There’s a line in Good Will Hunting that always stuck with me.  The irony of it.  The hypocrisy.  The foreshadowing. It had everything, simply because of who Sean was in real life.  After I found out Robin Williams was just like me – an alcoholic – and I heard him speak that line when I watched it again, I remember watching his face.  I don’t recall the first time I watched that movie or the fifth, but I absolutely LOVE that movie.  And as I write this, I can still see him and Matt Damon sitting on that bench in the park and I can hear his voice saying it.

Sean says to Will, “Unless you want to talk about you, who you are.  Then I’m fascinated.  I’m in.  But you don’t want to do that, do you, sport?  You’re terrified of what you might say.”

That’s more than a great few lines.  Much more.  It’s a look inside the mind of an alcoholic.  It wasn’t intended to be, but it is.  We alcoholics don’t want to talk about us, who we are.  There are a million recovering alcoholics that would drop everything to help, to soak up our words and be fascinated by them.  They would be all in to help us.  But we alcoholics don’t want to talk about it.  We are absolutely terrified of what we might say.

Robin Williams was an amazing actor to me.  He was amazing because the more I got to know about him, and the more I watched him in movies, I could see the darkness.  I’ve read stories of where other people could, too.  He covered it all up so well by being one of the funniest people that has ever lived, but his dramatic roles didn’t require a great deal of acting.

I think he loved roles like Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society and Patch Adams and One Hour Photo that had a darkness to them in which he could escape because he got to almost tell the world a little about the darkness without it being Robin Williams who was spilling his guts out to the world.  He got to be Sean or Adrian or Patch or Seymour, not Robin.  And every time he had a dramatic role, he got to take a little piece of his troubled soul and show just enough of it where we were fascinated.  We were all in.

All of this is complete speculation on my part, but I’m probably not off by much if I’m off at all.  Alcoholics struggle mightily with depression and reclusiveness and anxiety and some, like Robin Williams, try to disguise the torment with humor.  And he did it SOOOOO well.  He was one of the few actors in my lifetime that I was pretty doggone sad when he died.  That was 2014.  I was still three years away from sobriety.  Not only did his death hurt me a little, I remember being a little jealous.  That’s what alcoholism does to a man.  It eventually makes him want to die.

Robin Williams went to rehab at least twice.  He fell off the wagon twice. He was sober and clean for 30 years between the cocaine and alcohol days of the 1970’s and when he started drinking again in 2003.  Thirty damn years of sobriety, gone. How does a man let that happen when all around him there are people who would drop everything if they knew he needed to just open up and TALK?  He could have gone to ANY Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in America and twenty people would have sat with him all night to keep him from drinking.

The answer is that when stress or depression or some other excuse causes drinking to become a viable option in an alcoholic’s life, he or she will not talk about it to ANYBODY.   They don’t want to.  When they are at that place, it’s over.  At every AA meeting across America today (no matter the day you’re reading this,) some meeting leader is telling the group that they need to “call their sponsor” if they’re ever in trouble.  Sometimes that simply is not going to happen.  When an alcoholic already has their mind made up, which takes surprisingly little time, there is no way in hell they’d call their mama just to thank them for the lasagna she brought last week.  They want to talk to NO ONE because then they would have to talk.  

And as Sean said in Good Will Hunting, “You’re terrified of what you might say.”  I’ll add to it. They’re also terrified of what they might DO if someone finds out they are leaning towards drinking again.  When falling off the wagon is a viable option, there better not be a damn soul standing in their way or they will get flattened by the obsession that is alcoholism.  Nothing will stand in their way, so why in the hell would they call their sponsor?

That’s why it’s possible to go 2, 5, 10, or even 30 years and just rip the sobriety label up in less than 30 seconds.  That first drink was a foregone conclusion as soon as they made it a viable option. That’s how easy it is to fall off the wagon.  And it almost always happens because they WANT it to.

I had somebody I know pretty well fall off the wagon recently.  Over five years of sobriety gone in the blink of an eye.  He wanted it to happen.  He couldn’t handle the stress of life (or whatever it was; the reason doesn’t really matter) and it was enough of an excuse to start drinking again.  And then he told me it happened two years ago.  He hadn’t even attempted to get back on the wagon in two damn years.  Hid it from his family, his job, everybody.  For two years everybody that knew he was an alcoholic thought he was still sober.  That’s insane.  But I can completely understand how it can happen.

I remember the only emotions I really felt when he told me were sadness and inquisition.  I was sad for him, but mostly I was sad for his wife.   She had come with him to AA meetings a couple of times.  Just a great lady.  And it had to be one of the most deflating moments of her life.  I think about my wife in those instances, too.  How would she handle it?  The best and only answer is, “Not well.”

The inquisition focused on a very simple and blunt series of questions that are all related.  How the hell did this happen, how did he let it happen, and how can I keep it from happening to me?  But the simple answer is the correct one, and it answers all of them.  He wanted it to happen.  He never intended to call a single damn soul because they would have tried to talk him out of it.  They preach “Call your sponsor” at every AA meeting, but the reality is, when an alcoholic makes alcohol a viable option, most of the time the only phone call they’ll make is to God or the devil, depending on their anger and depression levels.  They have already made up their mind.  Why in the hell would they call somebody who might make them stop?

So what do we do as their friend?  I thought a LOT about this question during the day he told me because he asked me to join him at AA that night.  I of course said yes.  That was the obvious and only answer.  You have to support him no matter what because he would damn sure do it for you.  He could have fourteen white chips because of screwing up so frequently, but I must support him until the end. Tonight could be the one that finally sticks.  And the next wagon-faller could be me.  IF I make it a viable option.

Several weeks later, I’m still a little jolted by it.  This guy was a sobriety mentor to me and he didn’t even know it.  I looked at him and thought, “There is a man content with the ‘forever’ part of sobriety.”  And that’s a BIG word for a lot of us alcoholics.  Content.  I’m sixteen months sober and I am NOT content yet.  I’m content with today – I know I will not drink or dip today – but to say I am fully content with the “forever” part of sobriety would be a lie.

It absolutely sucks for him, but I’m okay that he jolted me a little bit.  It’s oddly healing for me.  I needed to see how easy it was to go back, especially by somebody I thought never would.  I think it’s even okay that HE was jolted by it a little bit.  When he finally got caught, it was probably the kind of jarring embarrassment that he needed to never let it happen again.  Probably.

The person I feel most sorry for is not him, however.  He did this to himself and he knows it. He’s a big boy and he’s taking responsibility for it.  He’s doing exactly what he should do in that respect. But I absolutely HATE it for his wife. It’s not fair to her.  I know life sucks and it’s not fair, but alcoholism is probably one of the more severe and chronic tribulations with which a spouse must live.  It affects literally every support beam in the foundation of a marriage.  It gives a spouse undue worry and stress every single day of their life, and what makes that suck even worse is that they have ZERO control over it and ZERO escape from it.  

Just consider the things a spouse must worry about.  Is he going to bankrupt us with his drinking? Will he get fired?  Is he going to get so drunk that he cheats on me and doesn’t remember?  Is he going to show up tonight?  Will he ever turn violent as a result of this?  Is he going to drive with my babies in the car after he’s been drinking?  

Spouses are NEVER given the luxury to stop worrying or even to take a break from it.  There is this mountainous lack of trust that has been thrust upon them, and they’re the ones responsible for dealing with it.  It just sucks for them.  I have no idea how to explain or describe that any further. They deserve a hell of a lot more pity than their damn spouse does, I can assure you of that.

But I don’t think it’s okay for me to pity the alcoholic that falls off the wagon, no matter how close they are to me and no matter how much of a mentor I consider them to be.  They do NOT need pity. Pity is the alcoholic equivalent of some random person in the crowd singing “Kum ba yah” at a murderer’s sentencing before the judge says, “Okay, that’ll be good enough.  You’re free to go.”  I really don’t think that analogy made any sense whatsoever, but that’s okay because showing pity to a wagon-faller makes no sense either.

