The Two Stages of My Alcoholism (there is no 3rd Stage)

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been realizing that there really are only two stages in my alcoholism: the first stage was when I could stop and the second stage is when I couldn't stop.  For me, there was and is no third stage.

My first stage started from the time when I took my first drink, I was probably 17 years old.  When I took that drink, strangely enough, I took it with the clear intent that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it without becoming an alcoholic like my dad.  When I was 21, my dad's drinking took off downhill and he gradually descended into a lonely and isolated existence and eventually death.  My way of proving to my self that I was not an alcoholic like him was to demonstrate the ability to stop drinking.  And whenever my drinking looked like it was coming close to alcoholic, I would stop.  The only problem to this strategy was that I would always reach a point in time when I'd realize that I had "really" stopped and therefore, I was not an alcoholic.  And inevitably, whenever I proved to myself that I wasn't an alcoholic, I would drink!  Isn't that the perfect test for alcoholism?

That first stage lasted almost 30 years.  It ultimately ended when my son entered an adolescent chemical dependency program when he was 15.  In order for him to get into that program, my wife and I had to agree to a couple of conditions, the most crisis-invoking for me was the one that "strongly suggested" that I stop all alcohol and drug use while my son was in that 3-6 month outpatient program.  That's the moment I moved into the second stage of my alcoholism, the "I can't stop" stage.  I knew as soon as the counselor (a recovering heroin addict now psychologist...) asked me to stop that there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to stop.  And I knew equally well that I could not tell them (my wife and son were also in the room) that I could not stop.  So I lied and convinced them that I would certainly stop if it would help my son learn how to "live life without chemical assistance" as they referred to their plan for him and now his mother and me.

I hid my drinking successfully from everyone but me and the strangers who saw me drinking for another 10 months.  At the end of 5 months, my son experienced some sort of change and things all clicked for him.  He's been clean now for almost 10 years.  I watched him from a safe distance for another 5 months and then one night I went to pick him up after his Friday night Marijuana Anonymous meeting (he went to every 12 step program there was before ultimately finding a home in NA...) and he smelled liquor on my breath.  He asked, without anger, if I had been drinking and I lied.  I wanted to tell him the truth -- not only had I been drinking while he was in that meeting, I had done the same thing for almost 10 months while he was going to 10 to 14 meetings a week.  I drank almost everytime after dropping him off at a meeting.  But what kept me from telling him the truth was that if he knew I was drinking, he would begin expecting me to stop.

And I simply could not stop!

He accepted my assertion and left me to my misery.  The next morning, I woke up at 6am with the clarity of thought: I can't stop drinking!  I'd had that same thought every morning for 10 months and for many mornings before that....  But that morning, a second thought came to me: not being able to stop is called alcoholism and alcoholism is a disease.  My body is different. 

All of a sudden everything I had been doing in relation to my drinking made perfect sense!  I couldn't stop because my body was different!  Wow!  What followed then was another thought and that was, I can do something about this.  I can do what Pat has been doing.  I can try to stay sober for one day.

You know, when I hear people talk about the day or moment that they were finally able to stop drinking, I cringe inside.  You see, I have decided not to describe what happened that morning of October 20, 2001 as the morning I stopped drinking.  Not even for one day.  What happened that morning is that I "stopped stopping" and starting putting effort into staying sober a day at a time.

So now whenever I hear someone come back into the program, full of shame and guilt for having drank "again", I suspect that much of their guilt and shame is based on the false idea that they are the only one in the room "who can't stop drinking."  What I try to do, as gently and as kindly as I can, is let them know that they are not alone in the room.  You see, I can't stop drinking either!  And the solution I found over nine years ago was that instead of trying to stop, I just redirected my attention toward the goal of staying sober today.

For me, there is no third stage of alcoholism.  This is a physical, permanent and progressive disease.  That doesn't go away, doesn't get cured.  What happened for me, as the result of some moment of grace and the impact of witnessing my own son's recovery from this same hopeless state of mind and body, is that I woke up and accepted who and what I was: an alcoholic, pure and simple.  Once I passed into the second stage of this disease, the only possible outcomes were ever increasing suffering and isolation, death or recovery.

Recovery has involved much work, but within a fairly short period of time, the process seems to have taken on a life of its own.  I don't do things with the intent to stay sober or to avoid the first drink.  I do the things  because they fill my life with meaning, peace, joy, purpose and love.  My life is full, if not overflowing.  I am connected to a large web of other recovering alcoholics and much of my day is spent doing something to help another alcoholic in a myriad of ways. 

Take care!

Mike L.