Chapter 10: Tightrope
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Trying to navigate separate worlds was a lonely charade that ended when this
gay alcoholic finally landed in A.A.
DRINKING WAS ALWAYS a part of my family background. All the men in my family
drank; my father---and later, my brothers---were heavy drinkers. As long as
a person held down a job, didn't embarrass his family or friends too
frequently, and kept out of trouble, he was entitled to get drunk on a
regular basis. Drinking was an adult thing to do, a part of growing up. I
don't believe it ever crossed my mind that I shouldn't drink.
I was raised in a conservative religion, and I commuted to religious schools
some distance from home. Because I had a quick mind and was comfortable with
academics, I became something of a teacher's pet. As a result, I was a
serious, shy, somewhat bookish child and teenager who found it difficult to
relate to my peers. So when I went away to college, I was an alcoholic
waiting to happen. My relation to alcohol was a love affair from the very
beginning. Although I wasn't too thrilled with the taste, I loved the
effects. Alcohol helped me to hide my fears; the ability to converse was an
almost miraculous gift to a shy and lonely individual.
It was at this time that I also began to struggle with the question of my
sexuality. For me, the idea of being homosexual---the word gay wasn't then
in common use---was unthinkable. Drinking helped me to forget and evade.
Also, it provided some cover; when you are drunk, people are not surprised
at an inability or disinclination to make any serious moves toward a woman.
This struggle continued throughout years of unsuccessful dating and
pretending.
When I eventually decided to act on my desires, the guilt and the shame---as
well as the drinking---increased. Now I had to hide not only my thoughts but
also my conduct. I always tried to project the image of the conservative,
masculine, deep-voiced loner with the mysterious, possibly tragic, but
always heterosexual love affair in the past. I wound up living two separate
and distinct lives---that of the gay man with friends and interests to match
and that of the straight man with a totally separate set of friends and
interests.
I had to walk this tightrope while trying to build a solid professional life
as well. After college I had gone on to law school, where drinking on a
daily basis became the norm. I justified myself with the thought that a few
drinks helped me to relax and "focus" on my studies. Somehow, I managed to
do well in law school and to land several prestigious legal positions
afterward. I soon learned that I could not drink during the day; if I had
even one drink at lunch, the rest of the afternoon would be lost. Instead, I
postponed my drinking until immediately after work and would then make up
for lost time.
Work in a law firm added a third side to my already divided life. Now I had
to try to maintain social relations with clients, members, and associates of
the firm, in addition to my gay and straight friends from my private lives.
Needless to say, as the drinking increased, things became ever more
confused. Eventually, the pressures became too great. I had formed a serious
relationship and decided that I could no longer carry on the deception.
Instead, I would change careers and go into teaching.
For a while things seemed to be going well. But the slide toward active
alcoholism was slowly accelerating. I had had my first blackout several
years before. At that time I told myself that if it ever happened again, I
would stop drinking. It happened again---and again and again---but I didn't
stop. I was always able to come up with some explanation, excuse, or
rationalization that justified my continued drinking. In time, personality
changes began to occur with regularity when I drank. I had always had a
sharp tongue; when drinking, I frequently became vitriolic. At other times I
could be charming and affectionate, sometimes too much so. People never knew
just what I would do or say.
After a few years I was a nightly blackout drinker. My lover drank heavily
as well, and I began to compare my drinking with his. I argued to myself
that I could not have a problem because his drinking was worse than mine at
times. In fact, I suggested that he might try A.A. When he did try this
Fellowship, I did all I could to undermine his efforts to get sober---his
recovery would present an obvious, if unacknowledged, threat to my drinking.
Eventually, the stress became too much and we broke up, but not before I had
succeeded in undermining his recovery.
The slide continued. Most of my friends were unwilling to put up with my
conduct---the verbal and sometimes physical abuse, the midnight phone calls,
the forgotten invitations, and the selfish disregard of anything but my own
need to drink. Those few friends who did not withdraw were forced away by my
resentments and increasing paranoia. I cut people out of my life, refusing
to return phone calls and ignoring them when we met by chance. By the end of
my drinking, only two people were willing to have anything to do with me on
a social basis, and both were heavy drinkers who were not surprised by my
actions.
