I am the first-born of a family of Polish-Luxembourg descendants. I grew up in Thorp, Wisconsin, where there is a significant Polish flavor and plenty of drinking at Polish weddings and just about any other family occasion. My dad drank a couple beers every day after work and I would occasionally ask him for and receive a sip of his Kingsbury. We used to peel the labels off the empty bottles so dad could redeem them for “nifty premiums”.
When we had family gatherings, it was very common for the men to sit together, play cards and drink and for the women to sit in another room. Some of my uncles or my grandfather would occasionally get pretty loud while playing cards but I never saw anyone obviously drunk, especially not my dad.
I was very interested in sports while in high school and I hung around with other kids who liked sports. I was a “townie” and we used to hear the stories of the country kids who drove before they had their drivers license and had beer parties on seldom-traveled rural roads. I didn’t ever go to a party in town where there was drinking.
I was 17 when I graduated from high school and I didn’t do any illegal drinking before I turned 18. After turning 18, I probably did my first legal drinking at Mile-a-Way, a teen bar and dance hall about a mile north of Thorp. I remember the feeling of being so “grown-up” as we sat at the bar at Mile-a-Way drinking our 8-ounce Schlitz “shorties”. I usually only had a couple since I was more interested in dancing and romancing in the other room where there was a live rock band and where you couldn’t take your beer because the dance was open to people who were underage.
I went away (40 miles) to Eau Claire to college and drinking was not really something that I was concerned with. There were no beer bars in the city of Eau Claire and I didn’t have a car so most of my socializing took place on campus where there was no alcohol allowed. One cold Wisconsin night though, all that changed .
There were a couple of sophomores living across the hall from me and they decided it was time that I got drunk. It was about 20 degrees below zero that night as we drove about 15 miles to a little bar called Corky's. I started drinking Special Export, also known as “the green death”. I got quite loud and the bartender told me I had to get out. My not-so-kind hosts left me to stand outside for several minutes before they finally came out and drove me back to the dorm. I remember walking down the hall to my room and having to brace myself first on one wall and then on the other as I tried to walk. As I prepared for bed, my sophomore “friends” told me to put my wastebasket next to my bed. I didn’t understand at the time, but later, when I awoke in the morning, it was clear to me as I noticed a streak across my pillow and that someone had vomited in my wastebasket. I suppose that was my first blackout, as I don’t remember throwing up.
Living on campus for all four years, and not being a member of any fraternity, drinking wasn’t really much of a problem for me. I got drunk a few times but seldom did it ever cause me a problem other than an occasional hangover. I drank at parties and that was about it.
In 1969, I graduated with a degree in Math Education and went off to Cedar Grove to begin my career as a high school math teacher. I had my own car, my own apartment and a good-paying job. I began to keep a case of Schlitz returnable bottles in my apartment and soon got another so that I’d always have a case of empties to take back while still having a case of beer at home.
After teaching for a couple years, I met Liz, we fell in love, and we got married in 1973. Shortly thereafter, I got a job as a bartender at a downtown bar in Sheboygan. Drinking on the job was allowed and there were many nights when I drove home drunk. We often stayed after bar-closing time and drank and ate until the wee hours of the morning, yet somehow, I always made it to work at school the next day.
At parties, I drank a lot and always wanted to be the last dog to leave. I drank to make it easy to mix with others and it made me bold with the ladies. Alcohol numbed my conscience.
Liz and I had three children. Though I was a biological father, I was a sorry excuse for a husband and father. I was selfish in that I was heavily involved with activities outside the home to the exclusion of my family. These were things that I wanted to do and I rationalized that we needed the money. I continued to tend bar for several years at a Country Club and then at a Supper Club. At both of these places I drank behind the bar even though it was forbidden by the management. I was finally fired for being drunk on the job. I made excuses and blamed everyone except myself for the hurt and embarrassment it caused.
By about 1985, I was drinking daily. It began with beer, moved to cheap wine and ended up with cheap blended whiskey and gin. It got so that I would drink as soon as I got home from work each night. Even when I was coaching volleyball that night, I sometimes had several glasses of straight whiskey or gin before going to the match. I was under the influence of alcohol plenty of times while I coached though nobody ever said anything to me about it. When there were parties, I would have a drink or two before the party started so that I could "hit the ground running” so to speak. There were many occasions when I would get hooked up with a friend somewhere, we would start drinking and I wouldn’t call home to tell Liz where I was. These always caused arguments.
