Liars and drunks

Me, Me! After all these God-Damn years I still get sucked in.

He is 53 years-old for Chrissakes. He has been seeing me for almost two years, the length of his probation. He got put on probation for trying to hit a cop. He tried to hit the cop because the cop was laughing at him when he was staggering down the front stairs of his house screaming at his neighbors. Then the cop flipped him on his chest, cuffed him, and brought him to jail. It was his third arrest in ten years for drunken/disorderly so they put assaulting a police office on top of it. He got two years probation. He had six weeks to go.

Sure, he had some slips, and he told me about some of them. How many he didn't tell me about I can't know. He found a bottle he had hidden and slurped it down and threw up all over his wife. He had a few other such moments, but they all ended privately.

Wednesday he was in my office. He spoke about how much his life had improved since he had stayed sober. He was employee of the month. He was building chairs in his basement. He showed me pictures. He said he would never work with ban-saws if he was drinking, he would cut off his hands.

He also told me how his attitude had changed in so many areas. Last week his car window had been smashed by some punks driving the streets. He told me how clearly he remembered how angry and vengeful he used to feel. So many times he had chased people for miles if they had cut him off. He had confronted people whose car doors had scratched his car. On Wednesday he was telling me how crazy that behavior was and how he relieved he was that he had finally out-grown it. Now he could just shrug it off and remember things he had done when he was a punk kid.

Thursday afternoon I received a call from his wife. She told me that Wednesday night he had been arrested for sitting on his porch and waving bee-bee gun at people. He was drunk and screaming that they had best never touch house and car again.

They arrested him and threw him in jail for thirty days for violating probation. He will probably lose his job.

Usually, when I see someone with an alcohol addiction, and they stay in treatment, they stay sober. I have had many people who drop out and go drink, and that's it. But to have someone who seemed so insightful, so convinced and convincing, yet so addicted.

He had taken all the pills, he had gone to all the programs, he was chairing a meeting every week.

Just say "no."

You can say no 10,000 times, and when the sun goes down you take that flask out of your hip pocket and think no one will notice.