Lisa’s additional
input throughout the book.
Instead of that keeping me on the straight and narrow, it actually had the opposite effect. I hated myself for what I was doing to Lisa, and that self-hatred caused me, ironically, to drown my sorrows in booze, to party even harder to silence the noise in my head. I’d grown up in a stereotypically Irish family of alcoholics, and this is all I knew of coping with pain; people in pain drank.
So I kept drinking, and Lisa, too afraid to start the fight that would inevitably happen if she confronted me about drinking, said nothing. She knew that fighting with me would accomplish nothing: It wouldn’t stop me from going out, and it would ultimately only make us both feel worse.
This wasn’t the strong, independent Lisa I had married, the one who had struck out on her own, moved to Las Vegas from South Dakota to start a new life and had become an officer. That Lisa spoke her mind, but this Lisa had lost her voice with me. She felt responsible for my addiction by continuing to enable it, not wanting to deal with it, and sad that our relationship seemed to be eroding by the day. The only thing that kept her with me was that, on rare occasions, she saw glimmers of the innocent, ambitious 20-year-old she’d fallen in love with.
Plus, part of her blamed herself. She wondered if she should have seen my addiction coming, or if she had enabled it. After all, I had trained her to bartend, too, and she’d spent plenty of time at the clubs with me.
Wasn’t she supporting that lifestyle, even being rewarded for it? As a child, she’d watched her parents and grandparents drinking beer and cocktails, eventually getting louder and bawdier as the nights wore on. In her experience, alcohol made things fun. It had made our time together fun, too. Working together in the early part of our relationship, she reasoned, had kept us close, but could it now be tearing us apart?
The fact that we were flush with cash seemed, at the time, like a sign that we were making all the right moves. In retrospect, it only exacerbated the problems we were having as a couple. We’d leave the bar with a wad of cash every night, and as fast it came in, we spent it on racy cars, lavish dinners at expensive Vegas restaurants, and wild nights at the swankiest clubs. We felt like high rollers, tipping $50 and $100 bills like they were Monopoly money. The feeling that we were royalty was very seductive. The joy of being carefree overshadowed any doubts we had about our lifestyle.
We lived for many years in the bliss that only comes with ignorance. But we were anything but free. I was, in fact, completely trapped by the choices I’d made, and the environment we were in. I was undoubtedly in the trap of addiction. But we were also trapped by our lifestyle; we’d created such a luxurious lifestyle for ourselves that we now felt as if we had no choice but to keep doing what we were doing.
It was about this time that we saw The Matrix and drove home, silent, each of us thinking about Neo (but too afraid to admit it out loud), “That’s exactly how I feel. I’m trapped in a life I don’t want.”
The Bottom
Our lives continued this way for years, as we hid behind our jobs, our money, and our belongings in order to avoid the real problem staring us in the face: my addiction. By late 2001, I had blown through nearly all of the money we had convinced ourselves we were rolling in, and I had begun stealing money from the nightclub just to maintain the addiction.
I had skipped out on many of my responsibilities at home and at work, even avoiding work by frequently calling in sick or just disappearing altogether. I had lost a substantial amount of weight, since the only thing I seemed to be ingesting these days was alcohol; I was unable to hide my malnourishment. And Lisa and I were beginning to drift apart, because the only thing I seemed to care about anymore was my next run.
The subject of my heavy drinking and partying had come up numerous times in our conversations, and I had committed, for Lisa, to attempting more restraint. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic, I thought. Alcoholics can’t stop drinking. If I really wanted to, I could stop for a week at a time; an alcoholic can’t do that. I just liked going out and partying, having fun with my friends. We were just doing shots, relieving the pressures of work and toasting good times. There was nothing wrong with that, was there?
So sure, I’d work to control the drinking, I said. I would just cut back on the number of drinks I had on a daily basis. I created workarounds, rules that would curb my behavior but still allow me to drink. They included rules like, “I’ll only drink after work,” or, my personal favorite, “I’ll only drink beer.” But as anyone whose life has been touched by addiction knows, that was pure delusion.
On November 23, 2001, Lisa and I went out with our friends, Chris, a fellow police officer, and his wife, Jen, to dinner at the Tiller Man Restaurant. In preparation for this night out, I had avoided taking even so much as a sip of alcohol that whole week, and I was feeling it.
“What do you think about having a drink with dinner?” I asked Lisa, nearly bursting out of my skin with anticipation.
She debated for a few seconds, looking at me as if scanning to see if I was too anxious. I gave her my best poker face. She clearly wasn’t happy about it; her eyes plainly said “no,” but I’d put her on the spot and she couldn’t argue. She remained silent, faking a smile to me through clenched teeth.
I kissed her on the cheek and quickly summoned a server to bring me a double Stoli and cranberry on the rocks.
Three minutes later, feeling good and enjoying an evening out with friends, I thought nothing of ordering another round when our server reappeared to check on us. It didn’t even dawn on me what I’d done until I noticed Lisa glaring at me, her eyes full of disappointment. I’d put her in a frustrating situation – she couldn’t even say anything, for fear of embarrassing me in front of our friends. Instead, she withdrew more, already consumed with anger and dread over the inevitable binge of self-destruction that I had just set in motion. And because she was scheduled to work the night shift at the jail for the next three nights, this dinner had all the makings of the perfect storm.
SIDEBAR:
Setting boundaries and sticking
to them is a key component in
dealing with a loved one who is
in an addiction cycle. I had set
boundaries but wasn’t always
good at sticking to them. I loved
Josh and would ultimately let
him have his way because I was
afraid of what would happen
if I didn’t.
As the night wore on, my plan hatched. I pulled Chris aside to ask if he was up for a night out with me after dinner. He was. After we all said our goodbyes, Chris and I dropped our wives off at home. I gave Lisa a feeble excuse, something about “checking in on business,” which she saw through immediately but said nothing. I gave her a quick kiss goodbye, and assured her I’d be home soon, which we both knew was a lie.
Lisa looked at me, clearly seething with anger at me and, perhaps,
