It starts young.
For me, it was at recess—that chaotic period of the school day when children run free and chaos reigns. Certain rules develop during this unstructured time—not the least of which being if you’re scared, you’d better not show it.
The fights: a pre-pubescent fist fire of fear. Every fight at recess gets broken up eventually, usually before any blood is spilled on the concrete. I learned to act a certain way to control how I was perceived. Now, as a grown man who took a few psychology courses in college, I realize that this was all part of the great art of overcompensation.
If you are scared, you’d better act fearless.
If you are worried, you’d better appear carefree.
If you are weak, you’d better act strong.
However it is that you feel, there is a contradictory pretense of behavior to keep the real you—the panicky, fearful or anxious you—from being known. It is a study in the insecurity of braggadocio. Ultimately, he who boasts best often doubts himself the most. The bully who casts fear through the heart of the playground also pees his pants when faced with real fear. The book-loving youth ditches his glasses after school to join the cool crowd. The intimidated student screams how badly he will beat up a rival so the fight is broken up before his cowardice can be seen. Something about society teaches us to broadcast the opposite of who we are.
It is case-in-point for the alcoholic or the drug addict suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction. We learn to save face, play it cool or build a tolerance to keep people from seeing who we really are. In that distance between who we are and who we want people to see is despair—referred to in psychological terms as denial. We deny who we truly are and present an alternative identity to the world.
When I learned as a teenager in health class about what makes an alcoholic, I was armed with the facts to keep me in denial. An alcoholic drinks alone? Never will I drink alone. An alcoholic takes an eye-opener in the morning? I’ll start each day with water. And while I can black-out drink to excess, if I follow the textbook definition of what an alcoholic isn’t, everything will be okay—It will be better than okay. I can drink however the hell I want, as long as I follow a few specific guidelines.
I should have realized I was alcoholic when I was drinking alone in the morning before work after college. But, by then, my education had failed me and so had all attempts to keep up appearances that I am okay.
What a revelation it was to learn that to feel better about who I am, I have to do things a good person would do. After a lifetime of trying to sound like a good person, or to look like someone with his shit together or to appear on top of my game, the simple truth that actions speak louder than words was a revelation, with deep and resounding results.
As I began my work in recovery, I could spend an entire day obsessing over taking a drink. In my head, I could run away on a drunken fantasy and make every plan in the world to skip out on life and never come back. In my mind, I could be good and drunk by the time I got off work; I could imagine the drink I would order at the bar. I could go so far in my imagination as to picture the glass in front me, and the cool sensation of swallowing. But regardless of where my fantasies take me, if I don’t physically take a drink, I have done exactly what I have to do that day. It’s my actions that will always keep me sober. Just don’t drink, one day at a time.
While this may come as obvious to some, it’s been my experience that other alcoholics have the capacity for a runaway train of thought like I do. I don’t just think to myself, don’t drink today. I think, what about tomorrow, and the next day? What about my wedding day, when everyone is raising a glass of champagne? What will I do then? Raise a glass of apple juice? What woman would marry a man who raises a glass of apple juice at his own wedding? Not the kind of woman I want to marry. What’s more, if I’m going to have just one glass of champagne on my wedding day, why kill myself about not drinking today? If custom requires me to have a sip of champagne at my potential wedding, then I might as well enjoy the journey and get good and royally shitfaced today.
I wish this line of thinking were fiction, but it is the exact course of thought I took when I got first got sober at 24 years old and heard the “one day at a time” spiel. My point is, while it is possible for me to act my way into a better way of thinking, I’ve never been able to think my way into a better way of acting.
My actions come first. They build habits and my habits are what determine the kind of person I become. I learned that to build self-esteem, I have to do esteemable acts. I have to act the part instead of playing the part. The practicing of this principle has rocketed my life into the fourth dimension of existence. Today, I have more confidence and certainty about who I am than I ever had on my best day drunk. It is the gift of freedom that I give to myself every time I do the right thing—help a fellow sufferer, show up at a meeting, be of service to my family and do my best as an employee. Knowing who I am and taking daily action to be the best version of that self is the greatest gift I’ve ever known.
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