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Alcoholism is a cunning and baffling disease.
As a child of an alcoholic, I got involved in the program for adult children when I was forced back to Austin by my own misery and panic growing around my dad’s malfunction. I don’t remember much about those early days in meetings of ACA, but I do remember feeling love and support in being in a room of others who were also struggling with an afflicted partner or family member. It wasn’t until my dad passed during college that I became more conscious of my own “recovery” program.
Here’s what you learn.
The Al-Anon program is not about the alcoholic, it’s about the people connected to and affected by the alcoholic. And the first ah-ha moment is when you realize it’s not about them. Recovery for many of us is learning how to focus on ourselves and our help, regardless of the drinker’s actions. It is my own actions that I can control. It’s my own past and problems that I can clean up. It’s all in the serenity prayer, that I’m trying to spoon feed to my son about the current horror movie he is playing out here in the present moment.
God
Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And
The wisdom to know the difference.
Past and regrets are often the pain that sends people to escape through alcohol or drugs. I would learn there is a massive difference between recreational drug use and drug addiction. My dad couldn’t not drink, tt least not until he got sick and was forced sober. My son, on the other hand, at twenty-three is dealing with a deeper and less obvious wounding and affectation.
The tables are switched in my current narrative. As a young high school student I was collapsing into prolonged depressions as a result of my hopeless fight against my dad’s drinking. My son, “not doing drugs” yet completely fucking up has me again, waiting and working to get the other person to change. This is the first lesson. I cannot make the alcoholic or addict change. The entire choice, the highs and the lows, are up to them.
In my son’s case, at the moment, it’s a bit terrifying if his aberration is not being caused by drug use. If he’s not on adderall or xanax and yet is still passing out in his car, there may be a more serious problem with his internal chemistry and neural wiring. This is the part of depression and hopelessness I learned from the thrashing divorce of my parents. My dad had so much to lose. He tried to come back to the glass castle. He committed internally to slow down his drinking. He couldn’t do it and for the rest of his life, I imagine, he drank even harder to dispel the ghosts of his perfect family in the perfect mansion and his perfect life that he left smoldering on the shores of Lake Austin.
Today I did a walkthrough of the glass castle 44 years after my mom sold it. It’s for sale.
While I was able to confirm some of my childhood memories I did not feel any emotional ghosts walking through the weekend lake house that was turned into a show of taste and opulence. The California doctor who bought it did a full Hollywood remodel of my parent’s Wright-inspired sprawling Texas ranch house. Walking through was a bit jarring to see all of the rough-hewn cedar replaced with stained wormwood and brass flourishes. They had money, when they revamped their dream home, but their esthetic did not embrace the spirit of my father and mother’s vision. Additions were added, extra buildings (amazingly) were built. Next-door houses were purchased defensively. While the magnificence is still present, the vibe is more “I am rich look at me.” Right down to the landscaping and new 2000 square foot pilates studio on the upper driveway. They had bought the property and the architecture and then defiled both. Ah, different tastes.
A few hours before the walking tour, my son texted me something about the “police being called on me, by my mom and her fucked up husband.” It was not true. He had the hyper-dramatic mode from his mom. Turns out, last night, after he and I spent most of the evening together, he drove away from my house after midnight, and rather than going home and going to sleep, he did “other.” He tells stories. He lies. Nothing is as it seems. And in his mind, he just “fell asleep in the car” with the door open in his mom’s driveway. I’m sure my ex-wife was horrified to find her son, exposed to the entire neighborhood, asleep like a drug addict in his crashed Infinity. She is hyper-fixated on what everyone thinks. They didn’t call the cops on my son. They said the neighbors might call the cops thinking he was dead. It was more about appearances than about my son’s condition.
Oh, we’re back to that again.
When I was married to her, my wife had a difficult time accessing her emotions. Stoic is almost an understatement. Her focus is often on appearances and balance sheets. That’s how she processes life.
Three months back, as we attempted to join forces and intervene on my sinking kid, she kept returning to the money, his debt, and the apartment he abandoned to his roommate in Dallas. Those were her major concerns. It took her almost three hours to crack and show her heart, tears, and pleading. It took my son another hour after that to let down his guard and admit that his thinking and behavior appeared to be flawed. It was a moment of weakness for him. He surrendered his second pistol, loaded, chambered, and snuggled next to his dick.