When somebody you know falls off the wagon, your ONLY job is to support them and be there for them if they need you.  I don’t think it’s okay to say something like, “You stupid dumbass.  What were you thinking?”  That’s just not okay.  You can be a good listener and give advice when its asked for, but it is NOT your job to give any unsolicited advice or condemn them.  Every thought a man can have has already flooded his brain.  He knows every piece of advice you could give him.  He knows how everybody will react if or when they find out.  He knows how disappointed his wife will be.  But it is absolutely not my job to dole out advice to people who have fallen off the wagon.  He knows he needs to be yelled at, but between he and his wife, nobody needs to add to that yelling.

Have you ever had a boss or parent who tells you three different ways that you screwed up when you already know you screwed up?  And by the end of their diatribe you actually WANT to screw up again just to give that person a big fat “F**k you” just because it will appease your boiling anger?  And the reason you got so angry during the diatribe is because you already knew – in perfect, vivid detail – exactly how, what, when, where, and why you screwed up.  You really don’t need anybody to tell you again.

That’s how I felt when I found out he fell off the wagon.  I listened, we went to AA together, I asked how his wife was doing, and then I stepped back.  I let him talk if he wanted to.  If I had nothing unique or philosophical to offer, why would I say anything?  Everything I could have said had already gang raped his brain for days, weeks, months, or possibly even years, because he subconsciously knew there would be a day that it ended.  And he knew it would probably not end on his terms.

Robin Williams as Sean Maguire is one of my favorite characters in my lifetime.  Him playing Patch Adams was another.  It makes me want to go back after writing this and watch both of them again, but especially Good Will Hunting.  The words he says and the heart he displays reminds me so much of the dark dungeon of alcoholism, even if that’s not the actual subject matter of the movie.  You could take his quotes out of that movie and apply them to a LOT of topics ranging from addiction to depression to suicide to fear.  But then he says something that gives you a little bit of hope, even for those who have just destroyed their families with their return to alcohol.

“You’ll have bad times,” he says.  “But it’ll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”

Yep.

Disclaimer:  The first several paragraphs below include a political/religious opinion that I feel very strongly about, but I am well aware that some people will read my opinion and immediately hate me.  If that’s your choice, there is very little I can do to stop you.  I am not asking you to agree with me.  I respect your opinion as you should respect mine.  If you are averse to other people’s opinions and have no place for them in your life, please start reading backwards from the end of this post.  I have no idea why that is the suggested reading path, but it makes as much sense as not being open-minded about other people’s opinions.  End of disclaimer.

 

I had a really odd memory the day my blog went public.  I remembered back seven or eight years ago to when North Carolina passed that stupid Amendment banning same sex marriage.  The stupidity of the arguments was worse than the amendment itself, though, mainly because I had a feeling the amendment wouldn’t last too long.  As a country, we were just getting WAY too progressive for it to stand. And very soon, the Supreme Court agreed with that.

What I remember about the arguments in favor of the bill were that they were predictably hypocritical and probably shouldn’t have even been legal.  Our laws in this country are no longer based on the bible, so we should not be able to use that as a point of reference for the issuance or justification of an amendment to our state or federal constitutions.  For people in support of the bill?  Sure.  Have at it.  You can quote the preacher of Westboro Baptist Church for all I care.  But it can’t have any part of the political reason it passes.  Or shouldn’t.  But what did we hear NONSTOP around that time?  “The bible says marriage is between a man and a woman.”  “The bible says that homosexuality is an abomination.”

Ah, yes, good ole Leviticus.  Do we even need to address the hypocrisy of Christians over THAT book of the bible when it pertains to this argument?  If we’re not letting gays get married, we have to ban adulterers and people that curse their parents and polygamists and even deformed people.  And by god, if a man has sex with a woman during her period, we have to remove him from his people.  Forever!  Thus sayeth the holy word, right?  

I’m not being blasphemous here.  I’m only summing up the bible.  That’s what it says!!!!  It is impossible to win the argument that the Holy Bible is a pick-and-choose rule book.  Everybody in 2011 just picked one rule out of Leviticus and they’ve never really had any use for the rest of them (and yes, I’m aware that homosexuality is talked about in other books; it’s just that Leviticus REALLY skewers them.)

Anyway, I got sick of it.  It was just starting to piss me off.  We were legislating against love.  How is that our job as a government and society?  I still can’t wrap my head around that to this day.  Not only were we making laws against who you could love like this was some kind of communist state, we were basing our arguments around a religious text whose words are NOT supposed to influence our laws.  And if they did, we have to kill all the f**king adulterers and make sure the hunchbacks and retards don’t desecrate the church, by dammit!!  (And I’m not being callous. Go read Leviticus 21.)

So anyway, I had just had enough of it, so I went on Facebook and announced that I was gay and let it hang over the Facebook world for about twelve hours.  I shocked hundreds of people.  It was awesome.  I still to this day laugh about it in my head.  Yeah, it was childish and a little insensitive and a few people got mad at me, but I don’t regret it.  At all.  I guarantee you people thought, “Well damn, I know him. What if he came to me and asked me not to vote for this same-sex marriage bill?  Dear God, what if he’s in love with my son?!?!”  

The announcement that I was gay on Facebook gave that stupid bill a local face.  It forced people who viewed gays as lifeless, detestable orbs to look at a real person who shocked them.  I do NOT regret that.  Not even a little bit.

Anyway, the announcement a couple of days ago that I was an addict was not dissimilar to how I felt the day I lied and announced I was gay.  That’s the last time I remember being really nervous about the opinions of the general public.  It was an odd thought, but I guess there are similarities between gays and addicts.  We’re both outcasts and pariahs.

But just like I did seven or eight years ago, I put a local face on addiction with my announcement and blog.  Both times, whether you agree with me or not, I stood up for something.  Or stood up TO something.  I started a difficult conversation.  I’m proud of that.  

But can I tell you what else I thought Thursday night when I looked back on the day my blog went public?  I sat in my big chair that I’ve been ignoring lately in favor of sitting in the office and working on this blog, and I laid my head back and said, “Holy hell, it’s over.  I did it.”

Addiction has been a huge part of my life for twenty years.  This blog has been a gigantic part of a very positive future for at least six months (four months mentally preparing and two months creating,) and the aftermath of all of that was entirely favorable.  Like entirely.  I expected some asshole to say something like, “Well, if you hadn’t gotten yourself addicted, you’d have no reason to have a blog.”  That didn’t happen, though. I’m sure that guy is just waiting for his time to pounce, but if so, I hope he’s prepared to be highlighted on my blog very soon thereafter.  Of course, if his critiques are warranted and intelligent and respectfully articulated, he will still be highlighted on my blog, but I would probably thank him. That could definitely go two vastly different ways. And I’m open and prepared for either.

Anyway, I sat there in my big chair the night of September 20, 2018, and I was truly exhausted.  My idea of patience is waiting until the cinnamon rolls actually exit the oven before I eat them.  And I had stressed over this blog for six months.  To me, that’s like living in biblical times and waiting at the bus stop.  You’re going to be waiting a long freaking time.  And it FELT that long.  I was tired.

But a lot went into this.  It was a LOT of work.  It wasn’t just the website building and writing content and brainstorming and all the technical learning curves.  There was a gargantuan mental hurdle to overcome.  I give all the credit on that one to my wife.  She supported me from day one.  At the suggestion of a blogger friend of mine, I gave my wife veto power over every word I published, and you would never believe the one thing she vetoed.  ONE thing.  All those words and all those articles and she vetoed ONE thing. I had written on my front page intro that we didn’t have a happy marriage those first three years.  She didn’t like that.  She said, “It wasn’t all unhappy. We had a LOT of happy times.”

She is just amazing in so many ways.  How can we see those first three years so differently?  I look back and see a woman who was constantly nagging me about drinking and begging me to stop and snooping around trying to find stuff and catching me in lies and all of those lies leading to a LOT of fights.  My memory tells me that happened five or six days a week.  HER memory says, “It wasn’t all unhappy.  We had a LOT of happy times.”

She makes me believe there is a God somewhere that loves me.  Nobody else could have been responsible for sending me such a blessing.  It’s like he knew it was time for me turn my life around and he sent me the perfect angel to help me spin.  I had to be the one to quit and take my life back, but she gave me the love that made me want to.  It’s just amazing to me.

