by David M
“Can I tell you about something I read when I was a kid,” I asked.
I waited for her to concede and continued.
“I read a story about a little boy whose mother became worried about how much salt he was consuming. He poured ridiculous amounts of salt on everything, and had even started drinking salt water several times a day. He drank salt water the way other kids drank Kool-Aid. Finally, the mother called the family doctor. He instructed her to not allow the child any salt for a week, no matter what. The kid was dead in three days.”
“First of all,” said the counselor, “I think that story is total bullshit. I’ve never heard of any condition that robs the body of salt at a rate fast enough to kill someone in three days. Secondly, what does this have to do with anything?”
“I never said it was a true story, just that I had read it somewhere,” I argued. “That’s not the point.
“Then what is the point,” she snapped.
“The point,” I said, “is that I believe the body sometimes figures out ways to balance itself. Maybe the reason I drink is because I stress out too easy. I’ve always been a happy drunk. Maybe I’ll always be a miserable sober person. Well done counselor; you fuckin’ fixed me.”
If looks could kill, the only thing you would have to read from me would be my epitaph. She leaned across the desk, and in the calmest voice she could muster, gave me some parting advice.
“Being released from ADAPCP does not give you license to drink. Your chain of command could still choose to discharge you. Though not required, you should continue with your meetings. If you feel you need further assistance, you may return to this office at any time. Do you have any questions?”
I just shook my head. She sat down and held her breath for a moment. I could tell she had more to say but was having a hard time either deciding what to say, or how to say it. She finally spoke, but without looking at me.
“If you ever repeat what I am about to tell you I will deny it, but it is my personal opinion that you need to go home, have a beer and chill the fuck out,” she whispered. “You may go.”
Well, I went, straight out to get a six-pack. I knew I couldn’t drink in the barracks anymore, but that wasn’t a problem. The girl I was dating went back to Canada for a few weeks and left me the keys to her apartment in Waikiki.
Normally, I would have opened a beer as soon as I got in the car. Open-container laws always pissed me off. They just didn’t make sense to me. If I got pulled over drunk, it didn’t matter what I was drinking. Why should it be any different sober. But this time I waited. I had other plans for the night.
I decided, for no real reason I could think of other than habit, I would go to my Friday meeting. I had waited eight months for a beer; I didn’t think a few more hours would kill me. I drove to my girlfriend’s apartment and put the beer in the refrigerator.
When the meeting opened and the chairperson asked if anyone felt like drinking today I raised my hand. This clearly threw her off her game. After a moment of counsel with the cochairman, she opted to let me speak.
I admitted that I had been considering a drink for a long time, and I talked about how angry I had been lately. Though I didn’t admit to buying it, I said that my girlfriend was out of town and there was a six-pack in the refrigerator. I did everything but come right out and say I was going to drink after the meeting. Other than the obligatory ‘thanks for sharing,’ you could have heard a pin drop.
It didn’t take long for the meeting to get back to its typical rhythm. I listened to kids talk about how hard life was and how unfair their parents, teachers and employers were. It was the same shit, different Friday night. For the first time, I took a good look around the room and began to understand what everyone meant by finding a meeting with more sobriety. Many of these kids weren’t even old enough to drink, and with only eight months on the wagon I was an old-timer here.
I didn’t hang around after the meeting, and the others didn’t circle the wagons around me. I was about to get in my car when a girl a few years younger than me asked me to wait. I had a good idea what was coming. I had heard all the cute little sayings before.
To my surprise she didn’t tell me to think through the drink, or to play the tapes. She didn’t tell me to seek help or call my sponsor. She didn’t even tell me not to quit five minutes before the miracle. She just asked for a ride. When I asked where she was going, she reminded me of the six-pack I had in the refrigerator. I thought this was a great idea; after all, only an alcoholic would drink alone.
We didn’t stop at a six-pack, or beer for that matter. Nor did we stop at Friday night. When I woke up early Monday morning the girl was gone. She had left sometime Saturday night after talking to her dealer. I never saw the girl again. It’s a shame; she seemed like a nice girl. I was told a short time later that she overdosed not long after that weekend.
I made it to work on time that Monday, and managed to fly under the radar for a while. I got promoted to Sergeant but I felt like I was fifteen again. I could no longer drink in the open without the fear of being kicked out of the Army. I needed a new plan.
I began looking around at everyone I knew. Most of the guys in the barracks drank like I did, though very few of them seemed to push the extremes of drunken behavior like me. I knew that lifestyle was no longer an option for me. I simply couldn’t control my own actions on a bender anymore.
The married guys all seemed to be doing a lot better. They had wives to take care of them and children to worry about. The married guys didn’t have to worry about lost weekends or catching a disease from a girl they barely knew. And wouldn’t a wife make a great designated driver.
I had found my solution. I would get out of the full time Army at the end of this contract and become a weekend warrior. I could sober up for weekend drills and live the rest of my life like a normal person. I finally figured it out. I wasn’t an alcoholic after all; I just needed to grow up. All I needed now was the perfect wife.
