Crossing the River of Denial

From the "Back of the Book"

I’m grateful for a cold Wednesday morning. I’m grateful for good bounces. I’m grateful for a visit from my daughter. I’m grateful for seeing that things usually happen the way they’re supposed to. I’m grateful for the way circles never end. I’m grateful for the coffee on the desk. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Christmas is fast approaching, I mean super fast, and as you look at your list (spreadsheet), and are pondering what to get that pesky alcoholic in your life, I wonder if there might be an idea around here somewhere?

Another story from the Back of the Book last night at our AA meeting. You’re invited, by the way:

We read “Crossing the River of Denial” (p. 328) and all thought that it had a different tone to it that made it interesting. I highly recommend investing the time to read all nine pages.¹ It’s the very identifiable story of a woman who eventually realizes she’s an alcoholic and gets sober, it only takes a long time and like five DUIs (arrested wearing a wedding gown!) and a few disastrous relationships to get the point across. Again, I’m always struck by this common theme in like, all of these stories:

Everything changed with my first drink at the age of sixteen. All the fear, shyness and disease evaporated with that first burning swallow of bourbon…I got drunk, blacked out, threw up, had dry heaves, was sick to death the next day and I knew I would do it again.

“Crossing the River of Denial,” p. 328

What’s the saying? Alcohol works for alcoholics. This story is obviously about denial, the lies we have to tell ourselves to keep the whole drinking enterprise afloat. They come in lots of varieties, but they tend to center on the ability to control one’s drinking, one’s placement in the pantheon of problem drinkers, and the very serious justifications for drinking one’s life away.

This story would be an example of the mustard seed improbably taking root in the previously barren soil:

The Judge sentenced me to six months in Alcoholics Anonymous and I was outraged! By now I had been arrested five times, but all I could see was a hard partier, not an alcoholic…So I started going to those stupid meetings and identified myself as an alcoholic so you’d sign my court card, even though I couldn’t possibly be an alcoholic. I had a six-figure income, owned my own home. I had a car phone. I used ice cubes, for God’s sake!

“Crossing the River of Denial,” pp. 332-333

The old, “I’m a classy alcoholic defense.” In my experience, this phase comes late in the drinking career. I remember walking home from a late night drinking session at Stoney’s on P Street. During those days, I would make a bar-to-bar progression, a pretty f******-up alcoholic parade. I’d start the day at the Commissary, at some point I’d get lunch and drink maybe at the upstairs Thai place on 14th Street, or maybe get pizza from the place on U street and drink there. Maybe I’d head to the Logan Tavern and get dinner. Then, if I was still thinking at all, I’d head to Stoney’s, open ‘til 4am, for a nightcap.

Here’s one of the very many f*****-up things about that time in my life. I’d spend the day getting served by a series of bartenders, who all drank at Stoney’s after their shifts, and there I was again, the looming alcoholic, now sitting next to them. I thought I was kind of a suave, semi-charming presence at the bars I frequented. After seeing the movie “Dream Scenario,” I’m thinking I was a very much more terrifyingly banal presence on those barstools.

Anyway, I was walking home from Stoney’s one Tuesday night or something. It was about 2:30am or so. I was pretty drunk and knew that I was walking like someone who was drunk. I was listening to music, like I always do, and persuading myself that we had it pretty good these days. No one to tell us what not to do, no one asking where we were, no one trying to discern the scent of evaporating alcohol from our skin. I was gloriously free to drink. I remember thinking that I was probably known throughout the neighborhood as the smart, funny, urbane alcoholic.

I turned the corner onto 14th Street, something about how desolate that street looked hit me. It was a Hopper-esque empty cityscape. The walk from P Street to R Street suddenly seemed like the Bataan Death March. I was so tired, so heavy-laden with all of the drinking. Sodden might be a word. I had that flash of insight, I wasn’t a gracefully-aging, elegantly-drinking alcoholic, an admired neighborhood character. I was just a sad, desperate middle-aged guy who literally spent the entire day drinking alone. I don’t think any of the bartenders, whom I counted as friends, wanted what I had. No one did. I tried to forget that and trudged home.

I think about that night a lot. It wasn’t my chronological bottom, but it was one of the moments where I could see how bad things had gotten. How far I had gotten from the person I thought I was meant to be, as far from myself as I could get.

Another great thing about the story last night, was how believable the descent into AA was. She goes grudgingly, under court-order, and has to get her card signed showing that she attended a meeting every day. It was one of the standard duties of the meeting Secretary/Treasurer to also sign court cards or rehab-assigned “90 in 90” logs. There was often a line after meetings. Our heroine goes to meetings to get her card signed, and then, the dreaded AA door clangs shut:

The most compelling part of AA, the part that made me want to try this sober thing, was the laughter, the pure joy of the laughter that I heard only from sober alcoholics.

“Crossing the River of Denial,” p. 333

I’m pretty sure there is a country song that speaks of a river called denial, and how strong it is, or something like that. One of the hardest realizations in recovery is that the drinking or using was not driven by external forces, it came from deep inside. Blaming people, places and things for my drinking was a great way to keep drinking. And there were always new people, places and things coming in the top of the funnel, keeping the whole thing going. It’s hard to realize that was all just a lie I told myself. A lie with pretty devastating consequences for all involved.

But it’s also the good news. Because it turns out the job doesn’t require fixing a zillion poorly-behaved and mis-intentioned people. It only requires fixing one semi-desperate person. Crossing the River of Denial takes some time, it looks pretty fast and cold. Those cold little glimpses of the truth, like that night on 14th Street, were like dipping my toes in the water. I could be a dick and tell you that the water is fine, it’s not actually that cold and you can definitely feel the bottom. But I’ll share something true instead, something I learned and know for sure:

You can definitely do this.

1. The stories in the Back of the Book might be referred to as “snack size.”