First Class

For my flights on Monday and Tuesday, I got upgraded to First Class on all four flights. Tonight, I called Delta and asked to be moved back to Economy. I also asked them to change my profile so I wouldn’t receive any more free upgrades in the future (I fly enough I receive a free upgrade almost every time). First Class is nice, but alcohol is free and most people drink on the plane. I once drank an entire bottle of wine on the plane before an International flight. It’s true you can still buy booze in coach, but the booziness of First Class is just not a good place for me. I’ve done something similar with Hilton. I travel enough, my Hilton profile included an option for a complimentary bottle of wine. Now (after some effort) my Hilton profile says to take everything out of the mini-bar before I arrive. Neither of these are huge sacrifices, but they’re just some of the odd steps you take as a recovering alcoholic.

Ghosts

I see ghosts everywhere. They’re always lurking in shadows and around corners waiting to surprise and horrify me. For me, those ghosts are from all the bad things I did drinking. My ghosts aren’t in scary old houses, they’re all around me. My ghosts are in the Yaris, the car I drive drunk for hours. They’re at South Cove Park where I had my last relapse, in my bedroom where I got drunk many times, the Thornton’s where I stopped when I was driving drunk with Kurt in the car, my blue shirt I wore the night I blacked out in Chicago, and so much more. I hate these ghosts but they have a purpose. That purpose is to remind me of how awful it was when I was drinking, just to make sure I never forget.

Thinking about things backwards.....

I have to give credit to Kris for this thought, but I'm happy to steal it! In regard to me and the eternal bugaboo of potential relapses, people tend to think of everything backwards. I find everyone is worried if I have stress, get depressed, have a bad day, get angry, stub my toe, or don't like my lunch that I might relapse. In fact, I never drank because something bad happened to me. I know that was the reason I gave at the time (e.g. I was sad about going to the dog house, I had to do the taxes, I was depressed, etc...), but I've grown to understand myself much better. I didn't drink because something bad happened to me. I drank because I was emotionally and mentally compromised and ill equipped to cope with the bad things that happened to me. Consider this---- much worse things have happened to people than I ever experienced, yet some of those people didn't drink. The reasons I did were medical, mental and emotional, but one of the big factors was that I was so messed up inside I couldn't deal with even minor bits of adversity. In short, please don't worry about me so much if some small thing goes wrong- that was never the cause of the problem. It is much more important to focus on my big picture mental and physical health and well-being.

The Road to Hell

Lion Rock has us share our homework assignments with the rest of our group. Last night, a guy named Ben read his life story. He’s had a lot of trouble, but the thing that hit me the hardest was that he used alcohol and nitrous oxide to the point that he couldn’t walk on his own or speak. The Doctors told his family that he may never speak normally again. Thank God he’s OK now, but his experience is a hard reminder of how horrible drug and alcohol addiction can be.

Cognitive Distortions

My Phase 2 Lion Rock homework is actually one big assignment. I'll post my progress on the assignment, a key idea is Cognitive Distortions. This is the description from Lion Rock: Our head can be a dangerous place, we often have patterns of self defeating thought that lead us to bad feelings and subsequently bad decisions. Remember, thoughts lead to feeling, feelings lead to urges and urges lead to actions. If we can learn to identify when a thought is distorted, we can correct it or redirect it in such a way that the bad feelings and actions are minimized. If we can teach ourselves to recognize a thought as a cognitive distortion we are more likely to be able to change our thoughts, moods, and behaviors. Here is a list of the 10 most common Cognitive Distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way. Try and give personal examples of when you have experienced each one. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. Mental filter: You pick our a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors an entire beaker of water. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretations even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out. The Fortune Teller error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an established fact. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny. Emotional reasoning: You assume your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are. "I felt it, therefore it must be true" Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with should and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser". When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attached a negative label to him. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored or emotionally loaded. Personlization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

