Chapter 1: The Missing Link
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He looked at everything as the cause of his unhappiness---except alcohol.
WHEN I WAS eight or nine years old, life suddenly became very difficult.
Feelings began to emerge that I did not understand. Depression crept into my
life as I started to feel alone, even in crowded rooms. In fact, life didn't
make much sense to me at all. It's hard to say what sparked all of this, to
pinpoint one fact or event that changed everything forever. The fact of the
matter was, I was miserable from early on in my life.
It was all very confusing. I remember isolating on the playground, watching
all the other children laughing and playing and smiling, and not feeling
like I could relate at all. I felt different. I didn't feel as if I was one
of them. Somehow, I thought, I didn't fit in.
My school marks soon reflected these feelings. My behavior and attitude
seemed to become troublesome to everyone around me. I soon began spending
more time in the principal's office than in the classroom. My parents,
perplexed by such an unhappy son, began having difficulties. My house was
soon filled with the sounds of arguments and yelling about how to handle me.
I found that running away from home could supply me with some sort of
temporary solace. Until of course, the police would find me and bring me
back to my house and my worried parents.
About that time I started seeing therapists and specialists, each with a
different theory and a different solution. They conducted special tests and
interviews designed to get to the root of my troubles, and came to the
conclusion that I had a learning disability and was depressed. The
psychiatrist started me on some medication, and the problems in school
started to clear up. Even some of the depression began to ease up for a bit.
However, something still seemed fundamentally wrong.
Whatever the problem, I soon found what appeared to be the solution to
everything. At age fifteen, I traveled with my family to Israel. My brother
was to be bar mitzvahed atop Masada. There was no legal drinking age, so I
found it quite easy to walk into a bar and order a drink. New Year's Eve
fell in the middle of the trip, and since the Jewish calendar celebrates a
different New Year than the Gregorian calendar, the only celebration was
being held in the American sector of a university. I got drunk for the first
time that night. It changed everything.
A stop at a local bar began the evening. I ordered a beer from the waitress
and as I took the first sip, something was immediately different. I looked
around me, at the people drinking and dancing, smiling and laughing, all of
whom were much older than I. Suddenly, I somehow felt I belonged. From
there, I made my way to the university, where I found hundreds of other
Americans celebrating New Year's Eve. Before the night was over, I had
started a fight with a number of college-aged drunken fellows and returned
to the hotel stinking drunk and riddled with bruises. Ah yes, what a grand
evening it was! I fell in love that night---with a beverage.
Returning to the States, I was determined to continue with my newfound love
affair. I found myself trying to convince my friends to join me, but I was
met with resistance. Still determined, I set out to find new friends,
friends who could help me maintain this fantastic solution to my most
desperate problems. My escapades started as a weekend pursuit and progressed
into a daily obsession. At first, it took several beers to get me drunk to
my satisfaction. However, within three years, it took a fifth and a half of
vodka, a bottle of wine, and several beers in an evening's time to
satisfactorily black me out. I would obtain alcohol by any means necessary.
That meant lying, stealing, and cheating. My motto was, if you felt like I
did, you'd have to get drunk too.
As the feelings of hopelessness and depression progressed, so did my
drinking. Thoughts of suicide came more and more frequently. It felt as if
things were never going to change. Progress with my therapist came to almost
a complete halt. The hopelessness was compounded by the fact that the one
thing that was bringing me relief, the one thing I counted on to take the
pain away, was ultimately destroying me. The end, I feared, was close.
My last semester in high school marked my bottom. It was everyday drinking
then. Since I had already been accepted at college, I consciously decided to
make that last semester one big party. But it was no fun at all. I was
miserable. I graduated narrowly and took a job at a local garage. It was
difficult to manage my drinking and a job since they were both full time,
but I concocted all kinds of lies to ensure that nothing would interfere
with my drinking. After being repeatedly reprimanded at work for being late
in the mornings, I made up a story to hide the fact that I was always hung
over. I told my manager that I had cancer and needed to go to the doctor for
treatment every morning. I would say whatever I needed to say to protect my
drinking.
More often, I was having these little moments of clarity, times I knew for
sure that I was an alcoholic. Times when I was looking at the bottom of my
glass asking myself, Why am I doing this? Something had to give, something
had to change. I was suicidal, evaluating every part of my life for what
could be wrong. It culminated in one last night of drinking and staring at
the problem. It made me sick to think about it, and even sicker to continue
drinking it away. I was forced to look at my drinking as the chief suspect.
The next day I went to work, late as usual, and all day long I could not
stop thinking about this very real problem. I could go no further. What was
happening to me? Therapy hadn't fixed my life---all those sessions; I was
still miserable. I might as well just kill myself, drink my way into
oblivion. In one last desperate fight for a solution, I reviewed my life,
searching for the missing link. Had I left out some crucial bit of
information that would lead to a breakthrough, making it possible for life
to become just a little more bearable? No, there was nothing. Except of
course my drinking.
