Tag: Peace in Recovery

An Open Letter to My Children

An Open Letter to My Children

Audio version now available.

 

I made my kids watch Beautiful Boy, the 2018 Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet movie about addiction. I also made my kids watch a CNN documentary about the internet-induced proliferation of pornography. My alcoholism was traumatizing to my wife and kids. I can’t erase the past, and I refuse to ignore it, so the only thing I can do is be a cycle breaker. But as my kids will tell you, the most traumatizing thing I have done to them might have been making family movie nights out of Beautiful Boy and a CNN porn documentary. To make matters worse, Chalamet’s character has the same name as my oldest son, and when my hair was shorter, I was constantly told how much I looked like Steve Carell. In fact, someone once brought me a life-sized cardboard cutout of Steve Carell promoting The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and I was once chased down a city street by a man screaming, “Hey The Office! You dat guy!” I have not shaved or had a respectable haircut since.

 

In spite of the trauma my insistence on confronting addiction with my kids has caused, I still feel like it was the right decision. We didn’t talk about this stuff when I was a kid – not in school and not at home. Nancy Reagan insisted that we, “Just say no,” to drugs, and there was a PSA where a fried egg represented my brain, but the only messaging around alcohol that I can remember was that we had to be sneaky until we were 21, so my friend, Brad, and I buried a styrofoam cooler in the woods behind his house and covered it with a piece of plywood with leaves glued to it.

 

Is talking about addiction with my children hard? Yes, absolutely, but it is also as important to unwanted-consequence prevention as talking about vegetables and condoms and exercise and seatbelts and identifying the arrogant stupidity of the sharp bulb.

March without the Madness

March without the Madness

I’m not quite the lunatic I used to be. And nothing used to bring out the crazy like the aptly named March Madness basketball tournament.

 

In four years at Indiana University, I never missed a home game, and knew exactly where to stand above the tunnel to touch Bobby Knight’s shoulder as the team came back out after halftime. Creepy much? Knight received technical fouls for throwing things on the court twice. I don’t know where the chair is, but the program he threw against Boston University on December 13, 1991 is framed in my basement. So when I attended a bachelor party weekend in Las Vegas half-a-dozen years later, confident that I knew more about college basketball than the odds makers, my lunacy kept me placing double-or-nothing bets, just trying to get back to even, until the only thing left on which to wager was a West Coast NBA game. I took the under and felt vindicated until I realized that the sufficiently low score was tied, and the game was going into overtime. Meanwhile, my fiance, Sheri, was perplexed as her debit card was declined when she tried to rent a movie at Blockbuster. I proceeded to get so drunk that I was kicked out of a dance club that night. Twice (I’m not sure how I got back in for round two of drunken belligerence). I woke up the next morning in the hotel room I shared with eight guys, lying in a puddle of my own puke. (Should that be lay or lie? Given the vulgarity of the rest of the sentence, I am not sure it matters.) Later that day, I told Sheri about the $1,200 I lost amidst a crowd at the O’Hare Airport. I thought it less likely that she’d kill me in front of all those people.

I’m Afraid

I'm Afraid

I’m afraid of losing what I’ve worked so hard to build. I’m afraid there won’t be enough…enough readers, enough listeners, enough participants, enough interest, enough connection, enough resonation, enough money.

 

My ability to sleep through the night, and the degree to which I am pleasant to be around during the day, both depend on how I am managing my fears. Just like addiction isn’t a yes or no question, but rather addiction exists on a continuum, my fear is on a spectrum as well. Sometimes my fear is in check, and I feel peaceful and content. Sometimes my fear is temporarily nonexistent, and I am joyful and exuberant. Other times, my fear is woven through my thoughts leading my mind to race with fixation and rumination. Occasionally, my fear is completely out-of-control and I am debilitated and consumed.

Independence that’s Worth the Fight

Independence that's Worth the Fight

I remember when I thought it was enough to not be a racist. But then 2016 happened and Charlottesville and dog whistles and, “…stand back and stand by,” and the cockroaches all emerged from the sewers. That’s when I learned that racism is still quite a bit more of a problem than I naively thought, and it isn’t enough that I, myself, am not a racist. It isn’t enough that all lives matter. I learned to be anti-racist. I learned that while we have made vast, undeniable progress in the past 60 years, we have much further to go than I previously realized. I learned that it is not enough to not be the problem. I needed to be part of the solution.

 

That introductory paragraph is not meant to stir the political pot in an election year, although, let me be clear: If you are a white supremacist, or if you are concerned about the demographic certainty that white people will soon not be in the majority in the United States, you can fuck right off and unsubscribe from our blog and podcast (I hate ambiguity, don’t you?). Michael Jordan once famously explained that he doesn’t engage in political commentary because both Republicans and Democrats buy sneakers. I have no such business-motivated neutrality. My wife and I don’t get all authentic and vulnerable to help cockroaches.