Obituary

My final assignment in Phase 1 for the Lion Rock Program is to write two obituaries, one for me if I didn't quit drinking and another one for me in recovery. The assignment was a little weird, because obituaries about people who die badly don't really say much, they're very succinct and kind of creepy in their brevity. So.... I wrote the obituary as well as an accompanying newspaper article, then my "good" obituary, which is a little boring (because obituaries for people that led good lives do tend to be pretty boring. Obituary 1 Daniel Grossman, age 53, passed away in the early morning hours of August 26, 2019. Daniel struggled with alcoholism and his family hopes that he has now found peace. Surviving are his parents (Gary and Marilynn Grossman), his wife (Kristine), 3 daughters (Kaitlin Biem, Courtney Jones, and Kelsey Grossman) and a son (Kurt). No memorial service will be held. Preferred memorials in the form of cash donations are requested for the Smith Family College Fund. Lexington Journal and Courier London, Kentucky- At approximately 7 AM this morning a red 2016 Toyota Yaris driven by Daniel Grossman, age 53, Independence, Kentucky, crossed the center line of I-75 just south of London, Kentucky. After crossing the median, Mr. Grossman’s Yaris struck a 2011 Ford Focus driven by Mr. Robert Smith, 37, London. Mr. Smith died immediately at the scene. Mr. Grossman was airlifted to Lexington General Hospital but succumbed to his injuries. According to toxicology tests conducted at the hospital, Mr. Grossman’s Blood Alcohol Content was three times the legal limit. Obituary 2 Daniel Grossman, age (something old) died in his sleep (some date in the future). Daniel was a loving family man, who coached many youth sports teams and volunteered at several local charities. Surviving Daniel are his wife (Kristine), three daughters (Kaitlin Biem, Courtney Jones, and Kelsey Whatever) and one son (Kurt), 9 Grandchildren and 3 Great-grandchildren. Memorial Services will be held (sometime soon), with preferred memorials to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Step 6

Having finally completed Step 5, I need to start on the next sequence of AA Steps. The ones I have completed are: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable, 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, 3. Made a decision to turn our will an our lives over to the care of God, 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and 5. Admitted to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The next sequence for me begins with #6: 6. We entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, 7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings, 8. Made a list of all persons we have harmed, 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. I feel pretty good about Step 6 already, but I've learned to spend a few days praying on it first. I'm very happy to have Steps 1-5 behind me. Completing those Steps was one of the most difficult things I've had to do.

The Myth of the Positive Effects of Alcohol

Paris (AFP) - Even an occasional glass of wine or beer increases the risk of health problems and dying, according to a major study on drinking in 195 nations that attributes 2.8 million premature deaths worldwide each year to booze. "There is no safe level of alcohol," said Max Griswold, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington and lead author for a consortium of more than 500 experts. Despite recent research showing that light-to-moderate drinking reduces heart disease, the new study found that alcohol use is more likely than not to do harm. "The protective effect of alcohol was offset by the risks," Griswold told AFP in summarising the results, published in medical journal The Lancet on Friday. "Overall, the health risks associated with alcohol rose in line with the amount consumed each day." Compared to abstinence, imbibing one "standard drink" -- 10 grammes of alcohol, equivalent to a small beer, glass of wine or shot of spirits -- per day, for example, ups the odds of developing at least one of two dozen health problems by about half-a-percent, the researchers reported. Looked at one way, that seems like a small increment: 914 out of 100,000 teetotallers will encounter those problems, compared to 918 people who imbibe seven times per week. "But at the global level, that additional risk of 0.5 percent among (once-a-day) drinkers corresponds to about 100,000 additional deaths each year," said senior author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor at the University of Washington and a director at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. - 'Less is better, none is best' - "Those are excess deaths, in other words, that could be avoided," she told AFP. The risk climbs in a steep "J-curve", the study found. An average of two drinks per day, for example, translated into a 7.0 percent hike in disease and injury compared to those who opt for abstinence. With five "units" of alcohol per day, the likelihood of serious consequences jumps by 37 percent. The "less is better, none is best" finding jibes with the World Health Organization's long-standing position, but is at odds with many national guidelines, especially in the developed world. Britain's health authority, for example, suggests not exceeding 14 drinks per week "to keep health risks from alcohol to a low level". "There is always a lag between the publication of new evidence and the modification and adoption of revised guidelines," said Gakidou, who admitted to being an "occasional drinker" herself. "The evidence shows what the evidence shows, and I -- like 2.4 billion other people on the planet that also consume alcohol -- need to take it seriously." Overall, drinking was the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disease in 2016, accounting for just over two percent of deaths in women and nearly seven percent in men.

