Part Nine~The Hideous Four Horsemen

FOR MOST normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt-and one more failure.
The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did-then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen-Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand!



~ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 11

I couldn't tell you how it happened. At what point, at what moment in time that I knew there was no turning back. Although I had started drinking again shortly after my three year AA birthday, the abuse didn't settle in for another year. I guess you could say I drank like a "normal person" for quite some time. I did some of that controlled drinking that every alcoholic aspires to pull off. For about a year, that worked. And then something happened.

I had been hired by Child Protective Services in October of 1998. I was fortunate to work for a county that payed their social workers well and being a single woman with little financial debt, the money was a windfall. For the first time in my life I was to know security and stability. I had an important job to attend to everyday, I was respected by my supervisors, I was realizing my dreams of actually making a difference and I began to feel self worth. While I had glimpses of this self realization during my three years of sobriety, the truth was that I always felt a sense of inadequacy because I didn't have a career. I began to see a different way of life than I had known previously. Previously I had been associated with either delinquent bottom dwellers who drank excessively and used drugs or highly abstinent members of society. I had never associated with people who could pull off a nine to five, have a couple drinks at happy hour or a glass of wine with dinner, then call it a night. But these were my new co-workers. These were the individuals who I began to call my friends. In my mind, this was the ever elusive middle ground that I had been searching for all along. Highly productive people drinking normally and still enjoying what they had. I began to convince myself that I was one of them.

As I said, I can't tell you when everything changed. It wasn't as if I woke up one day and realized I was back where I had started. No, alcohol is much more cunning, baffling, and powerful than that. I believe it may have started with a couple nights of a few too many. Not too bad, but definitely something to lament the next day as my head would pound all day at work. As I began to get comfortable within my new profession and no longer felt a need to always be on my guard, I began to take more risks. The "liquid lunch." The unnecessary three to four day weekend simply because I wanted to party with abandon. The very necessary after work happy hour that I found justifiable simply because I'd had "such a hard day." As I look back, I now realize that the people who I began to align myself with in this new profession were really no different than anybody else. Many of them, too, had substance abuse issues. I continued to convince myself that because I was doing such worthy service in the field of social work, and because I worked so hard, that wine with dinner was an acceptable reward. Until this...

There came a time when I realized that wine with dinner was every night. And it was no longer one or two glasses, but the whole bottle. And that I began to look forward to it with a sense of anticipation that no longer felt normal. And then I began to realize that most of my events and excursions revolved around alcohol. Paso Robles wine tours. Beer fests. Work conferences that centered around the hotel bar. Late nights on the Internet with a bottle of wine. I didn't want to see it. But I was exactly right back where I had started. I had to admit that I may be hanging out with a different group of people, drinking a higher quality of booze, but I was still just a drunk. That I might be saving children from the ravages of abuse but I was still as chemically dependent as the parents who abused them.

In April of 1999 I began dating the man who would later become my husband. A man as wonderful as he is deserves a blog dedicated to him alone. But I'm not in the practice of posting about my husband and I don't plan to start now. All I can say is that he is not alcoholic and he drinks. The first year and a half of our relationship was spent partying a great deal and taking trips that always involved alcohol in some capacity. But where he could put a beer down at the end of the night, I was always looking for more. And more. And more. And more.

By summer of 2000 I was beginning to feel the physical effects of alcohol much in the same way that I did in 1994. The chronic ailments, the anxiety, the accidents that could only be attributed to alcohol. He and I took a trip to Cabo San Lucas in August of 2000 and it was on that trip that I would once again begin to spiral downward again in to the depths of alcoholism. Much of that trip is a blur due to the fact that I stayed intoxicated the entire time. I spent a few days drying out when we got back home, promising to slow down on my drinking, only to pick it back up again within a week or two. Always with the same promises. Always with the same commitment to drink with control. The promises didn't last. I never had control. Alcohol controlled me.

It didn't matter if I went a week without a drink. That drink is all I would think about all week.

It didn't matter if I only had one glass of wine out of a whole bottle. That bottle sitting on the counter is all I could think about all night.

It didn't matter the circumstances of my day. Tragedy, celebration, fatigue, stress. They were all a reason to take a drink when I got home.

September 30, 2000 was a Saturday. I had an all day affair at a river near my home with a group of foster kids and some fellow employees. It was a long day. It was hot. I hadn't eaten much. And I was stressed. When I got home from work that evening, I began drinking because my day had simply been so stressful. My boyfriend and I went out to dinner that evening and at some point in the night a switch was flipped. We got into a fight and I caused a scene. It wasn't the first time I had done that but it was the worst. He was humiliated by this experience and got me home before any more damage could be done. I don't recall much. I was in a blackout shortly after the fight began.

I came to the next morning feeling the effects of the night before and vaguely remembering what I had done. My boyfriend was no where to be found. He had gone over to his office at the university to work that morning and I was alone in the house. And it was in that mid morning hour that I saw where I had been and where I was going to end up. I was 30 years old and I was a drunk. I had a great job, I had a great man, I had a great home, I had it all. And I was a drunk. I was going to kill myself with alcohol, that much I knew. I would never know a marriage and children. I would suffer the effects of alcohol in some form or another. Drunk drivings, cancer, cirrhosis, whatever. I was going to experience this all. It was inevitable. No longer were the circumstances of my life driving me toward sobriety. There was no long arm of the law forcing my hand in this matter. What I had come to know were the Hideous Four Horsemen: Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, and Despair. I was at the end of the line. The jumping off point.

I went to the computer and drafted an email to my boyfriend telling him I was sorry. That this was no longer going to work. That I needed to quit drinking. That I wasn't normal. I was sick. And that if he was unwilling to accept a different, more sober version of myself, then the relationship was going to end and I would have to move out. For the first time in my life I found the willingness to walk away from everything that I considered an achievement; everything that I loved, all so that I could know peace. My boyfriend. My job. My friends. My home. I was willing to walk away because I knew I was going to die. It was imperative that I remove myself from everything that would not support my sobriety. The love affair with alcohol was over. Alcohol had stopped loving me back. I finished the email and pressed send.

That was October 1, 2000.

Part nine in a series of ten posts chronicling my history with alcoholism and recovery. Comments may be emailed to my profile address.