ED NOTE: This was written on Dec. 11, 2008. I was sober for 7 months. I wrote this for many reasons. Mostly, I wrote it because I needed to talk to the innumerable people who saved my life. Without knowing it. An edited version of this essay will appear in the latest edition of Looking Out/Looking In (13th edition), a university Communication textbook.
But it’s important that there is one part of this essay that isn’t true. It was an honest omission, one I wasn’t ready to write about until July 27, 2009. I’m re-posting this for two reasons: This was first published on Facebook, which isn’t archived, and I was telling a friend this story tonight.
When I first got sober in May of this year, I decided – for many reasons – that I didn’t want to go through my recovery in a public way. That was a change for me as I’ve lived a large portion of my life digitally.
My parents bought me my first computer in 1984 and within weeks I was tooling around on Bulletin Board Systems and other public networks. I left comments. I made friends. Eventually I graduated to Quantum Link, CompuServe and America Online.
The reality is that if you dig enough, you’ll find little bits and pieces of my life scattered across the Net.
For many people, this transparency is unnerving. For me, it’s always been a source of comfort in the storm that has been my life.
As my life unraveled in so many ways throughout my 20 years of drinking and drugs, I’ve always had two things: a loyal group of friends + family who have stood by me when they by all rights should have cut me loose AND my cyber-friends who, for reasons I can’t explain, have stayed up late and saved me more times than I can count.
When I made the decision — or a more accurate way to describe this is to say when the decision smashed down upon me — to get sober, I was frankly terrified, embarrassed and angry. The last thing I wanted to do was admit that I was truly powerless over alcohol.
I certainly didn’t need anyone to help me.And while I couldn’t keep my family in the real world away from me, I could keep my cyber friends in the dark.
Against my better judgment, I kept quiet about my alcoholism + tried to handle the situation alone. Sure I attended some meetings, I made some calls + tried to lean on a select group of people…but I was still fighting against myself and worse, my own mind.
***
Throughout the first few months of my sobriety, I spent much of my time sequestered in my house, afraid to leave my living room because I knew – I knew – I couldn’t walk past a bar or liquor store without stopping. On my way home from my weekly meetings, I called my parents because there were a dozen bars between there and my home. If they were on the phone, I wouldn’t stop.
I didn’t leave my house unless there was somebody with me. But the reality was that I had cut off the people who wanted to help me because I didn’t want them to see me in that way.
As my mind dried out, the damn thing turned on me. I rarely slept more than 2 hours at a time. I regularly awoke to soaked sheets. My body shook so much I gave up trying to type for long stretches. I vomited several times a day. I prayed – insomuch as an atheist prays – constantly for death.
I wasn’t strong enough to actually kill myself, not yet, but I prayed that my heart would just stop or that my brain would short out.
Sometime near the end of the third month or early in the fourth month, the last bits of my sanity were gone. I couldn’t function any longer.
That’s when I turned to the Web. I began to post what I’ve been told was an ever-increasing series of erratic blurbs – some on Twitter, some of Facebook, some directly to FriendFeed, some to Myspace, some as status updates – about my life.
For some, the messages slipped into the ether.
For others, the messages were too random to be deciphered or too self-serving for actual reply.
But for a third group, the messages started a dialogue that has taken on a life of its own.
***
I began to get emails, phone calls, text messages, Tweets and other digital notes from people around the world. Some offering kind words. Some offering support. Many of them sharing their stories of addiction – or more often, their stories of dealing with addictive parents or friends or siblings or significant others.
In my darkest times, these notes would come and always + without question, they pulled me back from the brink.
Many of these notes were from friends, people I have known for years. Another handful came from childhood friends and Loveland-ites I’d grown up with. Some I had known. Many I had not. Others still came from complete strangers who had never met, nor even knew how they had found me.
Sometime around Fall Break, I’d reached my breaking point. I’d lost 15 pounds in 2 weeks. I was throwing up several times a day. My life consisted of sitting on my chair in the living room, staring at the wall for hours, and teaching.
When the 6-day holiday (thank you teaching schedule) came, I escaped to Austin – my home – and Tweet’d the entire trip (through Facebook). I posted for 17 hours. For some, that was too much. I lost followers. Strangely, though, I picked up more than I lost.
The highlight – and the moment I knew I’d be okay – was as I checked my phone messages in Arkansas. The phone rang as I blew threw Tennessee, but I didn’t recognize the number. I let it go to voicemail. As I pulled into a gas station, I listen to the message.
The woman on the phone didn’t leave her name. I have no idea who she was. But she told me about her father and his drinking. She told me that she was proud of me + that she wanted me to keep trying.
Already tenuous with my emotions, I sat on the side of the road crying. I listened to the message a dozen times. Over and over. This repeated itself several times on the trip, strangers leaving messages about their lives on my phone, but it was that moment that I stopped entertaining the idea that I wanted to die.
I stopped praying for my heart to stop or my brain to short out.
I wasn’t quite ready to get on with living yet, but it was a start.
***
Throughout the next few months, I found – or was found by – old friends from across the globe. My life became a 24-hour shower of love. There wasn’t one free moment that wasn’t taken up by someone making sure that my dumb ass wasn’t back at the bar, that I wasn’t looking for ways to die and that I was doing the right thing.
I still couldn’t bring myself to leave the house alone. I still rarely left my couch. I couldn’t communicate with most people. But I was never alone.
Somewhere along the way, I was so broken – so completely empty + alone – that I had to turn myself over to these people.
My friends.
I even connected with an old drinking buddy in Austin, who – during my second trip in November – took me to an AA meeting. Afterwards, we went to breakfast and this person who I hadn’t spoken to in more than 10 years – who I only found on Facebook a few weeks before – sat me down and told me that the last 6 months of my life weren’t sobriety. They were me not drinking. To get and stay sober, I had to get to AA.
I argued, of course, but as I drove back to Kentucky I realized she was right.
***
Those 6 months were worse than any of the time I’d been drinking. I was clear headed for sure, but I wasn’t living. I was living the horror of being an alcoholic without addressing the things that made me an alcoholic.
Since I returned, I’ve been to AA every day (minus one, which was awful and re-iterated the lesson that I need to go). The last 2 weeks have been – well they haven’t been on the same plane as the other 6 months and 2 weeks.
AA keeps me sane. Makes me better. I’m realizing that’s the missing component from my sober life.But social media got me there. Social media made it possible for me to reach out to my friends – to connect with my family in a safe way for me + them – and allowed me the privilege of seeing + hearing from so many people who took time out of their lives to reach out to me and pull me along when I didn’t have the ability to do that myself.
I’ll close with this: I am asked to lecture on social media, I travel and talk about social media…basically, I am asked to justify why technology is good for the culture (the underlying assumption that ONLY face-to-face contact is healthy)…and I’m not always very good at explaining it.
After all the facts and figures, though, this is what it boils down to for me: without that far-reaching network of people – friends + strangers alike – I wouldn’t be sitting here today.
Would I have stopped at the gun stores lining the Arkansas and Texas borders? Probably not although I stopped my car and contemplated it. The reality is I was too chicken to do that (knock wood).
Would I have stayed sober? Absolutely not. Without that network, I would have drank – and in all likelihood – disappeared without a word.
So this is the start of my thanks to this world, I think. And this is the end of my defense of you as well because frankly I don’t think this world needs defending.
And you are the best argument I have.