Down Days

I had kind of a down day yesterday. It was really no big deal- I wasn’t upset by anything in particular, but I had a little jet lag and basically woke up on the gloomy side of the bed. With my history, of course this was mildly alarming to the people who love me, making everyone worried I was headed down the road to relapse. As Kris said yesterday, “everyone just wants to put me in emotional bubble wrap”. This is understandable, but I need to remember the focus of my recovery can’t be avoiding down days or upsetting things. The cause of my drinking was always a lot deeper than getting upset about something. The focus of my recovery needs to be learning to cope with adversity, problems, and down days like a normal, balanced human.

Hello Letter

Following my assignment to write a "Dear John" letter to alcohol, my next assignment is to write a "hello letter" to recovery (honestly, writing the goodbye letter was much more fun). In the interest of sharing, here it is..... Dear Recovery, My name is Daniel and I’ve just finished an abusive relationship with alcohol. I know, I know… I’m on the rebound. I know you get a lot of that, but I’m serious about having a long term, committed relationship with you. I have no interest in ever resuming my relationship with alcohol. In fact, it makes me feel queasy to even think about alcohol. Alcohol would tell you I abused it, but in truth it abused me. Look at the evidence—I suffered at alcohol’s hands, damaging all of my relationships and hurting everyone that I loved. What damage has alcohol suffered because of me? None! Just look around you, alcohol is doing just fine without me! I really want to build a strong relationship with you and to that end, I’m taking actions to demonstrate my commitment. I’ve been going to AA for four months now, almost every night. I know that I still went back to alcohol, but I needed more. I started going to Lionrock and have been doing that for about 6 weeks. It gives me skills and tools to stay away from alcohol for good. In addition, I’ve made major changes in my life. I eat a better, balanced diet and don’t try to starve myself anymore, I meditate and prayer to keep my head straight, and I get enough sleep and exercise. The people in my life say that I act and look different that I did before. I’d like our relationship to grow. I have more in mind than just getting through each day without a black out. I want to be an involved, helpful father, a loving and appreciative husband, and productive worker, and more than that I want to use my life to help other people. I can’t do those things without you. Please give me a chance. Daniel

Step 5

I completed Step 5 today, in a very unconventional way. Just to remind anyone that may have forgotten, the first 5 steps of AA are: (Sorry, these are in my “unofficial” wording) 1. Admit you have a problem and your life has become unmanageable. 2. Realize that God alone has the remedy for the problem. 3. Turn your will and life over to God to manage your addiction. 4. Make an unflinching moral inventory (this includes going through resentments you’ve held against people, why, and where you are at fault, listing fears, why you have them and how they effected your behavior, and listing all harms you have done to other people. 5. Share the exact nature and details of your failings with yourself, God, and another human being. My Step 5 was unconventional in that a) I wrote it down (I’ve never heard of a Step 5 being written), b) the person I chose to share it with was Kris (I have NEVER EVER heard of Step 5 shared with a spouse), and c) she received my Step 5 while flying on an airplane. I’ll share my experiences later when I work on Step 6.

