A Problem, A Solution, and A Strange Fruit
Or, When You Can't See That You're The Problem
You can’t read the bottle from the inside. I don’t remember the first time I heard this, but it was likely in a recovery meeting or podcast. It names an inherent paradox in any kind of disconnection from self or addiction: the person in the grip of the thing (in this case, booze) can’t see the problem. Which is a problem.
Except that it’s not. I remember hearing Rich Roll saying that alcohol isn’t the problem, it’s the solution to the problem.
On our honeymoon to Maui, I discovered an alien fruit. Think discovery as in Columbus’s discovery of America, the fruit (or prickly ball) sat stacked on a plate at the breakfast buffet. I picked one up, unsure of how to eat it. I guess it’s a miracle I assumed it was edible at all and not some decoration. The outside was all small prickles and it looked like a fruit from another planet. I worked with my knife and inside, discovered a milky white orb. The fruit was sweet, chewy, and unlike anything I had ever tasted.
In my drinking career, alcohol was that tough, prickly outer shell, covering a multitude of inner shame and discomforts. I wrote a little about this last week (My Literal Rock Bottom). And alcohol was so good at protecting me from those feelings I didn’t want to feel. But it also protected me from the impact I was having on people around me while I was drinking.
When I was young and drank, too young to have been drinking for taste, the alcohol was that prickly outer shell that helped me feel better about the soft spots inside. I didn’t want to share those with other people and alcohol helped me protect my shame and my fear. Those binge drinking episodes would allow me to feel safe. I felt connected to the people I was drinking with, even if I had never met them. Booze became the superhighway to friendship, even if that friendship only lasted for an evening.
A Turning Point
In my late twenties, after a path I was pursuing closed(ordination in the United Methodist Church, more on this in another post), my drinking started to take a turn. Not noticeably at the time, but looking back, it was a turning point. Where drinking used to be about “connection” or having a good time, it became a reward for the day or a salve for some hard feeling from parenting or life in general I didn’t want to experience.
And alcohol was the solution to those problems. Kids being difficult? A drink would take the edge off. Bad day at work? A cocktail would smooth the transition to home life while cooking dinner. After the kids went down, a glass of wine or bourbon on the rocks would be the perfect end to the day, a “nightcap” in polite society.
The more of these days I strung together over the years, the more habitual it became. Never drinking all day, except maybe on a beach vacation or the occasional weekend that started with brunch and a bloody mary or mimosa. But still, the drinking, the “problem solving.” I wasn’t having three-martini lunches like the dads in Mad Men, so surely everything was ok.
What I couldn’t see through those years was how I was slowly checking out. Maybe not in a way that the wider world could tell, but the way that those closest to me, my wife and daughters, could.
Going inward, or disassociation, was historically my move (even before alcohol became problematic—Disassociation: My Life as a Movie). With drinking I had some added help.
I was present in body, but not fully in mind or spirit. We ate dinner as a family, I helped with bath time, changed diapers, read books, put the girls down, woke up with them in the middle of the night and walked them back to bed, took them to the park, went on date nights. I performed all these acts of fatherhood.
But as I began to habitually retreat within, I couldn’t see the hardening exterior shell. My experience was all softened edges and an escape from the thinking mind; I couldn’t see the spikes forming.
I thought my family got to enjoy this sweet release along with me, but couldn’t appreciate how rough their experience was. Not all the time, but often enough, and unpredictably, which is almost worse.
Would they get the dad who was happy, relaxed, and just a little tired? Or, the dad who was irritable and snippy, overreacting to minor annoyances or inconveniences: Why can’t you just flush the toilet? (This still kind of bothers me, but I mostly just flush and hope that once they move out of the house, they will have picked up this important life skill.)
Would my wife get the guy she married, the one who was thrilled to be with her no matter what they were doing and who laughed easily? Or, the dark and brooding character, unable to connect to himself enough to admit to himself, let alone her, the source of his unease? This dark and stormy character might have been more fun if he was the romance novel type, but that was decidedly not her experience.
I saw glimpses of their experience and occasional disappointment in myself for going a bit too far on an evening, but I wrote it off as an “off” day. Nothing was wrong or needed to change. Wasn’t everyone allowed an off day?
No Quick Fix
I didn’t stop drinking and immediately turn into a different person. I haven’t experienced enlightenment…yet. It is only now, two years into sobriety, that I can start to appreciate, thanks to my wife’s willingness to share, how different her experience of that period was from my own.
But since that decision to stop checking out with alcohol, the outer shell makes fewer appearances. I’m not the perfect dad and I (mostly) realize perfection isn’t an attainable ideal anyway. The best part is by no longer checking out with booze, I get to enjoy more of those sweet moments with my daughters and my wife. And, I’m really present for those moments, bringing my whole self to my life.
I’m also more present for the moments that are hard: the disagreements, fights over what clothes to wear to school, and whether it’s a treat day. And now, because I’m fully present and able to see what’s happening, I’m quicker to notice what I’m feeling in my body, quicker to make repair with the girls, or Jill.
When the shell starts to harden and a spike begins to form, I catch it sooner, and the result is a sweeter, softer experience for everyone, not just me.
If you’re on the fence about alcohol’s role in your life, or wondering if it might be time to take a break, why not listen to that inner voice? Trust the question. You might not notice right away, but soon enough maybe that sweetness of life you didn’t even know you were missing will return.
Whether alcohol or not, has anything kept you from connection with self or others?
“Why can’t you just flush the toilet? (This still kind of bothers me, but I mostly just flush and hope that once they move out of the house, they will have picked up this important life skill.)”
This made me laugh! I have many of these with my kids. But it truly speaks to how we can lighten our reaction to these “disturbances” because, does this really warrant a rant on our kids?
What. He. Said.