2006, Provincetown, Massachusetts

By Richard S. Ferri

I did not grow up until I was nearly 50 years old. I lived a life of drunken privilege and could not see a reason to stop drinking or having a good time.

I did good things. So what if drank at night? So what if I drank every night? So what if I couldn’t remember the night before?

Then John died. My partner of nearly 26 years dropped dead, and I was left a widower at 49 years of age. My heavy drinking tumbled more out of control than I thought possible, and four days after burying John, I was crouched in a jail cell, reeking of vodka and white wine, while crying uncontrollably. It was 10 o’clock in the morning.

Up until this moment, I thought of myself as a highly accomplished adult with some celebrity. I certainly had accomplished a lot in my life. I had walls of awards, citations, and letters of praise from various presidents for my good works.

However, being drunk and in jail after burying John kind of made all those things seem rather pointless. I had suddenly lost my husband, and I tossed my sobriety out the window in the amount of time it takes to witness the last breath.

In my drunken stupors, I could see things clearly, or so I thought. It was one of the reasons I drank in the first place. When I drank, I knew all the answers; I could solve life’s problems. I could plot and plan the wreckage of my future.

Of course, I did not have a clue about how to figure out “the now.” I did not live in the now. I lived in the past and the future. John’s death made that all the more important. Living in the now was too painful, so I choose to drink in the now.

I got totally smashed in the now and caused about $100,000 worth of damage. I did not kill or hurt anyone except myself. This time, the other kind of death I was experiencing was good. I had finally hit my bottom.

I knew, after flirting with recovery for years, that I was a full-blown alcoholic. I was a mess. I was a drunk. I am a drunk. Only now, I actively choose not to drink on a daily basis and have accepted the gifts of desperation and surrender.

I needed out. I needed to grieve. I could not grieve the death of the man I loved through torrents of booze swimming in my head and heart.

If I really loved John, I had to get and STAY sober. I had to become a man and stop my childish ways of thinking that alcohol was an answer. In fact, I truly believed that it was THE answer.

The only thing alcohol was to me, as I squatted in that jail cell, was liquid death. Somehow, when I got out of jail, I was going to have to get up the guts to go back into meetings and deal with the inward humiliation of failing again. I would have to sit and feel my self-inflicted wounds fester. There wasn’t any getting around it. I was a drunk, and I knew it; yet I went out and drank.

But first I would have to get out of jail. I did not even have the $20 bail I needed on me. So I did what any good drunk would do. I called a dear friend, a world-famous poet, to bail me out, and she did. She had also had it with my drinking, and she bailed on me as well.

So I was now not only a widower in a small town and an alcoholic, but I was minus one of my greatest friends. I lost my love, my life, and my best friend. All things considered, it was a remarkable trifecta of a jackpot to hit as a drunk. I managed to blast apart my life with a sudden and steady stream of fire. I self-destructed.

Stopping drinking is not the same as getting sober. Stopping drinking is just that – you stop drinking. Lots of people do it, but they never get sober. They become the “dry drunks” of our society. They no longer drink, but they basically act the same as if they were still boozing it up. Nothing much changes.

Getting sober adds other positive dimensions to your life. You not only stop drinking, but you grow up. You slowly learn about yourself, others, and how to be a real person. Not just a cardboard cutout character of good deeds and accomplishments. You learn to be real. To take life one day at a time. To live again. To be human again.

I cannot say that I wanted to stop drinking. Booze had become my closest companion. It was my constant shelter for any storm. As the months went by, and the alcohol cravings left, I started to feel again. The stranger I had become slowly fell by the wayside. I became a man. Hardly a perfect man, but nevertheless a man instead of the self-indulgent drunk I was for many years.

I still carry my imperfections around - sometimes glaringly, sometimes not. But they are there, and I am happy that they are. Every day, I get another chance at being a better person without being a smug little prick.

I came of age much too late in life, and in a hard and painful manner. Some of these pains have softened a little, but they are never going to disappear. They shouldn’t. They are there to remind me that life is short, that I am highly imperfect, and that I have a lot of forgiveness to ask for. But that is OK. It is not easy, but it is far better then believing that vodka solves life’s problems and sorrows.

Most likely, I am more than halfway through with my life on Earth. I am painfully sorry that I had to come of age – become a man – through death, booze, and grief. But for today, I cannot hold on to those regrets. They are simply there, but it does feel damn good to finally be a grown-up. A person. A man.

Richard S. Ferri’s latest novel, Confessions of a Male Nurse, won several awards and made people scared to get sick. He was rather pleased with himself. He also rants on occasion on NPR, giving fuel to those who want to overturn the First Amendment. You may taunt him at his Web site.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, November 26th, 2007 | Email This Post

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