(My apologies to Rodgers & Hammerstein)
First, I am grateful that on October 3rd I celebrated 17 years of sobriety. And, coincidentally, and possibly a God “wink,” also my 38th wedding anniversary.
But more on that later.
I didn’t begin my life’s journey wishing I’d grow up to be an alcoholic. Far from it. My father joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) about two months after my birth. We’ve always laughed that he needed to quit, but when I was born, he was 42. I’m sure he decided it was time when he looked at me and said, “We can’t let anything like a child happen again.” So, there it was, the genetic “addiction gene” passed down from one alcoholic to the next – just like me becoming an attorney – like father, like son. One thing we didn’t have entirely in common was how we got into recovery. In 1956, alcohol rehabilitation facilities were few and far between. I started my sober life after a short stint at Holly Hill in Raleigh, and I attended a rehab facility in Georgia for over 90 days. However, what we did share at that juncture of our wanting to stay sober was AA. His AA attendance began with just a couple guys above a store in our downtown. Mine was at the same AA clubhouse my father had attended for years before his death. My father died sober with 31 years of sobriety under his belt. I have 17 years sober and pray I’ll follow Daddy’s example one more time, one day at a time, to maintain sobriety until my passing.
My story began in 1973 when I went off to the University of North Carolina at age 17. It was like dropping a bomb on Chapel Hill. I had very little alcohol or marijuana use in high school and frankly was kind of a loner. But back when I landed in Chapel Hill, nobody cared about IDs. The legal drinking age for beer was 18, but I could get beer and wine anywhere I wanted it. There’s talk in AA circles and literature about alcohol being a social lubricant. And so, by using alcohol, I went from being this kind of shy loner to getting drunk and realizing that it loosened me up and made me feel like a different person. I was entertaining; I was funny; I was much more likely to ask girls out on dates.
My four years at Carolina were the best six and a half of my life. That was chiefly because in my junior year, I came across an article in the Daily Tar Heel featuring the opening of Troll’s Bar. The headline caught my eye: Lawyer Goes from One Bar to Another. The Troll, as he was known, had been a lawyer in Greensboro. After about 10 years of practicing law, he missed being in Chapel Hill, especially Carolina sporting events. As a result, he quit practicing law and opened his bar off Rosemary Street. As fortune would have it, I went the first night the bar was open. I hit it off with the owner and therein began several years of working at Troll’s, where I was basically the head bartender while also attempting to navigate through my studies, usually one semester on, one semester off, until I ultimately got enough credits to graduate. I had a great time in Chapel Hill, but a little voice inside me told me that if I didn’t leave there pretty soon, I would probably not make it to age 30 because drinking and drugging were a daily occurrence. However, even though my father was a recovering alcoholic, I didn’t really get the sense that I was doing anything, or my disease told me I wasn’t doing anything, that was irreparable. It was a lifestyle that I continued over the years with brief stretches of not drinking or certainly not drinking to excess. In 1982, I went to Campbell University Law School in Buies Creek. I went through the summer program and made it into law school and did very well. I graduated in 1985 and came back home to practice with my father and brother, both attorneys.
I could fill up the Bar Journal with my drunkalogue, but I won’t. When I was preparing to take the Bar, I was asked to come in and explain a couple of arrests that I’d had: a DWI, and an incident down in Atlanta. I think now we would call it disturbing the peace or resisting arrest. Back then Georgia called it creating a nuisance, which pretty well summed me up when I would get drunk and think I was being funny and enjoying life. I guess the ironic part is, looking back on those days, I wince at some of the things (actually a lot of the things) I did, and as full circle goes, I ended up going to rehab in Georgia in 2008. By then I had been practicing law for 23 years; mainly in a criminal and traffic practice. I’d built a pretty good name for myself and been involved in my community in every way imaginable.
During this time, my wife and I were raising two young, beautiful daughters. My drinking, certainly over the last three or four years of my drinking career, was causing problems at home. I would shake off these problems with my drunken episodes and say, Hey, I’m a Southern lawyer. I’m an Episcopalian. I’m supposed to be “kind of” a drunk, but I do my work, and I work hard. I go to all my civic functions, and I go to all my kids’ games and performances, putting on a good front, knowing good and well that at the core, my home life was starting to rot. And frankly, my soul was hollow over those last few years.
Many people, friends of mine, attempted minor interventions. Of course, my wife tried everything in the world she could to get me to stop drinking: she’d be good and nice, then switch to bad and angry, kick me out, and let me back in. I was, unfortunately, also ruining my relationship with my children. Even though I had known about AA my entire life, my disease told me I didn’t need it. The first step in AA requires an admittance that you are not only powerless over alcohol, but that your life has become unmanageable. While I knew I was powerless over alcohol, I couldn’t understand that my life was unraveling. I’ve come to learn that alcoholism and addiction are unusual diseases, but they are diseases, resulting from genetics and other factors. But it’s the only disease we know of that tells you that you don’t have it. So, I rationalized what I was doing as being just who I was, and there was really no need to stop.