Evolution Series: When the Solution is the Problem

When the Solution is the Problem

I have not been taking my meds

     My personalities have never felt better

The programming was not working

     So I switched off all the channels

Unlike Neo I took both pills

     Turned into my inner child

Now I’m rolling and running down hill

    Still profoundly upset with our depravity

I would argue the point that we are not civilized humanity

   My best thinking had me drinking, drugging, and With myself   Stuck IN

Monday Mornings

 

Monday Mornings

I didn’t hate my job. Not since I worked for an alcoholic landscaper one summer in high school have I ever hated my job. He was cranky in the mornings (hungover) and short tempered in the afternoons (drunk). He was OK at lunch, my one respite from hand weeding gardens at some big, corporate office complex. That job sucked. I was too much of a wimpy people pleaser to quit, so I pretended I had mono for a couple of weeks, then they just sort of forgot about me and got some other teenaged schlump to pull weeds and take the mild abuse.

 

As an adult, both before and after I crossed the invisible line into alcohol addiction, I really got into my jobs. I could see the path for career advancement and business growth, and I pursued goals with passion. I didn’t hate my jobs.

 

But I hated Monday mornings.

Confessions

Confessions

We were warming up running a lap around campus. My boss was in the lead, and I was the trailing sheppard making sure we corralled all 60 of the high school soccer players we had assembled for a Saturday morning training session. As we approached the pitch to end our roughly one-mile warmup, I slowed my pace to separate myself from the back of the pack. Saturday morning was coffee time, you see, so jogging with a full bladder was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

Evolution Series: The Beast

The Beast

For a long time, I couldn’t silence the screaming in my head.

It wailed day and night, night and day.

Years passed while it ranted and raved, quieting occasionally in slumber.

After a while, I wrestled that wraith into a box where it remained my captive.

Its muffled screams blending into the soundscape – white noise humming and buzzing at the periphery of my mind like the foggy mist of last night’s dream.

One day, a maelstrom came along and unleashed The Beast.

Cat Videos, Sugar Shame and Treadmill Trauma

Cat Videos, Sugar Shame and Treadmill Trauma

Over the New Year’s weekend I heard David Brooks, New York Times opinion columnist and author of How to Know a Person, describe social media as performance art. I like that. It is not connection or interaction no matter how many people we can reach, how fast or how far across the globe. Social media is not about growing closer. It is about screaming our opinions into the wind and posting pictures of our best, fake selves.

 

I have never really interacted with social media on a personal level, and we ditched facebook, Instagram and X for promotion of our blog and podcast in mid 2023 as an experiment. Our platforms continued to grow at the same slow and steady pace. No social media had no impact.

 

I do watch Instagram reels in bed most nights looking for funny cat videos to send my wife. It makes her giggle, so in that way, social media does create connection in my life. A wife who giggles because I show interest in her passion is about as good as it gets.

 

This is the time in the annual cycle when we all vow to make profound changes in our lives. You know it is the start of a new year when some of the beer commercials during the football games are replaced with ads for exercise equipment and tax preparation websites. But change doesn’t come from gym memberships and diet plans. Change comes from pain, and a few pounds gained from eggnog and sugar cookies doesn’t hurt enough. That’s why in January, when we realize our winter sweaters are sufficient cover for our holiday indulgences, our resolutions are fleeting little traumas of unwelcomed self-restraint.

 

But what if you are in enough pain?

Sobriety is Not My Thing Anymore

Sobriety is Not My Thing Anymore

For a large part of my seven years of sobriety, I had conscious thoughts about alcohol. I was alert for potential triggers. I considered how alcohol would enhance, then ultimately unravel, various situations. I worked to combat the shame of addiction, then the shame of sobriety in a society that reveres alcohol.

 

I felt pity for people who tried to quit drinking to appease a frustrated spouse. I felt pity for people who tried to quit drinking without a plan for recovery – as though not drinking was some sort of solution. I felt pity for people who put rules around their drinking and tried to control it. I thought about all the people I pitied, and it helped me maintain my commitment to sobriety.

 

But I don’t have a commitment to sobriety anymore. Not really. I don’t think about drinking or not drinking. Sobriety isn’t my thing anymore. At least it isn’t my thing any more than not drinking Drano or gasoline is my thing. I have no intention of ever drinking battery acid, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about not drinking battery acid. It is hard to consider your thing to be something you never consider. How can I claim sobriety to be my thing?