When people learn that I don’t drink they want to know why. I can give a very detailed and long-winded answer, but one of the chief reasons I stopped was blackouts.

In the beginning I adored alcohol. I was twelve and had been watching my parents and their friends drink for years. I noticed how alcohol was central to their gatherings and how the mood lightened with each round of cocktails of which there were always several. I can still hear the old man’s satisfied “ahh,” as he slurped his first martini in the evening.

So, I was interested. What was so great about booze? I was an anxious, angry kid. I carried a sense of defectiveness and was often the receptacle of my father’s rage, leaving me without confidence and any sense of self-esteem.

So when a neighborhood buddy stole a six-pack and asked me if I want to help him drink it, I was all in. Somewhere around the end of the second beer and for sure after the third I realized what all the fuss was about. The ever-present ball of angst that took permanent residence in my chest was replaced with a pleasing warmth. I felt a comfort in myself and other people when buzzed. Alcohol was a balm against my emotional suffering. At first anyway.

The problem for me, and people like me is that alcohol or other substances become the primary, always relied on coping strategy. Because my emotional pain was constant and alcohol was so effective in dulling it, I relied on it repeatedly. For awhile it worked perfectly. I found friends that drank like me and who in turn accepted the way I drank. We had fun. Lots of it.

But then things started to change. Through my teens and into my early twenties my tolerance for alcohol was quite high. I could drink copiously but still retain a certain level of relative sanity. Sure, I’d be buzzed, maybe staggering a bit and slurring my words even but I knew what I was doing and maintained enough impulse control to square my behavior with my morality, such as it was.

Then, I started to have black outs. These weren’t unheard of. Other’s in my friend group would have them too. When you’re a kid there was a kind of frat boy humor in them:

“I did what,!?”

“Dude, when New York, New York came on the jukebox, you climbed right up on the bar and started dancing. It was fucking awesome!”

But then they started to happen more frequently and unpredictably and my tolerance lowered.

I’d wake up in places completely unfamiliar with no idea whatsoever how I got there. Sometimes I’d wake up outside, having just fallen out. I’d be bruised, or cut up with no memory of what got me that way. I’d get handsy or boorish with women who just wanted my drunken self to fuck off.

I kept thinking the problem of blackouts was a matter of calculus that I could solve. I forgot to eat before drinking! It was the tequila shots! Goddamn gin, I get into trouble every time I drink gin! The truth was I had no control over alcohol and could no longer predict what would happen when I started.

One morning I woke up with my head pounding and sick to my stomach, par for the course in those days. My last memory of the night before was talking to the cocktail waitress at the local bar. She was this cute young woman earning for college that I admired. She was serious-minded and ambitious, the waitressing job a stop along the way to a good life I was sure.

Given that my last memory was talking to her at the bar, I prayed I ‘d just gone home and passed out. I headed into town in search of coffee. As I headed down the main drag I looked up and just ahead there was the waitress with another friend of mine. As soon as she spotted me, her face contorted into an angry sneer and she quickened her pace to close the distance between us.

“You son of a bitch,” she spat.

What?

“Look what you did to me. You punched me last night!” She rolled up the white-tattered hem of her cut-off jeans to reveal a large angry blue-black-yellow bruise. “You need to stay the fuck away from me.”

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea. I’m sorry.” And, I was, but she didn’t stick around to hear it. She was done with me, forever, and I couldn’t blame her at all.

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember doing it, because it was me that did it. I never spoke to her again because it was clearly her wish that I stay away. I can only tell you how I felt about it. What descriptor best fits: mortified, ashamed, disgusted, horrified, terrified? All of them and then some. But the words don’t do justice to how awful I felt. Traumatizing others traumatizes you. Whenever I think about this incident, I still feel guilty knowing that what I did goes against my own morals and ethics. How could I hurt someone I liked and admired? Someone who deserved so much better from me? To myself I think, how could you?

I’ve been sober for over forty years now and blackouts are one of the chief reasons.

Today, and for very other day of my recovery I know that making the decision to pick up a drink or a drug will lead me right back to blackouts and all the pain and misery that comes with them. I don’t want to ever be that guy again.

Today I can control myself and be the person I want to be. I’m bound and determined to keep it that way.