On August 20, I vaguebooked:
“I can’t anymore and I don’t want to. Somebody help”
Within 5 minutes, my phone had received a lot of calls. I prioritized by the one closest to me physically. Within 10 minutes, I had an ambulance at the end of my driveway, three of Norwalk’s finest on my right, and my friend Erik Moses on my left. I confessed to having long-time suicidal ideation, which was threatening to collide with my alcoholism to leave my children without a father, my wife without a husband, my parents without a son.
Within the hour, I was in Norwalk Hospital’s ER, with constant supervision overnight. I have never felt so self-conscious, and I’ve done some really weird shit in public.
A day later, I ended up at Wellbridge, a beautifully calming rehab facility in Long Island, where I took daily classes on coping strategies/mechanisms, warning signs to take note of to avoid relapse, and healthy practices moving forward. I also attended nightly AA/NA meetings — they were optional, but I had a policy of “if they show up, I show up.” I chose to approach this therapy Nerves Out. I figured that if I’d had almost 31 years unchecked of drinking, and now I only had 28 days to learn new habits, I didn’t have time for artifice or exoskeletons.
Hi. I’m Paul, and I’m an alcoholic.
I don’t think I was always an alcoholic — there were times, when I was younger, when I metabolized fine, but would occasionally abuse the privilege — but there was a time, somewhere along the line there, where the switch flipped and I failed to notice (not that other people didn’t). I allowed myself to rationalize and intellectualize my disease away, because I was always able to get up and get to work in the morning, and I was good at my job — even my night job playing music, where I kept my drinking on the even beer-keel — but little by little, my evening bourbon ritual was becoming less of a wind-down from a long day and more of a reward for Getting Through It, until I became positively convinced it was the only thing I was doing For Me.
What I learned over the last 28 days, is that every addict and alcoholic’s life story is analogous to mine — I was lucky enough to catch on before losing everything in my life (including my life), but the isolation, the rationalizations, the increase in usage that resulted from any attempt to cut back, it was all there in every story I heard. Most of all, we all seem to agree that right up until the moment we realize we are slaves to this thing, we will tell you that we are doing it of our own free will.
I am working hard to avoid a relapse. I can only take it one day at a time, as every other alcoholic and addict told me, from folks with two weeks to folks with 24 years, it never stops being a daily exercise in reminding ourselves that one is too many and 1,000 is never enough. As it stands, I did exactly what I was told to do and hit a meeting the day I got home, and I’m registered for outpatient therapy for the next 10 weeks to supplement the crash course I just got in prevention and self-care.
I wrote a song while I was at Wellbridge, and I’m going to start recording it tomorrow — hope to share it with you all soon.
Thank you so much, to everyone who commented and messaged me with support in this trying time. This has been a long time coming, and I’m hopeful that this will be a journey I’ll be able to share with you all without becoming a preachy asshole about it.
Love and bottles emptied down the drain,
Paul