A.A.

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Getting Sober In Your 20s


I have long thought about writing on this subject but have been reticent about “outing” myself.  But that has changed.  In January of this year, 2012, a young woman who I was friends with lost her battle with alcohol and prescription medication.   A little bit about her:  She was 31 years old at the time of her death.  I had known her for 3 years at that time and we had become close, closer than I even knew.  She came from a good family of substantial means.  She was a Yale graduate and a navy veteran.  She was tall, lean, well-liked, and by all outward appearances, in great health.  She was very athletic, able to run a marathon.  But in the end, all that was simply window dressing to a serious problem.

I have been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for almost 14 years now.  I could easily have convinced myself that I did not have a problem with alcohol as I was never an everyday drinker, I had a job that I had held for a long time, and by all outward appearance, I was doing pretty well.  That just was not the case.  My inner turmoil was tremendous and had been that way since I was a teenager.  Whenever I felt an unpleasant emotion or unpleasant situation descending upon me, I would use alcohol at a means to blunt those feelings.  I also used the excuse of drinking to be “more socialable.”  And I really believed that was true!  But the truth was, I was failing to deal with my fears by covering them up which allowed me to do things that scared me.   That is, by any stretch of the imagination, not a healthy way to deal with problems.  In point of fact, it only serves to make the problems worse.

When I stopped drinking my only reason was to gain peace and sanity, neither of wich I had.  I did not believe I had an alcohol problem, but if the Alcoholics Anonymous program would help me with a legion of other problems I had, I would do it.  Fourteen years later I can say that regardless of what I believed all those years ago, my life today is fabulous because I made a commitment to stop drinking and to closely adhere to this 12-step program.   For as much as I hated life back then, I love it now.

My young friend who died early this year had a future as bright as anyone could want.  But I firmly believe she had some inner demons that kept dragging her down.  And within those demons was one in particular that told her that because she was so young and so healthy she could have another drink.  But that was the big lie.  For whatever reason, her last drink killed her.  And the truth is, it did not have to be that way.

I remember my 20s.  I was drinking hard and it never occurred to me that I either had a problem or that my drinking could have killed me.  It was not that I felt invincable, but that I refused to consider my actions as being all that dangerous to my own health and welfare.  Worse, it never occurred to me that it was having a hugely negative effect upon those people in my life, but it did.

I see young people coming into Alcoholics Anonymous all the time, as young as 17 I have seen.  It is extremely difficult for those people to believe that it would be best if they never took another drink.  Their concept of drinking is that it is something everyone does and that they are going to be just fine.  They cannot imagine being out with their friends who are drinking and not drinking themselves.  They are victims to peer pressure and their own faulty thinking.

Here is something to consider.  Have you ever made the statement, even to just yourself, that you need a drink or that you have to have a drink?  Most people would have to honestly answer that question with a “yes.”  The follow-up question necessarily has to be “why?”   Almost without exception, if a person is being entirely honest, the answer is going to come along the lines of having to deal with uncomfortable feelings or situations.  And then the honest person must ask themself how taking a drink is going to help that situation.  And the honest answer is, it will not!  The strong sober person deals with those feelings and situations head-on, without feeling it necessary to anaesthetizing themself.   They will actually view taking a drink as getting in the way of good progress.

Webster’s Dictionary defines sober as “straightforward: serious; plain or subdued; devoid of frivolity, exaggeration, or speculative imagination.”  I particularly like that last definition because it harkens unto “magical thinking.”  That is, the belief that if I take a drink I will somehow be better at something.   That, of course, is totally illogical, but that is also very common thinking.  Everyone does it but it is never right.

People in their 20s, the “Gen-Y” people, are prone to this magical thinking mostly because they lack the experience of life to tell them that the truth lies somewhere else.  It is not their fault.  It is just something every person must go through.  It is really easy for a person in their 20s to deny that they have any problem with alcohol because, as the thinking goes, they are too young to have such a problem.  That, of course, is pure b.s.  A problem drink is any drink that is taken in lieu of something else.

Anther thing, while people in their 20s and 30s may not believe they are immortal, they usually believe they have a lot of time in front of them and that they need not concern themselves with some of their immediate problems.  That somehow, those problems will work themselves out or that they will simply grow out of them or that they are just going through a phase.  All of this happens when anyone, regardless of age, is in denial about their root problems.

I feel certain my friend who died was in denial about her vulnerability to her problems with alcohol.  I think everyone uses denial at some time in their life, if not frequently, because a problem or situation feels overwhelming and that somehow, by denying the problem, it will eventually go away or fix itself.  From my own personal experience, I can tell you absolutely that this is just a big lie we tell ourselves. It is never ever true.

