So I'm just going to come right out and say it... I'm kinda famous. Well, famous adjacent anyway.
Let me start by saying that what you are about to read is EXTREMELY arrogant. I want that to be known from the start, and I am totally aware how it makes me sound, and perhaps, I am, but it is that character defect within me and my alcoholic mind that I sometimes just can’t shake. SOOOOO, if this particular blog post offends you, you have been warned. Stop reading right now. Go no further or you will forever think ill of me. Seriously! Stop!
Don’t read ANOTHER word! I’m really not joking! Your eyes will hate you later.
If you are still reading at this point, you either really want to see the train wreck that my wife puts up with on a daily basis or a glutton for punishment. In either case, I need to tell you that I am slightly famous. Not the kind of famous that warrants a bodyguard, well not on most days, or the kind of famous comes with a large paycheck.
I’m the kind of famous where I can be walking through a parking lot, and I will hear the screeching of a car braking as the tires smoke on the road nearby. Then, hear a happy voice yell out, “Hey, My Favorite Teacher!!” from where a car containing one of my students or former students used to be while I am stuck between throwing a hand up to wave or duck for cover.
I can be standing in line at a drug store buying anti-diarrhea medication, and have a well-meaning former student or parent come up to me to have a conversation while I try to keep my purchase private. So while it is not a case of being stalked by the paparazzi, I do, in a way, kinda know what fame is like.
I am like the extra in a movie whose part was left on the cutting room floor, but still made it to the Oscars. I don’t get to walk in on the red carpet with the A-listers. I don’t even get to speed walk down the other red carpet for the almost famous people. I’m the kind of guy that is let in through a side door and asked to leave before the lights come on so I won’t be identified as being near famous people in public. And, I know people who are friends with famous people in recovery so I do feel like I’m less than six degrees from fame adjacent at times.
I mean, I’ll never be one of those people who “know people”, but I am sure I will meet one of those people who know people at some point. But, in my head, I am one of those famous people who gets asked all kinds of bizarre questions, and I feel like I have to meet a certain lifestyle.
My point in all of that is there are two common misconceptions that plague alcoholics and addicts, and only those famous ones get the sympathy vote for them. The first is that we drink and drug to battle our inner demons. I read or hear this the most when a famous actor or musical performer who has the world in his or her hand, drinks or drugs his or her way into an early grave. There is always a well-meaning Earth person who says, “He just couldn’t get past his inner demons.”
What a load of crap!
We all have “inner demons” and some of us have highly visible outer ones, but it is not the demons that keep the booze flowing. It is the disease. When I was in active addiction, I loved the inner-demon excuse as a reason for drinking.
I would summon up all of my poor, poor, pitiful me vibe, and drink to all of the pain I had experienced in the past, and play the victim to keep the booze flowing. In my mind, I needed the booze to face being me—an English-teaching, basketball coach in a tiny South-Georgia village. And if you didn’t know how hard I had it, pull up a bar stool and let me regale you with the losses in my life.
I literally used drinking to solve all of my problems. The only problem with that problem-solver is that it only created more problems. Good for my disease because I would have more excuses to feed it booze. Bad for me because the toll it was taking mentally and physically would keep me creating more demons to drink over.
Not once during active addiction did someone go on television and discuss how I was a gentle soul who could not handle his inner demons. Not that it would have been helpful for anything other than fueling another bender because someone “finally understood” how hard it is to be a successful teacher and coach.
Again, not famous, but I did get recognized in public a lot, which made being a full-fledged booze hound difficult. Poor, poor me. And poor, poor famous people who get the paycheck along with it.
The second, and just as deadly, misconception comes from the addicts themselves. The lifestyle led by tragically successful people puts them in a gilded cage of sorts where the addict side of the person is what sells, so they can’t let go and get sober. I always think of rock bands when I think of this one. It is not limited to them at all.
There exists a wealth of famous entertainers that fuel their performances by pre-gaming all sorts of substances, and then add different ones to calm down when the spotlight is turned off.
I, as silly as it sounds, had something in common with Slash of Guns-n-Roses, Eminem, George Carlin, Jimmy Hendrix, Juice Wrld, Bobby Brown, Amy Winehouse, and the Goo Goo Dolls, just to name a few famous entertainers who battled with addiction despite having amazing careers that most people envy.
I would get loaded every night the week before summer break ended and students returned to class. I would have nightmares of returning to the classroom, be unable to hold down meals and try to make all of it disappear in a bottle. Then, when I got a break from teaching, I would pour the booze on. At some point, I couldn’t be me without the never empty glass in hand. I was smarter, funnier, kinder and more self-assured as long as I could keep my liquid emotion control nearby.
I don’t know if the above-mentioned stars or others like Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, or Future, felt like giving up drugs and alcohol meant giving up the best part of themselves or not. However, I know I felt that way, and I have heard others discuss the fear that everything they are would cease to be if they got sober. Whether the first drink or drug came from a well-meaning friend who was helping a person calm his or her nerves before a big performance, or started as a means to cope with the pressure of being noticed and adored. The addict and alcoholic that I am became entrenched in the idea that I and the drug are one. There is absolutely nothing further from the truth.
When I finally made a sincere effort to get sober, my greatest fear became that I would never be the person I was again. And, thank god I’m not. Sure there were fits and starts in early recovery and my brain could not seem to keep focused on anything, but I am now the better version of myself that I always thought I was while drinking.
I am more creative and can actually follow through with the creativity. I’m able to write again for the first time in 20 years, which I truly missed during all those days I spent with a drink in my hand. The nightmares I had before the school year are long gone. I look forward to coming to work every day. The boost that I thought booze gave me was all a lie.
The longer I have stayed sober the more I question my drinking memory. I could have been the funny, kind, sometimes crazy, reckless life-of-the party or I may have truly been the slurring drunk that wobbles too close to you in a bar breathing gasoline fumes directly in your face while he mumbles something incoherent and laughs. I honestly just don’t know.
What I do know is that using the excuse of how you will be perceived once you get sober as a reason to stay drunk is a large, freshly dropped, steaming pile of BULLSHIT.
I had no idea that I would ever teach again. I was named a Teacher of the Year AFTER I got sober. I met my best friends in recovery and those I thought were friends when I was drinking have melted back in the shadows of a barroom. I met the love of my life in the rooms of A.A., some place I thought I would have died before going, and almost did. I am happier now than I have ever been.
My problems, which used to need to be thoroughly soaked in alcohol, are manageable and most are minor inconveniences. I am even better equipped to handle fame from having my face plastered across an electronic billboard. Not my plan or my fault. It was simply a result of being named teacher of the year. (Sorry to those who were blinded by my big-brother style stare at a stoplight.) And, I can deal with the side of me that somehow thinks I can compare my life to that of famous people.
The best part is I never have to duck away from former students or anyone I meet because my breath reeks of alcohol. Now, I can duck away because you know when you’re famous, everyone wants pictures. (Ignore that! My arrogance just showed up again.)
Seriously, the struggle to get sober is just as difficult, if not more so, for normal people as it is for the rich and famous. And, when we don’t make it, there aren’t always those there to talk about our “inner demons” and how we fought hard but lost. Or, how we just couldn’t walk away from the version of ourselves we created because others demanded we stay in that lane.
Whether we are rich and famous or poor and fame adjacent, what we need more than anything is help from someone who has been there.
But that sounds too simple, and it is not nearly as cool as “inner demons.”
