There are some things we did in our lives that we may wish we had done differently, but there is a good probability that if we got a second chance we would not do them differently. Why? Because the motivation to do what we did the first time is firmly grounded in the words of St. Paul who asked why he did the things he did not want to do and did not do the things he wanted to. The answer to St.Paul’s question lies in our genes, our childhood experiences and in the wisdom of God who permits us to do things we should not do because He can bring a greater good out of them. All that long-windedness is there to set the stage for a fact of my life that I passionately wish I could have avoided. But in my old age I see that God took my poor choice, worked His miracle on it and then gave it to me as a gift.
It was the summer of 1947. I was 15 ½ and had just completed tenth grade. Our country was still recovering from WWII. Factories were running full blast cranking out goods we’d been doing without, new housing developments were cropping up like mushrooms in a damp forest, colleges were bursting at the seams with returning veterans, and huge pipelines 24 to 36 inches in diameter were being built and buried in the ground all over the country. It was a time when opportunity didn’t knock on your door it almost stalked you. That summer I decided I wanted to go to Western KS and work in the wheat harvest. My parents, still numb from losing a son in The War and emotionally drained from the difficult life they had led raising 6 kids in The Depression, allowed me to go. Working in the wheat harvest didn’t pan out so I traveled a little further west to a tiny little hamlet southwest of Dodge City called “Montezuma.” My oldest brother was the “boss” of a crew of men building a pipeline across Western Kansas. I showed up on his doorstep, pleaded and persuaded him to give me a job as a common laborer. He told me to expect no favors and then bent over backward to avoid showing any. He also ignored what I was doing in the few after-work hours we had.
It was a terrible environment for an impressionable young boy. The laborers I worked with were the roughest, crudest, hard-living-est men you could find. We worked 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. After working all day in the summer sun of Western KS they wanted some cold beer. In Montezuma the only place that sold beer was the one service station in town. They sold gasoline in the driveways and beer in the back room. Eager to be a “man among men” I joined them in that back room. I watched them drink and was soon drinking with them. Age didn’t matter to the proprietor. I never got “drunk” but by the end of that summer I had developed a taste for beer. I liked it. That was the beginning.
For the next four years I “worked on the pipeline” every summer in W.VA, VA and OK. I completely trashed my teen-age years. During those summers my classmates were out at the lake or elsewhere, chasing girls and having fun. I was working on the pipeline, associating with grown men and enjoying beer whenever possible. Over the course of several years my “liking” developed into a craving. In short, I became a “practicing” alcoholic. I was addicted to alcohol when my lovely wife took me as her husband, but she didn’t know it then. Her “ignorance” didn’t last very many years but for decades she was the only person who knew or suspected. I rarely drank during the daytime but by the time I was thirty years old I couldn’t let the day end without a healthy “dose” of self-prescribed “medicine.” After a couple of decades of this I subconsciously realized “the medicine” had become “the illness,” but like all alcoholics I buried that understanding deep in my brain and kept on “medicating.”
Now I am a recovering alcoholic and have been for many decades. By the grace of God I have not had a drop of alcohol in any form since July 1979. My purpose in writing this is neither self-criticism nor self-exaltation. I am writing in the hope that it may help someone, somewhere, sometime; and to give witness to the fact that God loves and shows His love to even the weakest among us.
For my experience to be useful to anyone there are some things about alcoholics you need to know. First, there are lots of misconceptions about what an alcoholic is or looks like. The stereotype is a skid row bum, or a vagrant sleeping under a bridge. Those exist, but a huge percentage of “practicing” alcoholics are “closet alcoholics. If you have more than a couple dozen friends and acquaintances it’s a safe bet that you know at least one practicing or recovering alcoholic; but you probably don’t know who it is. We are found in pulpits, classrooms, executive board rooms, legislative bodies, military units, police cars, PTA’s, and hospitals to name only a few places. My children never saw me intoxicated. I was never intoxicated while inside a school building or while attending a school function. I never got a DUI and never piloted an airplane while “under the influence.” It is a fact that many alcoholics have accomplished great things in various fields during the years they were slaves to alcohol. I earned a B.ME, an M.A. a Ph.d. and a Private Pilot’s license during the years I was a “practicing” alcoholic. In meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I met some of the most productive, successful people you can imagine. So forget the stereotype. But did alcohol affect my life and the lives of every alcoholic I’ve known? Profoundly.
So, what would I do differently if I could go back? Well, no alcoholic ever “decided” to become one. But that decision I made when I was barely over 15 years old planted a toxic seed that produced poison fruit. If I could replay the summer of 1947 I would stay home and enjoy the summer with my friends. Instead of trying to be “a man among men I would stay home and be “a kid among kids.” But I didn’t. And that was a critical mistake that played a big part in many poor choices I made throughout my life. My dad had a saying about drinking alcohol that went like this: “First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” In my case it almost did. But God intervened to bring good out of the bad I had created for myself and my wife.
The ending didn’t come about until July, 1979 when God sent me an “angel.” Not a real heavenly creature but a man who did an angel’s work for God: A fellow private pilot named Joe. Joe and I were not especially close friends. We were both professors at an Ohio University and we both enjoyed flying. That was the extent of our “closeness.” One Sunday afternoon I was in my office at the university. When I finished my work I just happened to meet Joe in the stairwell and we began talking. Two hours later we were still standing in the stairwell talking. In God’s mysterious way the conversation had gotten around to alcoholism. Joe told me his wife was a recovering alcoholic who attended A.A. meetings. I confided in him that I sort of thought I “might be” an alcoholic. He invited me to attend a meeting with his wife that evening.
Later that evening my extraordinary wife and I were sitting alongside Joe and his wife at that meeting. As in many A.A. meetings it began with a speaker telling her “story.” Like me, she was a respected, professional person who kept her addiction to alcohol “in the closet.” As she spoke it was as if she was telling my story. And that was the beginning of the end of my being enslaved by alcohol. I began attending meetings regularly. By the grace of God and with the incredible support of my always supportive wife I found that life is much better without alcohol being a part of it. But God who often takes the bad things that happen to us and draws a greater good out of them took my addiction to alcohol, destroyed it, and made me a better person. I know my strengths and weaknesses better than I would have had I not been forced to confront a powerful enemy. I know first-hand how loving and powerful Our Lord is. I know beyond a doubt that my wife was a gift from God, and I believe I am more devoted and loving toward her than I would have been had the two of us and Our Lord not destroyed a terrible enemy. And I know because they have told me that our five children have a greater respect for me because they know I took a hard look at myself, humbled myself before God and Man, and with His grace overcame a terrible enemy.
But decisions always have consequences. That decision I made in June of 1947 robbed my wife and I of much of the joy we should have had in the first 25 years of our marriage. It made my career very tempestuous. It robbed my family of many dollars and caused my wife and me to have a much less comfortable retirement than we should have had. Is there any sage advice to be drawn from my life experiences? If there is it’s up to you to find it. I only know that kids make dumb choices that affect their entire life. But . . . the consequences of even the worst choices don’t have to last forever. Face your problem. If you admit it and turn to God and those who love you – any mountain can be brought low.