Everyone Else Is Wrong

Everyone Else Is Wrong

By Ned Wicker

It’s been so many years and so much has happened that all people are doing now is sitting back and waiting for “Joe” to drink himself to death. It’s a riches to rags story, the reverse of the American dream, and Joe doesn’t have a problem. He’s the first one to tell you, and being the gifted con man that he is, he’ll convince you.

Let’s go back a few years. Joe is an intelligent, college-educated professional. He’s one of those guys who could “wow” a potential employer, catch on quickly and move up the ladder. Along with that came financial success.

Joe had the big house, the lake cottage, the boat, the monstrously large SUV and the obligatory “trophy wife.” Think back to the Eagle’s song, “Life in the Fast Lane” and you’ll understand Joe and his wife. She also had an appetite for the good things and as much as Joe made, she was willing to spend. Along the way they had a couple of kids.

People who have all of the requisite talents to ascend to professional and financial success are certainly not allowed to be categorized as alcoholics. Heavy drinker, yes, but neither Joe nor anyone else was allowed to say he was an alcoholic. The talents and abilities that helped him in his professional life were helpful in masking his disease.

Long before he admitted, even deeply inside himself, that he had a problem, the alcoholism began to chip away at his life. As long as he brought home the bacon the marriage went along. But the disease of alcoholism won’t allow people to sustain the image very long. Things began to slide, but it was never Joe’s fault.

Long story short, Joe’s disease got him fired. He got another job, got fired, charmed himself into another job and lost that one too. If you didn’t know Joe well, you didn’t know at all that he was an alcoholic. It’s a tragedy that the very talents and abilities that allowed him to enjoy a successful professional life, would work against him in real life.

He got by on charm, charisma and enough talent, but alcoholism just turned him into a drunk. The wife and family went away, the houses and all of the trappings of the good life were gone. Still, Joe denied his problem.

The slide from the American dream to the pits took about 10 years. During that time, as his marriage was starting to go on the rocks, Joe did agree to go into treatment. The same charm and salesmanship that made him a professional success made him a model patient. He fooled them.

He can recite the 12 Steps, use the recovery lingo with fluid precision and actually convince you he’s a counselor or a therapist. He’s not. He’s a con man. At one point, he was living out of a sleeping bag, rolled up on the back of a motorcycle.

Being a charmer, he’d go to hotels that offered a continental breakfast and convince the staff that he was staying there. He knew of places he could go to take a shower, or “acquire” a few necessary items.

He had hit on his family so often that his own brothers and sisters, knowing full well the lies and manipulation that were coming, would not take his phone calls. He always wanted money, or in recent years, a place to stay. But having him around was poisonous to the family, to the children, everyone.

His brother told him not to come around and even instructed his wife to call the police if her brother in-law violated that edict.

Still, Joe did not heed the warning. He had been in treatment recently and believe it or not, actually had been given a van by one of the other people in treatment.

The old charm was still working. He showed up at his brother’s house, but was denied entry. He went back to the van and started drinking from a bottle of vodka.

Despite being in and out of treatment, spending tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, Joe denied over and over that there was anything wrong. He denies it today and refuses to accept any responsibility for managing his disease. “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

It’s the first step, and I dare say the most important step. Without Joe’s participation in accepting his disease, the efforts of those who love him, the counselors and therapists, will not be effective.

He cannot move to the next step of believing in some kind of “power greater than ourselves” or the critical “God, as we understand him” of Step Three. He never made it past Step One. He is not going to make it past Step one unless he has a change of heart.

He continues to call his brother frequently, not to ask for money but to get his brother to agree with him that he doesn’t have a problem. Ya sure, whatever. Everything has been taken away. It’s gone. Joe is still in denial. The proverbial ball is still in his court.

Ned Wicker is the Addictions Chaplain at Waukesha Memorial Hospital Lawrence Center.

For more on Alcoholism Rehab click for Intervention

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ABOUT…

SYMPTOMS…

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