The obligatory Thanksgiving post

I know, I know.  I already posted something with "Thanksgiving" in the title.  But that was just a hook to get folks to look at some websites that might direct money to charity.  Generic stuff.  True meaning of the holiday blah blah blah...

Then there was the whole cutesy Vox Hunt ironic crap post.

Which brings me to the real post, starting now:

Those of you who are my friends, or who have read my blog on a regular basis, know that I don't drink alcohol.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that I am an alcoholic.  Alcohol is poison for me.

I think that it's important to say that I have no moral opinion about alcohol.  After all, it is nothing more than fermented plant matter.  Alcohol is not bad.  And there are plenty of people who are able to enjoy a drink or two, or an occasional blow-out, without any serious impact on their lives.  I am not one of those people.  Now, when I started drinking, when I was in my early teens, I was.  Not to say that I drank just a little bit.  I always drank for effect, even when I was stealing bottles out of my dad's wine cellar and acting like a snob.  I'm just saying that the way I drank did not appear to be having any serious negative impact on my life.  I had good grades, I had lots of friends, I was athletic, I was involved in serious relationships, I was one of the Kool Kids.  I also was basically decent, honest and compassionate.  Just a normal Joe.

But it is difficult to describe to someone who hasn't had the feelings what it was like to drink the way I drank.  There was nothing about alcohol that I didn't love.  I loved the smell of it, the taste of it, the tingling feeling on the roof of my mouth, the numbing of my tongue, the heat as it passed down my throat, the warmth growing in my belly and spreading up to my head, the way I felt more relaxed and confident.  And especially the way it made those voices in my head shut up.  I spent most nights of high school downing hard liquor after my parents went to sleep, and listening to classical music.  It was bliss.

And it opened me to new experiences.  All of a sudden, I wasn't so shy.  That girl who had seemed so unapproachable was there for the taking.  I knew more and better than all of my friends.  I was a raconteur, an intellectual, a bon vivant, a lothario. 

That all passed over time.  I didn't drink more; I had started out drinking a lot.  What happened was that my world got smaller.  By the end, it was me alone in the dark, with inner shakes and the sweats, sleeping with a kitchen knife under my pillow, because I thought the folks having a party next door were plotting to scale the tree outside my window, in order to climb in through the window and kill me.

But I didn't believe that I had a drinking problem.  All evidence to the contrary, it didn't occur to me that the catalyst for my daily hell poured out of a bottle.  I use the word "catalyst", because the booze wasn't what caused the hell.  As a matter of fact, it was alcohol which had taken me out of my personal hell in the first place, in the beginning, when it quieted those voices whispering in my ears as a young teenager.  But as the years had gone along, alcohol ceased to muffle those voices.  As a matter of fact, it became an amplifier.

On a typical evening, I would get home from work intending to run to the supermarket, or maybe to the laundromat.  But I would say to myself I'll just have one drink first.  And all bets would be off.  I would rinse out the same underwear and shirt and socks I had worn to work that day in the bathroom sink, and hang them to dry on the shower rod.  I would work my way through the bottle, usually of whiskey.  At some point in the evening, I would stagger into the bathroom, kneel down, and stick my finger down my throat, so that I could vomit to overcome my nausea, so I could drink some more.  As I washed my hands and face in the sink, I would look at myself in the mirror, and think Who is this animal? 

I'll save the story of how I came to realize that I had a drinking problem and decided to go to rehab, and my experience in rehab for another time.  This is a Thanksgiving story.  And how, might you ask, could what I have shared have anything to do with Thanksgiving?  I left rehab on Thanksgiving morning, 1987.

It was a cold dank overcast morning in Wernersville, right outside Reading, Pennsylvania.  I stood outside the main hall of the rehab waiting for the van to come.  My group members, and some of the other patients I had become friendly with shook my hand, or hugged me, depending on their personality.  The van came; I climbed in.  The driver took me down to the local bus station and dropped me off. 

