My Literal Rock Bottom
July 30th marked the three-year anniversary of a bike accident that I’ve come to see as my literal rock bottom. Stone cold sober on a morning ride, I went over the handlebars and swan dove into the gravel path (I don’t recommend this). Three years ago today, I was on the beach vacation that this post discusses, throwing an epic pity party, which was my drinking rock bottom. There’s more I could say on these topics, but this piece sums up well where I was at the time and how far I’ve come since. I’m giving myself a break from posting a new piece today, and I hope you’ll enjoy this one from the archive.
I woke up and saw blood on my shoulder, adrenaline coursed through my body. I was dazed but not in significant pain. My bike laid on the gravel next to me. I quickly pieced together what happened. Maybe I had been knocked out by the impact with the ground.
This was a Saturday morning two years ago. I was heading out to meet a friend for a gravel bike ride. I left early, around 5:00 am, because we were supposed to drive to Oklahoma to spend some time with extended family that day. And to top it off we were leaving on a one-week beach trip to Naples, FL Monday morning.
Before all that though, I rolled out into the semi-dark morning, warm but not yet as steamy as it would become, toward the meet-up spot. This particular path was converted from old railroad tracks and crosses main roads in town. At the road crossings, cables hang to prevent cars and golf carts from using the trail. I had successfully hopped over three of these on my ride this morning, and dozens more in the past.
But, on that fateful Saturday, I did not make it over the fourth. Once I got to the cable, my front tire cleared easily, but my back wheel got caught. My bike stopped, and my body kept going. I was clipped in to pedals, but the abrupt stopped pulled my cleats clear of them and I dove head first into the gravel. I landed squarely on my left shoulder and probably was briefly knocked out by the impact. The next thing I knew I was sitting up, feeling the surging pain, and looking for my airpods in the gravel.
With the amount of blood on my shoulder and shooting pain when I tried to move my left arm, I knew I needed to get to an ER, but didn’t want to call and wake my wife, who would have to wake our sleeping seven- and five-year-olds. So, I rode home as quickly as I could (which was very slow) and did my best not to lean on my left side. Other than buzzing with adrenaline and cortisol, the pain wasn’t awful.
Once home, I changed as quickly as I could and then drove myself to the ER around the corner. My wife wanted to take me, but our daughters were still sleeping and driving meant I got to be the wounded hero guy, which my ego loved.
The small ER was slow on that early Saturday morning. After completing the admittance forms, answering questions about the accident, and x-rays, the doctor told me I had separated my shoulder. You might be wondering, as I was, if this is the same as dislocation? No. A dislocated shoulder is popped out of its socket. In a separated shoulder, the collar bone has disconnected from the humerus. The doctor sent me home with a hospital-issue sling and instructions to make an appointment with an orthopedist next week.
Only problem, again, we were leaving for Florida early Monday, so my appointment would have to wait.
The next day was a mix of packing, icing my shoulder, a trip to the country club pool, and generally feeling sorry for myself. I waffled back and forth between wondering how I could have been so stupid to try and hop the cable (why didn’t I just get off my bike and walk it over), and anxiety about how severe injury was (would I need surgery)? I quelled all this with a few club specials (fancied up vodka sodas) sweating in the deck chair while the girls swam with their friends.
Aside: One funny thing about the sling – it was a conversation starter, so while most of my trips to the pool were filled with my uncomfortable attempts at making connection with other people, most folks were curious enough to ask about the sling making conversations easy and giving me plenty of chances to rehearse the story.
Sling at the Beach
Monday morning brought an early flight out of Wichita to make our connection to Naples. My busted shoulder and sling meant my wife was forced to do the heavy lifting for our three bags, and I tried to help as I could rolling them around the airport.
I was looking forward to a week off work and the beach is my place. I’ve always wanted to be a mountain person, but something about the ocean and the beach just call to me. I was also bummed that I wouldn’t get to boogie board with the girls or swim in waves and generally just enjoy the ocean.
We dropped our luggage at the house where we were staying and went to the grocery store for food for the week and also drinks. I picked up a couple bottles of tequila, a six-pack of beer, and maybe a couple bottles of wine.
Rain sputtered off and on that afternoon so rather than brave the beach, the girls swam in the pool in the backyard and I poured myself a ranch water and watched. At that point in life, vacations were an opportunity to drink. It was my reward for all the work I did the rest of the time, a chance to kick back and relax, and alcohol is supposed to take the edge off, right?
