We sober drunks filled the New Year’s Eve dance floor. You have a second chance, too | Opinion
Ignore Scrooge. Reject the Grinch. Believe. There really are Christmas miracles.
My own personal miracle began 44 years ago Dec. 20. Drunk as a prairie skunk, I walked through the doors of St. John’s Hospital addiction treatment unit in Salina and checked in for a 30-day stay. That date has become my birthday, the first day of sobriety celebrated by everyone in recovery. Doctors told me at the time without sobriety I would be dead in a matter of months. I tell the story not so much as an accomplishment, but rather in the hope that even if only one person hears he or she will find hope and resources for recovery and a miracle in their own life, especially during this holiday season.
On Dec. 25 that year, my detoxing legs could not carry me to Christmas dinner without help. No matter — I could barely eat.
There is a saying in sobriety circles that no one volunteers to stop drinking or drugging. They must reach a low point, a bottom, in their lives. For me it was failed job prospects, failed relationships and failing finances. I was down to my last three dollars in the form of Susan B. Anthony silver dollar coins. Drunk, I had spent the remainder of my stash as 25-cent pieces for a few gallons of gas. I was on my second DUI in a year, charged this time by a trooper who snapped me off the interstate just before I could have killed someone in a wrong-way crash. Reading the arrest report later made me sick to my stomach.
I had plenty of warning. My family was filled with drunks. Happy drunks. Mean drunks. My father and my uncles were unable to function without a bottle. I was embarrassed. I vowed never to drink, a vow that lasted until age 16, when I began making up for lost time.
Manhattan writer Mike Matson has written two fine books on surviving family addiction. I once told Matson that he stole the story of my life and put it in his books. Every drunk believes his or her story is unique and special; no one can understand it. The truth is, every story of addiction is pretty much the same.
Delirium tremens happen frequently as drunks detox. Those of us who escaped the DTs were required to sit through the night to comfort and keep an eye on detoxing fellow patients. The country song tells of “green snakes on the ceiling.” In the DTs, there really are green snakes on the ceiling, but holding the person’s hand does not make them go away.
My fellow patients were plucked from the main streets and back roads of Kansas, just average people. There were two young women who became addicted to drugs in high school when their track coach turned them onto pills that would “help them win.” There was the small-town businessman who spent the first weeks of treatment plotting to divorce his wife (or worse) for getting him committed. After all, he only had a couple of beers on the weekend. When she confronted him with the damage, physical and emotional, to his family, he was shocked. There was the kid so far into booze that he rigged his car’s windshield washer to “secretly” pump whiskey right to his mouth, all noted on his arrest report.
Myself, I arrived for treatment with my bag stuffed with small vials filled with vodka.
On New Year’s Eve, the entire patient group was mandated to attend a sober party and dance. There was rebellion. Not a single patient could envision getting on a dance floor sober. No one had ever done it. But by the end of the evening, the floor was filled with sober drunks, all of whom bragged about it the next day. Getting sober after years of drinking or drugging is having to learn to live life all over again. A drunk’s emotional maturity stops about the age that person gets serious about drinking, and it has to be restarted.
While still a thriving endeavor, addiction treatment has changed over the years. St. John’s, a hospital-based program, is long gone. There still are residential treatment facilities, but many addicts do successful online programs. And formal treatment is not required to get sober. The 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program is available in every Kansas community. Some people stop on their own.
One day at a time.
Whatever works.
Expect miracles.
It is no longer just a problem of the drunk old man. Only recently did the medical community awaken to the extraordinary damage alcohol does to women, who process alcohol differently from men. Young women in their 20s into social wine drinking are arriving in their 40s with severe liver damage. They were never “drunks” and many never realized they had a drinking problem.
Advertising that tries to lure people further into the drinking culture peaks around the holiday season. On my own journey, I have been surprised by the support from drinkers and non-drinkers alike. Only a few times have I endured pressure to drink.
Once I was seated at a fancy Washington, D.C., dinner next to my wife’s boss, who arrived with a buzz. The boss insisted I join her. I declined as graciously as I could, only to have the tipsy woman become more and more insistent that I consume a drink. With visions of my wife’s job on the line, I finally had to leave the table.
Forty-four years ago, I approached the end of my life. Then a miracle. I lived to enjoy three great careers, a wonderful family and friends, grandkids, an amazing wife and the best daughter a person could ever have. In fact, my daughter, well aware of our family history, spends much of her precious personal time working to get people sober and keep them sober.
This year I am sober 44 years. It is a Christmas miracle. I am grateful.
Leroy Towns worked as a reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal and the Kansas Harris Newspapers. He served as press secretary to Kansas Gov. Robert Bennett and as chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts.
This commentary originally appeared in the nonprofit Kansas Reflector.
