PhD Dropout

I didn’t want to be addicted. 

I wasn’t having fun. 

I even tried to quit on numerous occasions…but I couldn’t. Sometimes that’s difficult for people who have never been hooked on a substance to understand. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I turned 35-years-old in April. By my reckoning, this new age puts me in a category where I’m too old to be a “young adult,” but too young to be considered “middle-aged.”

Fifteen years beyond 20, and fifteen years away from 50. It’s been a beautiful ride. It’s been an ugly ride. 

Along the way, I’ve learned some stuff. Stuff I wish I’d learned a long time ago. Stuff that would have rendered my 20s a far more functional decade.

Essentially, I’m viewing my first 35 trips around the sun as “part one,” or (more dramatically) a “first life” of sorts. The next 35 years (if I’m fortunate enough to get those) are an entirely new life. 

Maybe this whole “new life” thing is my way of avoiding a mid-life crisis at 40. Maybe. But it’s also my way of trying to implement the lessons I’ve learned from mistakes I made in the first life.

I’m rolling with it. Let’s do this, Baby!

So, what exactly have I learned? 

Integrity is Priceless

Without delving into the whole bloody story, there was a time when I completely lost my integrity. And it took a lot of work to get it back. I spent the better part of my twenties gradually slipping into the clutches of alcoholism. 

I was functional. Until I wasn’t. 

By the time I was 29, my life was visibly unraveling. I got divorced (for a myriad of reasons, but my growing love for beer certainly didn’t help matters) and slipped into a dark depression, mostly fueled by booze and self-pity (the two often go hand-in-hand). 

I was also a desperately broke Ph.D. student, so I started working at a bar to cover expenses. Hmmm. A divorced, broke alcoholic working at a bar? Sounds like a great idea. 

One of the infuriating things about addicts is that we engage in some rather shady behavior to fuel our addictions. I lied to everyone around me in order to continue drinking. Getting alcohol for the day became my sole priority, and I structured my life around my next drink. 

Free will went out the window. I could not control my drinking.

So, did the fact that I wasn’t in control absolve me from personal responsibility? 

NOPE. 

Even though I couldn’t “choose” sobriety at that point in my life, *I* and only *I* was responsible for my actions. And my actions were dishonest and harmful to myself and the people I loved. I acted like a total selfish jerk.

By the winter of 2017, I had completely lost my integrity. It had become pretty obvious to the healthy and functioning people in my life that I had a “problem.” My body vibrated with “the shakes” whenever I went too long without a drink and, depending on the severity of my withdrawal, it would take anywhere between two-to-four beers to ease the tremor in my hands. 

My weight also dropped to 165 pounds, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why: 

I barely ate. 

Almost all of my calories came from high-gravity beer. I am six-foot-one with a lean frame, so I basically looked like a skeleton with tired eyes. Eyes that didn’t sleep, so much as they closed when I passed out at the end of the day. Alcoholics are chronically exhausted because our bodies are trying to process poison at the expense of entering into a true sleep cycle.

But, as far as I was concerned, the only “problem” was that I had to find new and creative ways to pound down booze without my family and fiancee noticing. Don’t get me wrong. There was no doubt in my mind that I was an alcoholic. But, by this point in time I had accepted that I would drink until I died from liver disease, probably at around 40-years-old. 

I didn’t care if I lived a long life or got taken out of this world by a MARTA bus. I joked about such an occurrence constantly, but no one ever laughed. Probably because I wasn’t really joking. 

I started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and genuinely connected with the people there. I loved hearing their stories. But, more than anything, I still wanted to drink.

And I would drink however I could get away with it, chugging beers while walking the dog. Hey, at least that one was social drinking! 

It was only a matter of time before the ruse ended. There were just so many holes in my plan. I could go on and on with horrible stories about my wretched behavior, but, frankly, it’s still a bit too painful to rehash *everything.* 

My fiancee wisely called off the engagement. Two days later, I left Atlanta to sober up with family. It was February 18th, 2017. The worst day of my life, and the start of my recovery journey. 

How I came to reclaim my integrity and power over my own life is a much happier tale. But that’s another story. 

This story is about loss. 

I’m not sure if “rock-bottom” is real or not. People in recovery disagree over whether that’s even a useful term. I’m not wading into that debate right now. 

But I *will* say that the grief of losing my fiancee, as well as the physical and psychological difficulty of alcohol withdrawal, set the stage for a (how should I say?) an incredibly painful experience. 

And it was all my responsibility. I lost my integrity one drink at a time. But as I looked at the wreckage, I decided I would gain it back, one day at a time. 

Somehow, I did it. And I’ll die before I lose it again.