The next morning I went to see my therapist. I told him I'd decided to quit
therapy, because after eight years, it wasn't working. But I decided to tell
him how I had been searching through my life for that missing link and had
come up with only one thing I had never told him: that I drank. He began
asking me questions---he asked about quantities, frequency, what I drank.
Before he was even halfway through, I broke down and began sobbing. I cried,
"Do you think I have a problem with drinking?" He replied, "I think that is
quite obvious." I then asked, "Do you think I'm an alcoholic?" And he
answered, "You are going to have to find out for yourself." He pulled a list
of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings out of his desk drawer; he had already
highlighted the young people's meetings.
He told me to go home and not drink at all for the rest of the day. He would
call me at nine p.m. and wanted to hear that I hadn't taken a drink. It was
rough, but I went home and locked myself in my room, sweating it out until
he called. He asked if I had had a drink. I told him I had not and asked
what I should do next. He told me to do the same thing tomorrow, except
tomorrow I should also go to the first meeting on the list he had
highlighted. The next day I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics
Anonymous. I was eighteen years old.
In the parking lot, I sat in my car for about fifteen minutes before the
meeting started, trying to work up the courage to go in and face myself. I
remember finally working up the nerve to open the door and get out, only to
close the door, dismissing the notion of going into the meeting as
ridiculous. This dance of indecisiveness went on about fifty times before I
went in. Had I not gone in, I believe I would not be alive today.
The room was very smoky and filled with apparently happy people. Finding a
seat in the back, I sat down and tried to make sense of the format. When the
chairperson asked if there were any newcomers present, I looked around and
saw some hands go up, but I certainly wasn't ready to raise my hand and draw
attention to myself. The meeting broke up into several groups, and I
followed one group down the hall and took a seat. They opened a book and
read a chapter titled "Step Seven." After the reading, they went around the
table for comments, and for the first time in my life, I found myself
surrounded by people I could really relate with. I no longer felt as if I
was a total misfit, because here was a roomful of people who felt precisely
as I did, and a major weight had been lifted. I happened to be in the last
chair around the table to speak and, confused by the reading, all I could
say was, "What the heck are shortcomings?"
A couple of members, realizing I was there for my first meeting, took me
downstairs and sat down with me and outlined the program. I can recall very
little of what was said. I remember telling these members that this program
they outlined sounded like just what I needed, but I didn't think I could
stay sober for the rest of my life. Exactly how was I supposed to not drink
if my girlfriend breaks up with me, or if my best friend dies, or even
through happy times like graduations, weddings, and birthdays. They
suggested I could just stay sober one day at a time. They explained that it
might be easier to set my sights on the twenty-four hours in front of me and
to take on these other situations when and if they ever arrived. I decided
to give sobriety a try, one day at a time, and I've done it that way ever
since.
When I entered Alcoholics Anonymous, I had done some damage physically, had
a bouquet of mental quirks, and was spiritually bankrupt. I knew I was
powerless over alcohol and that I needed to be open-minded toward what
people suggested for recovery. However, when it came to spirituality, I
fought it nearly every step of the way. Although raised in an ethnic and
religious Jewish household, I was agnostic and very resistant to anyone and
anything that I perceived to be imposing religious beliefs. To my surprise,
Alcoholics Anonymous suggested something different.
The idea that religion and spirituality were not one and the same was a new
notion. My sponsor asked that I merely remain open-minded to the possibility
that there was a Power greater than myself, one of my own understanding. He
assured me that no person was going to impose a belief system on me, that it
was a personal matter. Reluctantly, I opened my mind to the fact that maybe,
just maybe, there was something to this spiritual lifestyle. Slowly but
surely, I realized there was indeed a Power greater than myself, and I soon
found myself with a full-time God in my life and following a spiritual path
that didn't conflict with my personal religious convictions.
Following this spiritual path made a major difference in my life. It seemed
to fill that lonely hole that I used to fill with alcohol. My self-esteem
improved dramatically, and I knew happiness and serenity as I had never
known it before. I started to see the beauty and usefulness in my own
existence, and tried to express my gratitude through helping others in
whatever ways I could. A confidence and faith entered my life and unraveled
a plan for me that was bigger and better than I could have ever imagined.
It wasn't easy, and it has never been easy, but it gets so much better.
Since that first meeting, my life has completely changed. Three months into
the program I started college. While many of my college classmates were
experimenting with alcohol for the first time, I was off at meetings and
A.A. get-togethers, becoming active in service work, and developing
relationships with God, family, friends, and loved ones. I rarely thought
twice about this; it was what I wanted and needed to do.
Over the last seven years, nearly everything I thought I could not stay
sober through has happened. Indeed, sobriety and life are full of ups and
downs. Occasionally depression can creep back into my life and requires
outside help. However, this program has provided me with the tools to stay
sober through the death of my best friends, failed relationships, and good
times like birthdays, weddings, and graduations. Life is exponentially
better than it ever was before. I'm living out the life I used to fantasize
about, and I have a whole lot of work still in front of me. I have hope to
share and love to give, and I just keep going one day at a time, living this
adventure called life.