Chapter 2 - Hi, I'm Tony and I'm an Alcoholic

Hold On To Hope: Help for LDS Addicts and Their Families, By Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone and Dr. Rick H. (1996)

A Personal Story of Addiction

        I guess I've never thought more about a statement in my life, and humbly say today, "My name is Tony and I'm an alcoholic." Maybe I can start with just a little bit of my story to let you know where I've come from and what we have felt in our home through tragedy as well as the return of the Spirit of Christ. I was born into one of the most fun homes that anyone could wish for. My dad was gone quite a bit doing church work and trying to make a living as a young father. My mom was very fun loving. They did the very best job of parenting they could. I thought they were great. I want you to know that if I could have chosen any home, it would have been the home I was raised in. If I could have chosen to change anything about my father and mother, there would have been only one thing, to have more time with them. I really have no complaints. Because my father is so high in the church, some therapists I'd see would want to find some fault with him. I guess his only fault was that he loved me too much. He thought I was the greatest and wanted me to have every advantage.
        I remember that many things came natural for me. I was a pretty good athlete. I had friends. I didn't care about school, whether that was natural or not. Everything was going along just fine. If you had asked me about life going into my senior year, I'd have said, I had a dream come true. I was playing varsity basketball and had professional baseball contract offers. I thought I had everything.
Then I did what a noble LDS boy would do; I went on a mission. My mission again was a dream come true. My mission president happened to be a general authority. I was called to be an assistant when I was out eleven months. I enjoyed my mission and converting nonmembers to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Of all the thrills I had in athletics, (like being carried off the court, making the last shot, or sitting in front of a scout who was trying to get me to play pro ball), the greatest thrill I ever had was watching a young family walk into the waters of baptism. I guess I felt as close to the Lord as anyone could have felt. It was a time in my life when I knelt down and asked direct questions and I got direct answers. You could have held a gun to my head and said, "Deny that there is a God or that the LDS Church is not His church." I could not have denied any of it to save my own or anyone else's life. I just knew the truth.
        I came home, fell in love and got married. My wife and I really had a fun first four years. I guess the tragedy of our lives came when the doctors said we wouldn't be able to have any children. Under those circumstances, the Lord made up for it. He called me to be the Young Men's President for nine years. So I had all the sons a guy would ever want, and I loved them.
        One year, on the day after Thanksgiving, a close friend and I were taking these boys out goose hunting. Suddenly, a couple of drunks crossed over the center line and hit us head on. My friend hit the steering wheel, his heart exploded, and he died. I was sitting between the two seats and the back seat broke off with two of the boys in it hitting me in the back and breaking it in three places. The engine came up and broke my pelvis, and then I went through the windshield. The next thing I remember was waking up and seeing a television set above my head that told whether I was alive or not. I heard the doctor say I had a 40 percent chance to live and no chance at all to walk again.
        I looked over and they had a bottle of Demerol dripping into my arm. When I felt that Demerol, my entire life changed. I was on a Demerol drip for a month and a half. It started when I was unconscious. I am a genetic, sociological, emotional, alcoholic, drug addict. There was a dream come true for me in my arm. All the feelings of not being good enough, of failure, of every problem that I had ever heaped on myself, were better, because of what was dripping into my arm. I felt a cure for all the pain I had created in my heart.
        I've gained a new understanding about "anonymity" in my life. It is not that you shouldn't go out and say that "Tony F." is an "alcoholic." That's only part of it. Anonymity is when I walk into the detox center, or into the gutter with another alcoholic or addict, and I am just "Tony, an alcoholic." All the money in the bank, my family (whom I came close to losing) didn't matter. I am an alcoholic. In 12-step recovery programs such as AA and SAVE, we are all the same. We are simply children of God struggling with a disease.
        Let me tell you a little about my drug use. I don't think I ever took a drug legally. If the doctor said one was good, four were better. My doctor had done some questionable things. He might have thought I was going to sue him, so he gave me almost an unlimited supply of Percodan #5 and Valium #10. I took these like candy. I honestly think if I took them now, it would be a lethal dose. I was taking five Percodan #5 and five #10 Valium at one time. People attempt suicide on less than that. I remember the night they had changed drug types on me, and I can tell you what it was like watching the death angel stand at the door and wait. That I was going to die a drug addict was one of the most terrifying things in my life. The Lord eventually blessed my wife and me with children. Not to have a chance to hold those little ones, or to watch them grow up, was like having all my dreams and hopes dying in a bottle.
