Since meeting Jenny over a year ago, we’ve had too many conversations to count about what makes life better. More truthful. More honest. More open. More giving. More fulfilling. A common thread in our conversations are the many inhibitors in life that can get in the way of finding life fulfillment. One of the most important keys to life fulfillment is to be the best human being that you can be. While that sounds so easy in a sense, life has a way of throwing an astonishing array of roadblocks and distractions in the way of accomplishing that. For Jenny and I, inhibitors have included abusive relationships and codependency. For myself, an inhibitor has been alcoholism.
I have a long relationship with beer. I grew up in a small Midwestern Volga-German town where drinking beer was a hallmark of respectable socializing from age 13 until your death. Birthdays, weddings, family reunions, funerals, biergartens and Oktoberfest. On weekends we drank beer while we drove our cars along the main drag, at least until we figured out where the party was at. Our uncles and grandfathers sang songs about beer while grandmothers spun grandsons around the polka dance floor. The Catholic priest danced, drank beer, and sang along.
In heaven there ain’t no beer
That’s why we drink it here
And when we’re gone from here
Our friends will drink all of the beer!
As I grew into adulthood, I found that beer was with me on my most memorable adventures. In Korea I explored the Songtan bar district and learned to order beer in Korean, “OB hana juseyo!” San Miguel on the beach in the Philippines. Biergartens in Munich. Craft beer from a shipping container on an Andean slope in Peru. I drank Angkor beer at Angkor Wat. Bia Hoi in Hanoi. Asahi on Asahi-dake. My literary heroes Kerouac, Bukowski, and Hemingway famously consumed copious amounts of the golden elixir. Bukowski often said he could only write while intoxicated. While I was kind, intelligent, and hardworking while sober, I was incredible with beer. Sober Eric was shy, quiet, and reflective. Drunk Eric was engaging, adventurous, and fearless. With sober Eric you might find yourself engaged in a discussion about racist socioeconomic structures or European colonial history. With drunk Eric you might find yourself crammed into the backseat of a pimp’s Cadillac holding a stolen chicken enroute to a Cambodian karaoke bar. Sober Eric was a great guy to work with and a great father, but drunk Eric was who everyone really wanted to hang out with. Even my ex-wife found sober Eric a bore to be with.
I also have a long relationship with alcoholism. My father was a violent alcoholic. My earliest memories are of him stumbling through the door, hair and clothes disheveled, beer on his breath. He’d yell at my mother barely intelligible, demanding that his dinner be delivered to his Lazy Boy recliner. She would retrieve his prepared plate from the microwave and we’d wait. Would he quietly eat his food, drunkenly guiding each wavering spoonful to his gullet? Would he voice dissatisfaction with the food or even throw his plate against the wall? Would he pass out before taking a bite, a full plate of spaghetti spilled in his lap?
When I was 13 or 14, my father voluntarily entered alcohol rehab. During his last week of treatment, my mother piled the four children into the Sedan De Ville and shuttled us to the daily family counseling sessions. I received my first formal education on substance abuse and dependency. But the rehab wouldn’t stick and my father resumed his drinking. Despite his abuse, I loved him and even blamed my mother for his drinking. As I grew into adulthood, I drank with him. He and drunk Eric were great together, drinking 50 peso liters of Filipino rum and singing karaoke. But as with all the most entertaining drinkers, the few hours of colorful beer-soaked conversation and song were fleeting and the sober moments increasingly tragic. Late in life my father was drinking himself unconscious twice or three times daily, sober only for the few minutes it took to awake from his sleep, sit up in bed, and fix himself another drink. After age 65 he deteriorated at a rapid pace, deformed alcoholic nose, yellow skin, a lingering smell of death.
In recent years, I started to realize my moments of drunken joy increasingly fleeting. I started to find stories of drunk Eric old and tiring, never really accomplishing anything other than stories for the next round of drinks. While being drunk Eric, I found fleeting moments of joy and energy but the next day only malaise and dissatisfaction with how little I had accomplished last night and how I will accomplish nothing today. While drinking I imagined myself being creative like Kerouac or Bukowski but never awoke to a finished work worth sharing nor the energy to create one. I eventually found myself trapped in a daily ritual of buying a six-pack of beer, having this feeling of happiness and productivity while I drank the beer, and then awaking the next day feeling malaise, dissatisfaction, and nonproductive. While I had long known I was an alcoholic, I was now increasingly having feelings of depression and regret related to my drinking habits.
After meeting Jenny, things started to change. Our best conversations were over a cup of coffee in the morning rather than a glass of wine at night. Our best days were on a hike or a motorcycle ride or reading a book as opposed to the days after drinking, pondering all the things we could be doing had we not drank so much last night. Jenny found sober Eric at least as energetic and engaging as drunk Eric without the cost of lost, unproductive days. Of course we all essentially know what makes drunk people so interesting as opposed to their sober counterparts. Alcohol erases inhibition. But perhaps more importantly, drunk people are really only entertaining to other drunk people. With Jenny I found someone with whom I could be completely candid and who found me genuinely interesting all of the time.
Today marks 6 months free from alcohol and I found it to be one of the easiest and most natural things I’ve ever done. Sober Eric is full of energy and thriving, reading so many books that had previously collected on the nightstand, dusting off projects for years set aside, and learning new interesting things every day. We’ve found fascinating new friends who are more interesting sober than they could ever be drunk. We have more fulfilling adventures more often. And Jenny was the key. Jenny provided me shelter and comfort, a safe space to learn, to communicate, to ruminate. A place more fulfilling, entertaining, and energetic when experienced sober. A refuge.