denial

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Which Lie are You Telling Now?


Everyone has a conception of what a lie is.  It is being deceitful to someone when they ask you a question or when you are offering something which you state as being factual.  I think most people are pretty honest in their lives.  But there is also a part of us, a part I think which comes from upbringing, environment, and other factors which is so insidious that after a while it blurs the truth so badly that we cannot tell what is true or that we are lying.  Still another sort of lie is one I think few people ever even consider, denial.

The first sort of lie comes to us when we are children and uncomfortable subjects arise which are parents cannot find the courage to discuss.  Possibly chief among such lies is the discussion of sex.  As parents we do not know how to speak to our children about it, or we are not sure what we should say or how much we should say.  The other thing that runs in most families is the lack of discussion around things like alcoholism, drug abuse, mental health, and fear.

When I was young we had an alcoholic uncle living with us.  He had been abusive to my mother when she was younger and was abusive to my brother and I when he was living with us.  But he was never referred to as a drunk or an alcoholic but as some one who drank too much.  Then, some time after he died, my mother suffered a mental break down.  My brother, sister, and I were shipped off to relatives to live for a number of weeks until she was recovered.  I was an adult, maybe in my 40s, before I found out what had happened to her.  And then when I asked my mother about sex she pushed some foolish book off on me which told me nothing.  She was too afraid to speak to any of us about this subject.  That was quite common for others in my generation but I fear it still happens far too often.  These are examples, mostly, of denial and fear.  In defense of my mother there were extremely good reasons for her actions, or lack of them.

For the first four or five years of a child’s life, almost everything they learn comes from their parents, either from direct instruction or by parental example.  From then on children learn from their peers but always use their parent’s example as the sounding board of what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  But any gaps in a child’s training, direction from his parents, he will fill in the gap with whatever seems right.  If parents actively avoid difficult discussions the child will grow up to do the same.  The lie in the case is the parent knows the truth but does not relate to the child, frequently justifying that action by saying the child is too young or does not need to know whatever.  Most of the time that just is not true.

I believe that as adults it is rare the day goes by that we are not confronted with an uncomfortable truth.  Most of the time those truths are relatively minor though they may be briefly psychologically painful.  The common human reaction is avoidance, and that is always wrong.  And too often that avoidance employs denial.  We think that if we deny that slightly uncomfortable truth, and then forget about it, it will be behind us never to be seen or heard from again.  I think the occasions when that actually happens is rare, if at all.  I believe that these minor uncomfortable truths come at us over and over again, slightly different, but basically the same.  The problem with denial of those small truths is that in either avoiding them, or denying them, we are teaching ourselves how to act or react in those situations.  It becomes second-nature.  We become so numb to our active denial of the truth that we come to believe the lie to be true.  From there we rationalize lying when we encounter even more uncomfortable truths we would rather not face.  Our denial becomes such an active and large part of our lives that we employ it without thinking.

For me, the most difficult truth to tell is one which puts me in an unflattering light.  But in considering such things, I have come to the conclusion that unlike the lie, telling that uncomfortable truth does not require that I defend the position whereas a lie always demands a defense.  And some of the most difficult positions to be in, and not defend, is when I know I own a portion of something I have done wrong but not the entire situation.  I want to say that this other person was complicit and so I don’t deserve all the blame.  The thing is, that does not matter.  If I own any part of a wrong, regardless of how small, I need to just own it and be done with it.  Trying to shift blame serves no good purpose.

My tack these days is to be absolutely honest about even the most minor of details.  For example, when someone asks me how I am doing, and I am not feeling at that well, my response will be along the lines of “I’ve been better.”  But I do not say “fine” when it simply is not true.  That is the most common thing people ask me which requires an honest answer and by being truthful there it helps me practice with the bigger and more important questions of truth.  Every now and then I will discover that something I have said is not quite fully truthful and upon such discovery I correct myself.  The truth is, my feelings have to take a back seat to my telling the truth.

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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.