So I wanted to write this post about the day my blog went public as much for me as for anybody reading it.  I just had this feeling, however it went, that this was going to be a pretty substantial day in my life.  I would either come out the other side excited as hell at what I can do with this platform and the lives I could touch and just all the gumdrops and lollipops with which dreams are typically stuffed.  Or I would come out the other side with those old feelings of regret and dread and depression and that stupid, physically impossible, delusional wish to turn back time.

I regret nothing.  The people in my life built a man up on Thursday, September 20, 2018.  I don’t watch the news very much, but I know pretty much everything that’s going on in the world from reading online, and it seems like all I see are assholes, bitches, fearmongers, bullies, anger, divisiveness, backstabbing, disrespect, hatred, and a bunch of phuchwads that couldn’t negotiate or compromise on how to slice a damn pizza.  Where are the decent f**king people in this world that just want the best for mankind, no matter what?

Well I can tell you where some of them are.  They are stuck inside the Facebook tab on my computer.  You people rock.  You built a man up this week.  I was tired as shit after many weeks of stress leading up to this, but I have gone to bed these past couple of nights with a confidence and a courage I haven’t known in decades.  My wife propped me up for a lot of years, and I’ll need her more than anybody when tough times hit, but sometimes you have to get outside the walls of your own house to rebuild a broken foundation.  I sincerely thank you guys for that.

With that, I just wanted to recap a few highlights from the day.

Morning

I knew when I woke up that Thursday was the day.  I’d been planning it.  The date had no significance other than I had to pick one, so why not pick one close to the weekend in case I had to spend the weekend crying?

So I got to work and the first thing I did was text some of my oldest friends to let them know about my blog.  These are the friends with whom I spent my high school and college years.  These guys were my clubbing mates and my golf partners and my groomsmen and my poker buddies.  I had not spoken to them in at least three years.  None of them.  I completely shut them out of my life.  That’s a pretty good indication that you’re closing in on rock bottom, you know?  I see that now.

So I texted them and was just as open and honest and contrite as I possibly could be.  It wasn’t hard.  I wasn’t pretending even a little bit.  I typed it out before class started because I knew I was going to cry.  And I did.  I told them I was sorry for disappearing, sorry for shutting them out of my life.  They had no idea why.  I just disappeared and never responded to anybody when they texted.  Pretty soon, they just stopped.

I also said I really wanted to see every one of them.  I wanted my friends again.  There won’t be anymore drunken beach trips with the guys or poker nights where I could easily drink a case of beer, but we’re all married with kids now anyway.  We can at least grill a hot dog sometime, right?  I hope we can anyway.  I got a great response back from all but one or two.  But those couple used to suck at texting anyway, so it might be coming.  If not, I have a few more friends than I had yesterday.

Afternoon

My planning period (I’m a high school math teacher) is the last block of the day, so I’m free of the hormonal humans by about 12:30 every day.  I was ready.  I knew exactly what needed doing to post about my blog on Facebook and officially make it public (yes, I admit to doing personal stuff at work, but I spend about ten hours a week doing work stuff at home, so I can justify it with the boss if I need to.)  

So I had about an hour’s worth of work to do before I could put it on Facebook.  I had to publish Thursday’s blog post, publish my dlee3.com Facebook page, test to see if Facebook would find a preview of my site when I posted about it (it did, it just put a picture on it that I didn’t want; I’m a technical idiot and still have no idea why,) and finish typing out the actual Facebook post where I announced the blog.

All of that went well with the exception of one interruption.  My wife texted me LIVID because some stupid bitch at my son’s preschool literally parked six inches from my wife’s door.  

Now how the hell is a pregnant woman supposed to get in there?  This was a distraction (somewhat humorous, I might add,) but I still got it all posted to Facebook and my blog updated before the bell rang at 2:00.  

And then I waited, nervous as hell.

Late Afternoon and Evening

When my first wife died back in 2008, and the years after, I could post something on Facebook and get somewhere around seventy-two million likes and thirty-four thousand comments, but that slowly dwindled away as time went on.  That’s to be expected, of course.  My wife likes to joke that part of the reason I used to get so many likes and comments was because all the single ladies were awkwardly flirting with me by liking everything I put on Facebook.  Who knows?  She might be right.  I’m female stupid anyway.

But in the past year or two, I really have only put pictures or videos of my kids on Facebook and I will get about twenty or thirty likes and maybe half a dozen comments.  Just slowly inching my way towards a completely anonymous death.

Thursday, however, I got thirty-seven comments, over fifty thumbs up or hearts, at least seven shares, and over a HUNDRED people have liked my dlee3.com Facebook page.  And not a single negative comment.  Not one.  That’s pretty impressive for somebody who had all but disappeared.  And really, really humbling.

What has impressed me most has been the sincerity in the comments people have made.  I’ve gotten a few texts as well, and they are all just amazing.  If you are reading this and you are petrified of life after addiction, and just terrorized by how people might react to you (both of which are completely realistic feelings and you actually SHOULD have them,) I hope you are paying attention.  

Ignore those assholes that are glorified on national news, ignore the media hoarders that believe hostility and divisiveness sell and somehow advance our country.  Ignore those drama-seeking reality TV dimwits that get pissed because their housemate slept with somebody they had a crush on in kindergarten.  And ignore those glory-seeking pissants who get offended because their hairspray was made in a nut factory by white Mexicans.  Those aren’t real people.  That’s just not real.  None of it is.  Give real people a chance to surprise you. 

That might not be a shocking realization for “normal” people, but as addicts, we struggle mightily with the perceived opinions of those “normal” people.  We believe those opinions are full of judgment, disparagement, condemnation, and stereotypes that keep US in the closet just like gay people.

If you’re out there and still suffering from addiction, look at what I have written here.  Look at what I witnessed this week.  My fifteen months of sobriety didn’t mean anything.  I’m sure some people looked at that and said, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive,” while some people probably said, “Ooo, that’s not a lot.”  It doesn’t matter if you have one day, one year, or one decade.  If you are sincere about your desire to stay sober and sincere about your desire to pay it forward, the people in your life will help CARRY you forward, even if they barely know you.  Because guess what?  They ALL know somebody who has struggled, even if they never have personally.  They’ve ALL seen somebody overcome something, whether it be addiction or abuse or an eating disorder or even a completely self-inflicted wound.

I truly believe after this experience that people love watching other people learn to love life again because it makes their light burn a little brighter, too.  It just makes people feel good.  And that means people ARE good.  Give them a chance to prove it.   Give them a chance to help you.  Just give life a chance.  I just can’t imagine that you’ll regret it.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is battle addiction and its many demons.  It can be REALLY hard and REALLY debilitating. But it’s 99.9% mental once the physical dependence is gone.  And somewhere in that 99.9% is this ridiculous mindset that you are a lesser person, an unworthy person, and somehow, a very important person.  What I mean is that we emerge from addiction and stare at a world that we think is staring back in judgment and condemnation.  That’s wrong.  Why?  Because we aren’t that f**king important.  We think the world is staring at us and there ain’t a damn soul staring.  We just aren’t that important.  So give people a chance.  I’m thankful today that I dropped the anonymity because I got to see a beautiful, loving side of people.  It makes me want to repay it tenfold.

One quick story before I finish.  A guy named Brice messaged me Thursday.  I have not seen or spoken to him in about three years.  I used to coach golf at the high school where I teach, and Brice was one of the best golfers at another local high school that we played against three or four times per season.  He was a great high school golfer by his senior year. 

I was drawn to him not because of golf, though.  It was because he had the kind of inviting personality you see on fully grown people that you admire.  You know, the kind of people for which you instantly feel a pang of envy because they just seem to have life by the balls?  He was still a kid, though, and he seemed to not need or want to rush life along too fast, and one reason for that, I think, is because a couple of years after I started coaching against him, he lost his dad unexpectedly. 

Talking to him after that, there was just a maturity and appreciation for the process of life that you just don’t see in high school kids.  If you’re local to me, you might even remember his dad.  His name was Jim Connors.  He was the local sports director for Time Warner Cable News.