Goodbye Letter

For my Rehab, we are required to write a "Goodbye Letter" to alcohol. Here's mine: Dear Alcohol, I’d like to say it pains me to write this, but it doesn’t. I know I’m supposed to say things between us were good once—and while I think they were way, way back when—it’s been so long I’m not completely sure that memory is real or just something I made up. From my side, I gave up everything I could to keep our relationship going. You needed me to lie to the people who loved me? Done! You wanted me to lose my dignity and self-respect? OK! You asked for all of my spare time, and I turned it over willingly. At first you wanted me to take headaches and a foul disposition the morning after we were together. Later, you wanted my brain for the next 3 days after I spent the evening with you. No problem for me! For you I endangered myself, my children, my family, my job, and sacrificed all of my self respect. I was like Silverstein’s Giving Tree for you. I gave up everything until only a stump was left. All this, and what did you give me? Nothing. Nothing but whispered remembrances of far off and long forgotten happy beer buzzes and warm feelings that never seemed to come around. When these failed to appear, you always said one more would do it, then one more after that, and one more again. But nothing ever made that happy buzzy feeling I think I knew years and years ago return. You lied to me and said you’d make me social, brave, calm, happy and creative. You just made me dumb, slow, angry and lonely. There’s nothing here for me now. Honestly, there’s been nothing here for me for years, and I’m sure you’ve always known that because our relationship has always been only about you. I’m moving on.

Good Side-Effects of Jet Lag

I’m on my 3rd day in Europe and the jet lag is (predictably) hitting me hard. I was up last night at 12:30, wide awake and used the opportunity to join my counseling group that meets online at 6:30 EST. It was a good meeting and lightened my spirits, however I really felt badly for one guy named Ben. Ben, who looks like Ferris Bueller, was on my first call ever and had relapsed the day before. At the time it really bothered me because his reason was that he was stressed because his flight was delayed (???) and he didn’t seem too bothered by the relapse. Today, he was allowed to join group again for the first time and is on 33 days sober. He reintroduced himself to the group and said he had been in in-patient rehab 3 times in the past two years in addition to living in “sober living” homes twice for several months. Basically, every time he gets back around alcohol he relapsed. Alcoholics come in a variety of flavors and I’m glad I’m not in Ben’s shoes. We tried to encourage him, but I really have doubts if he’ll ever make it.

Travel challenges

Just a snapshot to show what life’s is like traveling. I’m fine sober and not tempted at all, but it’s always shocking when you walk into the lounge and see this—

Daniel’s traveling tonight on a plane...

Tonight, I fly to France and I have to admit it brings back thoughts of my travels two trips ago (note, I said “thoughts” not “memories” because I don’t have many memories of that night). I think it’s natural but it’s dangerous to dwell on it. It’s good to acknowledge and recognize those horrendous past events, but I can’t live there. Right now, I’m getting ready to head to the airport and I feel confident, strong, and positive. I’m very different than I was before. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for me to stumble again, but it does mean that as long as I stay within myself and within the day, I’ll be OK.

