Jail People, and How I Tried to Help Them: On Assignment, Part 8

Mike Runner is our Sunday Guest Contributor, and he brings a perspective to Wings Like Eagles that is unique and challenging. 

I normally cover topics relating to the horror of having someone else bring darkness into the home.  Mike covers the same topics, but from a completely different angle.  He was the one who brought darkness to his family.  Mike is an alcoholic.

It is my hope that the perception of what we think we know about Family Crisis is shaken up a bit.  Because there is far more involved than we think.  Much can be understood by examining the other side, and I deeply appreciate Mike's willingness to help us gain understanding as he shares with us the mind as it is affected by alcoholism.

He isn't just an alcoholic.  He is an intelligent mind, has a bright, hopeful future, and he is my friend.  And this is his story.

ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 1
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 2
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 3
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 4
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 5
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 6
ON ASSIGNMENT, PART 7

Some famous alcoholic quotes:

"What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?"  W.C. Fields

"Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems."  Homer Simpson

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."  Oscar Wilde

"Always do sober what you said you would do when drunk.  That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."  Ernest Hemingway.

"Sir, you’re drunk!"  Lady Astor to Winston Churchill.  "Yes, Madam, I am.  But in the morning, I will be sober and you will still be ugly."  Churchill’s reply.

Like Winston Churchill, I’m sure that I have said many brilliant and witty things over the years when I have been drunk, but none come to mind.  I was able to do some interesting things in blackouts.  A couple of pizza incidents come to mind.  Getting drunk and ordering pizza went together for me.  I probably should write a short story called, The Pizza Escapades, but I will go ahead and give a couple of examples here.  

A lot of alcoholics get very thin as they progress into their disease.  It makes sense, money becomes tight and if you have the choice between alcohol and food, alcohol will always be the choice.  Also, a person needs less alcohol to get drunk on an empty stomach.  I always gained weight when I drank for long periods because I ordered large pizzas three or four times per week.  Get drunk, order pizza.  One morning I woke up with a pizza box on my lap and a check in my hand.  On the check, on the pay to line, I had scribbled out the word pizza.  That’s all the check said.  I don’t remember the delivery but I’m assuming that they wouldn’t take my pizza check and gave me the pizza anyway.  I imagine I caused a scene and told them that my check was as good as anyone else’s or something to that extent.  

I delivered pizza in college and I always remembered how great I felt when somebody gave me a $5 or $10 tip.  So, being the nice drunk that I was, I wrote the pizza guy a check for $520.00.  Twenty for the pizza and roughly a $500 tip.  I thought that would really make his night.  Me and my big heart. though.  The check would have actually bounced.  Fortunately, the pizza company called my wife the next morning and offered to exchange the check for a new one with a $5 tip.  Towards the end, I was on the “DO NOT DELIVER TO” list for both Pizza Hut and Dominos.
 

The third part of the drunken pizza day or night was always watching a movie.    The great thing is that I have at least 100 movies in my collection that I have seen the start of but have no idea how they end.  A two hour movie is just too long of a period of time to not fall asleep or black out when you have that much pizza and alcohol in you.

My On Assignment series was initially intended to be a 2-part series.  As I began to write it I realized how foreign the entire process would be to most people and I wanted people to experience it with as many senses as possible.  I hope that I have done so. 

The only thing that I have not discussed is jail people and what I could do to try to help them.  As I have said, I believe many people actually make themselves unhappy by trying to be happy.  Make yourself happy regardless of anything else is a common thought that I completely disagree with.  Being self centered is not a recipe for long term peace and fulfillment.  It certainly wasn’t for me.  

Being of maximum service to God and helping others was the way I was going to make it through jail.  For the most part, that kept me from feeling sorry for myself and saying, “This stinks, I am in jail,” all of the time.

There were a few groups of people in 14A.  Most of the people were young men between 18 and 25.  Most of them were there either for their first or second time.   There were a number of people between 30 – 60 who had been in and out of jail many times.  The last group was the older men who for the most part had decided that they were going to live out their lives in jail.   I talked to a number of the older inmates who told me that they should be in jail and they had never figured out how to live life in the outside world.  I found that to be very sad and wondered how their entire lives had led them to the point of giving up.  Then I remembered where I had been and how many times I had nearly given up and I understood completely.