When I started my career at 21 after college, I went into banking.  I hated it for a good seven or eight years. I had this dream of starting my own business because I didn’t want a boss anymore.  It was ill-conceived and poorly planned, but my dad went along with it because he loved and trusted his son.  With his backing, I could actually finance the business, and soon I had the beginnings of a family entertainment center.  It started out with batting cages and an arcade, but I had much bigger plans for it down the road.  I had visions of adding a driving range and a community pool and putt-putt.  Just big, expensive dreams.  It failed miserably, but at least I once had dreams.  That’s a good thing.  I remember having dreams.

That’s not the story, it’s just the background.  So Jim used to bring Brice up to the batting cages when he was little and they’d go hit for a little while and then come inside to shop for baseball cards.  I didn’t really remember Brice when I met him again years later on the golf course, and during the years I coached against him, he never told me the story he told me this week.  He had told me that he used to go to the batting cages, but never this exact memory of it.

Somewhere in one of my earlier blog posts, I made a reference to having started a business that failed.  That is not a false statement. It DID fail.  But Brice told me in his message this week that I did NOT fail.  He said, “My greatest memories as a kid with my dad weren’t at the golf course.  They were at your batting cage.  I sucked and at best would get a couple of hits, but after I was finished, the highlight of those trips were inside your shop where he would buy me baseball cards.  Obviously, he is not here anymore, but anytime I pass by, those memories are there.  So I hope you know even if you think you failed, you gave me memories with my dad.”

Damn.  Just damn.

I guess if I was to analyze that enough, I could say that our words and actions and our place in life create memories for OTHER people that we never really consider.  Or never even know about.  I had no idea somebody had such a profound memory of something that, to me, is such a difficult memory that I wish it could be ripped from my brain with dull hedge trimmers, even if they had to rip out some good memories with it.  It’s that bad a memory to me.  Failure weighs REALLY heavily within me.  Always has.  Especially when that failure was the direct result of my actions and my addictions.

His story made me wonder, though.  Will somebody have a memory of this past Thursday – the day they found out Denton was a drunk – that will be wildly different than my memory of it?  I’m not that f**king important, so probably not, but what if?  I hope it’ll be because my words and my struggles have touched them in such a way that their life is better today because of it.  What if somebody read my blog and decided it was time for them to REALLY put a plan in place to get help for their addictions? 

If it wasn’t that poignant, and I’m SURE it wasn’t for most people, I just hope they remember that they know a guy with some experience and wisdom with addiction that they can turn to just in case they ever need advice because somebody they know or love is struggling themselves.  And of course I hope it’s memorable enough that they keep reading my blog, whether or not addiction affects them or not.

Thursday showed me that I don’t give people nearly enough credit for the goodness of their hearts and the benevolence of their words.  Mostly, I think I saw how powerful and potentially influential we can be as humans when we have a powerful message.  For my entire adult life, the most powerful messages I ever exhibited were lying about being gay and acting like an amazing single father when really I was a reclusive drunk who miraculously fooled everybody.

I think my message is better now.  I look forward to seeing how powerful a message it can be.

My most recent lie was unintentional.  I hesitate to even call it a lie.  You know when you have your mind completely on something else – tonight’s dinner, the Cubs game, who’s going to get that damn rose – but you still tell your sister or your mom that you’ll absolutely take care of feeding Aunt Betty’s cat?  And then you don’t.  You don’t even remember saying it.  And then Aunt Betty gets home and the cat is eating silk flowers.  This is not your fault.  It’s actually THEIR fault for asking you during “The Bachelorette.”

Well this is similar.  Not really, but somewhat.  It’s only similar because I can’t be accused of blatantly lying.  “The Bachelorette” was on.  I mean, it’s possible it was on.  I have no idea.  I would rather watch stainless steel rust than watch that crap, but I was trying to make it relatable.  I fear I may have failed.

Anyway, I said in one of my earlier posts – and I referenced it on my homepage – that I discovered some months ago that I was able to make some sense of addiction and sobriety when I wrote about it.  I also said I had not written for ten years prior to this blog.  Those are both lies I had no idea I was telling.  I actually HAD written something in the past ten years.  And I actually got the idea to write about addiction and sobriety from something completely unrelated.

My wife’s miscarriage.

She actually reminded me recently that I had written a letter a few days after we saw an empty sonogram.  About three days earlier, that sonogram held life. It’s tiny, pencil-tip heart was beating. And then it was just gone.

As I told her then and I would still tell her now, a miscarriage cannot and will not be as heartbreaking for the father as it will be for the mother.  There are always those rare occurrences where a couple has scratched and clawed and fought biology or bad sperm or an unfit womb to get pregnant, only to lose the baby over and over again.  But in most cases – those cases where a woman has one or two miscarriages before or after having a baby and the miscarriages have no explanation – the father has ZERO physical connection to that tiny baby.  Not even the slightest inkling of a connection.  For that reason, it’s very, very hard to empathize with your wife’s grief.  She’s absolutely destroyed and you feel like your new pet fish didn’t make it home from PetSmart alive.

That was me.  My soon-to-be new pet fish died before I got it home.

I will be the first to admit that I am a crier.  I’m not necessarily proud of it, but it doesn’t really bother me either.  It’s just who I am.  I think it’s good for your spirit to let some tears flow every now and then.  It reminds you that you’re capable of giving love and capable of being loved.  And it reminds you how important both transactions are.

One thing I’m thankful for is that I do not know how many times I made my wife cry.  My guess is hundreds.  I was a drunk.  I was a nicotine addict.  My addictions came before my family.  It’s heartbreaking in hindsight to consider what I did to her.  She was prepared to leave me and fight for full and complete custody of the kids because I did not deserve to be a father.  And I didn’t.  She would have won.  I had no case.

But when that miscarriage happened, I had been sober about nine months.  I had not made my wife cry in nearly a year.  And then she cried a much, much different cry for days and weeks.  And I could NOT empathize with her grief.  It was stressful and confusing and awkward and it just sucked.  I could not feel her pain.  I wanted to SOOO badly, and I simply couldn’t.

Until I sat down and wrote about it.  It was during the letter that I wrote to my unborn child that I realized how much I needed to write.  I was unable to grasp any connection whatsoever with this tiny thing that to me was nothing but a fetus.  But then I addressed the letter to the baby, not its mommy.  And I found my connection.  I still feel it to this day.  And I still cry reading what I wrote.

That baby would have been born this month.  We’d be celebrating and falling in love with our new baby and we’d be tired and cranky and all that other wonderful stuff that comes with new life, but instead, we had to wait a little while.  We have a rainbow baby coming in January.  To my wife, it meets the criteria and definition of what a rainbow baby is.  It’s the baby that comes after a miscarriage, so called because a beautiful rainbow is born from a storm.  

But you know what?  When I read the letter I wrote to that baby again a few days ago, I cried the happiest tears I’ve cried in months.  My wife’s storm was the miscarriage.  My storm was addiction. My storm isn’t over – I doubt it ever will be – but this rainbow baby will be my first and last child as a sober man.  It’s got some work to do still in gestation, but God willing, it’s going to shine a big ole bright rainbow on some pretty dark and painful storms.

We have a thirteen year old whose daddy was a drunk for twelve of her years.  For the first ten months of my son’s life, his daddy was a drunk.  They deserved better than me.  In many ways, they still do.  There’s a lot of stuff that I missed, especially with my daughter.  But this new one – Mr. or Ms. Rainbow Baby – will get its entire life with a sober daddy.  And that feels really freaking good.

Because of that, the letter I wrote to my unborn child needs to be on my blog.  Because sometimes I need to cry.

 

A Letter to My Unborn Child – Written February 6, 2018

I don’t know how heaven works – I’ll never claim to – but I’ve been wondering these past few days what you might look like.  When God needed you more than your mother did, did he make you fully developed? Do you have eyes, a nose, little arms, a brain, and two cute little butt cheeks?  Mostly I want to know about the eyes.  I would have loved your eyes.

