Story of my life

The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.

Alfred Adler

For most of my life I’ve thought reading books was the answer to my problems, and for the most part I have solved a number of problems from the wisdom I’ve gained from others. Joseph Campbell has been my constant companion for many years, as have Dostoyevsky, Vonnegut, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, John Irving, and many, many others.

As a lonely child who had suffered the loss of his mother, I found a wonderful escape from pain through reading, and it is not a stretch to say that reading has both figuratively, and even literally saved my life.

So slowly I progressed from a broken, wounded, scared, angry child to one filled with intense intellectual curiosity. It was the way I learned to defend myself from the world. By becoming an expert. By becoming even more of an expert than teachers, relatives, foster parents, and many others I spent my childhood with as I learned to make my way in the world.

As a result of this I built a fortress built of knowledge around myself that became impossible for others to penetrate. If someone knew more than me about something, I went to the library and read everything there was to know on that subject. No One was going to tell me how life was supposed to work again, not after my life had crumbled so badly.

And so it went. Despite some fairly normal adolescent stumbles I became an expert at succeeding in academic environments. Somewhere along the way I realized I had become a know-it-all. I was always the kid who answered the questions before the others, and soon found this was not the best way to succeed.

So I developed some charm. From my father I had learned how to tell a story, make people laugh, and tell people what they wanted to hear. All of these things served me well, and soon I developed a kind of duel persona. I could be “the expert” when I had to, but could also downshift into glib and superficial charm when it served my purposes. Soon a schism between these polarities developed, and I became a kind of Jekyll and Hyde character, full of vigorous intellectual energy on one side and smarmy and superficial charm on the other.

Nathaniel Hawthorne said “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” This was me. This is me. Vacillating between these two extremes.

So, I kind of learned to adopt whatever persona people needed from me. If someone needed to laugh I made them laugh. If they wanted a rigorous intellectual discussion I could put on that face. Somewhere in the midst of this confusion I began to drink, a lot. It was the only way I ever felt at peace. This then became a deeply habituated pattern of behavior which became my strongest and most indelible coping style.

This set me on a crash course towards alcoholic oblivion. In my early twenties I was drinking so much it was a wonder I survived. Still, I managed to maintain a straight A grade point average. Along the way I also became an actor, performing in plays and using what I had learned from my father to entertain. On paper I was an eclectic, successful man of many interests and passions, in reality I had become a very severe alcoholic.

Sometimes the most unlikely people come into your life at exactly the right time and through you a rope. For me this happened when I wandered into a nursing home and worked as a volunteer. Although I did this as kind of a lark, I soon found I had discovered, in the most unlikely of places, the meaning of how powerful it is to give a part of yourself to others. In this nursing home I discovered most of what I know about serving others, and, although I only intended to stay for a couple weeks, I soon quit my job and began working there full time. I stayed for two years. While there I learned about the power of empathy. It changed, saved, and launched the life I would come to inhabit.

So I became a psychologist, and for years did this with a fair degree of competency. But still I had secrets. I would close bars down by night and then get up and go to work. I was young, I had company, and my life didn’t seem that much different than anyone else of my age and station in life.

As I got older I started to realize something was wrong. I began drinking during the week, alone when at home, and sometimes even in the morning when the discomfort became to severe. So I learned to wear the mask. To smile and laugh and pretend when inside I was dying.

Along the way I did a great deal of self-analysis. I learned to recognize my triggers for drinking and this was an important realization.

I discovered that I was a victim of emotional highjacking. I would become overwhelmed by the unresolved emotions from my youth, and all of a sudden my rationale brain would shut down. Adrenaline would overwhelm my body and I would become emotionally agitated. I solved this by drinking. I still solve this by drinking.

So that, in a nutshell is a large part of how I came to drink. There are other genetic and situational forces that are relevant, but basically that is it.

I tell this story because it speaks directly to the idea that a person can know virtually every reason that they drink, all the consequences, and still not be able to stop. I can’t stop. Not yet, I’m still not emotionally balanced. Years of both giving and receiving therapy has not restored this balance.

So here I sit. Alone. Unable to form a real relationship with someone else, and watching TV. I want a drink. After purging all of this from my mind I still want a drink. How? Why? Who can help? What can help?