I drank to celebrate. I remember being drunk from “doing shots” while talking to my dad over the phone to tell him about Liz being pregnant with our first son, Greg. I was so drunk that I couldn’t stay on the sidewalk as Liz and I walked a couple blocks to the grocery store shortly after that call.
I drank when I was sad. My mother died of a brain tumor when I was about 30 years old and we had to have a “Polish wake” at a tavern after the funeral. I used alcohol to numb the pain. It worked but the pain kept coming back so I kept coming back to the bottle. It was a viscious cycle.
I drank when I was sick. Straight whiskey was just the thing to cure a sore throat. When it comes down to it, I drank at every opportunity. Done with work, happy, sad, team won, team lost, Saturday, Sunday, cooking out, after golf, any gathering, any excuse. I drank when I was sick and I was always sick. I now know that I had and still have the disease of alcoholism.
I went to a summer leadership conference for the teachers union three times and each time was mostly a colossal drunk. After the last of these, a friend and I drank all the way home and Liz and I had a big argument when I got home.
We began to have arguments often. They would start over some other issue but would always come around to my drinking. I would always promise to behave myself in the future and usually would for a little while but never for very long. I actually tried to quit and wanted to quit several times but after a period of sobriety, I would always rationalize to myself and convince Liz that I had it under control and that I would continue drinking moderately. Moderately always turned into “out of control”.
I had myself convinced that my drinking wasn’t any worse than “lots of other people”. I rationalized that I was better than other drinkers because I did my drinking at home and I bought lower priced brands of beer and liquor. At the same time, in reality, I was drinking in a habitual manner. When I would be out of my beer and liquor, I would finish off Liz’s wine without asking her. If there wasn’t anything in the house to drink, I was like a caged animal. When the kids would walk in front of the TV, I’d yell at them like they were doing something bad. I was a lousy husband and a poor father and I didn’t think I had a problem with alcohol.
In the spring of 1987, as we arrived at Lizes parents house for Easter weekend, my mother-in-law met us at the door with the news that my father had been taken to the hospital. Upon calling my brother, I learned that Dad had been found on the floor at his home with blood all over. He had been bleeding rectally from ulcers caused by drinking. My brother explained how the emergency room doctor had asked him how much Dad drank. When my brother finally told him, the doctor explained that my Dad was an alcoholic. When my brother explained this to me, it was a great shock. I had never known anyone personally who had been declared an alcoholic by a doctor.
My drinking continued to escalate. I drank straight whiskey or gin because they were cheap and I didn’t want to “mess” with beer. Beer was fine for recreational drinking but I didn’t want recreation when I came home from work. I wanted relief from my worries and I needed to feed the beast that demanded that I drink. I couldn’t deny that beast.
Our family had been camping with two neighbor families every Memorial Day weekend for several years, and in 1987, we went to Governor Dodge State Park near Dodgeville. The week before, Liz and I had a rather nasty argument that was typical of our arguments at that time. It started over something other than my drinking but that quickly became the major focus. I made a promise that over the weekend, I would drink only beer. I did drink beer Friday night, but on Saturday, my neighbor bought a bottle of whiskey and I drank a lot of it that afternoon and evening and proceeded to act like a jerk the rest of the weekend. Liz and I argued the whole way home on Memorial Day. The next day, Tuesday, May 26, 1987, I called the treatment center at DePaul Hospital in Port Washington.
I called the treatment center because I was afraid that Liz would leave me. She had left one other time with the kids when I had come home drunk. Somehow, God gave me the inspiration to call that treatment center. I credit my father’s treatment for alcoholism for helping me.
When I first visited Dad in the hospital, he was only partially coherent. He kept telling this preposterous story about how some people had moved into his house to live with him but had systematically removed all his possessions and replaced them with items of lesser quality. He even explained that they had stolen his prized Rusco storm windows. When the nurse came to explain the alcohol treatment program at the hospital and suggested that he enter it, he declined. He said that he had quit smoking cigarettes on his own and that he could do this too. One by one, each of us begged him to go into treatment. He finally agreed.