Chapter ten:
I have nothing bad to say about my first wife. Her only mistake was falling in love with me. Our marriage ended after only a few years. Though I am no longer in love with her, she will always own a small corner of my heart. She was, and I’m sure still is, a good person.
My second marriage was a bit more toxic and relevant to my story. That’s not to say the train wreck was her fault, but we were a train wreck none the less. I don’t think she deserves to be publicly humiliated, so we’ll keep her identity under wraps. We just need a name. I’ve always liked the name Nikki, so that’s what we’ll call her.
Nikki and I were introduced shortly after my first divorce. Our first date was a Halloween party at our local pub. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I had a good time. Before the night was over we were back at my place and Nikki had her face in my toilet.
Nikki didn’t drink as much as I did, but she attacked her rum and cokes like she had something to prove. As a result, she could go from zero to piss-drunk in a matter of minutes. As I held her hair for her after our first date, I remember thinking to myself; this is the girl for me. If I lived to be a hundred I would never have to hear this woman bitch about how much I drank.
There were a lot of problems with Nikki from the outset of our relationship. The first was that she was out of work. She had been fired from her job under very dubious circumstances. As a result of her unemployment, she was falling behind on all of her bills. Since I was single and had a decent job, I was able to help her out. The truth of the matter is it felt good to be the solution to a woman’s problems for once, rather than the source of them.
The other obvious problem was her inability to tell the truth. In many cases there was no reason to lie. It seemed as though she did it out of pure habit. If we had plans and she felt sick, she would say her car broke down. If her car broke down she would say she was sick. I didn’t care though. In fact, I think all of her flaws made me feel better about myself.
Then one day Nikki sprang the t
rap on me. I knew it was a trap the moment she opened her mouth. I had warned young Soldiers in the Army about this trap for years. These four little words had change countless lives, and now they were being spoken to me. “I can’t get pregnant”, Nikki said.
This worked out perfect for me. It was part of my master plan. After all, I needed a family to keep me sober, and without a wife and kids there could be no family. I had one ex-wife, but she was smart enough to not have children with me. I had a child from a girl I had dated as a teenager, but I had not married his mother. I was incomplete, and if I ever wanted to be sober I needed a family to complete me.
Sure enough, Nikki was pregnant within weeks. I was on my way to seeing my master plan to fruition, but things weren’t getting better. In fact, they were getting worse. Simply surviving became a constant struggle. Even though she was pregnant and didn’t drink, she still behaved like an alcoholic. Besides, I was now drinking for two.
The life I was trying to escape found me again, and before long we were falling apart financially. Our first winter together we fell seriously behind on the gas bill and our heat was shut off. In order to warm at least part of the house we ran the oven day and night. This ran up the electric bill and burned out the element on the stove. Our problems multiplied.
We somehow made it through that winter, and several winters after it, but our life was always feast of famine. This seems to be a common alcoholic trait. When you have-you binge, when you don’t have-you suffer. We suffered a lot.
We had our first child about a year and a half after we met. Nikki was suffering from what I can only describe as postpartum insanity, and she was making my life hell despite the constant flow of alcohol. I was seriously considering leaving her when the unthinkable happened; she got pregnant again. Shit; I didn’t see that one coming.
I was fairly well behaved after the birth of our second child. I had made the decision to only drink after the children were in bed, with the exception of special occasions. If we had a cookout or if I was watching football I would have a few beers; and by a few I mean ten to fifteen.
When I look back now I may have been instilling in my children the notion that all special occasions, or activities of any kind, are made better by alcohol. This was a major stumbling block for me in early sobriety. I couldn’t imagine an activity that didn’t go well with, or even require, drinking.
So the general rule was that the bottle came out only after the kids were in bed. This is when the first real tension began to arise between Nikki and I. I would go to the smoking room and pour a glass of whiskey on the rocks. Then I would smoke a cigarette, sip my drink and wait for Nikki.
She would mix a rum and coke in the kitchen that was three parts rum and one-part coke. Then she would chase one or two double shots of rum down with her drink before ever coming in to join me. Her first drink would usually only last a few minutes before she was back in the kitchen making a second one. Within fifteen to twenty minutes she was plastered.
As hypocritical as it sounds, I found this disgusting. I had been told many times, usually because I couldn’t remember on my own, that I was not a sloppy drunk. This is why I was rarely cut off at bars. Even when I was in a blackout I rarely appeared intoxicated.
Nikki was sloppy in every sense of the word. She could barely speak and would repeat the same thing over and over again when she did. She threw up a lot and passed out in strange places. Nikki was not an idiot, but her IQ would drop to single digits after only a few drinks; in short, she was frustrating to be around when she drank. It’s a good example of the depth of my insanity that the things which first drew me to this woman were now the same things pushing me away.
Our downward spiral continued until we were about to be thrown out of another apartment. I knew I needed to do something drastic so I volunteered to go to Cuba for a year with a local Army Reserve unit. I figured the money would be good and there would be one less person in the house to feed for a year. Maybe we could finally get ahead.
