My Journey into Alcoholism, Drug Addiction and Recovery

I was born in 1947 and lived in a small town in the foothills of Vermont's Green Mountains. Back then, kids were innocent and lived with their biological parents; while the dads worked on the railroad to put food on the table. The outside world had little influence on our town, so I was carefree in a peaceful secure environment where family life and values had been the same for generations. Alcoholics were town drunks, but drug addiction was a big city problem, so I was certain that problem would not impact my life. Although we grew, our maturity lagged with no real challenges to stimulate our minds. I was popular, played sports and earned good grades, all of which positioned me to be the first of my family to attend college. I left home unprepared to care for myself; burdened with fear of failing at college, and running scared from the war in Viet Nam.

Once I arrived at the university, I quickly felt insecure and out of place. Without experience or coping skills I struggled to survive in a world I didn't understand. Consequently, I began drinking alcohol to hide my feelings and gain confidence to fit in socially. My need to feel accepted became an obsession that clouded my judgment reflected the company I kept, the places I went, and the changes in my behavior. Despite my drinking; I graduated from college, successfully dodged the draft, started a family, and began a career in computer technology.

After graduation, I entered the corporate world with low self esteem and felt intimidated by the trainees that seemed more intelligent and dressed for success. I sensed I didn't belong. My new family lived a simple life because we were relatively poor, although I always found money to buy pot. I moved my family to a town house development outside Hartford, Connecticut, where I became the superintendent of the complex and local pot dealer. I calculated how many years it would take to crawl up the management ladder from my job on the bottom. I was too ambitious and impatient, so I made a career move to New York for a higher level job.

In my first year with the mega-company in New York, I was offered career opportunities that would have accelerated my climb to management. Fear was influencing my decisions, rather than take the advantage of my options, I chose alcohol and drugs to burn those bridges. I was afraid success would be a commitment and interfere with my lifestyle. I could not imagine working late nights after the business day my concern was the commute home, where I could shut down my brain, by drinking and getting high. I was an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.

Two years later I found a position in Rochester, New York. I was hired by a smaller company which offered more challenge and a move through the middle management that was within reach. However, my expectation of a quiet, comfortable life vanished, when I was unable to find a drug connection. Without drugs, my anxiety fell into a low grade depression and indifference towards my stressful job, but I worked weekends and holidays trying to get ahead. For me hard work did not equate to a promotion, so I justified drinking whenever I wasn't working. I left that job after two frustrating years.

We moved outside the city into a communal suburb. I found the locals were high level professionals that did drugs, drank to excess and validated my addictions. In this environment, I developed a pattern of indiscriminate drinking and using and became jealous, paranoid, untrusting, and fearful. My arrest for domestic assault demonstrated my out of control behavior.

I accepted a new position responsible for developing emerging software solutions to manufacturing problems. This job required considerable time traveling to the corporate offices in Connecticut. The six hour commute made me anxious, nervous and fearful, creating health problems. I moved the family close to Connecticut after I was promoted to Project Manager. At this point my drinking and drugging dictated my life. The move sucked me into a toxic environment on the highway to hell. The trip to the dark side of life was quick and I stayed there four years.

During my corporate years in the fast lane, chemicals and alcohol cursed through my body 24 hours a day. As my tolerance grew, so did my need to maintain a physical and mental state that was one step from insane. From hitting a joint for the rush hour commute, through lunch hours of using and heavy drinking, I lived the life of a drug addict and alcoholic, putting my career in constant jeopardy. My days were demanding, as I labored to salvage my career and worked weekends to rebuild our house. Every day was so complex and overwhelming, I relied on lists to organize and direct the tasks of my life. My substance abuse defined who I was, a self centered man, taking care of business, assuming I knew how to run the world. It was rare that my disease abated long enough for me to assess my out of control life, but when I did, it scared me. A clean and sober business trip to Singapore showed me people could live without alcohol or drugs. It seemed possible I could also, but I had to remove myself from the contaminated people that held me in a death grip.

My company had a job opening in New Hampshire, so I took what I thought would be "a geographical cure" to escape the hellish components of my lifestyle. I was the IT Project Manager in charge of converting and upgrading systems for a manufacturing site. My staff and I introduced change to a stagnant web of people and procedures and as a result, we endured ridicule, intimidation, and alienation from the locals, who wouldn't accept us, since we didn't live in town or across the river in Maine. We finished the job in five years in spite of fighting for every new process we implemented. At work I was clean and sober, and enjoyed the hard work creating new solutions to old problems. As Project Manger, I took all the heat from the Retirement Ready managers, as they humiliated me as a person, joked about my consultants, and suggested most of what we were doing was wrong.

