In this article, the author explores his experience of his multiplicity of parts … a part wants one thing and another part a different thing. This theme of our internal divide and how to heal from it, is the focus of a entire section of our website entitled ‘Healing Our Jekyll/Hyde Divided Self’
Sometimes it is in the darkest places that the light is most visible
“Honey, why do you drink like that? Why can’t you just have a few and come home? Why do you have to get drunk?” The raw anguish in my wife’s voice cut into my consciousness like a hot knife.
It was the same question I had heard over and over through the drinking episodes I had splattered like rotten tomatoes across the two decades of our marriage. And my answer was just the same as it had always been: “I just don’t know. I’m so sorry but I just don’t know.”
“I just feel like I’m lost, like I’ve lost my way and am in the wilderness somewhere and can’t seem to find my way back.”
I uttered those words to my loving wife on a Saturday morning in July 1982 as I tried desperately to explain why I had stopped after work for a couple of beers the night before, but ended up eight hours later sitting drunk outside a bar in Bossier City, La., waiting for her to come take me home.
It has been a long time now since I spoke those tortured – but brutally honest – words that came from some dark reservoir of anguish, self-loathing and remorse that had filled my insides. But I can remember the moment as if it were yesterday – and it still gives me a sick feeling.
It wasn’t the first time that kind of incident had happened. My periodic binges of drinking had begun when I was in my early teens living in a small town rural Idaho. At first they were a typical part of the experience of growing up in a small town: underage teens getting drunk on weekends on beer or the occasional hard liquor supplied by an indulgent adult.
In my case, the occasional drunken binges continued through the years of high school. Once I took the first drink, I wouldn’t stop until something outside of me intervened. Only when I sobered up would I realize the wreckage I had created.
Then I would find myself begging forgiveness from my parents, pledging to never do it again and trying to explain why I had drunk myself into an alcoholic stupor, why my personality when I was drunk was totally different that when I was sober.
Today I know it was the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alcoholic behavior we learn about in AA. Back then, it just seemed like I had no will power. If only I had known it was just the beginning of 25 years of ever more frequent episodes of alcoholic drinking.
I cannot count the number of times my sprees ended after I had disgraced myself and humiliated my family. Begging my wife and children to forgive me, making solemn promises to never do it again and then doing it again.
As time passed, the intervals got closer together and repeated instances of terrible immoral behavior were added to the mix of wreckage I brought down upon those I loved.
And yet through it all, I simply could not answer the simple question my wife begged me to answer: Why? With years of failure to stop drinking as evidence, the only explanation I could come up with was that the things that good, moral people are born with had been left out of me. The resulting despair I felt left me contemplating suicide for the first time in my life.
My alcohol problem was shielded from my understanding by the façade that I had built to house it. I had suffered none of the outward signs that often identify people as having an alcohol problem. I never lost a job, was seemingly happily married with two wonderful daughters. I had never been arrested – although I should have been arrested more times than I can count for drunken driving.
My job never suffered and my career path was always upwards. I had a good home in the right neighborhood, a wonderful family, the right number of cars. It was a compelling case for blinding me to the reality that my drinking was the cause of the mound of wreckage I carried in a large sack on my back.
But things were about to change. I didn’t know it at the time but something greater than me was about to strip away the veil of denial and give me a fleeting but profound moment of clarity that would change my life.
It came several hours after I had come to that Saturday morning in July 1982. I was driving in my car thinking about the night before. As I had done many times before I absently said out loud to myself: “I have just got to stop doing this.”
Suddenly I heard myself say: “I can’t stop drinking. I want to, but I can’t.” And I knew in my heart that it was the truth.
Later that night, July 31, 1982, at 7:59 p.m., scared to death and filled with guilt and apprehension, I stepped into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a local church not far from where I lived. I haven’t had a drink since.
In the months and years since, I learned about my disease, how it manifests itself in my thinking and actions and, more importantly, what I need to do to deal with it. I know today that I cannot take the first drink, no matter what. I also know that if I am to do that, then I need to work the Steps and get a power greater than myself in my life. I’ve learned I have to work with other alcoholics and that I have to give it away to keep it.
I have tried my best to build a new life founded on what I have learned in AA. I have cleaned up the wreckage of my past by making direct amends where I could and by making (and continuing to make) living amends where they were more appropriate. Along the way, that big bag of self-loathing and remorse has dwindled to an occasional Tenth Step.
It hasn’t been easy. At times I think I have failed more times than my ego will permit me to say, but I keep trying. After all, isn’t it progress, not perfection? Some of us are just slower than others. One thing I do know for certain is that as long as I don’t drink and keep trying, I have a chance.
In return I have been given a life beyond anything I could have ever dreamed. Not in material things, but in the love of my family. My beloved wife and I recently celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary and I found in her a love greater than any I could have dreamed possible.
I’ll make an embarrassing confession here: In the beginning, I always kind of wondered if Bill W.’s hospital room spiritual experience really did happen the way he described it.
I no long need to wonder.
I know now that mine happened to me in the front seat of my car on a Saturday morning in July 1982. No smoke, no wind blowing through me, no feeling of calm and serenity. Just a moment in which I spoke aloud the answer to the question that I could never answer before.
Why did I drink the way I did? Because my name is Dick and I am an alcoholic.