To those people who are in their 20s and 30s I ask that you consider if you have ever wondered if you have a drinking problem, or if it has ever been suggested that you might have one, that you take that extremely seriously.  Consider if a doctor suggested you might have skin cancer, would you ignore that in the hope that it would just go away?   Of course not!  Problem drinking is a medical problem in exactly the same way.  It is also, by definition, a spiritual problem.   I promise that those of you in your 20s and 30s, if you were to go to an alcoholics anonymous meeting you will not be in the presence of a bunch of old people who are one step removed from homelessness, although such people certainly attend such meetings.  In fact, you will find there is an entire portion of Alcoholics Anonymous devoted to young people that includes meetings that are mostly attended by young people.  There is a whole group of young people in Alcoholics Anonymous who refer to themselves as “never having had a legal drink,” and yet they have stayed away from alcohol for many years.

If you think you have a problem and want more information, feel free to contact me via email here, or, you can always find a central office of Alcoholics Anonymous listed in phone books and on the Internet regardless of where you live.

My hope in posting this it that it will give pause to young people to at least consider how they drink.  Even the slightest suspicion is worthy of attention.

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Required Feelings


There was a time when someone asked me how long I had felt depressed, I would answer, “I have never known a time when I was not depressed.”  That depression came from a few sources.  One was fear and the other was an inability to deal with my feelings.  Feelings are one of those things that have certain requirements that come with them, but if you do not know what those requirements are, you fail.  I know a lot of people who get negative feelings of some sort respond to those feelings by taking a drink.  I was one of those people.  I knew that when I felt badly I could cover up those feelings by having a drink, or two, or three.

There is a problem to actively avoiding feelings, they are cumulative.  That is, each feeling that is covered up remains with you even if submerged.  They continue to accumulate waiting to be dealt with and released.  In my case more feelings meant more alcohol or pills.  And every time a new and negative feeling arose I covered it up with a drink.  I did not know how to honestly deal with my feelings.

One of the feelings I had that bothered me was a simmering anger.  There was a lot that had happened to me in my childhood and as a young adult that made me feel resentful and angry.  But my inability to deal with those issues in an honest and straightforward manner made me feel worse and worse.  It also made me dishonest.  Whenever someone offered to help I rejected the help because I was too ashamed with what I was feeling to express it and rid myself of it.   One of the things I feared the most, losing friends and family, happened anyway.  My own daughters felt rightfully estranged from me.  I needed a solution but I was clueless as to what it could be.

One day someone suggested I had a problem with alcohol.  My response was that I could control my drinking.  I could stop whenever I wanted.  Of course that was all part of the big lie I told myself so that I believed I had some sort of control of myself.  The truth was, I was totally not in control of my life.  I did not have a clue of how to be happy with myself.  Hell, I hated myself and told myself such regularly.  I resented my mother, my sister, and a whole host of other people.  What I failed to realize was all that resentment was simply my seeing myself and hating what I saw.

I was taken to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, still not believing I had a problem with alcohol.  I heard this promise in one of those meetings that my life would change more dramatically for the good than I could either imagine or hope for.  Of course I did not believe all those good things would happen to me but since I did not have any ideas of my own I decided to stick around and see if things could get better.

One of the first things that happened to me was I gained friends, lots of them, quickly.  I liked these people but they consistently told me that I had to be totally honest with myself and everyone else if I wanted to be truly happy.  It took me well over a year to accept that I had a problem with alcohol but in that year my life changed dramatically.  I finally had a plan for success that was working, and even though I was  not anywhere near where I wanted to be, for the first time in my life I had hope.

I promised myself that I was going to get honest about everything regardless of what it cost me.  That meant dealing with feelings.  It had never occurred to me that negative feelings are a requirement of life.  That is, the only way to know how really good I can feel is to accept how truly badly I can feel as well.  That came out in spades about three months ago when a dear friend, who was a mere 31 years old, lost her battle with alcohol and died.  I felt miserable, and for quite some time too.  But I understood that I had to go straight through those negative feelings.  I would hurt myself by avoiding the negative feelings.  But I had arrived at a place where I realized, gratefully, that everyone feels these things, and the strong and truly happy people readily accept their feelings.

One of the things that separates we humans from the rest of the animal kingdom are these feelings we get.  But we must accept those feelings to live as happily as is possible.  When we feel mad we have to find a healthy way to express that feeling.  When we feel sad it is all right, and a good thing.  When sad we do not need to lie to people who ask us how we are doing.  Telling someone that we are not doing so well is all right, and actually quite healthy.  We have to accept that we are responsible for our feelings and that if someone rejects one of our feelings, that is all right too.  We have an absolute right to all of our feelings regardless of what anyone thinks.  Feelings are a requirement of the human condition.  What we do with those feelings is a matter of personal choice.  Today, I choose to deal with them in an honest and forthright manner.  I have a great 12-step program and over 13 years of sobriety to thank for that.  I also have a fabulous life today and a plan for my next 50 years of life.

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Are You Sober or Do You Just Think You Are?


During most of my adult life it never occurred to me that maybe I should be in Alcoholics Anonymous, and yet for over 13 years now I have been.  I did not get there via a detox, or an intervention.  I was not court ordered nor did it follow any incident after which I knew for a fact that I needed A.A.

