And Even Worse Before it Gets Better, If it Ever Does

I was going to keep drinking today,… and tomorrow,… and all weekend long.

And that’s exactly what I did. It really didn’t matter to me that the prescription bottles told me to avoid alcoholic beverages. Well, wait,… that’s not exactly true. Two of the three told me to “avoid alcoholic beverages.” The third told me to “not drink alcohol TO EXCESS,” while using the medication. Bingo! That’s enough for me. If one of the bottles told me it was okay to drink as long as I didn’t drink TOO much,… well then, shit,… I can drink. And if I’m gonna drink one beer,... I might as well make it ten. Or fifteen. Whatever. Listen,… ain’t no bottle gonna tell me what to do.

So, Thursday was beers. And then Friday was a few beers (read: nine). And, of course, Saturday had to be a few beers,… it WAS Saturday after all. And Sunday is the day I start out by reading the sports page, listening to Jazz or New Age music,… and drinking mimosas.

Oh,… I still had to work all those nights,… so all those nights’ drinking was accomplished after eleven pm. Saturday was the night it got bad. Really bad. I had had my wife’s internet passwords for some time. Email,… facebook,… bank account,… you name it, and I had it. So I, with about a stomach full of alcohol, went online. I erased her emails—that she needed. I “unfriended” a dozen or so people on her facebook account. And then I drained her bank account by transferring all but a few bucks to my own account. I did all this because she had the unmitigated gall to go out with her friends from work and not get home until after I was home from work—at 11:00 pm. Also, she didn’t answer her cell phone when I called to tell her I was out of work and on my way home. When I got to the house, and she wasn’t there, I felt a rage unlike any other I had felt in my life. So I started to drink. I called her cell phone again—still no answer. The anger doubled in intensity. She reached the driveway about five minutes later and said she hadn’t heard the phone ring. Tangentially, I have mentioned in a previous chapter, my growing and seemingly uncontrollable paranoia. I demanded answers, and she was unwilling to argue with me,… which only made me more angry and paranoid. She must have been up to no good. She most definitely was doing something out there that was intentionally going to hurt me emotionally. By the time she got to sleep, I had hatched my hacking plan.

I woke up Sunday morning with a really bad hangover and regret that is unbelievable. But I certainly wasn’t going to own up to it. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about what I had done. I would let her discover it on her own (except for the bank account—somehow, even in a drunken stupor I realized that THAT was going a little too far—I had already replaced the money I STOLE from her). I rationalized that she had hurt me so significantly and cold-heartedly, that I was going to hurt her right back. Sunday was awful. I felt uncomfortable, ashamed and worthless. I also felt utterly alone: completely ostracized in my struggles to even recognize myself and what I had allowed myself to become. I think I was still struggling with the doctor’s diagnosis of my condition. “I am absolutely positive that I don’t have this brain chemistry issue,” I thought. “There is no way I need to be put on a fucking mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder.”

I had to work on Sunday at 4:00, so the mimosas were out. I still had the newspaper and sports page, but even that didn’t ease my sense of growing doom. My wife discovered in no short order what I had done the previous night. She confronted me with it, and I denied it. I DENIED IT? SERIOUSLY? Who the fuck else could have done this, John? Do you really think you’re going to get away with something like that? So I owned up to it. And, of course, she lost her mind—quite rightfully so and completely defensible—and I drew my own line in the sand, and we argued the entire day. I eventually called off from work. It was going to be impossible to face customers and managers with a pleasant demeanor that evening,… I was fuming! So,… after I decided I wasn’t going to work,… yep,… I started drinking again.

And I continued on that trend for a few weeks. I stopped eating except for once a day (about four or five ounces of sliced deli turkey for lunch), and drank my dinner when I got home from work at nighttime. I lost weight,… at an alarming level. I had started March at 257 pounds (by the scale at my local grocery store—somehow I had smashed the one we had in the closet). By May 31st, exactly three months later, that same scale told me I had lost forty pounds. It, of course, wasn’t healthy. I looked better than I had in about twelve years, but I had accomplished all of the weight loss by starving myself and swallowing more stress than I can explain. I ate the little amount I described above,… but I insisted to myself—and anyone else who would listen—that it was a result of me being on my feet and walking as much as I did at my job.

And well into June, the mood stabilizer and anti-depressant the psychiatrist had added to the cocktail still were having no effect on my mood. I never felt any better, I had insisted. I owned up to the continued drinking of beer when I visited him in mid-June, and he explained to me that I was masking the ability of the prescriptions to provide me some sort of relief. If I wasn’t going to stop my intake of alcohol, I wouldn’t allow the drugs to work,… they were a complete contraindication.

By the end of June, I was a complete and utter wreck. I had dropped another few pounds and continued to treat my wife shabbily. I even started harping on my sixteen-year-old daughter. She had always turned to me when things were going wrong in her life to the extent that she just needed to feel safe. It wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager myself. I remembered how difficult it was to grow up,… and she knew that. I had been, until that point, the one person she could count on to make things better; I was her rock. And then I turned on her. There was nothing she could say or do to make my mood any better. I argued with her about trivial things, but the absolute worst thing I did was to ignore her. On nights that I worked, I got home late enough that she was usually in bed. The other nights, I barricaded myself in my bedroom by eight pm,… poking my head out only briefly enough to retrieve another beer. She finally said, “it used to be fun coming over here and now it just isn’t.” Mortified by this statement, I tried to make her feel wanted and welcome and safe again right after that. It didn’t work, and I gave up again and retreated to my solitude.

Then an event occurred that woke me the fuck up! Immediately! I didn’t hurt or attack anyone,… except for verbally. I didn’t threaten anyone,… except for myself. But I was removed from my house. I spent four days away from my wife and my home by going down to my mother’s house in Bradenton. The alternative, she explained to me in a language that I easily understood, was being committed to a hospital for observation. I had completely lost my mind.

I, indeed, had gone temporarily crazy.

Next time,… Something Light Before I continue.