A Success Story

"The less said, the better."

—my mother, to me, September 1997          

          Success in life can be measured by an ability to make oneself important to others. In short, to be loved. As a lifelong outsider to this process, I've marveled at how counter-intuitive it is—you can't want it. In fact, the less we desire anothers' approval, the more it is bestowed. Or so I have observed.
          It's better to be sassy than nice, and if I had children I would encourage them to establish a strong personality and charm the world—be large—rather than long for it, or, worse, live in stunned resentment of its coldness.
          Yet, important things happen to people who are not important, and this is the essence of loneliness, the hardest part of it. To grasp the full force of this is to begin to develop compassion—the sort of compassion that, with time, includes one's own self. When this takes hold, however late in life, there is a thawing of frozen things.
          An important thing has happened to me, and I am feeling lonely because I'm not sure that anyone cares. No one cares because no one knows. No one knows because I am not—especially—important. 
          I'm nice.
          I'm also a black-out alcoholic.

          And this month, for the first time in 19 years, through a combination of medication, extensive reading, and the YouTube videos of a woman in Colorado who calls herself "Annie Grace," I have made important, lasting progress toward stopping drinking forever. But there is no special friend I can discuss this with in person. Outside of my marriage and pets, there is not very much love in my life. 
          If I could write just one thing, and then not write at all anymore, it would be this: I am coming to believe, quite sincerely, that everyone has value, even the ugly and thoughtless. We all carry terrible, heavy things within us. And many people die without ever disclosing what they've experienced. There are many "unimportant" people. This is at once the most heartbreaking and the most freeing, most enlightening thing we can ever understand.

* * *

          Probably every family has members who drink too much, but on my mother's side of our family there ran a more serious strain of alcoholism. I have childhood memories that can't be described for their undignified sadness. There were also periods of domestic violence involving alcohol that I cannot describe. This was my childhood and teens.
          The contrast between my upbringing and Gary's has always been interesting to me, and it has framed major differences between us that I suspect others cannot guess. I think we are perceived as being similar; we are not.
          I was a pipe smoker in high school and developed a keen interest in the different types and blends of tobacco. So when I was about 40, I brought that same epicureanism to the study of different wines. I knew little about wine and rarely drank it, but a friend had introduced me to Malbec. The bottle had such a nice painting of grapes on it that it sat empty on our mantle for weeks—a piece of art.
          In 2001 I called my mother at an extremely rare moment when she was out of her apartment, and I was greeted with her voice on an answering machine. I laughed hysterically because I'd never heard my mother's voice on tape before. I couldn't stop laughing as I left my message.
          When she called back she kept asking me "Did you have too much wine to drink?" Mom had been dry since 1994, and she put a yellow stickie on her last bottle of Canadian Club giving the date she bought it. I had that bottle until we moved to Maine. The whisky had turned clear as water.
          I just evaded her question. But it stuck with me why she would have asked me that. (In fact, I had been tipsy.)
          One weekend afternoon not long after my mother died, Gary was working on the cedar closet in my bedroom. As usual, I came up to see how it was going and to demonstrate—however weakly—my interest in his carpentry. Somehow our talk came around to my glass of white wine, and how many I had had. I wasn't able to understand his point—that you shouldn't be drinking all the time. I found it pleasurable and did it when and as much as suited me. I honestly didn't understand objections to that.
          I had visited my uncle in Maine every September for about 10 years. In the evenings we'd drink his Fortnum and Mason tea while we watched Canadian news. But by 2004, as soon as we got to Ellsworth from the Bangor airport, our first stop was to Hannaford's to buy a 1.5-liter bottle of red wine. I needed two of those for a week's stay. He made me put my "booze" (as he called it) on the floor of his narrow, dark pantry closet. Now, I reflect on how unkind and humiliating that request was. 
          I was unable to sleep one night because of his late-night telephone calls carried on in the kitchen below, and we had a terrible argument (our only one). The next morning when I came downstairs he was standing in the kitchen waiting with my bacon and coffee. He hugged me, and everything was back to normal. It wasn't until years later that I understood the origin of my virulence: I was drunk.