Another thing I don’t know about heaven is if its residents can see those of us down here that they left behind.  And if those eyes work and you can see us, I hope you don’t understand how to read the heartbreak on your mother’s face.  Your daddy can, and her heartbreak is pretty painful to witness.  I don’t like it at all.

But for seven weeks – seven weeks filled with hope and dreams, even sickness and early pregnancy backaches – your mother’s heart was alive.  It was full.  It was joyous.  It’s been that way since she adopted your sister and your brother was born, but you were going to finish the motherhood dream.  You were the final piece.

And then you couldn’t hang on.  Something was never quite perfect enough within the perfection of human life.  For whatever reason, God’s miracle of human development wasn’t meant for you.  And your mother’s heart lost a little of its joy.  How could it not?  Her baby died.

I guess I need you to know – and I hope your mother knows – that it wasn’t your fault.  It wasn’t her fault either. These are rarities in life. Those things that happen where no one is at fault.  They also appear to be the toughest to battle simply because there is no one to blame.  Who do we get angry at? God?  He gave us two of the greatest gifts married couples will ever know, and he made them perfect in every way, so how do we blame him for taking you away?

I honestly think I know the answer to that, and if you don’t mind, and if this is even doable in that unknown place called heaven, tell God we’re sorry.  We’re going to blame him for a little while.  He’s a big boy.  He’ll understand.  Your mother especially needs somebody to blame.  She needs her anger displaced so she doesn’t carry so much of it herself.  I personally think God can help carry her burden until she’s ready to carry it all herself.  He knows she believes in him and will forever honor and worship him.  So just tell him she needs a little help carrying the anger and burden for a little while.  I think that’s one of those prayers he probably always answers when his servants need it.  If not, he should consider it.

Little one, this is not your fault.  You tried hard.  You fought hard.  I wish you could have come to live with us in September and met your sister and brother.  I wish you could have laughed your cute little butt cheeks off with daddy’s rough beard tickling your belly.  I wish you could have let your mommy cuddle you well past the time you actually fell asleep just because she couldn’t stop staring at you and falling in love a little more every second.  I wish you lived.  I just know you would have been great at it.

I doubt it’s ever a great idea to make grandiose promises to God if he’s willing to answer a prayer and send your brother and sister one more little sibling, but I can make you a promise, little one.  Every day in my life that passes, I am finding it plausible and enjoyable to truly appreciate the process of life.  I don’t love the valleys, but I respect them because of how much I’m growing to appreciate every moment from the view on the mountaintops.  You leaving us before you ever had a chance to live was a valley, but I can promise we never want to forget that valley.  You were beautiful, if only for a fleeting moment.

If we’re blessed with the opportunity to be parents again, we’ll fly up to that mountaintop of joy and love and appreciation again, and because of you, all of that love and joy and appreciation will be so much greater.  Because of you, I already want to do so much more for the two God blessed us with because he gave me today to spend with them.  All we will ever need is today.  We’ll fill tomorrow with as much love as we can muster when we get there.  Today we get a chance to live our best lives as parents and fill our house with love and joy and appreciation.

All because of you.  Sweet dreams, little one.

It must be hell.  Really, it must be.  To live with an addict.  To love an addict.  To rationalize with an addict.  To sometimes have no other choice than to defend an addict.  To fully understand what it is like to love AND hate somebody at the same time.  To be terrified of your husband, even when the fear is not of physical pain but staggering amounts of emotional and mental anguish.  To be the addict’s spouse.

It must be hell.

In a world without the prospect of perfection, my wife is just so, so damn good at everything a wife and mother is supposed to be – so close to perfection that she’s forcing the judges to reconsider the qualifications for earning the title of Perfect Wife – and she fell in love with a liar, a manipulator, an idiot, a disgrace, a drunk.  She had no idea she was marrying all of that.  And somehow, she’s still here on the other side.  I cannot begin to express my gratefulness for that, but I also cannot begin to express how undeserved it is.

When I met my wife, she was going through a divorce and I was a five year widower, just dating here and there with no real interest in anything too serious because, as I told people, all thirtysomething women just wanted to get married and have kids immediately because their clock was ticking.  I might have dated a couple of women that met that description, but mostly it was me.  I was in love with alcohol and tobacco.  I had no other place in my life for a girlfriend.

But then a good friend of mine set me up with my soon-to-be wife.  Blind date.  I saw a picture, but it was mostly blind.  In truth, she actually asked about ME because she knew about me through some acquaintances or family or something and knew I was single.  

Well, I agreed to the date but I almost immediately tried to think of any reason in the world to cancel because every first date just scared the hell out of me.  I also knew I couldn’t drink as much as I wanted if I was on a date.  That’s an absolutely true story.  It happened on every first date.  Or fourth date.  I had to make sure I had enough time to get back home so I could get at least six or eight beers and two dips in before bed.  It’s just sickening now to even say that.

The night I met her, though, I might as well have been a ribeye forgotten on the grill because I was DONE.  I always thought those people that talk about love at first sight were full of shit, but there is absolutely something to it.  Maybe it was mostly physical that first night because I wanted to do naughty things as soon as I laid my eyes on her.  And that only got worse throughout the night as I got to know her and smell her and touch her and gradually get close enough that we were making out by the end of the night.  

It was supposed to be just a goodbye kiss, but it lingered for about an hour.  And kissing was it.  It was enough.  I loved every minute of it.  I even managed to stop at one point and say, “I just want to make it clear that I’m not sleeping with you.”  She looked at me like I’d just spit snot in her mouth and said, “Duh shit, moron. I didn’t ask.”  (It might not have been those exact words, but it was close.)  But then we kept kissing, so I was only mildly embarrassed.  And she still brings it up to this day, so I quite literally will never live that down.  But I knew that night that I was done looking for my wife.  I was in love, lust, and a fair amount of pain by the time I left to go home.  Where I drank, naturally.

We were married 14 months later.  And even though we lived together for the last three or four months of our engagement, she had no idea what or who she was marrying.  

You don’t expect your future husband to be an addict.  You just don’t.  How in the world could anybody expect the man they love – the man they want to spend the rest of their life with – to hide beer in their grandmother’s China cabinet and cans of Kodiak Wintergreen snuff in so many different places that the people who bought our first house are probably still finding them?  Again, it’s sickening to even admit this.  But I get to do that now.  I’m not hiding from it anymore.  It’s freeing.  It’s healing.  

I don’t really know when she began to think I drank too much.  I blame addict brain for that one.  I can’t really even remember how I proposed, so it’s not that surprising that I can’t remember when she first started making suggestions that I drank too much.  

The hiding was the first clue.  No doubt about that.  Normal people do not drink ten to fifteen beers every night.  And I mean EVERY night.  She probably had no idea that it was that much, but she started figuring out that I was absolutely hiding something and lying about it.  The great thing (and the scary thing) about alcohol is that once it’s on your breath, it stays there for a while.  So while I was “working in the garage having a couple of beers,” she didn’t know about the eight beers I’d drunk while “sipping” the “couple of beers” and hid the empty cans or bottles under the freaking bushes in the front yard.  

Again, not normal.  I essentially tricked this amazing woman into marrying a raging alcoholic.  Why the hell would any sane person do that to someone they love?  It’s an unanswerable question.  I can give you a lot of excuses, but that’s all they are.  Want to hear some of the excuses anyway?  I actually said these things to myself when rationalizing my desire to hide this gigantic secret from this stunning woman.

• “It’ll be okay.  I’m going to quit soon.”
• “I’m not hurting anybody.  I mean, I’m not driving.”
• “By the time she wants to have kids, I’ll cut back.”
• “Men drink.  That’s what we do.  She’s just being a nagging bitch.”

You get the idea, right?  These are the stupid, irrational thoughts that go through our minds when the rationalization for why we keep lying to this person we love is necessary to nullify the guilt.  It’s insanity.  But when it’s happening, we actually believe ourselves!!  We actually think we have it all worked out and have a real plan for when we will quit or “cut back.”  That’s even more insanity!!

Addicts don’t do moderation.  We don’t live balanced lives. It’s an all-in, full bore, mental and physical obsession with alcohol (and in my case, tobacco, too.)  It’s more important than your family, your job, your health, your friends, everything.  It is your life.