Looking back, it’s ironic that even with a busted shoulder, I made sure to get the Styrofoam cooler in the wagon for our walk to the beach. It was filled with plenty of sparkling waters for the girls, and one or two beers for me. I wasn’t drunk at the beach, that would come later in the day after we returned to the house and the pool ritual. Ranch water, music, and the girls gleefully jumping into the pool and chasing tiny frogs.
The week was filled with some good moments: hunting sand dollars in the surf, seashell boat tour, air boat trip through the everglades, and a family Monopoly game on a stormy afternoon. But it was also filled with a lot of drinks. My shoulder pain was incessant (unless I kept it immobile) and adding this to my general predilection for drinking on vacation just increased the volume. By the end of the week most of the alcohol we purchased was gone (including the two bottles of tequila). I made a few margaritas for my wife, but I was the main consumer.
And piling drinks on with dinner just meant that I was short and irritable with the girls. I’d lose my temper at bedtime when they fought getting ready for bed (either with us or each other). There wasn’t a dramatic moment that I remember, but there were plenty of moments of me being checked out, but I had to be with it enough to switch from my day sling to the immobilizer I needed to keep me from moving my shoulder or rolling onto it in my sleep. Then again by that point in my drinking career, I could move still function through a number of drinks (or at least that’s what I told myself).
There’s no dramatic moment in the week, though there were plenty of me being less than my best self. I’m sure if my wife told this story her experience would be very different (see footnote on this).1 And that’s part of the problem of drinking—you can’t see yourself in that state. Because you’re slowly checking out, you don’t see how you’re impacting others. You build a temporary cocoon that numbs the pain and feels good, but instead of turning into a beautiful butterfly, you wake the next morning to find you’re still a caterpillar.
A New Path Forward
Back in Wichita, I met with an orthopedic surgeon who told me my separation was on the fence line between surgery and physical therapy. When I asked if he would recommend surgery, he offered, “I like to do surgery.” Which wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. After some days of thinking about it, I chose to forgo the surgery and try to rehab through physical therapy alone. I could always go under the knife in the future.
Still in the sling, I began physical therapy and started walking for my exercise. I also started watching a documentary about Billy Kemper, a surfer who suffered a broken leg (maybe two?) and after surgery and physical therapy recovered enough to surf again. I’m not a surfing fanatic, but I found some motivation in his story. If he could overcome all that, I would get over this shoulder thing.
Then, on August 22nd, Huberman Lab released its episode on alcohol and I listened to the whole thing that morning. If you haven’t heard it, I would recommend a listen. It breaks down that there’s really no benefit of alcohol to human health, and the recommended amount is much less than what the government recommendations outline: closer to one or two drinks per week, not per day. To say my drinking was well over these bounds was an understatement.
I don’t know why, but something connected with me in a new way in that episode. Plus, I was trying to heal my shoulder, and adding inflammation in the form of alcohol was diametrically opposed to this goal.
I met my wife for lunch and casually mentioned that I was thinking about taking a break from drinking. She seemed a bit surprised and was supportive, but the conversation was brief and I don’t recall her sharing much beyond that. She was so patient through those years, and she would also call me on my shit on the nights that my drinking went too far. I thought everybody had these nights every once in a while, and everybody enjoyed drinking most nights, so that kept me going for quite a while.
The rest has been history for the last two years. I haven’t had a drink since. And for as much as I hated my bike accident rock bottom, it led to my drinking rock bottom, which had me in a receptive mental state for the podcast on alcohol, which allowed me to start my journey of reconnecting to my self in sobriety. It’s hard to say I would have chosen it, but without that accident would I have ever stopped drinking? Would the slide have continued? I don’t know, but I’m glad I don’t have to find out.
What do your vacations look like (or used to look like)? Were they more boozy than your your day-to-day or a continuation of the same?
Addendum — In a conversation with my wife after she read my post, she reminded me of a conversation we had that week in Florida, one that made an impact, but that I forgot due to my state of mind at the time. As soon as she reminded me of it, I could remember it taking place, the bedroom where it occurred and where I stood in the room, but it slipped my mind in writing this post.
On one of those evenings when I was drunk and had been irritable with the girls and generally unpredictable in how I would react to things, my wife told me, “I know we’re on vacation, but this all has to change when we get back home.”
This highlights for me that you never know the impact of your words on other people. Even if I didn’t recall it when writing the first draft of this post, those words did impact me. I wouldn’t have gone down this path if it weren’t a way to improve my relationships with my family. And it took the person who means the world to me, saying something for me to change. And even then, it was another couple weeks before things were really different. You can’t make someone get sober until they’re ready to, but you can plant seeds in that direction.
Anyway, thanks for reading the addendum and thanks to my lovely wife, Jill, for being in my corner and reminding me of the path even when I don’t always know the way.