Facebook is reminding me of memories from the past few years when around this time I noted that Allen and I went through what became known as The Lost Weekend.
We were living in Petoskey, Michigan, and on Friday, October 2, 1992, Allen attempted suicide by driving his car at a high speed, planning to crash it into the woods. Fortunately the engine blew out, and when I got home he was curled up in a ball on the couch. We tried to get him to the rehab center in Traverse City, but they didn’t do intakes on the weekend, so for the next two days we lived in that murky haze of trying to come to terms with our mutual problem: his excessive drinking and my enabling of it and my own borderline excessive consumption.
I don’t remember much about that weekend except that he spent Saturday in bed and I sat on the couch and on the phone, and on Sunday we switched places. I convinced his employer to give him a 30-day leave, and on Monday I bundled him into the Pontiac for the 50-mile drive to Munson Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. I went home, cleaned out two full garbage bags of empty vodka bottles that he’d stashed throughout the house, threw out any form of liquor in the house, and that night went to my first meeting. I got the little “One Day at a Time” book and inscribed my name and the date: “5 October 1992.” I haven’t had a drink since that weekend.
Allen came home three weeks later. Life was different after that weekend. It still is even though we separated six and a half years later and we moved on apart. But this time of year I remember that weekend as if it was yesterday, knowing that it could be tomorrow.
I remember going to an AA meeting as an onlooker. One of our employees had long term serious drinking problems that broke up his marriage to another of our employees and eventually cost him his job. We couldn’t have both of them sitting in the same room, dealing with the same customers who had had many experiences with him while he was barely sober. So we went to observe and support. It was an eye-opener for us. I’m sure there are thousands and thousands of people who simply can’t, physically can’t tolerate even a drop of alcohol even as they crave it’s ability to wipe out the reality of the day. I don’t know how effective AA actually is but it gives the user the feeling that they’re doing something to control the urge to obliterate and that in itself is better than doing nothing.
Good for you for taking charge of your life. One of your brothers has come to the same place. Both of you will live long happy lives, free of the destruction that booze can cause.