Twenty years ago today

Twenty years ago today, I quit drinking. And, at some point not too far later, actual sobriety set in, and stayed.

I got, if not drunk, half-drunk, for the first time when I was 10 years old. On liquor, not beer. And drunk straight, or as close to straight as a 10-year-old me could stand.

There’s a story behind that, which is part of the story with why I sought out alcohol more and more for nearly 25 years after that.

I’m a “survivor.”

A child abuse survivor.

A child sexual abuse survivor.

An incest survivor.

My primary sexual abuser led me to where that liquor was at. And encouraged me to get drunk.

In addition to being a survivor of child sexual abuse at home (and yes, there, not some grandparent or step-grandparent who lived elsewhere), I am also a survivor of a fair amount of emotional and verbal abuse, along with some other psychological abuse, and a modest amount of physical abuse.

I’m old enough to have been watching John Wayne movies before he died. I knew that “real men” like John Wayne drank straight whiskey, so I drank it as straight as I could on an empty stomach to show the neighborhood kids — acquaintances all of them more than friends, and sometimes bullies and even abusers themselves on an occasion or two — that I was a man.

And threw up 30 seconds after I met two of them.

Gradually, those memories faded more and more. Along with more and more alcohol, helped by me going to an “18-state” on beer for college. Repression may not be the right word, but something like that is real, and Elizabeth Loftus is wrong more than right on this. I know.

I drank more after graduating college and doing traveling church construction for a couple of years. That said, I had alcohol poisoning in college, along with bouts of depression, and didn’t learn.

I eventually tried to follow in my dad’s footsteps. But, before I was through graduate divinity school, knew I couldn’t be a pastor, even as part of the reason for trying it, other than to please my physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive dad was to be a Protestant Christian minister’s version of “married to the church” and escaping other things.

I got my degree, but not ordination. After a year of not getting full-time work, yet not grasping in my mind how manipulative my dad had been in the past, I accepted his offer to move back in.

He lined me up with the possibility of contract adjunct college teaching, which idea I liked, and even more when I got it. And with the job of working part time at a convenience store as well, which I dreaded and made me feel more a failure.

My third suicide attempt was the day before that interview. Yes, third. One at around the time of my first drunk, in childhood, when tormented by the second of my two sexual abusers at home one afternoon. Another in college, after rebuffs from a woman who in hindsight may have been like my third, covert sexual abuser. And then this.

A year later, I was the victim of an armed robbery at gunpoint at the convenience store. And my drinking took off from there. Drinking on the job there, I got fired.

Fortunately, my dad was going to move, and I had nothing keeping me in Flint, Michigan. So, I went with him to Texas. Got my first newspaper job. Then got one in another town. Not great pay, but enough to live on my own.

And the drinking got worse. The last year or so, the only thing I rationally thought about was whether my stomach could handle a straight shot when I got up, or if I needed to start the day on beer.

For non-drinking reasons that weren’t all my fault, I was fired there. At the risk of boss-employee issues, I had asked my office manager out, for coffee, the week before. That removed that problem.

I had it “easy” on drinking. Both a Walgreen’s and a grocery within three-block walking distance and another grocery less than a mile away. After we’d been dating a few weeks, my former office manager saw me walking back to my apartment with a case of beer one afternoon. When she was over that evening, she told me how it made her feel.

Something in my listened. That was a couple of days before July 28, but … after I finished off the booze I had at home … I didn’t buy any more.

And soon, memories started coming back. And more. I talked some with her. Later, I talked more, as yet more memories came back, with the only other person I could talk to at the time.

I soon got a new newspaper job, in a new city. While driving there from Hobbs, New Mexico, I got gas in Amarillo, Texas. A voice inside me said “open the phone book when you go inside.” One AA group was the “Hobbs Plaza” group. I was a secularist of some sort then, and even more, now. But. That caught my eye. I went to a meeting in 15 minutes and an emotional dam started to break.

Then? The move, the stress, the sobriety? The memories came on more — with more emotional content. I would have to stop driving because I was crying.

Eventually, in the next town over, I found out that the pastor at the Methodist church had experience with counseling children. She’d never counseled an adult survivor before, but she helped, with EMDR, and some other techniques.

Eventually, after losing that job for various reasons, I got to Dallas. I found some secular sobriety meetings there, and got involved with Lifering online.

I also, crucially, found a organization called The Family Place which had a lot of women at risk services and then, with a grant, started its first group therapy for male survivors.