The cases in which disaster struck when I drank outside my home increased. I
made inappropriate passes at parties, or at people at work---both men and
women. At other times I awakened battered or with my watch or wallet
missing, or in the company of strangers whose names I did not remember and
did not want to know. There were the inevitable injuries and accidents. I
was ejected from bars because I would steal tips or change from bartenders
or other customers to pay for the drinks I could no longer afford. At other
times I would get into arguments and be forced to leave.
In consequence, I made the seemingly logical decision not to drink outside
the house. Instead, most of my drinking was now solitary. When I left work,
I would have a few stiff drinks at dinner and then go home. I would stop off
at the kitchen to pick up a glass, some ice, and some mixer. I would go to
my bedroom, where I kept half-gallon bottles of gin and vodka, and "read"
while the ice melted, the mixer ran out, and sometimes the glass broke.
Every night was blackout drinking. The really bad times were when I would
have to struggle outside to a liquor store or bar late at night, weaving and
trying not to stagger, because I had miscalculated and run out of alcohol.
I found it increasingly difficult to do anything more than work and drink. I
was afraid to use public transportation or even to walk on the streets. My
stomach was constantly upset and my doctor had diagnosed a number of
intestinal disorders. Even though I rarely drank away from home, my body was
covered with bruises because I often fell down during blackouts. I never
wore short-sleeved shirts, even in summer, because people would ask me about
the bruises. One morning I awoke with a numb leg and found that I had
somehow ruptured two spinal discs while in a blackout at home.
For the last four years I lived alone in a small house. The ceiling of one
room had collapsed, and plaster dust was everywhere, coating the garbage and
newspapers that littered the floor. Empty food cartons, beer cans, bottles,
and dirty clothes lay where they were tossed. I had gotten a cat because the
mice were out of control. But I was not conscientious about cleaning up
after the cat. It is not surprising that I had few visitors and neighbors
tended to avoid me.
The last few months were filled with fear and self-pity. I began to
contemplate suicide with increasing regularity, yet I was afraid of dying. I
remember thinking that this life would go on and on, never getting better
and slowly fading away to nothing.
Then I began to hear the whispers. I became convinced that there were people
living in my house. I couldn't see them, except for occasional glimpses out
of the corner of my eyes, and so I concluded that they were small and
somehow living in the walls or under the stairs. I could hear them plotting
to kill me. There were nights when I went to bed with a knife in hand to
protect myself. Other nights I locked myself in the bathroom so they
couldn't get me. One night I left a shot of vodka on the mantelpiece so they
would go after that and leave me alone.
Then a miracle occurred. An evening came when I decided to have one drink
outside and then go straight home. I had that drink and left for my house.
The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning with a stranger I
had picked up in a bar. Apparently I had gone on autopilot and, in a
blackout resulting from just one drink, had gone on a tear. The look of
disgust and pity on the face of that stranger was the jolt I needed. I
suddenly realized that my life was totally insane, that my drinking was out
of control, and that I was either an alcoholic or a candidate for committal
to the local asylum. Not wanting to be locked up, I decided to try
Alcoholics Anonymous.
I called my former lover, and he put me in contact with an individual who
took me to my first meeting. Although I can barely recall anything about
that meeting, I heard two things I have never forgotten. The first was "You
don't have to drink again." This was a total revelation to me. For a long
time I had believed that alcohol was one of the few positive things left in
my life. I looked forward to my first drink every evening and thought that
alcohol was holding my life together. I had to drink to survive, let alone
to have any comfort. Yet here, people who had been in the same boat were
telling me that I didn't have to drink. I don't think I believed them that
night, but it gave me enough hope to avoid drinking the rest of the day.
The second thing I heard was "You don't have to be alone anymore." This too
was a revelation. For years I had rejected or been rejected by friends,
lovers, family, and God. I was alone and afraid. My life had narrowed to
work and the bottle, and work remained in the picture only because it was
necessary to enable me to buy the bottle. The isolation and loneliness that
alcoholism brought weighed heavily on me, and those words lifted an immense
burden of fear. Again, I'm not sure that I completely believed, but I felt
hope for the first time in years.