Life Story

As part of my intensive outpatient program, I have homework. My most recent homework was to write my "life story". This was to contain my childhood and major influences as well as my experiences with alcohol. It had to be 5-7 pages long. I'm sharing it here without edits. You are welcomed to read it, but it's a little raw from my perspective. Life Story Daniel Grossman I am the 5th child in a family of 6. My father was a farmer and he and my mother struggled to make ends meet with all the hungry mouths to feed. When I was too young to really know what was going on, my mother became very ill with Lupus. Years later my Dad would say he thought he was going to lose her. I don’t have much memory of this, except that at one point she had a hospital bed in the living room that I always wanted to climb up onto, but couldn’t. It was decided that I would be taken care of by my grandmother and aunt while my mom was sick. My little sister (14 months younger than I am and a perpetually sunny fop of blonde hair with a huge smile) went with them everywhere. We had our own bedroom in their house, although sometimes we slept in our own home. My aunt and my grandmother were our caretakers for many years. At some point, my mother’s health improved- although being a kid I don’t really know when- but she never really re-engaged with us. She could have been too ill to cope with small children for years, I really don’t know- but she was cleaning the house, going to church, going shopping, etc… It was my aunt and grandmother who took us to all the kids movies at the theaters, took us to the library, to carnivals, etc…. My relationship with my mother still remains distant. We are polite and I know she loves me, but she never really acted like my mother. Somehow, we didn’t quite bond. At any rate, my father was about the same. I don’t think the poor man knew what to do with a seriously ill wife and six hungry children. He was up before everyone else every morning and always came in from work after dark. He usually came in for dinner after 9 PM. Like my mother, my dad was kind, but distant. We didn’t have any experiences of playing catch, shooting baskets, etc… We had small outings but they were rare. As I became older and reached middle school, my aunt caretaker lost interest in me. She often regarded me with something that bordered on disgust. I was fat, unconfident, and I got bad grades in school. She was a career elementary teacher and I think she couldn’t stand older kids anyway. I remember feeling very lost, with the exception of my grandmother. I was a pretty popular kid in elementary school, but that changed in Junior High and I began to feel very, very lonely. My parents and aunts were very disinterested in what I was doing, something really continued for the rest of my life. I played basketball (badly), did public speaking, plays, and lots of music, but they almost had to be dragged along if at all. It was at this time that I met the first real mentor in my life. His name was Kevin and he taught 8th grade English. He had a quirky sense of humor and knew that I played piano and would tease me about it during class. Eventually, he took me and other boys in my class to the Fort Wayne Philharmonic several times, and out to nice restaurants. He was a big force in my life. My next mentor and major life influence was a worse choice. His name was James and he was my Speech Coach. I found out I was really good at Speech and James took me under his wing. James was snarky and looked down on people and things in a way that really appealed to a lonely High School Sophomore. I found out later that James had affairs with multiple female students. Later, he adopted and subsequently abandoned four orphaned children. Not kidding. I was good at music and public speaking so this became my social group and it was there that I had my first experience with alcohol. One of my friends was Wes and his parents had a house on a lake. I would go out on the lake with him and other friends and we would play Trivial Pursuit and drink Bartles and James Coolers. This was pretty harmless, but one night Wes had gotten into beer and was pretty drunk. He was also the only one that knew how to drive the boat. A big storm started to form up over the lake and Wes tore off driving the boat at high speed in the darkness toward his house. I don’t know how we didn’t kill someone or ourselves. We thought it was great fun. My later experiences with alcohol were in college, but it was all small stuff. I remember getting “drunk” to watch The Wall. I think I had two beers. We sometimes went to house parties and got “drunk” but it was very minor. I rarely drank for most of my early adulthood. When I was about 30 and we had two small children, we went to a Baptist Church and I stopped drinking at the time completely. This was easy for me- Neither of my parents drank. Then I started going to China. My company was starting a new site in China and I went there often to help. Beer drinking is a big thing in China. Nevertheless, on my first several trips I never drank despite many many attempts to get me to drink beer. After a year of traveling back and forth, I moved to China is 2005 with my wife and four children. At that point I decided I wasn’t a member of the Baptist Church anymore and I was