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ALCOHOL AND SELF REFLECTION
There but for the Grace, Right?
It’s an interesting place to be, watching someone you respect on an alcoholic bender, and suddenly realizing you’re looking at yourself — could be the spark you needed to change course
I sat with Joe at his kitchen table as he drained the last of a half-gallon bottle of cheap vodka. He was on an active bender telling me things better buried deep in his mental file drawer.
“Sixty-eight years old with nothing to show for it,” he said, “drinking myself into oblivion.”
“Come on now, Joe, you have plenty to be thankful for.”
“Don’t patronize me, Dan. I know when someone’s blowing smoke up my ass. Do you know how to get onto the roof of the Chase building? I do. No telling how many times I’ve thought about going up there and walking right off the edge of that son of a bitch.”
Joe and I had worked around each other for several years before we met, each aware of the other, but uninvolved. We were leaders of our respective nonprofit service organizations and met by chance in the same breakout group at a community collaborative dealing with homelessness. We became fast friends.
Joe and I knew almost everyone in town, but our circles of close friends were small. We shared liberal views on religion and politics, which was a blessing given the conservative views of the community at large.
In our leadership roles we remained apolitical, while in our private conversations, we’d say things unmentionable to our boards or donors.
Joe was passionate in his left-leaning views — and he was angry about the dissonance in his family. His wife was much more conservative and traditional. She sat alone in the same pew every Sunday at the First Baptist Church, and actively supported the Republican ticket.
The only thing surprising about the breakup of their marriage was how long it took. No doubt it was their two children, Audrey and Andy, who were the glue that held them all together. And when those two left the nest, the family unit was done.
The siblings couldn’t have been more different. Audrey was a hundred percent in lock-step with her mother, except more extreme in her views. And with the exception of Andy being gay, he was the spitting image of Joe both inside and out.
Andy’s gayness was a bone of contention for his mother and sister. More than one family dinner ended over the debate. While the women prayed for Andy’s healing, Joe was protective of him. He told me one day about calling out his wife and Audrey.
“You two are so hung up on God, always throwing the Bible up in Andy’s face. It makes me sick. If there is a God, how do you know what he thinks? And why would God have made Andy gay if he didn’t want him to be that way?”
Well, Audrey and her mother didn’t believe God had any role in Andy being gay. They said it was simply a choice and he was making the wrong one.
I found Andy to be one of the kindest and smartest young men I’d ever been around. And, if I hadn’t known he was gay, I wouldn’t have been able to tell by the way he carried himself.
Audrey was a beautiful girl, smart as a whip, and engaging. Of course, we didn’t talk politics or religion. I think she only did that with her dad to get under his skin, and it worked. And to drive the point home, Audrey married a “gun-toting, Bible-thumping rancher,” according to Jim.
“I hate that redneck son of a bitch,” said Joe. “I can only imagine what my grandkids are going to be like.”
Joe and I worked closely on the collaborative and it didn’t take us long to conclude that the two half-way houses our organizations supported were just touching the surface of the community alcohol problem.
A local crew was working on a marketing video for the men’s program. The director asked me to review the first draft and I thought it was amazing. The focus wasn’t as much on the dark side of addiction as it was on the potential for it to affect every family regardless of gender, race, or social status.
I took the video to Joe’s office and we sat together viewing it. He was somber and his mind seemed to be on other things, but he asked me to leave it with him so he could review it again later.
The next day Joe called. “Hey Dan, that video sparked a thought. I heard about this adult rehab center in Austin. Why don’t we fly down together and take a look… maybe replicate it here?”
A few days later we flew to Austin to meet with the director. Raymond was a guru in the field, a recovering alcoholic himself and straight-forward encyclopedia of alcohol rehab. He took us on a tour of the Austin center, and then on an excursion to several different rural half-way houses he had founded.
As we drove up to one of the homes, several of the men were standing on the front porch, smoking and drinking coffee. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a while. The men were relaxed and open with us.
Joe later commented, “I’m curious about those men… how they ended up there. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but they’re just regular guys.”
“They’re just like you and me. Some have been in prominent positions, though you might never know it. There’s no room here for pretense. The only difference between any two men is the degree of depression, anxiety, or mental illness. No one’s exempt. Could be genetics, or our choices, or as simple as the luck of the draw in life circumstances. There but for the grace, right?”
Joe sat quietly and didn’t say much until we got on the plane to head back home. “What do you think, Dan? Worth pursuing?”
I was pumped and excited about the potential for setting up some similar programs in our town. “We can’t bury our heads in the sand forever.” Then I laughed and said, “Heck, one day you or I might need it!”
Joe smiled but said nothing.
A couple of days later I was working in my office and I got a call from Joe’s secretary. “Dan, Joe wanted me to let you know he checked himself into that alcohol rehab center y’all visited in Austin.”
“As a patient?”
“Yes, sir.”
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Joe never went back to his workplace, and I didn’t inquire. I missed him but left him alone during those days figuring if he wanted to talk to me, he’d call.
Almost a year went by before Joe and I reconnected. He invited me to lunch, then no showed. When I called to check on him, he told me he had been sick and was sorry for standing me up.
“I’ll bring you some soup tonight,” I told him. And it was when I took the soup over that I ended up at his kitchen table watching him top off his glass with the last of the cheap Vodka.
“Are you happy in your job, Dan?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, I think so…most of the time.”