Yes, it’s true, at the second time he refused to hand over his fourth weapon, a Glock, I threatened to call the police on my own son. When he pulled the pistol out of his pants I was not sure he wasn’t going to fire it just to make a point. When he pulled back the slide and poped the bullet out on the carpet, I was relieved and horrified at the same time. It was a big moment.
A few hours before I had found his “bag” on the couch in the living room. He had gone out and fallen asleep facedown on my dining room table. I gently tapped him on the shoulder as I woke to go to the bathroom. “You should go sleep in your bed,” I said gently. He acknowledged my presence and when I got up around 6 am he was in his room asleep. The bag was forgotten on the same couch where he would later unload his pistol. The signs had been obvious. His denials fierce. We had no evidence until I opened Pandora’s bag.
Without too much fanfare or shock value, let’s just say, my son was a well-equipped, well-stocked drug dealer. He had branded business cards with a Signal phone number on them. He was a “proudly reagen-tested” drug-dealing rich kid with a flair for design and paranoid skills. Of course, this part of his journey is what precipitated the weaponry and plate carriers. He was loaded for war. We thought it was just a gun fetish. It explained a lot of his anxiety and paranoia. Even the dropseys could be explained somewhat by drug use.
I sat there in horror, awe, and growing anxiety. My son was an active drug dealer bearing two Glocks and two AR-15s, and I was about to liberate his kit.
It was six in the morning. I sat exactly where I’m sitting typing right now (present time 6:35 am) and tried to contact my support network. I left text messages for my ex-wife, my son’s therapist, my al-anon sponsor, and my girlfriend who was asleep about half a mile away at her house. Not one response. I knew I was in this alone. I prayed. I wrote. I tried to sort through my options. I knew my son wouldn’t be awake until afternoon. I had time. I had fear and regret. I felt my own powerlessness.
In the same way, my dad’s dad could not get his wife to stop drinking. In the same way, I still struggle with my dad’s alcoholism. Here I am unable to redirect my drowning son to the lifeboats and swim rings around him.
I listened to some music. Kept working to unload my emotional and psychological baggage into poetry about the struggle we’ve been dealing with for two years now. My son is not well. Now, my son is also dealing drugs out of my house. His two commitments to living with me, no smoking in the house (he picked up cigarettes during his summer abroad) and no more adderall. We didn’t cover dealing drugs. It was an immediate and urgent call for help.
His therapist texted me back around 9 am. It was a Thursday morning.
“Take the bag.”
“Okay,” my mind said, “We’re going to confront this today.”
About an hour later I thought of a buddy to call. KP was up.
I almost forgot, AT&T, my carrier, had a massive reported outage in the southwest that morning. I could not phone my ex-wife. I could only text her until my computer and iMessage. KP was also on an iPhone so we were able to FaceTime over wifi even though my cell signal was dead.
“Get the guns out of the house,” Kevin said immediately. “Do it now and call me back.”
I could only find the two rifles and one Glock.
“What all was he dealing with?” my friend asked. “If he was selling Fyntnal he’s putting you and your house at risk.”
“Even as his parent?”
“The feds aren’t fucking around with Fynt, it’s killing a lot of people. They’d seize all of your assets to wrap him up.”
Back to this chair. Writing. Waiting for my people to wake up to the new world of chaos.
It was a moment for me to practice my own serenity.
What could I do? Accept the things I cannot change. We are here. Bag full of colorful drugs and paraphernalia stashed way in my garage. Three of four weapons hidden under my unfolded laundry. Son struggling with demons and potential addictions of his own. Also, I had the courage to change the things I could. My own actions. That’s all I can control. And the wisdom, in my life at that moment, sitting in this same chair, was that I was powerless to rescue or control my son. I could let him get as much sleep as possible before facing the new dawn.
KP’s advice, “Go wake his ass up. Time to face the music.” He’d dealt with a defiant stepson. “I had to physically throw him out of the house, the little fucker.”
I took my actions, secured the stuff, and began my own self-soothing rituals of breathing, writing, and praying.
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