That’s why it must be hell.  Since I got sober fifteen months ago, I’ve tried to put myself into my wife’s shoes and wonder how I would react if there was something in her life that was more important than me.  I don’t even like it when she talks about old boyfriends or when she says Channing Tatum is dreamy.  I mean, he is, but I seriously feel emasculated and unimportant and replaceable. It depresses me.  I don’t really have that much in the form of jealousy (I kinda like it when other guys think she’s hot,) but I can absolutely feel depression.

So how must she have felt?  Her husband, the man she fell head over heels in love with, held alcohol AND tobacco in higher esteem and on a loftier perch than her.  Once again, that is sickening.  But I was completely fine with it during my days of active addiction.  I could rationalize the hell out of that.

But it must have been hell for her.  I spoke a couple of paragraphs ago about the depression I feel when she talks about a former boyfriend.  Can you imagine HER depression?  She knows how badly I do NOT want to even pretend she had boyfriends (or a husband) before me, and she respects that.  She’s okay with our lives just being about us.  We have absolutely no need to rehash old relationships.  It does us absolutely no good.

But seriously, can you imagine HER depression?  An old boyfriend might come up in conversation once every two months.  I was essentially flaunting the fact that she came in third on my importance hierarchy every single day.  Can you imagine HER depression?  Can you imagine how much worse it must have been because she did NOT sign up for that?  She had no idea who she was marrying.  Addicts are no better than adulterers.  We might be worse.  We cheat on our spouse every single day.  Not a day goes by that our addiction(s) fall to second or third place behind our spouse.  It’s just sickening.  It’s actually pretty depressing to put all of this down in print. 

It’s also freeing.  She knows the regret I feel now.  She’s even becoming partially sympathetic to it.  She knows I have no ability to ever repay her for standing by me through addiction and bearing with me through early sobriety when it’s sometimes worse than active addiction.  At least in active addiction, you know what you’re getting every day.  A person in early sobriety is pretty mercurial.  Like a lit bomb that has no timer.  You have no idea what’s about to happen, when it’s going to happen, or the extent of the damage.  You just have to stand by in support with a shield of thick skin, unbending love, and a shitload of hope.

And she did that.  She was amazing and still is.  But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have every right to leave me when she did.  She basically had to.  I look back and wonder what took her so damn long.

She gave me an ultimatum.  Pick her or my addictions.  I called her bluff.   I chose my addictions.  I got home one day and she was gone.  Her brother-in-law and a couple of his employees came and helped her get the bed, the dresser, the living room furniture, the kitchen table.  She took everything she needed.  I got exactly what I deserved.  An air mattress and a hi-def glimpse at a man I hated more than any terrorist.

We were back together a couple of weeks later.  I begged and pleaded.  I also told her I was done.  It was another lie.  She thought I was sober for about nine months after that.  It was probably closer to nine days.  I started hiding it again.  Most days I drank enough to buzz, to get by.  It was always after she went to bed, so my time was limited.  I was lucky to drink a six pack and get in one dip most nights.  But it was sustaining my addictions.

I don’t recall how it happened, but I remember the exasperation in her face and her words when I told her I wanted the freedom to drink if I promised to do so in moderation.  She didn’t know I’d been drinking all along, but I was getting sick of hiding it.  It was too stressful (poor baby, I know.)  In response to this request, she basically said, “I know I can’t stop you, but if you ever put our children in any danger, or if it has a negative impact on this family, I will kick your ass out and fight for full custody.”

So for the next year or so, I fought that addiction, I fought suicidal thoughts, I fought her, I fought to rationalize my freedom to be a man and drink a beer if I wanted to.  I could finally tell I was losing the fight.  I had no idea how and no ability to drink in moderation.  I’m an alcoholic.  It just doesn’t work that way.  My wife and I were not happy during this time.  Not even close, really.  We were just existing.  We damn sure weren’t loving each other.  She knew I was hiding beer and dip and I knew she was snooping to see if I was hiding it.  She found some here and there.  We fought about it every time.  I didn’t stop hiding it or drinking it.  It was no way for either of us to live.

More ultimatums came, but I finally flipped the switch on her.  I told her that I knew I was an addict and I knew I had to quit.  She just needed to give me some time to come to grips with it.  I had no idea how much time that was, but I knew that by admitting I had a problem that I could steal another month or two.  I just honestly wasn’t sure I wanted it.  I knew I was pretty much done drinking.  I could not dislike myself any more than I did.  It was over.  But just like every other time I promised myself I was quitting, I still wasn’t quitting TODAY. 

And what was her response to this?  There wasn’t much of one.  We were not close at the end.  She was so tired of the same old shit at that point that she had almost left or kicked me out a half dozen times.  Her life had become a giant shrug where I was concerned.

Well finally the day came.  I went to her one last time, after she’d heard the same rationalization about fifty times before, and I said, “Let me drink tonight because my mind’s already made up that I’m going to, and tomorrow, I’m done.  Drinking AND dipping. I’m done.”

At that point, she was defeated.  She was “done” in a much, much different fashion than the “done” I was the night I met her.  On this night, her fight was gone.  Completely gone.  That’s what I saw anyway.  She didn’t say that, but I knew.  She had absolutely had enough.  I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it was basically, “Whatever.”  She didn’t believe a damn word I said anymore and had no interest in responding with much care or affection.   There was very little of that left anyway.

The next day was May 28, 2017.  I’ve been sober and nicotine free ever since.  My fight was over at the same time she had lost her ability to fight me.  It worked out well in that regard.  And every day for the next few months, I fought to win her back and stay sober, and those two fights were not unrelated.  I had to have both or else I would have lost both.  But for the first time in twenty years, I finally wanted it.  I absolutely hated myself at the end.  I knew if I was ever going to feel like I deserved her, my family, and a healthy self-esteem, I had to fix me. 

It took me twenty years to heed the advice of every recovering addict before me.  I had to quit for me.  And I finally was.  It took a LONG time for my wife to understand what that meant, and even though it was a little tough to accept – that a husband couldn’t, wouldn’t, and shouldn’t quit for his wife or family – she accepts it as necessary now. 

I recently told her the story of somebody I know caving and giving up ten years of sobriety.  His addiction came back immediately – with the first sip – and progressed until he got caught two years later.  It was as simple as him NOT putting his sobriety first.  He strayed from AA and stopped doing service work for other recovering alcoholics, he just stopped waking up every morning with anger and gritted teeth and looking at himself in the mirror and saying, “I am NOT f**king drinking today.  The bottle does NOT control me anymore.”   

It took one drink and it controlled him again.  For two years.  His wife had no idea.  I can’t even begin to fathom what went through her mind when she found out.  Or the tears she shed.  Or the pain she felt.  She had also unknowingly married an alcoholic many years earlier.  It also got worse after they got married.  I don’t know the extent, but I know it also put a strain on their marriage.  That strain is no doubt back in their marriage now.  Gone for more than a decade, and now it’s back.  

I have no doubts that she had the same anger and exasperation and disappointment that my wife knows all too well.  I’m sure his wife remembered it pretty easily, too.  I don’t think the spouse of an addict will ever forget how their spouse’s addiction made them feel.  There’s just no better way to say it than, “Like shit.  It made them feel like cold, rotten shit.”  It’s no different than adultery.  He had been cheating – the alcoholic’s form of DAILY adultery – for two years behind her back.  It’s just awful what we addicts do to our spouses.  And it’s not even a little bit fair.

And that is why I still do not deserve my wife.  It is a very selfless act to love an addict.  There are very few emotional rewards.  There is nothing but a lifetime of feeling inadequate because you will NEVER be number one.  And when an addict is in recovery, there is very, very little their spouse can do to help.  They can be supportive, but there is nothing they can really do to help.  The addiction is the addict’s to fight alone.  Only they can beat it.  The spouse has to sit back and allow sobriety to come first, even before them.  For their rest of their lives or their marriage, whichever comes to an end first.  And that is NOT fair.  It must be hell.  If must absolutely f**king suck to be married to an addict.

I’m just thankful that with every passing day of sobriety, my wife doesn’t realize that anymore.

