[Printer Friendly PDF: The Last Drink]

Eventually, I'd had enough. I was lucky because that happened before I died. For a lot of alcoholics, that's not true. Here's the story of my last drink, as it happened:

“What’s wrong?”

I shifted my eyes away from my hands and glanced at my wife. “Nothing.”

“Something wrong with your hands?”

“No.” I squeezed the steering wheel hard. Maybe that would keep me from looking at my palms. Time passed and I realized I was doing it again. Looking at my palms. My red palms.

My liver palms.

We were on the way to Young Harris, Georgia. Our middle daughter, Kalli, was starting college there. Her older sister had gone there, too, so I knew from experience how hard the day would be. The college is in the mountains. Everything is uphill and then there are the stairs in the dormitory. Our Toyota van was crammed with heavy stuff we would be toting soon. Kalli was behind us, her car overflowing as well. I had dreaded this day for months. I was terrified I wouldn’t survive the day. Literally.

My focus returned to the twisting mountain road ahead of me. Trying to recapture my mind, I shook my head and tossed the cigarette out the window. Think of something else. I thought of the tires on that Toyota. Damn. I had noticed before we left home that the tires were bare. Why hadn’t I looked at that before? I didn’t drive that vehicle often, but it’s my job to maintain it. Too busy drinking and smoking when I come home to do the things I should to make sure my family’s safe. There had been no time to replace the tires before we left this morning. I would do that Monday. I had applied for personal leave for Monday. I needed to recover from this moving to college deal . . . if I survived it.

We arrived at the small college campus just after 9:00. We were veterans at this from when our oldest daughter attended the school, so we knew where to go. The midmorning temperature was already approaching ninety. Just like when I’m at work, once my mind focuses on the task, I somehow manage to get it done. Still, the thoughts of a heart attack came from time to time. After carrying the dorm refrigerator up the steep driveway, I paused and felt the pulse at my neck. Way too fast. I decided to rest a moment. I lit a cigarette. It had been a while since the last one – maybe twenty minutes.

We worked through lunchtime and finished around 3:00. We decided to drive into nearby Hiawassee for a late lunch at Shoney’s restaurant. There was a buffet. I was feeling good. I had dreaded this day for weeks and had survived. The huge sense of relief created hunger and I went back to the buffet more than once. The girls and their mother were talking and laughing as usual. I sat quietly and ate, as I generally did. When I’d had enough food, I went to the men’s room, and then stepped outside. Time for a cigarette. I had quit smoking indoors years before. Way before that became the norm. I was proud of that.

On the second puff, a hard jab of pain hit my chest. I bent over, dropped my cigarette, and waited.

Nothing more.

Just a sharp pain, then nothing. Heart attack pain isn’t sharp. That’s what I’ve read. Not a heart attack. Relief.

Lung cancer?

The first stab of lung cancer?

I breathed deeply. I felt a little prick. Not bad. Another deep breath. Nothing. I closed my eyes. I was just so tired of this grinding, never-ending anxiety. I looked down at the cigarette at my feet. Dumb to waste it. Resigned, I picked it up and took a drag. Across the road, somebody was skiing behind a boat. There were mountains behind the lake. It was a beautiful scene. I flicked the butt to the middle of the parking lot and went back inside.

And so it goes.

Finally, Enough

It was Sunday night. We had been home from the college for an hour. I was in my basement room – a combination office and den – and was exhausted from the day. I reached in the closet and retrieved a paper bag that contained a half-gallon container of Mr. Boston vodka. It’s always Boston or Barton. Back then, they were less than ten bucks a half gallon. At one time, I drank scotch. Usually Crawfords. Somebody told me that Crawfords was Johnny Walker Red, but shipped to the United States in barrels and bottled here. I don’t know if that was true or not, but Crawfords was much cheaper than Johnny Walker Red, so I chose to believe it. But, it wasn’t cheap enough as I drank more and more. I had to support a family. I had no choice but to drink alcohol, but needed to spend as little money as possible. That’s what cheap vodka is for, I think – keep the functional alcoholic family man supplied with his fix. I took a swig from the still bagged bottle. Then another. I put the bottle back into the closet and went upstairs to fill a glass with ice and water. Back in my office, I topped the glass off with vodka. For the rest of the evening, I refreshed the glass with ice and vodka, and every thirty minutes I went to the porch to smoke a cigarette.

I maintained. As I always did.