I did not fall in love with A.A. at first glance. The man who took me to my
first meeting later became my first sponsor, and he had to put up with
objections, arguments, questions, and doubts---everything a trained but very
muddled legal mind could throw at him. He was gentle with me. He did not
push his opinions on me. He had the sense to see that I was so afraid and so
used to being alone that I could not face a "hard sell" approach. He
listened to my questions, answered some, and suggested that I could best
answer others myself. He refused to argue but was willing to explain and
share his own experiences. I had asked him to be my sponsor before I knew
what he did for a living and felt I could not back out of the relationship
when I discovered he was a minister.
My alcoholism and my lifestyle had led me to reject the religion and the God
of my upbringing; I had never replaced them. Instead, I was an agnostic,
doubting the existence of God but afraid to say so in case I was wrong. My
self-pity and sense of victimization led me to doubt that a caring God could
exist; if He did, why had He given me so many problems? I was very wary of
the members who talked of their spiritual lives.
My sponsor was a living damper on my intolerance. But even more, he told me
that it would be all right for me to doubt God, that A.A. was not a
religious program and, to belong, I did not have to adhere to any set of
beliefs.
He suggested that for me a good starting point would simply be recognition
of the fact that I had failed in running the world---in short, acceptance of
the fact that I was not God. He also suggested that I might try occasionally
to act as if I believed. Somewhere I had heard that it is easier to act
yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of
acting, and this made sense in the context of "acting as if."
I also thought that the people in meetings sometimes seemed too standoffish
and overly concerned with their friends and acquaintances rather than with
me, the newcomer. Well on my way toward developing a resentment, I expressed
this to my sponsor. He suggested that I might find people more communicative
if I took the coffee-making commitment for the group I had joined. Although
I thought I was far too special to make coffee, I did figure that as coffee
maker I would have the chance to select decent cookies, and so I agreed. My
sponsor was right again. People did start to speak with me---if only to
complain about the coffee and cookies. But once a conversation starts,
communication frequently continues.
I started to work on the steps, and even with my difficulty over the Third
Step and "the God concept," I began to develop a sense of trust in the A.A.
group and in the ideals of the Fellowship as a manifestation of a Power
greater than myself. Although for many years I did not come to an acceptance
of a God who intervened personally and directly in the lives of individuals,
I was able to accept the idea of a force that moved in the rooms and
animated A.A. members with a sense of unconditional love. That satisfied my
spiritual needs for a long time.
A later sponsor took me through Steps Eight and Nine and provided me with
support during some trying times. In my third year of sobriety, I was
bedridden for over a month as a result of that earlier injury to my spinal
discs, my father died, a relationship ended, and the AIDS epidemic started
to hit home among my friends and acquaintances. Over the course of that and
the next few years, almost half of my gay friends died. I learned in that
year that if I ask for help, my Higher Power will never give me anything I
can't handle.
It was in this period that I started to turn to service beyond the group
level. I had helped in founding the first gay A.A. group in my part of town
and was elected general service representative after having served in other
group offices. I knew nothing of general service at that time, and I decided
to learn what it was all about so I could do a decent job and be able to
pass it on to a successor as quickly as possible. After two years I went on
to do a number of other service jobs for A.A.
In all these positions I never felt obligated to conceal or deny my
sexuality. I have always felt that the representatives of groups in my area
were concerned only with how we carried the message of recovery, not with
what I might do in my personal life.
When I first came to this Fellowship, I had lost my health and sanity, my
friends, much of my family, my self-respect, and my God. In the years since,
all of these have been restored to me. I no longer have the sense of
impending doom. I no longer wish for death or stare at myself in the mirror
with loathing. I have come to terms with my Higher Power; after more than a
dozen years in the A.A. Fellowship, I was able to join a religious group and
have now become active in that organization. I have a full, happy life, with
friends and loving family. Recently I retired and have begun to travel
throughout the world. I have attended and felt welcome at A.A. meetings
wherever I have gone inside and outside the United States. Even more
important, I have returned to my home group and am still asked to make
coffee. I now have an extended family that is international in scope, all
the members of which are joined by bonds of shared pain and joy.