Over this 7 year period in New Hampshire my wife crossed a line from recreational cocaine user to full time IV addict. Her life as a junkie held me captive. Waiting for the chaos to end, I discovered junkies will do anything for a fix, including the crude and crazy behavior I witnessed that shattered our family's love, trust and happiness. My memory of those years is vivid, as I observed the self destruction of my beautiful wife into a drug addict, living in a shooting gallery. I continued to reach out, but I could not help her, all I could do was survive in ways I never imagined. I was drained of compassion and finances from the deception, theft, and pain I suffered. The final stages of the saga to reunite the family began with treatment centers, but ultimately ended in divorce. God helped me stay sober the final year of the nightmare.

The next decade is a composite of lost time, from passing out and black outs to not participating in life. My kids moved away to start their lives and my wife never resurfaced, leaving me feeling empty and alone. Emotionally I was lingering in a depression of profound sadness and loss. I remarried, but the tragedy continued to sink deeper into my sub-conscience mind. For a period of five years my life consisted of driving, working and drinking, as I commuted 140 miles to work in suburban Boston. My disease was progressing with each passing hangover, the physical illness and mentally exhaustion was wearing me down.

I wasn't working, my marriage was failing, and I was drinking into black outs nearly every night. My doctor had been warning me for years my drinking was killing me. At my last appointment he showed me liver enzymes levels that were off the chart and told me I would die soon, if I kept drinking. I went home, emptied the house of alcohol, and went to an AA meeting. That was 12 Dec 2001. My earlier attempts at sobriety conflicted with an underlying question of whether I could ever drink again. This time AA consumed me, one day at a time and as days turned to weeks, my life got better and my recovery easier. I knew if I relapsed I would die.

Sober only a couple months in February, 2002, the opportunity presented itself for me to leave New Hampshire. I filed for divorce, sold the house and drove away with a clean slate. Soon I started going to multiple AA meetings per day and praying for help to stay sober until I felt mentally and physically better with a little peace and sprinkles of spirituality. My recovery in AA became and still is the highest priority in my life. Without it, I would lose the beautiful relationships with my family, and everything else that I value.

The first months living in the south were wonderful with meetings and good people in recovery, as well as nice weather and excellent golf courses. Despite my resume blaster, I could not find full time employment, so I did some consulting and sold cell phones to stay alive. I believe god knew I wasn't ready to re-enter the corporate world yet, while he helped me develop a life saving recovery. I designed an Internet business, but could not find customers or investors after the recent .com business failures. I lost thousands of dollars to a marketing firm that went out of business before they created my business strategy. Without any experience selling, I used the little money I had left trying different sales techniques.

In early sobriety I beat myself unmercifully for the pain and embarrassment I caused the people that cared about me, when I was a sick alcoholic. My remorse and guilt seemed to ride me always, triggered by a song, word or sight. I cried and isolated before I shared anything to rid myself of the past. When I trusted that god had forgiven me and most likely other people had also, I began to slowly put the past away. I continue to make amends when I am wrong. Once I accepted sobriety, I felt peace and serenity. My mantra was the Serenity Prayer. My faith grew when I began to look back at all that happened in my life and realized I was still OK. I began to believe things are exactly as they should be and nothing happens in god's world by mistake.

In May, 2004 I filed for bankruptcy, which was a very humbling experience. My condo was foreclosed and everything I owned paid my creditors, but I faced the issues with patience and faith. On 8 Aug 2008 I landed a full time job in the IT field at a large company. In October, the court gave me $10,000 to start my life over. At the end of bankruptcy, I had my car and a few possessions, $10,000 and a new job, which was a better financial position than when I started. I believe this solution is an example of god's love for me, as I continue to turn my life and will to him, he helps me in ways I never knew were possible.

I began to rebuild my life, using the 12 steps of AA, but I lacked confidence to work in the real world, thinking each work day I would be fired. I worked for that company for four years. Since I had no credit, I was forced to live on cash. Today I spend money on what I want and continue to save for retirement. Living without credit is a good thing for me.

Early in recovery I adjusted to living alone and developed a spirituality with faith and trust in a power greater than myself. There had to be some kind of force that took away my compulsion to drink and drug. It sure wasn't me. I began to understand and practice the 12 steps. I found meetings and friends, shared my life story and heard parallels as I listened to others share their experience, strength and hope. I continue to practice the principals of AA in my life by the way I think and how I live. I try to stay humble to accept things I can not change. I am no longer afraid of life, whether I need serenity to accept life on life's terms or the courage to change. When I stay in the present, life is easy and I stay sober one day at a time.

My recovery is as personal as was my addiction.