I stood outside with my ticket, looking at the other passengers, using my alcohol radar to guess who else might be an alcoholic.  (This was a freshly acquired skill).  I picked out one fellow as appearing a likely prospect.  Wouldn't you know it?  When it came time to board the bus, this guy decided randomly to sit next to me.  I have found over the years that busses are some of the most likely conveyances in which to find oneself in unsolicited conversation.  This time was no exception.  It didn't take long for me to discover that my instincts had been right.  My new friend was on his way to the New Jersey shore to have Thanksgiving with his brother.  He had recently lost his job and his marriage.  I didn't mention that I had just gotten out of rehab.

The bus pulled into Philadelphia, and I got off holding my shabby suitcase.  The words of one of the counselors at one of the full rehab meetings resonated in my head.  He said Look around you.  Four out of five of the patients here will be drunk or high within a month of getting out of rehab.  It's probably going to be you.  Unless you take this seriously.

I was determined to be part of the 20%.  I was also afraid to go back to that same apartment I drank in to be alone on Thanksgiving Day.  So I grabbed a cab, and took it to a local AA "clubhouse", which I had discovered while in rehab was less than two blocks from my home.  (I had passed the building nearly every morning on the way to the subway.  I could never figure out if it was a fraternity or a drug house.)  The taxi dropped me off outside, and I walked up the stairs, across the porch, and into the clubhouse.  There was an AA meeting going on.  I sat down in a chair, and listened through the rest of the meeting.  When the meeting was over, I noticed that they had put out some food for Thanksgiving. So, I grabbed myself a plate, and loaded it up with turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and OBrien salad and pie.  I ate my first sober Thanksgiving meal as an adult that day, sitting on a shaky folding chair among strangers.

After I finished eating, I started going around to the other folks, and started to ask for phone numbers.  (The rehab had suggested this.)  Most of them people I asked declined.  Just one guy, who seemed pretty crazy, offered his number.  I took it while promising myself that I would never call him.  At the time, I thought that the reason nobody would give their number to me was because I was white, and they were black.  I have come to understand that I wasn't the only one in pain that day, that perhaps the people who said no didn't feel they had anything to offer me.  Alcoholic thinking can be like that. At the time, it led me to conclude that perhaps the clubhouse was not a place around which I should center my efforts to stay sober.  But I felt OK.  I had gotten through first day out sober, and had even eaten a Thanksgiving meal.  I felt good enough to walk home and fall into a dreamless sleep.

The next day, I went to another AA meeting.  Two guys came up to me after the meeting, and offered me their phone numbers.  Both eventually became friends, and one of them became my AA "sponsor".  I have not had a drink of alcohol since.

Because of the circumstances of that first Thanksgiving Day, the holiday always has centered around sobriety for me.  The first couple of years, I went back to the rehab on Thanksgiving, and sat with the patients as they ate their holiday meal.  Then I made it a point to go to detoxes where people were locked up for the holiday, and shared the joy of being freed from bondage to alcohol.  As time went along, I got back into the "normal" pattern of sharing Thanksgiving with friends and family.  Last year, I had fifteen people over, including my sister and my best friend.  But no matter what, every year, I go to an AA meeting to share my gratitude.

Thanksgiving is the quintessential AA holiday.  A  secular (or at least non-denominational) holiday centered around gratitude.  This year, my sister is going elsewhere, and I don't feel like cooking all day.  So, I'm going down to a local AA group for breakfast and a meeting, and returning in the afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner and a meeting.  I will see a lot of friends there.  Certainly, all of my homeless friends will be there.  (We make it a point to be sure that the local homeless community knows about the event.)  We'll go through at least a dozen turkeys, along with side dishes by the truckload, and tons of desserts.  And coffee, lots of coffee.  The AA kind, that can also be used to strip walls.  I can't wait.

On the off chance that any of you reading this will be doing the same thing, I will be with you in spirit if not in fact.  And if anyone out there can identify with the pain I described earlier, knows what if feels like, and is willing to believe that my experience is not unique, that alcohol need not rule your universe any longer, drop me a line.  I won't answer until Friday my time, at the earliest.  But I will answer.  You are not alone.  You never have to feel the pain of drinking again.  And I love you.  No questions asked.