I remembered sitting in my car, drinking, the morning after my last DUI.  Part of me wanted to give up… to stop fighting the alcohol… to just slowly die with it.  I had tried and failed so many times and my energy was completely depleted.  I knew it would be almost impossible to do what I had to do to get sober and I was just so tired.  Incredibly mentally, and physically exhausted.  Yet, here I am on the other side, writing a blog and hoping to help someone who was as worn down as I was or in hopes of stopping someone well before they get there.  Had I chosen to give up and finally just give in to my alcoholism, I am fairly sure that I would no longer be alive to write anything at this point.   

It seemed to me that the people to spend my time with in jail were the kids with their whole lives ahead of them.  I was able to tell them my story.  I was able to tell them that they didn’t have to come back.  I was able to tell them that I was 43 years old and this was my first jail stint and they had started much younger than I had.

I told a 21 year-old that was a consistent blackout drinker that I didn’t black out consistently until I was in my late 30s.  I told him that, like me, he could never safely drink again which he said he already knew.  I told him to call me when he got out and we could talk more and go to meetings together.  Maybe he will call.  

I dealt with others specifically on alcohol and substance abuse.  I told them where it would take them if they were truly an alcoholic or addict, even though they didn’t believe it now.  I told them it took me a long time to learn that I didn’t have the strength on my own to beat it, that I had tried with everything that I had, but I needed God’s help and I needed to humble myself to ask for help from others. 

As well as the drugs and alcohol issues, I found a lot of young men with anger issues who were in jail for doing something violent.  For many, it was a combination of doing something violent while they were either on drugs or drinking.  

I am fortunate that I was never a violent alcoholic.  Alcohol took me terrible places, but it never took me to physical violence like it does with so many.  I have known many alcoholics who would never dream of being physically violent when they are sober and have hit their wives and children when they are in a blackout.  In blackout mode, your brain and your body are no longer in control and I am grateful that my blackouts never took me to violence or affairs.  I am luckier than some, nothing more.  

With these men, in a manly way, I tried to get them to do what I had finally done.  To stop stuffing everything and start being aware of how they were feeling.  It’s a tough concept to get through to a person who thinks admitting any emotion is a weakness, even if it is admitting it to themselves.  I was able to get a few of them to understand that letting their emotions or anger run their lives was weak, that a strong man could control himself and take charge of every situation.  A real man has choices and they are not a slave to acting out on every feeling that they have.  None of them much cared for the idea that they were slaves with no choices.   

There were other young men who had been taught that violence was the only way to solve problems by the male role models in their family.  One guy was very proud that he had not hit someone over the head with a liquor bottle until the second time he felt disrespected.  It was the same with all of these guys, if you are disrespected, you physically retaliate.  I told them that that was a great recipe to be in and out of jail for the rest of your life.  I told them that they were smart guys and that by losing themselves to the moment, they had let the other person outsmart them because the other person wasn't  the one who ended up in jail.  I told them that if they were as smart as I thought they were, they could outsmart the other person--keep their cool, not give in to their anger--and not have to go to jail.  I told them that using fists first is what stupid people do who don’t know how to talk and think.  Again, I could see some lights bulbs turn on.

I continued this for the whole time I was there and towards the end I had a number of young guys coming up and asking me how they should handle certain situations.  It was wonderful to see the tough guy veneer come down just a bit and to see some realize that they didn’t have to spend their time in and out of jail just because that’s what the rest of their families and friends did.  Real tough guys need God and good people around them. 

On Tuesday night at 10pm, I was fairly exhausted from doing nothing again all day and I went to sleep.  At midnight, a familiar irritated female voice blared through the loudspeaker and said, “14A, role it up.”  

I was going home and was finally going to be Off Assignment.

Next week:  Grand mal seizures, strokes and heart attacks should be avoided if at all possible.