When normal people conjure an image of an alcoholic, they likely think of Nicholas Cage from Leaving Las Vegas. The Oscar-winning film depicts the suicidal journey of a man who decides to cash in his chips, travel to Vegas and binge drink himself to death with the company of Elizabeth Shue, a woman of the night he solicits on retainer.
His character wakes in the middle of the night with incontrollable convulsions only to be calmed with several pulls off a bottle. Food is inedible. The only fuel he needs is alcohol. He takes down pints of brown liquor in one long drink. He stumbles through life with slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and a fading grasp of reality. He passes out unexpectedly, gets tossed out of eating establishments and projectile vomits several times a day.
You can spot Cage a mile away. Even if you’re not looking. When he walks in a room, the waft of Vodka permeates the air. You can hear his loud and boisterous persona across the room. He’s crass and makes impulsive decisions. He has a beautiful woman hanging from his arm at all hours of the day.
This fictionalized version of an alcoholic may exist. The script was loosely based on the life of the author of the book the movie was based upon. In my experience, however, this is not the norm. I was an alcoholic for more than 20 years and even in the final days of my disease, I wasn’t as bad as Cage. The majority of the years I drank, most people in my life had no clue I even had a problem.
Every chronic alcohol abuser eventually hits rock bottom. However, everybody’s bottom is different. For some, their low is blowing their life savings in Vegas on one last hurrah. For others, it’s losing custody of their children. Perhaps they got fired or blew a job interview. Some reach it when they get a DWI – depending on the individual, rock bottom may be another three or four driving offenses down the pike. It typically takes years to hit the bottom.
You often hear that those who don’t quit drinking will end up in one of three scenarios: in prison, locked away in a mental facility or dead. It’s a popular saying in the recovery community. It’s not entirely true.
You likely have an alcoholic living in your neighborhood. You see them gardening and mowing their lawn at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. You work with an alcoholic. They are probably a high performer who comes up with innovative ideas and pitches in to help others without incentive. There was an alcoholic on the elliptical next to you at the gym this morning. You know an alcoholic who is embracing Sober October and bragging about it on social media. Many of these people are in committed relationships. They won’t end up incarcerated. They’ll die surrounded by friends and family.
Those who drink the most often do it in private. They aren’t whooping it up at bar on a Saturday night. They aren’t stupid enough to pound a half-dozen drinks in front of colleagues at an office happy hour. They don’t show up to work overtly drunk. They keep away from family and friends when they are highly intoxicated. When you see them consuming, it’s a façade. The Coors Light they are drinking is a prop in a performance. Most of their drinking is secretive – at home, in their car, before and after a gathering. An alcoholic imbibes to get drunk, not to enjoy the earthy tones of a wine or the bitter hops of an India Pale Ale.
No one wants to be called an alcoholic, or even worse, a drunk. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. It’s demoralizing. Despite popular belief among normal consumers, people who suffer from alcoholism can’t just quit drinking. They wouldn’t continue to drink if it was as easy as stopping. They aren’t having fun anymore and probably haven’t been for a long time. Their caveman brains have been rewired to seek satisfaction through drinking. They are offered a kick of dopamine as a reward for calming the agonizing SOS signal broadcast subconsciously from their brain. Alcoholics don’t drink for pleasure. They drink to take away their emotional and physical pain.
There are alcoholics who appear functional. Many are to varying degrees. Alcoholism is open to interpretation. Normal drinking and alcohol abuse are located on a blurry fine line. I know dozens of people who far surpass the National Institute of Health’s threshold of merely 14 drinks a week to be classified as a high-risk drinker with an alcohol abuse disorder. People I know who drink 15-20 drinks a week coach their children’s soccer team, volunteer and belong to book clubs.
We live in a culture that trains us to believe that we can attain a healthy life in alcoholic bliss. Many of us try to trick ourselves into believing that myth. The truth is that most perceived benefits of drinking are an elaborate façade we construct for ourselves and others. When alcohol becomes paramount, we’re often living in a fragile utopia. The walls are about to crumble.
My journey into the depths of alcoholism is not unique. I’m a 41-year-old white middle-class male (he/him/his) who is married with three children. I was not sexually or physically abused as a child. My drinking career spans 23 years. My disease is progressive. I’ve abused alcohol since the first time I drank it. It didn’t overwhelm my life, however, until many years later. I wasn’t secretly drinking a quart of vodka each day off stashes hidden in my basement, laundry room, garage and attic until the end of my journey. For many years, I drank socially. I worked hard to establish a career as a writer and healthcare communications professional. I was relatively healthy in terms of body mass index and traditional measures such as blood pressure for many years. I graduated college. I traveled. I dated. I earned numerous career accolades and awards. I got married. I raised my children. I did all of this while drinking excessively.
I’m not trying to dismiss any of my faults. There are many. I live with regrets obtained while under the influence. My failures pain me every day. I’ve lost friends. I’ve hurt people. I’ve disappointed family members. I’ve been bombastic, pretentious and downright mean. The failures of my existence are always present in the back of my mind. I can’t shake them. I feel guilty all the time. It can be paralyzing.
I wish I could apologize to everyone I’ve harmed through the years. I can and have tried to make amends – both living and with words – when possible and practical. A blanket “I’m sorry” does not suffice. Even if I could meet everyone I hurt and genuinely make amends, my olive branch wouldn’t necessarily be accepted. In some cases, the best I can offer is peace. My best action is to leave those I’ve hurt alone. Everyone has a limit.
I reached my rock bottom in the fall of 2023 on my oldest daughter Violet’s 7th birthday. I was too far gone to blow out candles on her cake. I was in a drunken stupor passed out in bed. It was 7 p.m. I went to inpatient treatment two days later. In a perfect world, my rock bottom would have come years earlier. DWI, marital issues, an intervention, isolation and declining health should have been triggers to seek help. They weren’t.
I tried to manage my alcohol consumption for many years. I was in some type of treatment for five years unsuccessfully. I was doomed to fail because I didn’t embrace my sobriety until I decided to go to inpatient treatment. Each time I white knuckled through a period of sobriety, I never did it for myself. I didn’t want it. I was attempting to placate another person. Or I was resetting my system so I could drink in moderation at some point. Without fail, every time I returned to alcohol, my drinking would go right back to ridiculous threshold I imbibed prior to abstinence in a matter of weeks. When I finally gave up, and tried to attain sobriety for myself, I began to have success. I truly had to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
My wife dropped me off at Beauterre Recovery Institute, a sprawling 180-acre cottage and former horse ranch, on the Straight River in Owatonna, Minnesota on the morning of Nov. 8, 2023. I polished off a hidden pint of vodka before we departed. I haven’t had a drink since.
I hope my story will inspire others to reach out for treatment long before I did. The struggle is real. If you’re in it, know that there is hope, but that attaining sobriety is not easy. You must want it. Badly. Most importantly, you don’t have to be homeless or on death’s door before you decide to put the cork in your bottle.
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