Free and Fearful
"Love And Theft" Part Two
I made the choice to drive.
It was around 1AM on February 28, 2010.
I knew I’d had too much, but I was just two miles from home.
I knew I’d had too much, but this was before Uber, and Lyft, and I didn’t really live in a town with taxis.
I knew I’d had too much, but my wife was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her, and have her leave the house while the kids—then four and five—were asleep.
I knew I’d had too much, when, at a traffic signal about a half-mile from my house, I turned right after only coming to a rolling stop.
I knew I’d had too much, when, a few seconds later, my back window filled with red and blue lights.
I was arrested with three charges: first, Operating a Vehicle with a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) level over .15% (Class A misdemeanor); second, the standard Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) (Class C misdemeanor); and third, an Improper Turn.
I spent the rest of my night in a cell in the Allen County Jail.
A little before all that happened, I texted my wife and told her I was heading home.
I never showed up.
Gravely worried, she woke our kids.
They sleepily piled into her car, and then drove every possible route between our home and the bar that I’d texted her from. She was sure that she’d find my Jeep crashed up against a tree, or worse.
She expanded their circle, street by street, looking for me until 3AM, before desperately calling her out-of-town sister, who had some connections to our local law enforcement. My sister-in-law phoned around, and around, and around, and eventually found out that I’d been arrested for driving under the influence.
(The same sister-in-law later exploited those same connections to obtain my mug shot; in it, I have the vacuous eyes of a ghost.)
Down at the jail around 5AM, I finally received my “one phone call” and dialed home.
My wife wasn’t mad. She was just grateful.
I was released around noon that same day, and she picked me up.
The deep fear I’d caused her and my kids as they drove around the city looking for my wrecked car was, up until then, the worst thing I’d ever done in my life.
February 27, 2010 had been the night of the annual Addy Awards, an award competition for our city’s advertising and marketing firms. (I work at one.)
Each year, the Addys are staged under an overarching theme. 2010 was the height of AMC’s Mad Men television series, which chronicled the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency and its enigmatic creative director, Don Draper, through the 1960s. The evening’s theme was a take-off on that show and its success.
The day before the Addy event, we’d held a half-day team-building session at my workplace. Part of the afternoon’s curriculum included a vulnerability exercise, during which we each looked inward to reveal and share something about ourselves that most people don’t know. (I told my story of being terminated for theft.) Due to the particular mix of individuals in the room, this remains one of the deepest experiences I’ve ever had at work.
That day, a recently hired colleague told a powerful story about a prom-night accident—where she and her boyfriend were t-boned by a drunk driver—that nearly killed both of them. (They are now married, with three terrific kids.)
We all stood slack-jawed at her story.
Awakened, to real danger, striking so close to home.
Motivated, to spread their message of awareness.
And still, 36 hours later, I chose to drive.
At the Addys, my colleagues, their significant others and our friends had drinks at the award ceremony, then more drinks after the event at a martini bar called Club Soda, and still more on The Landing after that.
My coworkers were disciplined.
I was not.
Keeping up with the Mad Men theme, I wore a fedora as I drank Old-Fashioned’s and Manhattans.
I’d quit smoking just three months earlier, and had noticed that, nervously looking for something to do with my hands, I was drinking more, more quickly.
Old-Fashioned’s and Manhattans are not drinks that one should drink more, more quickly.
In Mad Men’s fourth season, Don Draper says,
“People tell you who they are,
but we ignore it
because we want them to be who we want them to be.”
Research shows that in Indiana, an OWI conviction costs the average person about ten-thousand dollars, all told. I found that to be about right, along with a significant amount of shame, anger and regret.
I struggled to tell my family what had happened, and I could barely show my face at work. I ached at the fear I’d caused my kids and wife.
My BAC was more than twice the legal limit, so the court really (and rightfully) let me have it.
I was sentenced to 60 days in jail, which was suspended through plea. I was required to enroll in the State’s alcohol and drug services program. I lost my license for 90 days. I got placed on probation for a year. And yes, I was required to provide a urine sample at Criminal Division Services once a week. The urine was tested to make sure I wasn’t drinking alcohol or consuming illegal drugs.