 

Are you like me?  Are you tired of money?  How about self-esteem? Honesty?  Clean living? Is all of that stuff just a little too boring and blase for you?  Are you looking for a little excitement in your life? Something that gets your blood boiling, your heart beating too fast, and causes years of stress leading to an early death?  Do you want to despise morning daylight?  Drink Pedialyte to lesson the feeling of impending death?  Taste hops and barley with your cereal every single day around lunchtime when you finally get your sorry ass out of bed?

Well you’ve come to the right place, Champ (or Champess.)

Let’s get something out of the way before we start this how-to guide.  Your place in life, your marital or dating status, your friends, your job, who your live with, and even the place you live are all determining factors in how successful this will be.  In other words, if you are married with two kids and live in a three bedroom house with an acre of land, a garage, and a job you must attend daily by 8:00 a.m., you will read this much differently than a single twenty-two year old with a restaurant job and enough disposable income to keep a line item on the monthly budget for tattoos.

As you read this article, try not to feel overwhelmed if it all seems far too unattainable, though.  It can at first, but like anything else in this life that is worth having, your cherished goal of full blown alcoholism WILL take some effort on your part.

The key to all the advise you get with this article is creativity.  People that hide alcohol behind the milk in the fridge and think it’s “hiding” are going to get caught.  Somebody that gives a rat’s ass about them is going to ask if this is a different case of beer than the one they saw yesterday.  This example would be a dumb ass attempt to “hide” the fact that you desire to drink way too much.  That seems like a no-brainer to me, but I’ve seen worse.  Hell, in my early days, I DID worse.  So get those boring, pedestrian ideas out of your head NOW.  We don’t play with that crap about here.  Alcoholics must be creative with their bounty, like a pirate is when he’s hiding his gold.

The following are some well-researched ideas from a recovering addict I know pretty well (it’s me.)  Everything you read here actually happened.  Honestly, if all the ideas were here, it would be book length.  But you don’t need that much to get a good start on a successful alcoholic lifestyle. 

The fact that none of this was made up should probably tell you a couple of things.  First, when it’s put down on paper all stuffed into one article, it is really tough to downplay how fully twisted, encompassed, and marvelously insane a life can become when addiction becomes as necessary as food, water, and oxygen.  It’s beyond comprehension that marriages, jobs, mortgages, kids, and even lives can progress when fully embedded in an alcoholic lifestyle.  But that’s why this article is so important.  If alcoholism is your dream, the fact that you might NOT lose everything is good news. You need some help in getting there, and that’s what we’re going to accomplish today.

The second takeaway from this being a completely true article is that the creativeness of an alcoholic is remarkably impressive.  You don’t get married twice (neither ending in divorce,) keep one job for eight years and the current one for six if you aren’t an amazingly successful and creative hider of all things alcohol and tobacco based.  Yeah, you’re probably still going to get caught at some point.  That is just part of the lifestyle.  Don’t worry too much about that now.  We’ll just plan another how-to guide for another day on how to lie, manipulate, fool, exploit, dupe, and attempt to deceive nearly everyone in your life for so long and in so many elaborate ways that you, too, can come out on the other side twenty years later and not have a damn clue who you are.  

Are you getting excited for your future yet?

The ideas collected in this article mostly come from the past three or four years.  The addict we collected our data from (me) was widowed at 30 years old, leaving him a single father of a two year old.  He stayed single for the next six and a half years.  Those six and a half years did not present any challenge to an addict of his loftiness.  It’s really not hard to hide beer from a three or four year old little girl.  You can just put it in the fridge and call it “Daddy’s Juice.”

He was also a ridiculously sexy dipper during the entirety of his alcoholic days.  (He had to literally BEG the ladies to leave their panties on.)  With that addiction coinciding with the alcoholism, he also became quite good at hiding Kodiak cans and spit cups in strategically placed locations in the house.  When he remarried, this, too, had to be tightened up.

So here’s a few ideas from a masterful beer and dip ninja who managed to maintain daily usage of both vices for twenty years.  More impressively, however, he miraculously kept it up for three and a half increasingly stressful years of a marriage he finally has the freedom to no longer continue to ruin.

Part 1 – How to hide beer in the garage

This will, of course, depend on whether or not you have a garage, and what you keep in the garage, but keep this high on your list of possible hiding places if you’re married.  It will also depend on whether or not you use your garage for its intended purpose:  parking cars.  If your garage looks like a flea market full of worthless shit all came to rest on and around your Bowflex (which is now missing, along with every piece of furniture that was in your first house,) you really shouldn’t have much trouble finding a few thousand spots to hide some beer.  You might just have to deal with some mouse droppings and dead birds from time to time, but you’ll experience worse if you become a successful ninja alcoholic.  

Anyway, it starts with the places that she would never look because they’re icky or have no business being touched with manicured fingers.  (And yes, I know that is sexist.  I apologize.  It’s in the past.  Shut up.)  From there, you must look at places that are a challenge to get to, even if they’re right under (or over) her nose. Lastly, don’t forget that the garage opens up into the yard.  Who looks under hydrangea bushes, am I right?

Anyway, if we are to presume that you have already procured your beer, the next step is to get home and stash it.  Quickly.  Is wifey home?  Are you the first one home?  Is the babysitter there?  Are your roommates making out in the living room?  Did the kids flood the first floor again?  Did your insane girlfriend set up hidden cameras?  Again, these are different based on your personal situation, but you need to know all of these things before you get there so that your plan can go into action as soon as you arrive.  And this must happen every single day.  Every.  Single.  Day.

If the wife is home, you must complete one step before you ever actually hide the beer.  You MUST get it out of the car and into a temporary hiding place.  You just never know when you’re going to get home and wifey is like, “We’re going to Walmart.  I need hairspray.  I want to go now.  Your car is already warmed up.”

If that happens and you have not placed the beer in the temporary hiding spot, you need to be prepared for the wrath of Wifezilla.  It would be hard to envy your position in that argument, mainly because if you are hiding beer, it means she already has been on your for months or years about the fact that you drink too damn much.  Bitch.

Temporary hiding places can be something as simple as “the other side of the lawnmower.”  It’s chancy, yes, but when you have to work fast, it qualifies as “icky” and therefore can probably be used.  You can also put the beer under her car, behind your golf clubs, high up out of her reach but either in a bucket or hidden behind something, or you can take it to the backyard and put it behind a bush.  The key is to think fast and just pick something that there is less than a five percent chance she will use the rest of the day.  We can work with those odds.

Now, on to the semi-permanent, waiting-to-be-stuck-in-the-freezer hiding places (more on the freezer later.)  Aside from creativity, the thing to remember here is that beer doesn’t have to stay in its original packaging.  Sometimes hiding places are only good for one or two beers, and there’s no way in hell an aspiring alcoholic is only going to drink one or two.  In other words, if you are truly going to get good at this hiding thing, you need to get rid of the box and utilize several hiding spots per day.  Also keep in mind that garage hiding should be somewhat time-consuming to uncover.  Much the same as you don’t want her finding your beer, she does NOT want you to catch her snooping.  That means she can’t take too much time looking.  So without further ado, here’s a list of places to hide beer in the garage:

• If you keep a large plastic bin for old junk towels (because every garage needs old towels for various jobs,) it is quite easy to lift towels and place a few beers under layers of towels.  If the bin is large enough and they’re down far enough, it takes effort to find them, and that’s what you want.
• A deceptive idea is to keep several of those plastic “three drawer carts” stuck up on shelving or break them apart and have three, one-drawer bins.  The obvious hiding place here is to place them INSIDE the drawers, but that’s wrong.  You have to place them behind the entire bin, nestled up against the garage wall.  If she’s looking for your beer, she’ll open the drawer and not find any.  Then you’re golden.  It’ll still be right there behind the drawer, but she will not move the entire bin if she can easily just slide out a drawer.
• Lift the hood of your lawnmower.  Look for space.  There’s almost always some around the gas tank.  It’s a foolproof spot.  Manicured hands will not touch the engine compartment of a lawnmower.  Yep, more sexism.  I’m fully aware that women can mow grass and even ENJOY mowing grass.  We’re just giving advice here.  Never said it was nondiscriminatory.  Moving on.
• Got any old, scrap wood in the garage?  Stack it so that it makes a tunnel through the middle.  Trust me, it’s doable.  Slide the beer down the tunnel.  Voila.  She’ll never move that wood.
• Got kids?  Do they have car seats?  There is almost always space behind the fabric inserts of a car seat.  This works REALLY well for cans of dip.  The kids can even ride with a can pressing into their back if it’s forgotten and they won’t complain a bit.  There is often a gap under the car seat that can be used for beer, also.
• If you have a Honda Accord or another car that has a spare tire under a panel of removable carpet inside the trunk, remove that damn carpet and put the beer inside the tire.
• Speaking of tires, if a vehicle will not move after you get home, you can place individual beers behind each tire.  You can usually get two cans behind each tire, so that’s eight beers without much thought. And there is no way in hell she’s getting on her hands and knees and looking under your car.  (Yes, even MORE sexism.  These are the thoughts of an addict, ladies.  At least I recognize it.  Please don’t make me room with Cliff Huxtable.)