I talked it over with Nikki and we decided to do it. A few weeks later, and just shy of my youngest son’s first birthday, I was on a plane bound for Cuba.
Everything went great for a while. We caught up on bills and talked on the phone once a week. For the first time in years I was a happily married man. I figured it was true that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
This is not to say alcohol wasn’t an issue during my year in Cuba. It was a huge issue. With a steady income I was able to drink more than I had in years. And because my children were at home with my wife; I no longer had to wait until after 8 pm to start drinking.
I would begin most days with a steady flow of Irish coffees at work. By the time the workday came to an end I was well on my way to being drunk. It wasn’t long before I was identified as the unit’s token alcoholic, but because I was good at my job it was overlooked.
I saw myself as a tough, old-movie Soldier. I was the guy who could drink until 3 am and still be in uniform and outperforming his peers by the start of the duty day at 0530 hours, and this was true to a point. I was ready for work every morning, and I did outperform many of my peers, but I was no Clint Eastwood.
The alcohol led to an increasing number of incidents as the year went on. On several occasions, I was returned to my place of duty by the shore patrol, which is the Navy version of military police. I was frequently found passed out along a road or wandering around where I didn’t belong. Though I was never charged with an offense, I can only imagine my leadership’s embarrassment.
One night I decided it would be fun to go to the beach. It was eleven o’clock at night and I could only find one other person willing to go. We loaded a cooler with beer and took our First Sergeant’s van. About half way to the far side of Guantanamo Bay we were pulled over by the shore patrol.
My friend was as drunk, if not drunker, than I was. He was sure we would both be locked up with the detainees by the end of the night. I finally convinced him to calm down and let me do the talking. Yeah, this was going to go well.
The patrolman approached our vehicle and asked if I knew why he pulled us over. I said I had no idea. He told us I had been doing forty-five in a twenty-five mile-an-hour zone. Naturally, I feigned surprise. I had anticipated all of this, so things were going pretty well. Then he asked where we were off to in such a rush. Shit, didn’t see that one coming.
Suddenly, my mouth opened and words came out before I could stop them. I have no Idea where the words came from; I don’t even remember thinking the words before I said them. They were just there.
“Bible study,” was all I said.
“Bible study,” he repeated, “at eleven o’clock at night?”
“That’s why we’re in such a rush,” I said. “We’re late as hell.”
He took my license and said to sit tight for a moment as he turned to walk back to his patrol car. As soon as he climbed inside his car and closed the door my friend lunged across the seat at me. He was choking the shit out of me and trying to shake my head loose from my neck.
“Fucking bible study, that’s what you came up with; fucking bible study! Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I finally pried my now irate friend from my throat, and convinced him to relax. We were going to the brig; it was as simple as that. We both assumed the patrolman had gone back to his car to call for backup. When he approached the van again a few minutes later we were both expecting the worst.
You can imagine our shock when we were let off with a warning and told to have a good night. The patrolman’s tail lights hadn’t even faded from view before we both had a beer in our hands. We opted out of the beach and turned the van towards home. During the entire tottering ride, my companion kept uttering the same three words, fucking bible study, over and over again.
The reprimands for my actions became more and more frequent. Though no official action was being taken, I was becoming a laughing-stock. The shore patrol and reprimands from my superiors weren’t my only problems tho
ugh, there was also a girl.
She was twenty-three years old, beautiful, and very obvious about her intentions. For whatever reason, she wanted me. At the very least, she wanted to know she could have me. I made it very clear I was married and had no intentions of breaking my vows, but this only seemed to add to her desire. She was relentless.
She would often sit in a chair adjacent to me and prop her feet in my lap. This seemed harmless enough, but as the night went on and the drinks flowed she would move in ever closer. By the end of the night she would be pressed so close I could feel her heartbeat, often with a hand resting on my thigh under the picnic table. I would always manage to pull myself away, but with ever increasing difficulty.
One day at the beach she decided to pull out all the stops. We were laying in our beach chairs soaking up the sun. Everyone else had run off to the water, leaving us alone. We were both quiet for a while when I suddenly heard her speak.
“Wow, would you look at that,” she said. “I cut myself shaving the other day, but now there isn’t even a mark.”
When I turned to look, I saw that she had her bikini bottom pulled down leaving nothing at all to the imagination. I could feel every nerve in my body come alive and I think I turned red from head to toe. I was going to lose control and there was nothing I could do to stop myself. I needed help.
The first person I went to was a woman I worked for and trusted emphatically. I explained that I was losing a battle with temptation and needed her to keep me in check. She had seen the two of us and said I didn’t look like I was trying too hard to put any distance between myself and the girl. Naturally, I blamed the alcohol.
Besides, I said, the girl followed me around. I ran when I was sober, but the more I drank the slower I ran. She looked unconvinced, but asked what I wanted her to do.
“That’s simple.” I said. “I just want you to watch. I’m not making it up; this girl follows me around. If I try to move away, she moves with me.”