Sobriety with Depression (part one)
The very day I moved in with my father I went back to the 12-step group I’d attended with some regularity a couple of years before. They were glad to have me back. I started over. Looking back on the first two and half year sober run, I think it’s possible that I was doing that for Becky. I had accepted a good part of the message, but in the end I drifted away. I can’t remember if I thought I was cured or not. I think I was probably just so unhappy that I didn’t care what happened to me.
I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that I very nearly died, several times, during my the crack up. In that year and two or three months, I’d damaged my health (physical, mental, and emotional), I got into legal trouble, I ruined myself financially, and I lost the girl, forever, that I thought, still think, I loved. Consequently, I was very receptive to the recovery tools offered to me via the 12-steps and a 12-step group’s fellowship. Surprisingly, probably to everybody, things started off well.
I got a job and managed to remain relatively invisible at my dad’s. But then, just as I was getting ready to mark 90 days of sobriety, I pitched a drunk at my dad. Dad wanted me to start behaving like a man, and I didn’t understand why. Fortunately it was a one day drunk, and I couldn’t get my hands on any crack. I started over with my 12-step program immediately. If I’d have been smart, I’d have never had to drink or drug again. As it turned out, it would be a little over seven years before I again relapsed.
After the one day drunk, my sponsor approached me about the possibility of moving out of Dad’s and in with another guy he sponsored. Quite frankly, the idea scared me. I’ve proved remarkably inept socially, especially in recovery, and the thought of rooming with somebody I didn’t know seemed crazy to me. I did it though. It almost certainly saved my life.
The guy I moved in with had been sober about 12 years. In no time he was my best friend. He was very bright, a Mensa member, but very down-to-earth. (Mensa and down-to-earth probably don’t usually fit in the same sentence. Nevertheless…) We liked a lot of the same things; bluegrass music, Civil War history, women, and other stuff too. Mostly, though, he taught me, by example, how to live sober.
We went on 12-step calls to rescue drunks in peril. We went to meetings. We talked about the steps. We talked about the traditions. He was well-versed in all the history of the program. I caught it from him. What I caught was a sincere desire to be a decent human being, not for the sake of being decent, but because to be anything else would probably mean an in-glorious, drunken death. At that time I had truly had more than enough of the bullshit.
About four months into sobriety, I began to get depressed. I don’t remember how it started. I don’t think there was a catalyst. I do remember spending much of the next several months hiding out and sleeping. It was by far the worst it had ever been. I felt awful. It abated after I guess it ran its course, and it was some six months before I was again depressed.
It was summer in Memphis and hotter than hell. I was really down, between jobs, honing my powers of celibacy, but not by choice, and just in a bad place emotionally. The only incident I remember from that particular, and relatively minor, bought with depression started when for some reason I was driving my grandmother’s car. I began to notice some smoke coming from the vents behind the hood. I pulled off the road at a stop sign, and before I could pop the hood, I noticed the paint on the hood start to bubble. If a car can burn to the ground, then that one did. I was about a mile from home so ran, slowly, home and called the fire department. About 30 minutes later I got in my car and drove over there to see what had happened. I pulled up to the stop sign where the charred car sat, realized it was hopeless, and decided to get out of there before I was identified as the culprit. I pulled away from the stop sign and before I’d gone 50 yards the universal joint on my old Chevelle went out and I was walking. In the span of about an hour I was down two cars and within a stone’s throw of each other. I’ve always been luck that way.
