Thanksgiving: New Spirits and Old Ghosts

Mike Runner 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.

Normally I am late turning in my column because I am late turning in my column.  Working on procrastination is on my to do list.  This column I actually did late on purpose because I wanted to start writing it on Thanksgiving.  I have a lot to be thankful for in 2012. 

My immediate family all gathered at my parent’s house and had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We all went around the table and said at least one thing that we were thankful for.  When it came to my turn, my words came easily.  I am thankful for my family, I am thankful to have had my three healthy kids with me on Thanksgiving, and I am thankful that I was not in jail like I was in 2004.

Pushing the clock back eight years and I had little to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.  I was in the worst phases of my alcoholism.  I was down at my old house along with my kids, step kids and my wife.  At the time, my kids would have been 8, 3, and a baby who was 8 months old.

My three year old son woke me up slightly before 6am on that fateful Thanksgiving morning.  A wonderful and tragic thought went through my head.  The nearest liquor store opened at 6am.  For those who don’t know, alcohol in California cannot be sold between 2am and 6am.  I was often the mini mart’s clock to unlock the liquor section, as I would arrive exactly at 6am on certain mornings.  

My thought that day was that everyone in my house would be asleep for another couple of hours and we didn’t have to be to my parent’s house for dinner until 2pm.  In both scenarios, I could drink early and certainly be somewhat sober in a couple of hours and completely sober by 2pm.  The best laid alcoholic plans.

At 6am I packed my son into the car seat and headed off to the liquor store.  I bought too much vodka for an empty stomach.  In those days, I had a pretty good idea of how much I could drink and still somewhat function.  That day I had not eaten dinner the night before nor had any breakfast.  I greeted my friends at the liquor store who were always happy to see me because I may well have been their best customer.  I bought my vodka and a newspaper and home I went.

I did not want to drink and drive with my 3 year old in the car so I drank in my driveway, still in the car.  Time passed quickly and the next thing I knew I had fallen out of my car and onto my head in the driveway.  I couldn’t get up.  I am fortunate that my neighbor across the street called an ambulance.  

Two ambulances and two police cars arrived at my house at around 7am with their sirens blaring.  The wailing sirens of course woke up my entire family.  I vaguely remember my daughter looking out in horror from her upstairs bedroom.  Much of the neighborhood was now awake and standing outside to see the neighborhood spectacle. 

The next part is slightly hazy.  I’m not sure if the police, my wife, or both helped me off the ground and into one of our front patio chairs.  I had received my 2^nd DUI a few weeks prior and I remember telling the police that on the advice of my attorney, I was not going to tell them anything.  The neighbors were watching in awe and my wife, kids and step kids were all there.  The police and paramedics asked me if I was hurt.  Although I did land on my head, I didn’t feel hurt.  I remembered something important.  

When you say you are hurt, they take you to the hospital and you can often escape jail.  So, hurt I was. 

The paramedics took me to the hospital.  My wife was, for good reason, completely disgusted and took my children to my parents and went off to one of her relative’s house with my step kids and my baby.  She had no interest in going to the hospital with me. 

Unfortunately, after I went to the hospital and they decided that I didn’t have a concussion, my plan didn’t work as I had hoped and the deputy sheriff who had been with me the entire time took me to jail for being drunk in public.  I tried to argue that I had been in my driveway which was private property but to no avail.  I was lucky that they didn’t book me for DUI as had been in the car with my key in it.

So, off I went to jail, handcuffed in the back of a patrol car for the second time in a month.  I have no need to describe the jail experience in any detail as I described the wonderful holding cells in my On Assignment blogs. 

Thanksgiving in jail is no different than any other day in jail.  No turkey, no stuffing, just the mystery piece of bologna on dry bread.  This piece was the worst ever.  One side was about an eighth of an inch thick and the other end was about an inch thick.  The usual meat jelly dripped off the sides. 

I don’t remember if it was my parents or my wife who picked me up that night.  Events like who picked me up from jail kind of blur together for me.  On that Thanksgiving, it didn’t matter.  I had wrecked Thanksgiving for myself and for those that I loved.  None of my immediate family had a lot to be thankful for that day. 

Eight years later I am finishing my column two days after Thanksgiving.  My 11-year-old son and 12-year-old nephew are sitting in the room with me playing Xbox and I am thankful.  I am grateful because I remember where I have been.  I am a free man again who has been let loose from the shackles that I never thought I could break. (And indeed could not break on my own.)

There is a very short line in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that simply says, “Gratitude is the key.”  In my life, I’m not sure that truer words have ever been written.  When I was at my worst, I am grateful for very little.  I had nothing to be grateful for, or so I thought. 

This time around, I have taken those words to heart.  It has been said that it is very difficult to be depressed, angry, resentful, etc., when you are truly grateful.  These things seem to be opposite.  I have found that like anything else, gratitude is something that needs to be practiced, and it needs to be practiced before you feel like it.  The rest seems to fall into place.

Nineteen-plus months ago when I received my third DUI, I felt that I had little for which to be grateful.  I knew I would lose my driver’s license, my job could be iffy, my wife had finally had enough, I could go to jail, and I just seemed to have a mountain of negative things ahead of me. 

That’s when I was reminded to do something that I had never taken seriously before.  I started writing down gratitude lists every morning.  I had always thought that the concept was hokey but I had to remember that my old ways of thinking had not exactly worked out so well.  So, I sat down with a piece of paper and began writing.  I wasn’t feeling very grateful. 

I started listing everything I could think of in no particular order.  I am grateful that my kids are healthy, I am grateful that I have my eyesight, I am grateful for my parent’s support, I am grateful to have a roof over my head and food when so many don’t, I am grateful for friends, I am grateful that I don’t have cancer, etc.  On and on I went until I had written about two pages.  I went back and read my words and thought about how so many had it so much worse than I did.  Things were going to be tough in my life but if I had gratitude for what I did have and for what I hadn’t lost, I knew then I could get through it.

For those going through depression, remorse, resentment, or whatever negative things you might be feeling, try this.  Write out what you have to be grateful for on paper and then reread and think about the list.  I had little gratitude for a long time and doing this exercise at the start of the day has helped me more than I can express.  Again, it takes some practice which is why we write it out and try to think of new things daily.  It works.

I saw something the other day which I will paraphrase.  It was a person saying to another person that she told herself to be thankful for certain things but she really didn’t feel any emotion or true joy behind what she was saying.  She asked the other person how she could be more grateful for these things she had in her life.  The other person said, “Imagine your life without them.”

Next week: I will write on what I decide to write about next week.