The key to all of this (and there are PLENTY more) is to be creative and think of all the places that take real effort to find.  Why?  Because she WILL have suspicions that you are drinking too much, no matter how good a pirate you are.  And she WILL go snooping.  The more insane and outlandish your hiding places, the better.

The last point on the idea of hiding beer in the garage is that nobody wants to drink hot beer.  This is why your MUST invest in an old refrigerator for your garage.  Then, after she goes to bed or she becomes enthralled in “Grey’s Anatomy,” you start stuffing that crap under the frozen meat in the freezer and find you a super important job to do in the garage while you wait for it to get cold.  Either that, or it becomes necessary to break out an old lunch cooler.  Why, you might ask?  Because you can use your lunch break to go fill it with beer.  And then you can grab some ice from work before you head home (because nobody wants to buy an entire bag of ice and use a third of it.)  Which brings us to…

Part 2 – How to Hide Beer in the House

The key here is the old, collapsible lunch cooler.  If you have one that doesn’t leak (also a key component of this,) you have a multitude of places you can hide it, and you don’t have to mess around with the freezer because your beer stays cold from the ice you got from work.

If you’re able to secure this setup, the outside of the house becomes pretty appealing because that cooler will slide under shrubs and porch steps and you can flip the wheelbarrow over and slide it under there.

But if you want to hide it inside, that’s okay, too.  If you’ve got a big enough Crock Pot, try that first. Nobody keeps the Crock Pot in an easy-to-see location.  Most likely it’s stuck back in the corner cabinet or on the floor of the pantry with seven rolls of paper towels stacked on top of it.  But the inside of the Crock Pot is pretty big and it is really easy to wipe out if you have a leaky cooler. So try that first. She’ll never look there. Well, unless she’s cooking in it.  That seems obvious.

The next place is again the corner cabinets in the kitchen.  The very back of the bottom shelf is impossible to see unless you get on your hands and knees.  Sounds like a good place to hide a cooler, am I right?  Why not stick it behind the air fryer you haven’t used since those French “fries” tasted more like pool noodles?  And do you know what will happen if your wife needs something from the bottom shelf of the corner cabinet? She will ask her fabulous husband to get it for her because she’s too lazy to do it herself.  (That’s sexist again, I know.  I’ll work on that as soon as the satire is over.)  And this is only experience talking; your wife may be different.  Doubtful, but certainly possible.

Other “Inside the House” hiding places:

• Lockable Furniture.  “I haven’t seen the key, honey.  I’ve never even put anything in the China cabinet.”
• Under a bed (but not necessarily your bed.)  It’s boring, but usually effective, especially if there is already stuff under there and you can slide the cooler all the way to the middle and put something in front of it.
• Inside a suitcase.  Everybody keeps them high up in the closet or in a storage room or coat closet that’s never used.
• Got any knee walls upstairs with those little tiny doors?  Can you get in there far enough to slide the cooler behind a stud?  If so, it would take some real effort to find it, which means that’s a good hiding spot.
• You get home, you see there’s clothes in the dryer but none in the washer.  You kindly go ahead and fold those clothes, which means the dryer is empty for the night.  That there is a good spot for your cooler as long as you announce that you have happily folded all the clothes in the dryer.  If not, it WILL be the night she opens it up to check to see if any clothes need folding.  This one is a little chancy, but it works if you know she’s pretty close to going to bed.
• Do you have one of those unnecessarily giant pots that you only use when you cook corn on the cob for your son’s baseball team, coaches and families included?  Those kinds of pots are either way low or way high in the cabinets.  Put the cooler inside it with the top on without too much worry.
• Anywhere up high in a closet.  It should preferably be hidden by sweaters or old WiFi router boxes or something that hasn’t been touched in months.
• Check to see if any tall furniture has a lip or ledge around the top.  If so, this means you could put something on top and not see it unless you back way up.  This works REALLY well for dip (or cigarettes, I guess.)  Unless it’s a really tall lip, your cooler probably can’t go there.
• While on the topic, another idea for dip (and there are literally hundreds because the can is so small) is to just nonchalantly place the can in the bowls she only uses for guacamole or chips or a cheese ball when company comes over.  Why would she need those bowls until then?  And they’re almost never super easy to reach, which is good.  Most likely they are on the top shelf of the cabinet and require a step stool to reach.  All good things.
• And again while on the topic of dip or pretty much any tobacco.  Any of these: cereal boxes, bags of chips she will not eat, toiletry bags, inside the back zipper of couch cushions, between mattress and box spring, in the pockets of hanging pants, between diapers, between your boxers, on top of the fridge near the back, under meat in the fridge, in the toe of shoes (even hers because she would never suspect that.)  There are literally thousands.

Part 3 – Disposal of cans and bottles.  Possibly the most important part.

To back up somewhat, we are presuming that you have time to get drunk every day and need this coaching.  It can be done, even if your wife (or husband, I guess) doesn’t go to bed super early. To get drunk every day, regardless of when they go to bed, they have to know and accept (even begrudgingly) that you need at least one beer every night.  You already call it your “release” or your “stress-killer” or whatever, and she already knows that.  The reason this is necessary is because once you have beer on your breath, the number of beers is incalculable. There is no proof of how much you’ve had to drink.

Unless, of course, you fail to dispose of the empties correctly.  If she finds the empties, it’s all the proof she needs to drag your ass to either counseling or AA.  And that is NOT what you want.  That’s why this is the most important skill.

The key here is to get them OUT of the house and into something small and secure.  It just has to be convenient enough to just grab them and go when you leave for work the next day.  If you decide to simply bag them up in a plastic grocery bag and tie the bag really tightly so that the contents don’t make a lot of noise, that’s perfectly fine.  Nothing wrong with that idea at all. (Proper and stealthy disposal is also the reason bottles are not a great idea. Glass beating together makes noise, and the only way to stop it is to wrap the bottles in paper towels.  And that just takes too much damn time.  Plus, you can crush cans on the driveway with very little if any noise heard inside.)

If there is already trash in the outside trashcan that you wheel to the road, you can also take that trash out, place your empties where the bag(s) was, and then replace the bag(s) on top of the empties.  It’s a desperate woman who goes through the trash looking for remnants of your alcoholism. If that’s happening, your days are numbered anyway.

Lastly, and this depends on your living situation, you can always use public trash, your neighbor’s trash can, the giant trash bin at a construction site (especially if there are houses being built around you,) or simply place the bag way up under your car so that it can’t be seen.  When you leave for work, you simply grab it and go. Once it’s away from the house, you’re pretty much free. You can just drive through any gas station or McDonald’s and use their outdoor trash cans. Easy peasy.

I think that’s all I have for today.  Best of luck with your beer hiding. Feel free to leave any ideas I haven’t included here in the comments below.  They probably won’t help me because I could probably write another twenty-five pages of ideas, but they might help the next aspiring alcoholic!!

**Profound, almost gratuitous sarcasm was used throughout this article.  If you did not get that, you probably do not need to read anything else I write.  Or you might be better off just getting off the internet altogether.