Craving Recovery (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

My Story

It is so damn dark before the dawn – Life seems to get worse before it gets better, but in the saddest, unhealthiest and most dangerous of situations, there is hope!

On my final day of drinking, or what I thought would be my final day of drinking, it happened to be Valentine’s Day, 2018. It was early in the morning, and I had just showered to wash the overnight stench of alcohol off my skin and was ready to head out for work when I was overcome with a feeling of guilt, shame, and despair. Unlike most alcoholics, who end up being forced into rehab by an intervention or court order, I knew of my own accord that I would never make it through the end of the year without it and would never get to walk my daughter down the aisle or see my son play high school football. I also knew that if I didn’t do something now, at this very moment, my wife would be a widow for the second time in her life, and her sons would be fatherless . . . again!

I think about guilt all the time, and the crazy thing is that no matter how much guilt you have, you can always top off that glass a little bit more to make it even worse than it started out. The habit of adding to the guilt glass takes years of practice, and I’m a professional when it comes to it. My guilt came from hiding my drinking problem. In other words, I lied, and once you learn to lie, it becomes routine and easier, or so one would think.

I always showered each morning and got ready in the kids’ bathroom, not the bathroom off of our master bedroom, and I’ll get into the reasons for that later, but on that Valentine’s Day morning I exited the kids’ bathroom, walked the hallway with all the courage I could muster, and sat down on the edge of the bathtub behind my wife. My wife Sasha was standing at the counter getting ready for work herself, and with a lump in my throat, I finally broke down and told her, “I have a drinking problem, and I need help.” Sasha looked at me, and with a tender glance reflecting off the bathroom mirror, she softly said, “It is about time you admit that obvious fact. We’ll get you the help you need.”

My drinking career, and yes, it was a career, began, like most people’s, in high school. My grandfathers were alcoholics, my dad is an alcoholic, and at every party or event I attended, alcohol was center stage. I had tasted alcohol before high school and thought it was awful, but it wasn’t until I was a sophomore, at the age of fourteen, that I realized that alcohol would soon become my best friend and help me solve my problems. I had problems—boy, did I have problems—specifically one big one that I perceived as solely mine to solve.

I was at a typical high school party at a friend’s house. His parents were out of town, and they had beer and vodka there. I was only fourteen, and this was my first official high school “party,” an awesome one with loud music, lots of girls, a lot of laughs, and lots of booze. I didn’t like the taste of beer at the time, so vodka was the clear choice; mix it with Kool-Aid, and it was awesome. The pain in my life numbed instantly the minute I imbibed it, and I was happy, although the next thing I recall is being woken up by the police in my friend’s parents’ bathroom with a half-naked girl lying next to me and our shirts and pants in the sink. According to my friends, who filled me in on what had transpired at the party at school that next week, the girl and I were starting to hook up when we both started feeling sick from the booze, and so my friends hustled us to the bathroom, where we ended up sharing the toilet to vomit. I, of course, didn’t remember a thing, much less how our clothes ended up in the sink.

I was fairly popular in high school; I was on the football team, hooked up with lots of girls, went to parties, surfed, got good grades, and hung out with multiple groups of friends, which is easy to do in a high school with five thousand kids. I thought, like a lot of kids do, that I was on top of the world and could do no wrong; if I kept lying to myself and to others, I’d be just fine.

Constant lying started early for me. In eighth grade, lying became a habit. I went from making the honor roll to failing most of my classes. Before the days of the Internet and parents being able to check, in real time, their kids’ grades online, parents would only be informed of poor grades by a letter sent home from the teacher (a progress report) or when the physical report card was sent home twice a year. To say the least, I would always start sweating the moment I had to hand over the report card. I was grounded indefinitely throughout eighth grade, of course, and my parents got the same answer to every question they asked of me, which was “I don’t know.” “Why did you do this?” “I don’t know.” “Why didn’t you do your homework?” “I don’t know.” “Why didn’t you do well on the test?” “I don’t know.” Today, as a parent, I realize this is the most frustrating answer a kid can give you. I knew at the time I had to get better about actually coming up with a reason other than “I don’t know,” even if it was a lie.

My mom’s nickname in high school was “nails,” not because she had nice nails but because she used her nails to fight with or so the story goes. My mom was extraordinarily caring, always hugging and loving on us, but when we got into trouble, it was another story. ‘Hit first and ask questions later’ was her way of dealing with us. My dad was also very loving but wasn’t one to hit us unless prompted by my mom to do so. He used a hiking belt to spank me, and I hated this belt as it had little metal rings all around it. This belt always scared the shit out of me as it would leave little red rings on my ass, and I thought at the time that life sucked and wondered if it was worth living.

I remember the first time I considered killing myself. It was a Friday night, and the family had gone to Sizzler’s restaurant to have dinner. While at dinner, I was doing my best to avoid having a conversation about school, but my older sister, who was already in high school, ruined my night by bringing up her straight As. My mom knew I had had a test earlier that day, and being a good kid, I was honest and told her that I had failed it. My mom looked me straight in the eye with a smile and said, “Okay, you’ll get the belt when we get home; enjoy your dinner.” Right, enjoy my dinner. How in the hell would I enjoy my all-you-can-eat Sizzler salad bar with that lingering over my head? I’ve never understood how someone on death row could eat a last meal, because knowing the pain and suffering to come made me sick to my stomach. As a kid, knowing that this was in store for me was the equivalent of a painful death. I excused myself to go to the restroom and found myself looking in the mirror and asking myself how I could possibly get out of this situation . . . wait, what if I killed myself? I didn’t end up attempting suicide that night, but it was the beginning of a life spent contemplating and attempting suicide if things got too bad.

I had to start lying, so I did. My mom worked during the day, and I would walk home from school, and the key was always in the mailbox, so I’d just let myself in as a typical latchkey kid would do. My mom called home one day to check in, and I answered, with her immediate question being whether I’d taken the trash out or not, like she had reminded me to do so before I left for school. I told her I hadn’t done it yet but would do it now. She of course told me that I needed to take the trash out now and reminded me that I’d get the belt that night for not doing my chores as she’d asked. Why in the hell didn’t I lie? There was no way for her to know if I had or hadn’t taken it out. Going forward, instead of admitting I hadn’t taken the trash out, I’d just tell her “yes,” and she’d be happy. Problem solved. Mark this one down on the list of lies that would be in my back pocket from that day forward.

There were also obviously great times growing up and growing older, although my years from the eighth grade to the fall of my sophomore year were the most difficult, challenging, and secretive for me. These years comprised a lot of confusion, lies told to me, and an incident that would shape my life into something of a nightmare for the years and decades to follow.

In my opinion, all the adults in their lives, and not just their parents, are supposed to look out for children. What you are about to read is not regarding a family member or even a family friend, but an adult nonetheless.

Like all kids, we dream of being the best at what we do. Perhaps that dream is hitting a home run in the ninth inning of the World Series or scoring the game’s winning touchdown in the Super Bowl; at least it was for me. Football was huge in my life during my youth. I had season tickets to the Rams and USC and excelled at playing the game. I was younger than every single one of my friends, starting high school at thirteen. I knew that I would have to work harder than all of them to prove my worth and would need to build muscle and work on my speed in order to even step foot on the field, not only to protect myself but to add value to the team.

When I was in seventh grade, I worked out and ran with my dad all the time, and he even surprised me at Christmas with a weight set, which was awesome, as my friend Steve and I would work out with the set all the time. My dad’s best friend, Wally, would also work out with me and teach me about fitness, diet, and the special workouts he was taught in the military during the Vietnam War...