* * *

          There are three stages to drinking; many "social" drinkers never get beyond the first. You are (1) silly, then you are (2) sad, then you are (3) mad. If you're a weekend drinker, you probably get to "sad" and fall asleep. Better that it is so, for in the third stage lies the danger.

          When you push beyond the melancholy—when you sit up too late, crying alone—the bottom falls out of your blood sugar and paranoia takes over. This is the drinker's gateway to a separate, spectral personality that acts independently and without accountability. It likely takes different forms depending on the individual, but for me it was a profound self-loathing coupled with a maniacal resentment—directed toward those I knew cared for me.

          I lost literally scores of friends in the years between 2007 and 2016 as my nightly wine intake topped out at nearly two bottles. Two bottles of wine every night of the year, no breaks. 

          My pattern of sleep became fixed, invariable: Pass out at 8:45. Wake up at 11:00 and go up to bed. Wake up at 3:00 with a rapid, fluttering heartbeat (it felt like my heart was flailing and "loose" from its anchor in my chest). Take an aspirin. Take a bath. Take a sleeping pill. Take a shot at remembering what I said and did.          

          This pattern was so set, so established, that I grew never to question it. As Gary and I discussed my drinking, I would explain to him that it was best not to rock the boat—making large-scale gestures at stopping, making big promises the next morning, had the opposite of the hoped-for effect: I just returned to the wine with renewed gusto. 

          Rule #1: Never let the alcohol know you're trying to sneak out of the house. 

          In 2016 I had two liver sonograms. My lab values were deadly. I was dying in installments.

          Moving to Maine didn't help. I stumbled through a summer alone, making a vague impression, a few awkward connections. When Gary moved up in August, people came out of the woodwork to know him and involve him in activities—another validation of my doubts about myself. The steep river banks of downtown Ellsworth discourage walking, and my weight and blood sugar increased.

          As we became more involved with our church, we attended small groups and task force meetings, all of which were conveniently scheduled for the dinner hour or just after—my prime drinking hours. I attended many of these functions fairly loaded, desperately sucking one after another of those large white mints and staying silent until I felt sobered up enough to speak. 

          On one occasion, we attended a large dinner party at the island home of a woman in our congregation who I was certain wouldn't serve alcohol. So after several glasses of wine at home, I filled a water bottle with Sauvignon Blanc and drank it on the 30-minute ride to her house. When we arrived, the first thing I saw after taking off my coat was not one but two long tables of wine and spirits. I was in heaven! Unfortunately, even with my vast experience, I miscalculated, and halfway through the meal the minister's wife shot me a knowing and not especially generous glance. I checked in with Gary for the remainder of the night about how I was doing. 

          I have never been able to speak to anyone at my church about my alcoholic life. Or at work. Or anywhere, really. No rehab seemed plausible (I investigated several), and the dogma and finality of AA wasn't looking like a fit for me. 

          For New Year's Eve, I watched "When Harry Met Sally" alone, as Gary had gone up early to bed. That afternoon and evening I had had three glasses of potent egg nog, bottles of wine with dinner, and a Manhattan cocktail. We hadn't been together to toast the night, so I drank champagne by myself. 

          The whole bottle.

          At the end, I wasn't even getting drunk with alcohol anymore—it no longer had that effect, exactly. I was just drinking it to feel normal.

* * *

          Discretion is the better part of valor, and I haven't been very discreet, have I? But something important has happened, my life has changed, and I needed to talk about it. And I'm just not that good at making friends. 

          I once had a terrible row with my mother, here in Maine—in my aunt's house up on Christian Ridge Road. We had a shouting match because she kept telling me—I was 35 years old—to tuck my shirt into my trousers. I refused.

          I let her have it good. I told her I was sick of her tyranny, that I had never truly loved her, and so on. It was true at the time. It was true for much of my life.

          All she said to me was "The less said, the better."

          At 59, I miss her terribly, and her personal style and wisdom seem remarkable to me now. 

          There were about ten people at her funeral, and I had to practically threaten my aunt and uncle to get them to drive down from Maine. Another person who attended was a friend I coerced to show up after his night shift at a factory.

          So you could say that my mother was not an important person to others. There wasn't very much love in her life. Yet she was tremendously brave, and she survived many important things that happened to her.

          That's a bit of success of its own kind, I think.

          So I will be successful—too.