Joe laughed…
“You think so? I used to tell myself the same fuckin’ thing, totally noncommittal. You’d better be careful, Dan. One day you’ll look forward to getting home and having a drink. You’ll be invited to social functions with rich assholes, and you’ll have to have a bracer first. You’ll get there and head straight to the cash bar to order a martini. It’ll be so smooth and relaxing. Then, you’ll have another, and that’s when you can finally be there, without really fuckin’ being there. Works every fuckin’ time.”
As he talked, I thought of my first impressions of Joe in his CEO role. He was an imposing figure, taller than most and dressed to the nines in designer clothes, clean shaven, and never a hair out of place. He had a degree in Economics from Southern Methodist University, was articulate and passionate, and obviously one of the smartest men in any room.
I didn’t judge Joe but just listened, knowing good and well how close he was to being right about the path I was on — just not that far along.
And there we sat at his kitchen table, Joe bemoaning a life as empty as a cheap bottle of vodka, unshaven and hair all a mess, donning a yellowed wife beater and boxers.
He stood up, swayed a bit, walked into the living room, and fell into his recliner. He mumbled as his chin slowly dropped to his chest and his glass slipped from his fingers, spilling the last of the vodka into his lap.
I took the glass from his lap and set it on the coffee table, flipped the light switch, and pushed the lock button on the door before closing it behind me. It was sad to see him like this, but I was confident a man of his ilk would work through it.
A neighbor was sweeping leaves out of the corridor of the condo when I knocked on Joe’s door the next afternoon. “Joe’s not home,” he said. “I had to call EMS last night. Found him wandering around out here in the courtyard in his undershirt and drawers, totally incoherent. They took him to the psych hospital.”
I pushed the call button at the outer door of the psychiactric assessment center and an orderly buzzed me in. The dayroom was wide open and painted bright white. It was as sterile and cold as any other psych hospital I could remember. Couches and chairs of light blue vinyl and shiny chrome frames were scattered about in random disorder.
The patients were in pajamas, visiting each other and their families, while some sat talking to themselves. A nurse called patients to her station one by one for afternoon meds.
Joe was sitting by himself playing solitaire when he spotted me. Several days had passed since I’d been to his house. He stood up and gave me a big roundhouse hug. We walked back into his room where another gentleman was sitting on his bunk.
“This is Leon, my roomy. He’s been here about a week, kinda for the same reason I’m here. Right, Leon?”
“Yes, sir. Just a couple of pathetic drunks we are.”
They both laughed and I joined in. About that time the nurse called Joe up for his meds. He took the small paper cup and tilted his head back and swallowed. He opened his mouth and lifted his tongue so she could see he hadn’t cheeked the pills.
He turned to me and winked.
As we sat and chatted, it was hard to discern whether he was embarrassed or proud. He stayed for a few days before going back home. I worried about his stability, but recognized he was a grown man making his own choices. I was on my daily trail run when Audrey called.
“Dad tells me you’re looking into some long-term treatment options for him. You don’t know how many times we’ve been down this road with Dad. It pisses me off that you guys let him pull your chains. It’s a waste of time and money. He really thinks a lot of you, Dan, and the best thing you can do for him is stay away.”
Audrey was struggling. As long as other people in Joe’s life were intervening, she felt guilty for not participating. But she and Andy were disgusted with him. I understood the anger and feelings of guilt. But in the moment, I thought maybe I could make a difference.
I finally connected Joe with a treatment center in the hill country and drove him down. He looked small and insecure sitting in the passenger seat of my truck. This was like a father-son trip. He asked me to sit in on the admission with him where they told him to plan on a 30–60 day stay, the first 30 costing close to a thousand dollars per day.
He stayed the entire 60 days. On the way home I let him talk as I tried to pick out signs showing whether or not the course of treatment had impacted him. I got the impression he enjoyed the cycle, the ritual of it all, the binges, and the interventions.
Even the agony of detox didn’t seem to faze him. He spoke as if he’d outsmarted all the staff at the center — that he was treatment-wise and had flipped the roles, being more of a therapist to the professional staff than patient.
I began to feel our relationship was a one-way energy drain. Our visions of helping other programs in the community had faded, playing second fiddle to Joe’s personal saga. It was disappointing because I had hoped he’d be on the mend and we could get back to working together.
Instead, I distanced myself from him, empathizing more with Audrey, and told her as much. I turned my attentions back to my own work and continued to support the two halfway house projects, which incidentally, had thrived in spite of me and Joe.
Both programs chugged along beautifully. Ironically, as underfunded, and unsophisticated as both programs were, they actually helped more clients than any rehab program Joe had ever been served by.
The directors of both programs were modest and unassuming, purely mission-driven. As much as I admired them, they looked up to me. But I learned more from them than I ever gave back, mostly how to do so much with so little.
By this time, I was no longer on Joe’s short-list of friends to call. Still, every now and then he’d work his way down the list to me and we’d go to lunch. It was always spur of the moment.
I’d try to steer conversations towards things other than us, but we’d inevitably drift back to the ebb and flow of Joe’s sobriety. His treatment cycle had become his obsession and lifestyle while his network of support maintained a low retention rate.
He was a celebrity at the local AA group going three or four times a week. He even solicited the help of his friend, Raymond, from the Austin rehab center to be his sponsor. But Raymond ended up firing Joe as a mentee, telling him he never knew anyone who got more satisfaction out of a disease.
The last I heard from Joe was during the COVID pandemic when I dropped a line to see how he was getting along. He was as jovial as ever.
“I’ve never been better,” Joe said with a laugh. “Seems I’m at my best when the world around me is going to hell… ha, ha… ain’t that some shit.”