In the course of Dad’s month in the hospital, I received a phone call from a counselor asking if I could provide any information about my father. I explained that I had not lived with him for years and couldn’t provide much help. But I did ask what I might do if I wanted to see if I had a problem with alcohol. The counselor explained that I could get an evaluation free of charge at any treatment center. I didn’t really know where to find a treatment center but the teacher who worked across the hall from me was on the AODA committee and he told me they had a treatment center in Port Washington.
So at about 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 1987, I called DePaul in Port Washington and made an appointment to go down after school for an evaluation. After the counselor asked me a few questions, she said, “Well, there’s no doubt in my mind you are an alcoholic.” I said, “I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I changed a couple of my answers?” She said it wouldn’t. She then explained that they would like me to stay for the 30 day treatment program and that my wife had been notified and she would bring some of my belongings down for me. I said that I couldn’t because I had to write and grade final exams and make out final grades but I did promise to return on Monday, June 8.
The next two weeks were very unpleasant. I felt so ashamed of being an alcoholic. My teacher colleagues would ask what I was going to do for the summer and I would tell them that I was going to enter a treatment center for alcoholism. I told them because I guess I wanted them to feel sorry for me. It was a little uncomfortable when one of my bosses even pulled me aside and confided that he had some concerns about his drinking. I explained that I didn’t know anything about alcoholism except that I had it.
Once I entered treatment, I was branded as the Jr. counselor by one of the counselor-aids. He rode me hard. One day I was sent out of group therapy to see the doctor. He confronted me with how arrogant I was. This made a huge impression on me. At the time, I felt superior to many of the other patients and apparently it was obvious.
I’ll never forget the first time I was allowed to call home. I felt afraid that they would never want me to come home again knowing what kind of person I had REALLY become. I think if I had to point to any point in my recovery when I really "hit bottom", that moment on the phone would be it. Treatment helped me to see how low I had sunk and how disgusting I had been as a husband and as a father.
In treatment, they taught me about AA and said that it was the best way they knew for me to remain sober once I left treatment. They showed me how easy it is to talk yourself into another drink if you really are an alcoholic. I learned that I REALLY AM AN ALCOHOLIC. So I decided to go to AA and stay there.
In AA, I’ve learned that alcoholism is a disease and not a moral issue. I’ve learned that I drank too much because I have this disease and not because I’m a bad person. I’ve learned that nobody is too smart, educated or socially placed to be an alcoholic. I’ve also learned that no alcoholic is more important than the newcomer and that we can all learn something from each other as long as we are honest, open-minded, and willing to become humble.
Finally, I’ve learned that if I want to enjoy continued sobriety I have to work on it one day at a time. It does not matter how long I have been continuously sober. I am an alcoholic and every alcoholic is one drink away from a drunk. What I have done in the past to foster my recovery is like money in the bank but each day is a chance to either succeed or fail. I must continue to progress on my spiritual journey if I want to keep from going back to that bum who knew he didn’t deserve to be invited back home.
Since I've been recovering, I've had some of the most difficult things in my life happen to me. In February of 1994, my oldest son, Greg, was killed in an auto accident. He drove his car into the back of a school bus that was backing out of a driveway on a foggy day. Greg never regained consciousness after the accident and was declared brain-dead five days later. I did not find it necessary to take a drink to kill the pain of losing my son. As a matter of fact, as I write this nearly six years later, I know that as much as losing Greg hurt, taking a drink would hurt me even more.
In 1996, I was asked to leave my teaching job. After 27 years at the same place, my employers grew tired of me. I gave them good reason. I did some things which were arrogant and very ill-advised. The ordeal of being "cut loose" from the only "real job" I'd ever had was terrifying. I had many resentments. As any recovering alcoholic will probably tell you, resentments are major poison for a recovering drunk. Today, I have come to realize that the principal players in my firing were simply doing what they knew was best. At the time, I was just too stubborn to admit that I had been wrong.
Today, I have a new
career
and a job that I adore. I don't quite understand how God has seen
fit to fulfill my wildest dreams but I am grateful. I have
everything
I need today and so much more. I thank God and AA for helping me
stay sober one day at a time.