How I Stopped Drinking And Never Looked Back
I know AA works for millions of people, so I would never knock the program. It also played a role in my recovery. Mainly it got me thinking there quite possibly might be life after alcohol.
AA meetings worked for me for a while, but I found the time commitment, and redundancy just wasn’t for me. Most discouraging was that I was still white-knuckling it. I always felt compelled to drink 10 minutes after I’d heard some very inspiring shit.
I’d read tons of articles about drinking moderately, not realizing that if you’re even reading that type of material, you likely need to quit altogether.
It took me a long time to understand that alcohol is a poison to the body.
I always limited my drinking to weekends until I worked for an Italian who’d have a glass of red wine after work every evening. I thought, what a great idea.
The part of your brain that keeps you breathing while you sleep is sometimes called your “lizard” or protoreptilian brain, which is the part of the brain that evolved first. I discovered if you give it enough addictive substances, that part of your brain begins to think the substance critical for survival.
So it won’t let you stop.
It’s incredible how the alcoholic can find excuses to justify their ways. But like The Allegory of the Cave, the alcoholic’s brain is so affected by alcohol, and their reasoning tools don’t function because alcoholism is, in fact, a disease.
Downing a bottle of wine before the actual start of festivities (going to a party, out to dinner, etc.) or what we call in Seattle, “prefunking,” should’ve been a clear indication that I had a problem. But it took me a while. My liver had to start aching, and I had to develop Type II diabetes and high blood pressure first. But I still had trouble envisioning a world without alcohol. It was so godamn fun, after all.
Light drinkers and teetotalers made me nervous. Something about their gaze exuded, “What the hell is wrong with you?” Plus, they were boring.
Alcohol lingers in your brain, making you more righteous, more easily offended, and more volatile.
But I was also f-ing right all the time too.
I tried drinking in moderation and other bullshit, but in the end, I found I just liked to get hammered.
So I was perusing the in-flight magazine returning from a temp job in Alaska during the Great Recession. The real estate market tanked, and I happened to be a real estate broker. I’d landed a job that I had great benefits until the end of the month. The ad mentioned a 10-day recovery program. Suddenly I recalled their TV ads growing up for smoking cessation. I figured, “What wussy can’t handle ten days?” I’d just been on the Bering Sea for two months.
Aversion therapy is brutal, but so is death by cirrhosis or accident. Or by drunkenly deciding you can light a fire in your fireplace with gasoline and die from severe burns. As recently happened to a friend of a friend.
Many have written about how much better life is after alcohol, so I won’t bore you with pink cloud stories, but I will say this:
Just as I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol wallowing in the fog of addiction, I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave the clarity I’ve found and slither back down that hole of despair.
The 10-day program consists of alternating between “Sleepy’s” and “Duffy’s.” First, the good part. “Sleepy’s” consist of writing out affirmations to be read back to you while sedated by propofol, which is very relaxing. The idea is to reprogram your subconscious by way of counter conditioning. They also have a list of positive affirmations you can select from to add to your own.
I recall from my coding days that the subconscious mind is really amazing and always working away. I’d be exercising or doing something non-work related when the perfect coding solution would pop into my head. If I ever got stumped by how to solve a problem, I’d do something else and put it on the back burner knowing the solution would come to me later. There are now plenty of articles and books on the subject, but the concept came to me empirically.
My rehab roommate was a 19 year old there for pill and alcohol addiction. He asked if I could fix his laptop his father had tossed it at him after he dropped him off at the clinic unconscious. I wondered if that would’ve made a difference with me at his age and concluded probably not. It didn’t work for my younger brother.
“Sleepy” days alternate with “Duffy’s.” For the “Duffy,” you start with pre-consuming plenty of fluid to throw up later. A couple of pitchers of Gatorade was my weapon of choice. We’d shuffle to our meetings wearing scrubs and a robe (the kind you get at a spa) to educational talks. Toting a pitcher was the telltale sign of those scheduled for a “Duffy” day. Getting words of encouragement from others. “What time you go in at?” “Good luck, man.”
The meetings educate you about alcoholism being a disease and what it does to your body. All of the counselors have been inpatients, which gives them a lot of street cred. In one meeting, we partnered up and stood across the room from each other. We tossed a ball to the person across from us to demonstrate the normal process of neuron transmission. Then the speaker had us throw the balls to anyone on the other side of the room at random. Sometimes three balls would come at you simultaneously. Some would fall to the ground depicting overloaded brain receptors.
Meanwhile, back in the “Duffy” rooms, they have your favorite booze down to the brand waiting. The very compassionate nurse has you sit in front of a stainless steel bowl and a large mirror so you can watch your sorry ass throw up in living color.
The nurse starts handing you watered-down versions of alcohol that you mainly swirl and spit out. You’ve also had a shot of Vivitrol, which blocks the brain’s ability to “feel” alcohol (and opioids).
Every so often, Nurse Vomit would have you swallow some diluted alcohol and somewhere in there, a shot of ipecac. The 30-minute process would end with the bowl pretty full. The nurses that walk you through this process are incredible. They deal with people in misery in a closet-sized room that smells like barf and alcohol all day long.
N for the good part. They soak a washcloth with your favorite alcohol (red wine for me) and return to your room to lie in bed for 3 hours. It was essential to keep the booze-soaked washcloth nearby. Most would put it on the nightstand, but I opted to place that mofo on my chest. Never one to not get my money’s worth.
In stark contrast to my former days of Fireball and Jager shots, someone comes in after about 30 minutes with a shot of ipecac for you to down.
The idea is for your brain to process the same misery from overdoing __________ (insert name of alcohol here) to the point of shuddering at just the thought of it for years to come in an accelerated, controlled manner. And by doing so, hopefully achieving permanent repulsion at the very idea of drinking alcohol.
It worked perfectly for a fiend like myself who flat out couldn’t quit or control the compulsion to drink on his own without outside forces.
I haven’t craved alcohol since I completed rehab eight years ago. I can’t overstate how lucky I am to have a wife who stood by me for 29 years — 19 of those for the sake of our kids who never really saw my alcohol-infused side. I straightened my shit out just in the nick of time.
Too often, it takes a wake-up call to appreciate things before they’re gone. I was in denial for so many years because I was “high functioning.” I didn’t have any DUI’s, but I shudder at all the near misses.
I’m luckier than many people around me who have a problem and don’t realize how great life is on the other side.
Another benefit of aversion therapy is I can be around alcohol, and it doesn’t phase me. I can store it for my friends and serve it without thinking twice about it. Although the smell of hard alcohol is mildly repulsive.
Retraining my lizard brain through aversion therapy straight-up saved my life. I don’t miss the post-boozing guilt, the depression, the cost to my health, or saying and doing regrettable things.
And it’s way cheaper too.