going to drink beer. It turns out I was very good at it. The China drinking culture is huge. You drink beer from small cups, but many small cups. The procedure is to call the name of someone else at the table, hold up your cup, and say “Gan Bei”. This means “Dry Glass”. You tap cups, holding it lower than the other person when you tap to show respect, then drink all of the contents as quickly as you can. It’s best if you do this faster than your partner. You hold up your arm with cup in hand until your partner is done, then turn the cup over to show you have both consumed every drop. As you could imagine, this production become more involved and more of a struggle as the evening goes on and more and more beer is consumed. I got a lot of face by basically drinking groups of people under that table. I was considered very cool because of this, along with the fact that I was a foreigner, hung around with Chinese and spoke a little Chinese. My wife, an excellent drinker herself, became a good team. Her blonde hair, beauty and sparkling personality made us a power couple. Drinking in China was all fun and games until it started to fall apart. I would drink 10 “pings” or large bottles, of beer at dinners with friends doing this “Gan Bei” thing (a ping is about 32 ounces- no kidding), and we’d do it in about an hour and a half. Sometimes we’d forget to eat. Eventually, I started to black out and my wife would tend to me and make sure I got home. Business occasions were the same, and my Assistant was under standing orders to make sure she wasn’t as drunk as me to make sure I got back to my room. I spent 3 years in China blacking out during these social occasions, all with the support of my wife or my assistant in the name of meeting Chinese social expectations. I used to say I was the most famous beer drinker in Guangdong Province, but there’s no way that’s actually true. I am pretty sure I was the most famous beer drinker in FengGang Town in Guangdong, which doesn’t sound like much until you found out FengGang Town has about 600,000 residents. My last year in China, I became very depressed. We had built a very successful business from scratch with a close knit team, and I had the task of hiring my replacement then turning things over to him. Turning things over to the new guy, Joe, made me feel like I was dying. I had an apartment in the town where our factory was located (Zhongshan) and my family was in the city where the English-speaking school was located (Shenzhen). I was alone every night in Zhongshan and started to spend my evenings at the Irish Bar down the street drinking 3 pint glasses of Guiness. I used to count until I had 6. Eventually I quit counting. I was usually capable of getting a taxi back to my hotel (eventually the same driver took to waiting outside the bar to take me home every night for an exhorbitant fee). We loved living in China. My boss said I could stay there and write my own ticket for whatever I wanted to do. I was torn. I loved it there, but I knew it was killing me. I had a deadline of 3 months to tell my boss what we wanted to do and my wife and I had many agonizing conversations about it. At the end of three months, we told my boss we wanted to stay, and were answered with silence. The Great Recession was approaching and the company would move us back to the USA. For the last year in China, I drank more than any person should ever drink. We moved from China to South Texas and I worked running a factory in Mexico. Remarkably, I stopped drinking. Well, almost. I would still enjoy the occasional tall can, especially on the beach, but my drinking was very limited. After two years in Texas, we moved to Indiana, then Pennsylvania. As the stress of my job increased my drinking increased in PA. Sometimes I drank to much , but it wasn’t such a chronic thing. I lost my job in Pennsylvania in a corporate cutback and we relocated to Cincinnati. The job stress followed me and my drinking patterns stayed the same- probably unhealthy, but not crazy out of control. The Cincinnati job turned weird when the mentally unstable CEO (really, I am not kidding) cleaned house and fired all the good people right and left. He decided to keep me, but I could read the handwriting on the wall. I took a job in South Carolina with the agreement with my wife that we would relocate there after my son finished his last year in High School. I got off to a good start in South Carolina, but it immediately became clear that my wife and family would not be visiting me very frequently, contrary to our original plans. It was hard to manage with responsibilities and jobs back in Cincinnati. To save money I rented the cheapest place I could find- a $450 a month half of an old house. It didn’t seem so bad at first but I later figured out the neighborhood was visited by local law enforcement almost every night. I grew accustomed to waking up and seeing blue lights flash outside my window. Shortly thereafter, it became very clear that my wife and family wouldn’t be moving down to South Carolina after graduation. Logically, I knew this was for many solid reasons and our original plan was ill-conceived but I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. I became very depressed. I felt unloved and abandoned, and feelings from my mother leaving me to