        I watched my wife become a codependent. My dad came to her and said, "I think Tony's an addict and needs help." She said, "Mind your own business." I loved her even more. I loved her for those statements. What a kind codependent! I would feel like going somewhere and she would say, "You just stay here. Do you need any pills?" I'd say, "I don't think those three are working. I'd better get a couple more." I'd crack my back and learn how to move just right to get sympathy. I learned how to use people for my gain. The only gain I wanted was my drugs and alcohol. This was my goal in life; everything else centered around it, not around four little children who needed a father, or a wife who needed a husband, or a church who needed a member, or my parents who wanted a son. It was just me and feeding that craving.
        My doctor was killed in a plane crash and, instantly, my source dried up. I'll never forget the pain of going through withdrawal. One day I was driving along the road in my car and I saw a liquor store. It had been ten years since I had tried alcohol. I'd drunk about five times while in high school. I thought maybe alcohol would help get me through the jitters of the drug withdrawal. At that point I crawled into a bottle. I drank for five years without anyone knowing - I was a closet drinker. I didn't go to bars. Can I tell you of the loneliness I experienced? Can I tell you what it's like to stand in a garage late at night with a cup in your hand, shaking, with tears streaming down your cheeks, and saying, "Please, dear God, don't let me. Please stop me. I know you're there. I think you still love me. But please stop me." But I couldn't stop because I have a disease. 
        The cravings were more than I could bear. I would stop for a little while but the pain in my heart would be too much. When I was able to stay sober for a while, I'd start thinking, "Now I have to be successful. Now I really have to be a father. Now I have to really be an intimate, loving, gentle husband." Then all the fears would come back and into the bottle I'd go. Under these conditions working in the church was very difficult for me. I guess if I could have run and hidden from any name, "hypocrite" would have been number one. I felt like the greatest hypocrite that had ever walked on the planet. My father is a General Authority. He claimed I was a "chip off the old block," and he frequently said, "He is going to be like me. He loves the church and loves the Lord." After five years of drinking, one day when I was drunk and driving home, the police pulled me over. My tolerance level for alcohol was unbelievable. I thought I was driving just fine. The police said I had a blood alcohol level of .385, but I wasn't as drunk as usual, and my family didn't know.
        There was no way to hide my drinking now. The police called my wife. I remember being out gardening, when my dad came down to help plant flowers at our new house. I stood there and thought, "I have to tell him myself." I told him I'd never let him be fooled by anything. At least this way he could say he knew. I said "Dad, I got a DUI." I knew his father's history, that he died of alcoholism, that he was a mean, ugly alcoholic. (I was a sleepy one. I thought that was better.) You could have taken a baseball bat to my father and it wouldn't have hurt him as badly as those words did from me. From that moment on, I admitted to myself that I was an alcoholic. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't try to stop drinking. Not a day would go by that I wouldn't promise myself to stop tomorrow. I still wanted to be what I could be as a father and church member. I didn't want to tell the bishop and stake president and be released. I loved what I was doing in church service.
        Under those conditions, I continued along a path of incredible mental and emotional turmoil. I experienced feelings of guilt and shame. Guilt is "I made a mistake." Shame is "I am a mistake." I felt them both. I made a mistake, but I'm not good enough anyway. The other rationalization I kept using was the excuse that my father holds the apostolic priesthood. "He'll give me a blessing and God will take this from me," I told myself. I really believed that something would happen that would kick me out of this incredible craving. I lived with the emotional pain that I was a hypocrite, a liar, a cheat, and a thief. Everything I despised in life, I was. I was telling everyone else they shouldn't be doing this or that, and then I'd sneak out to my car for a drink. I'd rather have died than have been an alcoholic.
        I finally went into treatment. I went to a place where no one would know me. I tried to use a fake name but they wouldn't let me. That showed a lot of progress, didn't it? In fact, my early recovery was as bad as my alcoholism. To tell the truth, the first few A.A. meetings I went to were "Gay Alcoholics Anonymous" meetings. I didn't know any alcoholics or gays, so I thought I'd be safe there. Who could I run into? Yet, I'd go to these meetings, sit in my car, and watch every person who went in. If I recognized someone, I'd find another meeting.