The Methodist pastor had diagnosed me with PTSD. I had first figured that was mainly a diagnosis to give an insurance company something as an entry for billing purposes. But, I found out it was real. Very real. And still is today. I even learned that something like this is considered "complex PTSD."

Along with those emotional returns came about two early sobriety years of semi-regular flashbacks and silent scream nightmares. Occasional “body memories” and actions. That’s pretty much faded away, but I had a silent scream nightmare earlier this year. Had a flashback from another trauma last year, over the car accident that badly displaced my left hand two years ago. I may have some genetic susceptibility to this, for traumas beside the sexual and other abuse, as well as that abuse priming me for other PTSD reactions.

I’ve had a hard life. I don’t mean this as a “poor me, pour me” moment per the old AA chestnut. And my life isn’t as hard as someone born into poverty. Nor have I suffered the worst sexual abuse. Trust me, from The Family Place, I know that in person. But, it’s been hard enough.

After a couple of years at The Family Place, I started facing parts of my past. Even before that, I had mildly confronted my dad over the physical and other abuse. He denied it, then minimized it while outsourcing blame.

I then confronted my primary sexual abuser. After initial non-comment, he admitted it, but said the fact he was in the ministry now was a sign he was beyond it. In turn, that only adds to the idea that in some cases, religious abuse can be a real issue.

I’ve never confronted my second abuser, but … while having less interest in confronting him before, I have less interest in accepting his apologizes for not defending me from the older abuser of the two of them as an apology, or even an unconscious admission, of his own actions. The other family member, who said I have false memory syndrome once long ago, I’ve ignored since then on family dynamics issues.

Had I confronted my mom with what I earlier called covert abuse, she would have been clueless, even with a detailed explanation, but then might have had a fatal heart attack years earlier than reality. I don’t want to go into more details; I still feel bits of shame about the weirdness, along with everything else in my family. And, again, with all of this being full blood — no "steps" or "halfs."

With the two people I have confronted, just as described in some books of survivor narratives, I’ve learned that there’s not much healing there.

Do I still have bitterness today, inside the mild-mannered self that many know in person and some Lifering friends have probably sensed just through online contact? Yes.

Bitterness over a stolen adulthood as well as a stolen childhood, not so much from alcohol, but all the family abuse and dysfunction that led to the psychological battering that led me to start getting drunk in the first place. Bitterness over knowing that, in things like a family life for myself today, or not one, a career path that isn’t my original idea or my ideal — not my ideal creatively and “spiritually” even more than not my idea or ideal financially — gets harder to change as I get older, especially in a country like ours.

All I can do ultimately is stay sober and “trudge,” as Yenta the Matchmaker says near the end of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

And, with that said, a couple of closing thoughts, for people with me now, or working to be with me now, on this journey.

One is how huge luck is in our lives. A middle class minister’s family shows blood is not thicker than water. A girlfriend’s comment at the right time “sticks.”

Related to that? Per the old medieval Church’s rhetorical question, “Cur alii, non alii,” I don’t know why sobriety, and sobriety support, “sticks” for some and not for others. I’ve tried to become more careful in insights I offer, or claim to offer, over the years, because of that.

Speaking of, I offer a few “call-outs” to those who have passed.

I mentioned Robert “Itchy” Bradley recently in another post here.

Kat Wyke, aka Kishimojun, was little known even to “oldtimer” Liferingers outside the online meeting and chat room. She stayed sober through the pain and intestinal surgeries of Crohn’s disease for more than a decade herself, until a recurrence of feminine cancer was too much.

I think of Thailand Chani (never learned her real name) and Kenya Johnson, who stayed sober through years of bipolar disorder and other mental health challenges.

Sadly, I think also of those who “succeeded” on one action where I “failed,” because they were frustrated by not staying sober. Or, those who may have thought marijuana was OK, even if marijuana smoke may not have agreed with other health issues.

Cur alii, non alii? As Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem, plays here in the background.

All I can do is stay sober, while being honest and true to myself. That's part of what non-steps sobriety offers, including on dealing with issues behind sobriety, and recognizing that they, not "sobriety itself" in a sense, may need to be the primary focus at times.

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On a related issue, I also don't know why on "cur alii, non alii" on child sexual abuse and recovery. That's both as to why some children are affected worse by it and why, some recover better than others.

I'm going to offer a few bits of speculation, though.

First is that, if it's just a one time, or even more than once, a very occasional abuse, that may lessen its effect.

Second is that, per the ACES evaluation, stability or instability of a child's family life in general is a factor.

Third is if a child is able to, or not able to, find some sort of surrogate parents.