People get sober in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they just quit on their own. Sometimes they go to rehab. They show up in 12-step rooms, ashrams, churches and their parents’ basements. There is no one right way—something we’ve aimed to show in our collection of How I Got Sober stories. While we initially published these as either first person essays by our contributors or as interviews with anonymous sober folks, we eventually began to realize that there were other stories to tell: yours. This is our reader spotlight and this, more specifically, is Anthony.
(We’ve broken Anthony’s story into three parts; check back next week for part two.)
Click here to see all of our How I Got Sober stories
What is your sobriety date?
June 27th, 2010
Where did you get sober?
Los Angeles
When did you first start drinking?
Freshman year of college, 1996.
How would you describe your life before you quit drinking?
My life before I quit drinking was lonely. No one really wanted to drink with me, and I’d often have to invite myself to hang out with people. Most of the time though, I was content sitting at home, in front of my computer, listening to music, smoking cigarettes and getting drunk. If I wanted company, I’d go to the local bars when a sports event was on, and buddy up with people there. I’d oftentimes buy people drinks so they would hang out with me. I didn’t have a way to stop drinking, and I kept reaching out to people so they’d see my condition and try to help me stop, but no one was really there. I was worried about my health; I wasn’t sure how much longer I had, living the way I did.
What was your childhood like?
Growing up in my house was a challenge. My mother worked away from home as a pharmacist, and my father worked his insurance company out of the basement of our house. He was very unpredictable and was prone to fits of rage towards me, and beatings came pretty regularly. I was too young to know how often, but it was enough to put me in a constant state of fear and stress. His reasons for hitting me was more out of his own life problems more than it was my actions, but I didn’t know that at the time. So my sense of being “good” and being “bad” were warped (most of the time I assumed I was being bad).
My father, however, had a big heart, and could be pleasant and often gushing with his love for my brother, mother and I. It was nice and created a foundation of love and affection, but there was a strong undercurrent of the rage and beatings which could appear at any moment.
As an adult, this lack of trust in people, that the worst can come out of them in any moment, has put a strain on my current friendships and relationships.
When did you start drinking?
I was a goody two-shoes. I didn’t use drugs or alcohol; I was an athlete and wanted to be scholarly and creative as well. I wanted everyone to see what a good kid I was, how hard I tried to be what everyone expected. At the same time, I wanted to be an independent spirit, but I didn’t quite grasp what that meant. I was good at being “good” and I enjoyed the attention it awarded me. I remember having big dreams of being a productive member of society. I wanted to be a youth football coach and help the homeless when I got older, and at the same time be an award winning actor, director and writer.
Early in my teen years, I became very depressed about who I was and the person I was becoming. My relationship with my father strained when the State’s Child Services was called in to talk to him about how he treated me (after a friend had witnessed him beating me at a pool party). He told the State Child Services that he only disciplined me when I was “bad,” and never hit me for any other reason. My mother recently revealed to me that she stood by and knew he was lying to them, but she said nothing. There were times she stood in the way, and there were times she let things slide. I can’t go back and change the past, but I wish this was one of the times she stood in the way. I guess she didn’t have the strength in her.
By freshman year, I joined the football team because my father was a star football player in high school and I wanted to impress him, because he had become my Higher Power. I quit the band (I was a trumpet player) and joined the team, and I wasn’t very good. I often doubted myself and felt out of place. I stuck with it, however, for four years. I used this as an excuse why I never drank or used drugs to the kids at school, but truly believe now that it was a cover for my father’s mental grip on my psyche to not “misbehave.”
On the football field, I was prone to outward depressive behaviors such as hitting myself on the head and punching myself in the face when I messed up on a play. The coaches often joked they would see me swinging by my neck from the uprights one day, and I wanted that to be true. I had many fantasies about committing suicide publicly for the school to see. I started to fight back at my father, often hitting him and threatening suicide.
We went to see our minister at church for counseling, but that did very little to stop the tension between my father and I. What it did do, is create a basis for my faith in a Higher Power, because our minister, Bill, really spoke my language. He smoked, swore, was an ex-atheist and didn’t really hold any kind of strong grip on uptight adulthood that my parents or teachers had. It allowed me to see that some men could be of faith, and still speak to kids without shame or judgment. During this time, I was paired up with another kid, Donny, who I had known through the church for years, who had tried to commit suicide. I had only threatened it, and cut my arm with scissors a few times. Donny, however, was found in a running car in his garage and saved by the skin of his teeth. He was the real deal, and I remembered wanting to get to that kind of depression. The kind where there was no turning back.
My senior year, I became captain of the football team and my Dad became mayor of my hometown. There was a lot of pressure to conform and I felt it. I didn’t drink or do drugs. If anything, I helped kids not drink and drive by chauffeuring friends to and from parties. Didn’t matter though, I still had the fear of God in me whenever I left the house. I would always be guilty. I felt less-than, different and weird. I had no self-confidence and thought that I deserved to be alone.
By the summer of my senior year of high school to my freshman year of college, I smoked weed for the first time, out of a gravity bong. My head exploded. I never laughed so hard in my life. I was able to let loose and allow myself to say whatever I wanted to.
When the next morning came, however, I told myself that it was a one-time thing. Around October of my freshman year, I started entertaining the idea of maybe going to a party. I remember standing in line at a keg, waiting for my first beer. I was so nervous, my hand was shaking uncontrollably. My plastic cup got filled with a rush of white and gold foamy beer, and it went down my throat just as quick. Before I knew it I was asking for another. By the second beer, I could barely stand up straight. I remember making a lot of friends, talking very easily to girls which I had never been able to do. This stuff was magic. I was a changed man.
After that I asked my friends if I could go out with them every weekend. I managed a very good balancing act with my academics and my alcohol. It was important that my parents and family see that I was doing my best with my school work and their money wasn’t being washed down the drain. This would be the basis of my existence for the next four years.
Check back next week for part two.
Click here to see all of our How I Got Sober stories.
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