What I had become expert at was denial of the obvious.  I was never a daily drinker.  I did lose one job because of drinking but otherwise I was fully functional.  No one ever suggested that I possibly had a drinking problem.  That was until July 3, 1998.  But I will get to that in a minute.

Until I joined the Army I was not a drinker nor had I ever gotten drunk.  I did love the taste of my father’s port sherry but I never stole any from him. I only took the sip offered and nothing more.  But from a young age when I first tasted it, I adored it.  I was in flight school at Fort Wolters Texas when I got drunk for the first time. I managed to drink myself into a blackout.  From then on, the next 30 years, I would drink for effect and that effect was to change how I was feeling.  I would binge.  And that is what my drinking career looked like.  I would drink for a while and then not drink for a while.  But I always drank as a means of self-medication.

On July 3, 1998 I was on the banks of the Charles River in Boston enjoying the day.  I had been sitting for a while with a friend talking and enjoying the day.  We got up to move on and after we had moved only a few feet I was overcome with the feeling that it was difficult to breathe.  My friend looked at me and told me I was ashen gray in color.  She offered to call an ambulance, suggesting it a very good idea.  I said I knew I could make it the short distance to Massachusetts General Hospital.  I made it but I was very fortunate.  It took every ounce of strength I had.  Once there it took the doctor examining me about 17 seconds to decide I was having a heart attack.  After he told me that he suggested I stop drinking and drugging.  I told him that I did not drink.  The truth was I had started drinking around 11 that day and had done a good deal of that.  I did not use drugs so that was not an issue.  But there it was.  Denial in the first degree.  It was not 24 hours later a cardiac surgeon had to do emergency surgery on me, that was a Saturday and a holiday, July 4.  He said I would not live if it was put off any longer.

Still, it was not until late October of that year that someone suggested I might want to try an A.A. meeting.  I did and the rest, as they say, is history.  My life truly sucked in October 1998 and I was certainly feeling the desperation for a change that I had no idea how to make.  I embraced the 12-step program because all my previous attempts to make things better had failed.  At that time I did not believe A.A. would actually help, nor did I believe I had a problem with alcohol, in spite of the fact that a certified physician had suggested that I did have a problem.

My life today is fabulous, in no small part due to my active participation in A.A. and my complete acceptance of its principles.  I have managed to turn around every thing that I viewed as negative.  I now view whether I had a drinking problem or not as being irrelevant.  I do know there is no down-side to not drinking, nor is there an up-side to taking a drink.  I am not going to mess with success.

The reason I am writing this is to hopefully get someone who reads it to do a self-assessment.  I have seen too many people struggle with the concept of whether or not they are an alcoholic only to die in the process.  Most recently I had a very dear friend die.  She was only 31 years old.  She was very athletically strong.  She was very smart, a Yale graduate.  She was a veteran having served as a Naval intelligence officer.  She came from a wealthy family so she did not want for money.  She had lots and lots of friends.  She also believed she had another drunk in her, but she was mistaken.  To look at her you would say, “no way she was an alcoholic.”  But she was.  Alcohol wanted her alone, and then it wanted her dead.  It got both.  The two pictures below are of her just before she died, January 6, 2012.

My point in bringing up someone who young is that age is irrelevant.  A person’s income, social status, education, and most other things are irrelevant.

People who do not have a drinking problem do not plan their next drink.  A person who does not have a drinking problem is unlikely to get a D.U.I.  A person who does not have a drinking problem does not lose family, friends, jobs, or anything else because they had a drink, or even a few drinks.  A person who does not have a drinking problem does not worry who sees them having a drink, nor do they hide their alcohol at home, nor do they lie about having a drink.  A person who does not have a drinking problem frequently has a problem remembering when they had their last drink.  A person who does not have a drinking problem does not see running out of beer or any other alcohol as a problem.

One of the biggest problems in any person’s life is their ability to deny the obvious.  People with alcohol problems are particularly good at it.  People with a drinking problem frequently try to shift blame for their own problems to other people, institutions, or things.  They are seldom interested in taking responsibility for their own actions.  They are someone who, when faced with a problem, decide they “need a drink.”  Whenever I hear someone say that, my ears perk up.  That is because I have the simple belief that no one “needs” a drink, ever, for any reason.  To the contrary, the well-adjusted, together person, wants to plow through the problem fully sober.  A drink only serves to muddle.

You do not have to drink every day to have a problem with alcohol.  You do not have to have been in jail as a result of drinking to have a problem.  You do not have to be homeless to have a problem.  Shortly after I stopped drinking I met a man who had a Harvard MBA, was a high-powered financier, and was getting ready to do some serious jail time which he admitted had been the result of his drinking.  Drinking never seems like a problem until it is.  And when it is denial comes to the rescue that permits the person to continue drinking.  Like any disease, untreated, it always gets worse.

I hope this makes an impression on someone who might be wondering about their drinking.  Feel free to contact me if you want more.  Better yet, go to an A.A. meeting, if only to gather information.  You have absolutely nothing to lose by doing so, and everything to gain.  If you do not know where meeting exist close to you, go to www.aa.org and you will find everything you need.