I was up early Monday morning. That was normal. I was always among the first to arrive at work. I wasn’t working that day, but I still didn’t linger in bed. Never did. I had known I was an alcoholic for years. Getting up early and readily is one of the things that made me think it‘s OK to be an alcoholic.

Just before noon, I drove the van to the tire store. Installing new tires will take an hour, they said. Outside the door, I looked at the strip mall across the parking lot. There was a Chinese place. I was hungry and queasy at the same time. Maybe food will help the fatigue and nausea. The air was hot and humid like August in Georgia is. My eyes squinted against the sun. The restaurant was maybe a hundred yards away. It seemed such a long way to walk. I needed to eat. I lit a cigarette and headed toward the restaurant. I bought an Atlanta Journal Constitution from a machine outside the restaurant door, and read and ate and began to feel better. It was good to get food in me. Maybe that was what I needed. It wasn’t.

As I walked across the parking lot toward the tire shop, a wave of nausea hit me again. I sat in the tire store’s lobby next to the bathroom in case I had to hurry in to it to puke. As I sat, the nausea diminished some, but didn’t go away. Finally, the van was ready. I paid with a credit card. I had checked the balance before leaving home that morning, and the tires took me to within a few dollars of the limit. There was just enough room left to buy some windshield wipers. The rubber had started flapping off the old ones on the way back from the mountains.

I drove to the Toyota dealership. The wipers on the van were giant things I’ve never been able to install myself. Marvin Blalock, the parts guy who’s been at the dealership during the past twenty years that I owned Toyotas, helped me install the wipers. At one point, he stopped and looked at me. “Are you OK?”

I grunted. “Man, I don’t feel good at all. I’m heading home after this to lie down.”

That’s what I did. That evening, about six, I filled a glass with ice and water; topped it with vodka, and drank. I felt better and kept doing that all evening. At ten, while brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror and mumbled to my reflected image, “Ed, you’re an alcoholic,” like I always did.

It’s back to work the next morning. I started out feeling OK, but as the day moved on, the weakness returned. The school lunchroom was serving tuna fish salad. I took two bites, and waves of nausea slammed me. I pushed the tray away and concentrated on not ruining everyone else’s lunch by losing mine. Again, the nausea passed. Later, I was in my office and the school nurse passed by. I called to her. I described my symptoms: fatigue and nausea. She said she had seen kids with similar symptoms and it turned out to be strep throat. I was relieved. Maybe that’s it. Strep. Now I had a legitimate excuse to leave work early.

At home, I turned on the television in my office and laid back in my recliner. It was good to be at rest, but I still felt terrible. I dozed fitfully. Pat worked afternoons and returned after seven. Our two oldest daughters were away in college. Our youngest, Mariah, was in tenth grade. I usually cook dinner, but didn’t that night. Mariah was on her own.
It was close to nine. Way past drinking time. I was still in the recliner. Maybe a drink would make me feel better. That’s the way it worked. Each night, the drinking seemed like a new idea. I moved to my office closet and retrieved the half-gallon of vodka, still in the bag. Anyone looking in the closet wouldn’t see the hidden vodka. That was the theory, anyway. Nausea washed through me as I moved the opened bottle toward my mouth and the odor rushed out. I knew from experience that once I got the stuff in me, I would be all right. I pushed the bottle against my lips and started to tip it up.

I stopped.

My eyes closed. I stood, bottle against lips . . . deciding. I was just so tired of this. I was just so damned sick and tired of this. I was sick from the nausea and fatigue, but it was more than that. Being sick never kept me from drinking alcohol. In fact, being sick justified it. What was wrong with me? Was it strep? Seemed like weird strep to me. I lowered the bottle. No liquid had touched my lips. My head dropped. I looked at the palm of my left hand.

My red palm.

My red, liver palm.

“That’s it,” I said aloud. A short, but momentous sentence.

I carried the bottle upstairs and out to the carport. I moved to the carport’s edge, opened the bottle again, and emptied it onto the ground. I had poured liquor out before, but that had always been in the morning when I was sick as a dog from a hangover. I would pour the alcohol down the drain and promise to never do it again. I never kept that promise, but eventually I learned how to drink alcohol without having hangovers.

This time was different. I had never poured a bottle out in the evening before I had a drop to drink. Never. When the bottle was empty, I turned and tossed the bagged, empty plastic half-gallon container on top of a cabinet that holds tools.
And, that was the end of my drinking alcohol. Just like that – except it took more than two decades to get to that moment. It was the beginning of what has become a wondrous journey.

But, the trip didn’t begin easy. It began hard. Very, very hard.