        Later, while I was in the county detox center, I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. Eight years later, I'm still trying to get it into my heart, eight years of staggering because I did too much in my head and not enough in my heart. Sure, I could see the DUIs. I could see all these things piling up, but I didn't feel the pain.
        Let me tell you of the intervention that happened to me. I went to county detox. I was there with every race, creed, and color, what I would have called "low life," and I belonged there. I was no better than any one. They had lice and even worse diseases. Three of the bigger guys decided they were going to rape me. This is the best intervention ever done to me or that I have heard of. I called my wife and said, "You need to get me out of here. There are three big guys who want to rape me." She said, "Maybe it is better to get raped than drunk." That would put you back a step or two, wouldn't it? I said to her again, "No, I don't think you understand, not snuggle with me, they want to rape me." That's how my intervention happened. For she, who had never violated a code, had come to the understanding that it was better that I was raped than to drink again.
        The other intervention was God's doing. I was still in county detox and I was about to enter a treatment program because I couldn't do it on my own. I have as much will power as anyone, and I'm telling you I couldn't do it alone. I called my wife the night before I was going into the center. I said, "Please come and get me. I want to spend one more night with the kids before I go in for 30 days of treatment." She said, "Let me think about it and I'll call you back in a half hour." I went to the back of county detox and shut the bathroom door. I knelt down next to a toilet and with all the humility I could raise, I said, "I'm willing to do anything you say God. I'm willing to go into treatment for 30 days. I will do it if you will let me go home." I continued, "If you will let me go home again to spend one night with my children, if you'll let me have just one chance to lay on the bed and hold those four little ones in my arms and tell them I love them, I will do anything you say."
        An hour passed with no phone call. An hour and a half passed and then two hours. I called her back. She said, "I'm not going to come." I remember hanging up the phone. I went back and laid on the bed. In this massive room full of bodies, I thought, "Why?" The second intervention came when God said, "You have it wrong, my son. When you are willing to do anything I say you will have them for eternity, not just one night."
Let me tell you what my recovery program means to me. I thought I could do everything alone. I didn't pray to God; I checked in. I would just kneel down and say, "Thanks for this and that. We're having a great time. Let the show begin." That was basically my prayer. I can't do that anymore. My prayers now are simple. I say, "Please dear God, help me stay sober, today. Please dear God, help my children and wife find serenity. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." I love the 12 steps of AA and SAVE. You know the AA concept that saves me is "maintaining a conscious contact with my higher power." I don't have any choice. When I'm driving down the road I have to think, "Heavenly Father, what should I do? Thanks just for being here. I just need a friend. I just need to know that I'm your son and you care about me." I guess my sweetest meetings are by myself. There was a change for me. The Book of Mormon calls it a "change of heart." I no longer have desire to do evil.
        It is not that I stopped using or drinking that is the secret to recovery. The giant genius, the grandness of recovery is that I admitted that alone I couldn't, but that I had the courage, the strength, and the faith to say with God's help I can do it. Then I was willing to take other steps. These are not fun. They include doing a searching and fearless moral inventory of my life. This step frightened me above all. To admit what I really was, that I am not a General Authority's son or an Elder's Quorum President. I'm Tony. I'm an individual. I have all the possibilities and capabilities without anyone else. I am God's son. That leaves me with infinite possibilities, hope, humility, and love.
        If God had given me the choice of a disease, to have an addiction would not have been my first choice. But if He had given me the choice of a recovery people, people working a 12 step program would be the choice. If I could have chosen a recovery church, the LDS Church would be it. If I could have chosen a family, my family is the one I would have chosen. As I said at the start, "I'm Tony. I'm an alcoholic." To me it is a statement of conviction. Not that I haven't made mistakes, but I've resolved that my family need not go through the problems of dysfunction anymore. The miracle in our lives is that dysfunction doesn't have to go any further. It can stop because of the atonement of Christ, because of loving fellowships and friendships. Because we are there for one another, it need not go on.
        I guess my prayer for all of us is no longer to desire that our will be done, but His. No longer to think we have to control others or their problems, but to do His will. As the Savior said, "Not my will but thine be done."