At CDS, you see everyone. Punks. Grandparents. Athletes. Immigrants. Veterans. Artists. All of us, by definition, criminals. And all of us there doing the same thing: trying our darnedest to finish off a two-liter bottle of water—which is probably our second or third of the day—just to make it tad bit easier to pee into a plastic cup, on command, under surveillance.
There were about 15 of us in my alcohol recovery class, including a prominent local c-suite executive. He knew me, and I knew him. We locked eyes, before sitting down and looking over our worksheets, waiting for class to commence. Professionally, we were competitors. But we were suddenly bonded. As the evening’s slide-show began, we each started taking notes with a CDS-supplied ‘Criminal Services Division’ ballpoint pen.
To this day, I’ll see him at city events and community fundraisers.
We lock eyes, but don’t even nod.
Once, divorced and single at an art market, I saw a magnet that said “We were together—I forget the rest.” I thought that summed up my relationship to drinking quite well.
I followed the rules of my probation precisely, but once I’d completed it, I waded back into drinking.
For a while, I was smart about it—I just drank at home. Or I thought I was smart about it, but really wasn’t—I rode my bike to The Brass Rail, drank, and then rode my bike home.
In the fall of 2012, inspired by a new friend, I got sober for about a year.
By the time I was approaching my 40th birthday in 2014, though, I was back to the bottle(s).
It’s not that I was blackout drunk all the time. I just really liked a really good buzz, six or seven nights a week.
I never thought drinking was healthy and knew I wasn’t making the smartest choices, but I had a heckuva scapegoat on which I could place all blame: stress.
Today, I know there are healthy ways to deal with stress. Running, for example, is a good way of mitigating stress. Drinking is not.
Despite all of our differences in this country, we’re really more alike than not. And one of the ways we’re most alike is that we all have stress.
Stress at home. Stress at work. Stress over the declining health of our parents (if we’re so lucky to still have them). Stress over parenting. Stress over the fear-of-missing-out; stress over comparison. Stress over money. Stress over breaking up. Stress over separation. Stress over divorce. Stress over not keeping up. Stress over keeping up. Stress over personal safety. Stress over the pandemic. Stress over aging. Stress over responsibility. So much stress over so much responsibility.
For me, it was all blame, blame, blame.
I do have a lot of responsibility.
But what I didn’t do was take responsibility for my drinking.
I thought of it as a way to feel free, to be taken away from the present moment. And one day, I came to fear being taken away from the present moment.
I woke up. I stopped blaming, and started accepting—that it was me.
That maybe my responsibilities didn’t cause me to drink.
That maybe my drinking caused me to come up short in my responsibilities.
I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol, and that my life had become unmanageable because of it.
I deeply believe that—for me—alcohol is the devil.
I found myself lucky to even be alive.
And so a couple years ago, I quit.
Most days, most times, I don’t ever want to drink again.
I know I’ve had too much.
I’m not here to tell you how to live your life, and I’m not here to romanticize drinking, either. (I already did that, I suppose.)
What I do know is that a lot of people think about this kind of thing at the beginning of the year, with “Dry January” and the growing sober-curious movements.
If that’s you, then the following NYT articles might be of value—
I Quit Drinking Four Years Ago. I’m Still Confronting Drinking Culture. by Charles M. Blow
January 2025 Playlist!
I’ve started a project, WLNP, where I share a one-hour-ish Spotify playlist each month. I’m thinking of it as my own little hour of radio programming, longing to be left-of-the-dial on your terrestrial radio.
January’s WLNP playlist is a collection of nine songs that are helping me make sense of the world right now. It’s a jam. Play it loud.
“Running the World,” Jarvis Cocker
This JC song is probably not safe for work (or kids). But it’s also probably true.
“Backlash Blues,” Nina Simone
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” The Staple Singers (Bob Dylan cover)
“People Ain’t No Good” (Live from KCRW, Santa Monica, CA, April 2013), Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
“Leaving Winslow,” Jackson Browne
“When I Paint My Masterpiece” (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, October 1992), The Band (Bob Dylan cover)
“Speckled Pony,” Bobby Bare
“Freakadelic,” Jeff Parker, w ETA IVtet, Anna Butterss, Jay Bellerose & Josh Johnson
“Piano Furnace,” Joe Henry
Thanks, as always, for reading.
MK
congratulations on yer sobriety matt
one day at a time
Thanks for sharing your story, Matt 🤍