In many ways 2008 was a horrible year, but it also was the springboard for me to get help with my alcoholism. That year, things were not going well at home, as usual. I was Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Board and I got a DWI. I always said I never had a need to drink in the mornings, but one particular morning that year, I got to the office, and I was very hungover and just decided it wouldn’t hurt to have one little drink of vodka. Nobody’d smell it – that’s how brilliant alcoholics are. That drink threw me back to where I was the night before. My drunken thinking was that all I had to do was go to court and continue a couple cases. By the time I got to the courthouse, anybody that looked at me could tell I was ripped. Luckily, some friends got me out of there before somebody that might have taken advantage of that situation and really busted me could get hold of me. That year, because of the DWI in February and that incident in the summer, I was trying not to drink. I was bare knuckling it. I was mad. I was resentful. I was upset with everybody. I was probably worse as a dry drunk than I was as someone pouring a drink at every opportunity.
Just before 2008, my wife told me she was going to go to Al-Anon, which is a program that helps family members dealing with an alcoholic. I responded, “you can’t go to Al-Anon, people will think I’m a drunk.” My wife was quick to quip, and the truth hurt, “Everybody’s way ahead of you on that; you don’t need to worry about them finding out what they already know.” But even that didn’t curtail my drinking. By October 1st, 2008, I had not drunk for a little while. I’d had a pretty good week. I think I’d won a case in court. I was having a profitable year.
We’d made plans to go to the county fair, and I decided before I went, I’d turn to my old friend the social lubricant and just have a couple. This way, when I ran into people at the fair, I’d be ready to glad hand everybody and have some fun. Well, those two drinks put me on my tail. My wife came to pick me up and took one look at me and left the office. I proceeded to go around the corner to a familiar watering hole and began a blackout. Blackouts had been a part of my life for years, but I’d always basically felt great. I didn’t have to remember any of the bad stuff when I did something stupid. I know I was never physically violent with my family, but I was certainly a loudmouth drunk and said things in and out of blackouts that I wish I could take back.
Thus, I made my way to that bar. I got thrown out of there, and some friends took me home. As the story goes, they asked my wife if she was okay with them leaving me there. She relented. Subsequently, she called my brother, who was also my best friend. While we didn’t practice together, we were always looking after each other. Again, I don’t recall this because I was in a blackout. Apparently, he and I got into an argument. When I came out of the blackout, a city police officer friend of mine was telling me that my brother was dead. There’s no other way to say it other than I was at the gates of hell when I realized what had happened. I had no idea whether I’d done it, had hurt him intentionally or what had happened. In fact, the local paper and news organizations that caught wind of the story were going with the idea that I had murdered my brother, one lawyer killing another. That ought to be good for viewers. Truth had it, we did have an argument, but he, in fact, died of a heart attack.
When I came out of the blackout, I did not have any true remorse. I seemingly did not care about my family, my brother’s family or our Mother. All I really wanted was a drink to make it all go away. I just knew my life, as it had been, was over. I would never be able to hold my head up in my hometown and especially practice law. My family would want to be rid of me. That day and the next day were a complete blur. Some good friends of mine, a law partner and an Assistant District Attorney, came over to babysit me to make sure I didn’t do anything dumb. I don’t recall being suicidal, but it’s likely I was because I was at my wit’s end. Ultimately, I was involuntarily committed and went to Holly Hill for a few days. As some clarity started coming to me, I talked to a member of the old Positive Action for Lawyers (“PALS”) committee (today, the Lawyer Assistance Program “LAP”). I talked to some other lawyers with the State Bar, talked to my partners, my family, some very good friends and everybody agreed I was to go to rehab not for 28 days, but for at least 90 days.
I missed my brother’s funeral while I was in lockdown at Holly Hill. I was being taken to a rehab facility in Atlanta by two of my law partners and my wife; they dropped me off and I began my recovery journey. But my recovery journey actually began when I came out of that blackout and then had my last drink on October 2nd. And thus, October 3rd is not only my wedding anniversary, but my sobriety anniversary. My wife cogently points out, if I didn’t have the 17, we wouldn’t have the 38. I get it. I had been to an AA meeting or two in Holly Hill, but Georgia was certainly where my true path to sobriety began.