someone else and my aunt dropping me as an adolescent came rushing back. I became deeply depressed and drank to try to make it going away. I never drank every day, but when I did drink it would go out of control very quickly. I attribute this to brain damage from heavy bingeing in China and learned habits of drinking very quickly. One of the first times this got way out of control, I was bringing luggage down stairs in preparation to drive my daughter back to college. I had been drinking from my wife’s box of cheap wine and fell down the stairs and smashed my head into the drywall, leaving a dent that is still there today. My family talked me into going to the ER and, while the side of my face turned black and blue, there was no real damage. I missed a day of work, used make up to hide the bruises and made up a story about being in a car accident. On another occasion, I started drinking (again my wife’s box of cheap wine) while doing taxes and ended up terrorizing my family, screaming up and down the street and scaring my youngest daughter so bad she went to the Dollar General to hide. The kids hid the car keys from me that day. One weekend I was going to meet my wife at a campground in Virginia, and I drank the whole way from South Carolina to Viriginia. At one point I drove through a sobriety check point, but they didn’t stop me. Later I got confused about where I was going and turned around and drove through the same checkpoint a second time. I blacked out on some off the main path mountain road in Virginia. My wife managed to find me, but to this day I don’t really know how. One of the worst nights came when I was flying back from a business meeting in Panama. I had a beer in Panama, and two glasses of wine at the United Lounge in Orlando. Somehow, I was woken at about 2 AM by the Chicago Police banging on my door. I eventually figured out that I blacked out at the airport, missed my flight, rebooked for the next day, booked a hotel and somehow (not sure how) got to the hotel 2 miles from the airport. Once at the hotel, I wandered around for two hours inside, unable to find my room. I would learn that the only thing that kept me from leaving the hotel and wandering into a very bad part of Chicago was a kind hearted overnight desk clerk who kept me from leaving the hotel. All this time, my wife and kids were following me on Life360, desperately trying to contact me to make sure I was safe. I really, really scarred my family with this one, especially my wife. My final episode I was camping while working in South Carolina to save money and on a rainy, lonely night decided to drink in my tent. I’m not so how, but I ended up driving around and couldn’t find my campsite. I had some kind of confrontation with another camper and an unpleasant encounter with a ranger. I don’t know why he didn’t call the police but he told me to get back to my tent and stay there. I drove home the next day but on impulse bought a tall can which I drank as I drove. I was drunk by the time I got home and failed a breathalyzer by a long shot. There many more stories than these. I really horrified my kids and traumatized my wife more times than I can recount here. I often wish there was a way to make all of the past go away but there isn’t. My recovery has come in phases. Several months ago, I saw a Doctor for my depression and was prescribed Lexapro. This really helped and I felt much better, but I still couldn’t quit drinking to manage my feelings. After the Chicago airport incident, I went to AA for the first time in Walhalla, South Carolina, and said for the first time “My name is Daniel and I’m an alcoholic.” Until that point, I was in denial that I was an alcoholic. Although there was a huge amount of evidence to the contrary, I couldn’t admit to myself that I was an alcoholic. After the Chicago Airport fiasco, even I couldn’t deny it. AA helped and I stayed sober for 32 days, but the 32 days were a terrible struggle. I was working through my Moral Inventory (AA Step 3) when I relapsed on day 33. I didn’t have the skills to cope with my feeling and issues inside my brain. I continued to try AA but relapsed again. After the drunken drive home from South Carolina, I spent the night in prayer, desperately crying for a solution to help me. God answers the prayers of a crushed spirit and he helped me. It was after this that, after figuring our financially we couldn’t afford and in-patient program, that something like Lionrock existed. I travel frequently and it would be almost impossible for me to attend a physical location on a regular basis. I thank God for having me run the Google search that found Lionrock. Lionrock has helped a lot. I’ve begun to use more meditation, which really helps me to manage emotions and situations. I use HALT to understand triggers or stressors in my life and to manage them. In AA they say you have to just go 24 hours at a time, but sometimes it’s 10 minutes at a time or even 1 minute at a time. I’ve used the principles I learned in Lionrock to form my own strategy if faced with an urge to drink- wait 10 minutes, say a prayer, and eat a sandwich. It sounds goofy but it works really well. I started with Lionrock 44 days ago. I feel confident about the future and positive, but I have no illusions about the work I have do to recover.

