Drunk is Temporary, Asshole is Forever
If the thirteenth step in a Twelve Step program is sleeping with someone you aren’t supposed to, then the fourteenth step is getting a taste of your own medicine from someone who isn’t yet sober. I spent the last week being annoyed, frustrated, and horrified by someone who claimed that they needed guidance in order to drink less (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that drinking “less” wasn’t an option.) This was never meant to be a sponsor/sponsee relationship—while I don’t adhere entirely to AA for my sobriety, I respect the sanctity of their guidelines and their program, and I would never blaspheme or bastardize it. I told him that we could talk through his habits and behaviors, and I would support him while he made some small adjustments and thought through what was driving his need to drink.
I was determined. I was prepared for setbacks and deep realizations. I thought that all of my hard work was leading to this sort of dynamic; I could make a difference in someone’s addiction and, therefore, their entire life. … that is soooo not the way this story went.
He would only contact me at night, after he was already three sheets to the wind. Reasoning with someone who is drunk is a pointless endeavor. Even so, I thought that maybe some of the truths he expressed while inebriated would come in handy as I administered my Dollar Store brand therapy. Instead, it all got jumbled into nonsense.
The truth ended up being that he never had the drive to stop drinking. He was driven to drunk text. He was driven to flirt with someone that wasn’t his wife (hints the AA rule: your sponsor has to be of the same sex.) He was driven to brag about salaries, cars, and Rolexes. He was driven to call me repeatedly at 2am, even after I angrily expressed that I wouldn’t answer the phone if he’d already been drinking. Long story short, that “relationship” ended with me blocking him and quick quick!
While this is a great anecdote about how I failed miserably, its not the main point of my story. Middle-aged, privileged white men are going to do what middle-aged, privileged white men do. Add alcohol, you’ve got a radioactive lizard trolling the waters of coastal Japan wearing a Rolex. What I got from all of this was, like I said, a taste of my own medicine.
I know that in my drunk years, I broke hearts. I ruined events. I left people desperate, tired, worried, tearful, and helpless. I’m doing my best with this list, but there really aren’t words to describe what addiction does to an addict’s family. Love, resentment, hope, grief of hope, and even hate all mix together into a lumpy batter that becomes nearly impossible to separate once blended. I know that. I hate that, and I know that. Those are the long term and far-reaching effects of addiction.
What I learned from this situation were the day-to-day frustrations of interacting with an addict. I learned how disappointing it is to be in the middle of a conversation when the person starts misspelling words, repeating themselves, and making zero sense. I learned very quickly that wise words given at night will not be remembered in the morning. Make all the logical, intelligent points that you want, they fall on deaf ears. And the lies—OMG the fucking lies! Lie, after lie, after lie, after lie… LIES. “I wasn’t drunk last night,” “no, I’m not drinking now,” “I remember what I said last night,” “I swear, I’m trying,” “I wouldn’t lie to you.” I know addicts are liars and I know that I lied constantly, but it hits differently when you, yourself, are a former bullshitting drunk. I knew that the lies would happen, I didn’t know they would be constant and that they would burrow like chiggers underneath my skin.
Being lied to is obnoxious, but it’s not the abundant lies he told that upset me. Having my eyes opened to the habitual turmoil that I put people through was unnerving. It’s been over a year since my last drink. It’s been a year of self-awareness, therapy, support groups, and mea culpa, but there are still places that my mind won’t go because it’s just too Goddamn painful. Its incredibly selfish, considering that I forced these horrible moments and situations on my family and friends, yet I am too much of a coward to even revisit those tragedies in my memory. Or worse, they were so bad that I don’t remember, and I am too much of a coward to ask the addict’s Kryptonite question of, “what happened? What did I do?”
In the natural evolution of regret and proceeding self-correcting, the addict’s questions change. I owe so many apologies, not because I am unaware of who I hurt and how, but because it feels like scaling a mountain that is leagues above sea level and base camp is still miles of flat ground away. How do I even apologize for something like that? How do I invent words for how sorry I am, or how do I make the words that exist sound more powerful? How do I acknowledge my wrongs, but also guarantee that the things that came out of my wine-coated mouth are not the things that exist in my remorseful, thumping heart? Dealing with long term consequences like pending legal issues and liver failure are easy. Trying to formulate an apology that is strong enough, sincere enough, and epic enough is the greatest challenge that an addict will face in sobriety.
Therapists and addicts alike say that recovery, at least at first, is selfish. In many ways, its true. I wrote a diatribe on how much I dislike the phrase, “you have to do it for yourself,” on the Church (de)Basement page, because I do dislike it. However, recovery is selfish sometimes because we have to be so delicate with ourselves. We don’t go places where we don’t feel that we can go. We ditch friends who may be loyal but are also triggers. We caudle ourselves and lick our wounds before we can address the wounds we inflicted on others. And yes, it may be a long time before we can psych ourselves up to a point where we can revisit our worst mistakes… selfish? Yes. Keep in mind, we are trying to not to drink here people—and we know ourselves well enough to avoid thoughts and feelings that make us want to chug a fifth of Jim Beam and wrap our car around a tree.
I did not block my older acolyte because of his drunkenness or his lying. I’ve been there. I know where he is in his addiction, I know where his mind is at, I know where his motives are, and I don’t even blame him for being a pig and flirting with a woman who isn’t his wife. None of that is ok, but he doesn’t realize how “not ok” it is. He’s 50% drunk, and 50% trying to feel something worth living for when he’s sober. His life is crap because of his drinking, but he hasn’t yet made the connection that the drinking is the problem. Where he is, alcohol is the only good thing in his life and that 5pm buzz is all he feels he has to live for… so how can it be wrong?
I blocked him because he needs to learn. To realize how massively the drinking is ruining his life, he needs to lose a few more things: starting with me. Buh-bye!
Selfishness is relative in addiction and sobriety. I would say that a man who targets a sober 30-year-old girl claiming to need help with their abundant drinking, but instead just drunkenly capitalizes on hypothetical derivatives of “if I weren’t married,” is pretty selfish. However, when I told him that I was done with the drunkenness and especially the lying about it (before I blocked him), he told me that I was “arrogant” and a “narcissist.” … arrogant. … and a narcissist. Huh…
Not gonna lie, that stuck to my gut for a few days. It shouldn’t have. He was the drunk potential adulterer that only spouted nonsense after 9pm, so why would I take anything he said to heart? Somehow in his stupor, he managed to select the two descriptors that I have been desperate to avoid since I began sharing my story on this platform. The only time that I tango with being arrogant or narcissistic is when I talk about my sobriety, and I refuse to apologize for that. I cannot stand-up for recovery and not be proud of myself. I cannot talk about addiction without bragging about the courage it takes to climb out of it. I cannot tell other people that there is light on the other side of the tunnel without showing off all the light that exists in my life. I cannot tell addicts that life is better sober if I can’t prove that my life has gotten exponentially better.
My life isn’t perfect. I, myself, as an entity, am FAR from perfect. I am confident about three or so things about myself, the rest is a junkyard. Sobriety is one of those things. I am so proud, so grateful, and so determined in my recovery that, yeah, I can be a bit arrogant and narcissistic. Like Narcissus, I am obsessed with my own reflection because I love what I see when I look in the mirror now. I don’t just mean the physical difference: I love that addiction recovery has a face and that it’s my own. Maybe my former mentee is right, or maybe he’s just a drunk asshole. I’ve been both of those things too, so I cannot blame him or shame him. My arrogant and narcissistic ass can only hope that his switch flips and that he gets the luxury of one day wondering, sober, how he could possibly apologize to me.