When I was asked to write this article, this poignant memory stood out in my thoughts: when I arrived at rehab, I had my own therapist. He had me sit down and read out of the AA “big book,” specifically a long paragraph beginning on page 21 as follows:
“Here is the fellow who has been puzzling you, especially in his lack of control. He does absurd, incredible, tragic things while drinking. He is a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is seldom mildly intoxicated. He is always more or less insanely drunk. His disposition while drinking resembles his normal nature but little. He may be one of the finest fellows in the world. Yet let him drink for a day, and he frequently becomes disgustingly, and even dangerously anti-social. He has a positive genius for getting tight at exactly the wrong moment, particularly when some important decision must be made or engagement kept. He is often perfectly sensible and well-balanced concerning everything but liquor, but in that respect, he is incredibly dishonest and selfish. He often possesses special ability, skills and aptitudes, and has a promising career ahead of him. He uses his gifts to build up a bright outlook for his family and himself and then pulls the structure down on his head by a senseless series of sprees. He is the fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around. Yet early the next morning he searches madly for the bottle he misplaced the night before. If he can afford it, he might have liquor concealed all over his house to be certain that no one gets his entire supply away from him to throw down the wastepipe. As matters grow worse, he begins to use a combination of high-powered sedative and liquor to quiet his nerves so he can go to work. Then comes the day when he simply cannot make it and gets drunk all over again. Perhaps he goes to a doctor who gives him morphine or some sedative with which to taper off. Then he begins to appear at hospitals and sanitariums…”
After reading that, he asked me to write several examples of each sentence which turned into 16 sentences. The big book passage that read “Here’s the fellow that’s been puzzling you,” was a godsend. He was puzzling me, he was puzzling my loved ones, he was puzzling my friends, puzzling everybody who cared about me: that while I could generally be a good guy, I had to get drunk. Yes, I had been hungover in cases and in court, but I always felt I was prepared and always felt like I did my best. Looking back, obviously, that was part of that deception I’d led myself into: rationalizing that I was managing just fine – that my life was still not unmanageable. But as a friend of mine at the State Bar told me, “We always knew you were a bad drinker, but you had never done anything specific that we needed to intervene.” I had even been an elected councilor with the State Bar Council for nine years and drank aplenty at those meetings. Now I’m not assigning any blame to anybody at the State Bar, but I mention it because it was the PALS program (now LAP) and Ed Ward (LAP staff at the time) that really helped me pull myself together, both during my time at rehab and when I returned.
I led off the article talking about my father and myself. He got into the AA program and followed the program. He was my hero, a great lawyer and a great dad – and I didn’t know him as an active drinker. But the insanity of my disease was so strong that I felt like even though my hero needed AA, and I was grateful for him going to AA, I was somehow better than that and didn’t need it. That’s how powerful alcoholism is.
I came back home and was told to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I give my rehab time credit because I went to a lot of meetings and did a lot of self-introspection, but I also give those 90 meetings in 90 days much thanks, as it was a wonderful investment in me, and in turn saved my life, the loves of my life and my relationships. So, was it easy? No! Was it necessary? Absolutely. Was I hard-headed? Yes. But even with all of that, with all of those problems, I still knew I could and should be a better person. I follow the 12 steps to this day. I try to live my life more easily. A life, of course, without alcohol, and a life I turn over to my highest power.
Actually, in my life, I’ve got two higher powers, my relationship with Jesus Christ and my relationship with my wife. I find that if I listen to both of them, I will usually keep it between the ditches. Over the years people have asked me how I did it. The simple answer is God’s will be done, not mine. As part of that, I ask daily to have my character defects removed. Some days I need more help with that than others, but at least I’m cognizant of what my defects are, whereas in my drinking career, I really didn’t care.
I mentioned earlier, alcoholism is the only disease that says you don’t have it. I mean, if you went into a cancer ward or an AIDS ward or some other serious disease area and said, “I’ve got a cure for you,” people would crawl across the floor to get that relief. I was too blinded by alcohol and my own self-pity to realize my cure right in front of me – my father’s recovery through AA. It was hard to dig myself out of that. I’m here to tell you it’s worth every bit of investment in myself to be where I am today, still practicing law, still married, and having a great relationship with my beautiful daughters. My oldest daughter now has a wonderful husband and two little boys – they are the apple of PopPop’s eye. I could have missed it all… If you find yourself or someone you love that mirrors the story that I’ve laid out before you, please don’t worry about the stigma of admitting that you’ve got a disease. Save your life. Save their life. Do everything you can to get them some help. My law license says Attorney and Counselor of Law. I’m not a professional counselor, and while I do want to get the best results I can for my clients, I also worry and am concerned for them much more now that I’m sober more than I did when I was just trying to be a big, tough trial lawyer. Remember, in the practice of law, there are all types of folks that are willing to help you. There’s the BarCares Program with the North Carolina Bar Association and the Lawyer Assistance Program with the North Carolina State Bar. Don’t be as hard-headed as me. Ask for help, it’s confidential. Or go to AA; try it out! It could save your life. It saved mine.
By Anonymous