Recovering from recovery

Recovery, at first, is really, really awful. Trying to stop drinking when it has become your standard way to deal with feelings, issues, and stress is- quite honestly- a real bitch. But I’m past that. I’m on day 43 and feeling good. I am confident and know that as long as I stay within the day, I’ll be just fine. My only problem now is recovering from the recovery. I’m doing well, but my alcoholism did a lot damage, some to me but more to the people around me. The residue and impact of this damage is still around. Sometimes I’ll be going through life happy, sober, and confident, then the effect of the damage I’ve done comes around and smacks me in the face like a 2x4. It’s a very incongruent feeling. I almost feel guilty for feeling happy and confident. immediately, you feel like a loser drunk again. All those feelings of depression and hopelessness come rushing right back into my brain. Recovery has become easy. Recover from memories and effects of what I’ve dine is not.

Signs of a potential relapse...

From my Counselor, Larry—-

Shoes

Tonight at AA, we read a story from the “Big Book” (aka the AA Bible) where a lady described being so drunk she woke up outside, in winter, without her shoes- and no idea where they went. I’ve never done that, but it reminded me of something... when I was drinking, when I woke up in the morning and my shoes were off it was a good sign. It meant that I had enough working brain matter at bedtime to take them off before going to sleep. If I woke up and my shoes were still on this was a bad, bad sign and I’d work hard to try to remember going to bed, how I got home, what I did that night, etc... This habit goes all the way back to my “glory days” drinking in China. To this day, every morning my first thought is “Are my shoes still on?”.

Relapse—- not mine

Today’s group counseling session was very tough. There’s a nice guy in my group named Jose that I’ve always related to. He’s a Police Officer, but we have many similarities. We’ve both been married 28 years, he has 3 children, and our time sober was about the same. One night in group I said since I quit drinking my wife commented that she could see the light in my eyes again. When I said this, Jose smiled and said his wife had told him the same thing. That was all a few weeks ago. Tonight, I learned that Jose relapsed. He said he went to the store for groceries and the next thing he knew he was drunk. This lasted for four days. I was really shaken to hear this and shocked that it happened so easily. I am very grateful for how God has blessed me and protected me. Jose’s experience is a reminder to me to put my trust in God and not to doubt Him.

AA Controversy

I attended a different AA meeting today in Ft. Thomas. AA meetings are nice in that I can go to any one any where and be greeted like a long-last relative. This one was no exception, everyone was nice and welcoming, and I’ll probably go back. I did, however,run into some controversy. Our discussion subject was “Is alcoholism self-inflicted?”. I happened to go last and said that I thought alcoholism was passed on genetically like blue eyes or a predisposition to diabetes (there’s a lot of science to support my opinion), that science has shown alcoholics process alcohol differently than normal people- sending the toxin from the liver to the brain instead of quickly converting the alcohol to acetate in the liver. That being true, I said it was always my choice to drink and that I suffered a spiritual sickness that could only be cured by God. After the meeting an old guy cornered me and started lecturing me that this was garbage science, blah blah blah. Truth is, I suspected my words would get this reaction. AA is a fantastic organization, but it’s strength and weakness is it hasn’t changed since 1930. Most members are pretty tolerant, but there’s a group of fundamentalist opposed to modern medical research, and things like counseling. This behavior is nothing new, a small % of people will always stratify. For example, there’s a guy in my counseling group that hates AA and says so often, even though I’ve never heard a valid reason from him. Such extremists simply need to be ignored so they don’t impede the progress of everyone else.

Why now?

My next rehab homework assignment was to write a 3 page paper titled “Why now?”. The first half explains what brought me to this point and why I want to change. The second half details what my life would be like in 6 months if I didn’t get help. In the first part, I detailed most of the horrible incidents that led to me starting rehab. The second part was Obvious but hard to write. I clearly would have ended up dead or in jail, and I would have lost my family and my job.

Top 20

As part of my counseling, I have homework each week. This week, I needed to write down 20 reasons I used alcohol. I have to confess I only came up with 18. My list ranged from drinking to relieve emotional pain, stress, and anger to stopping bad memories, fear, relieve guilt, and also just because I liked the taste. This self examination helped me to better understand my motivations for abusing alcohol. My next assignment is a 3 page paper on why I want to quit now.