Making Amends
|
|
| 3/6/2008 |
SPOTLIGHT ON
Making Amends
By Matt G.
I took a deep breath and punched the numbers into my cell phone. This wasn’t an easy call to make but I knew I had to do it. After three and a half years in AA I understood the importance of the ninth step—making amends. I’d made my list and there was something that had been troubling me. Something I’d done nearly twenty years before.
If I close my eyes I can still see that VCR. As I held it in my hands it represented one thing—cash to buy marijuana and more beer. Instead of carefully packing the machine in my neighbor’s moving van as I was hired to do, I stowed it behind their woodstove. Later that night I broke into the empty house and retrieved the machine. It was my first theft and easy to pull off. I’d spent enough time in the house over the years to know how to get in and the Bettles were long gone to California. Sure they’d notice the VCR was missing but in the mess of unpacking they’d no doubt forget about it and simply buy a new one. Guilt gnawed at my insides but it was nothing compared to the hunger I had for alcohol.
My mother has a photo of me on my fifth birthday. Instead of brandishing a fork filled with cake, I’m holding a can of Olympia beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. My father put those items into my eager childish grasp. Maybe he thought it was funny. Alcoholism is anything but funny.
Dad was a raging drunk who beat my mother and abused our family. Mom divorced him when I was eight but the disease wasn’t done wreaking havoc in our home. It wasn’t done with me. I began my own relationship with alcohol when I got drunk on hard cider at age fourteen. Waking up outside in the middle of winter, vomit lying in pools around me, you’d think I would have been cured of drinking. Not even close. My binge drinking had just gotten started.
Like me, lots of my buddies drank to excess during high school and college. It was the thing to do. Still, inside, I knew I was different. My craving for alcohol was all consuming. A thousand beers were the same as one; there was never enough.
The summer I stole the VCR I was twenty. Bad habits and a couple DUIs aside, life was great. A forestry major in college, I landed a cushy summer job with Weyerhaeuser, a wood products company. One evening after work I rode my motorcycle to my mother’s house. She was outside, putting together items for a garage sale. I was in good spirits, antsy to have some fun.
“I’m making so much money, Mom! I think I’m going to go into town tonight and get drunk,” I said.
My mother shook her head unhappily. “Matt, wear your helmet and don’t drink and drive!”
I waved goodbye and sped off. Out of sight at the bottom of the driveway, I carefully removed my helmet and placed it on the ground. I never liked wearing the thing and frequently rode without it. Mom didn’t need to know.
I don’t remember anything that happened on the evening of June 28, 1987. What is sure is that I was drunk and stoned at 6:55 the next morning when I ran a stoplight and was hit by a Ford pick-up truck. An emergency room doctor wrote this evaluation after examining me: Totally comatose; unresponsive even to deep pain.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that I survived the following week and came out of the coma. Besides numerous broken bones I sustained a head injury. Even that didn’t stop me from drinking. Immediately after coming home from the hospital a buddy began sneaking alcohol to me. I’d wash pain pills down with a six pack of beer.
The most troubling side effect from my accident was memory loss. I suddenly couldn’t remember the names of my friends and chunks of information seemed to be wiped out entirely. Leafing through my calculus book I squinted at what should have been familiar equations. Nothing made sense. I complained to my doctor.
“I’m all busted up. I can’t work anymore; I can’t even think!”
He tried to be reassuring.
“Go back to college Matt and be diligent. Your brain needs to be exercised like a muscle. It needs nourishment.”
My mind did start coming back, even though I regularly “nourished” it with pot and binge drinking. I was terrified to fail college, to let everyone down again. I changed my major, got special help and managed to graduate in 1992. Still, no degree could keep me off the slippery slope of addiction. After a diagnosis of bi-polar, things only got worse.
There is no way to explain to a rational person the motives behind what I did seven years after graduation from college. I have a hard time believing my own actions now that I am sober and in my right mind. Because of mental illness, exacerbated by continued substance abuse, I walked into a bank in Albany, Oregon with a gun shortly before Thanksgiving. I had no intention of killing or hurting anyone. I didn’t even want money. Mostly, I wanted a way out of the life I was living. I wanted to die. Perhaps a cop or someone in prison would kill me. Wearing no disguise I approached the counter.
“Could I have all your money please?” I asked the clerk.
“Yeah, right,” she replied, barely glancing up from her paperwork.
I showed her the gun and watched her eyes widen.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes. Now remember this number,” I told her. “VXS820.” It was my license plate number so the cops could easily find me. To make it even easier I added, “I’ll be at the First Round, having a beer.”
I’d be returning what I’d just stolen so I used my own money to buy a beer at the First Round tavern. I sipped the beer like a normal person, rather than guzzle it down as usual, and waited for the cops to arrive.
It’s funny how the bad things that happen in life can be exactly what is needed to change things for the better. To get a second chance. After spending time in jail I was incarcerated at a mental hospital and started meeting twice a week with a psychologist. One day the subject of alcohol came up.
“You know Matt, I’m a recovering alcoholic,” shared Dr. B. “AA helped me a lot. Would you like to learn more about the program?”
“Yes, I would.” I took the information he gave me that day, amazed that a regular, respected person like Dr. B had struggled with the disease, too.
I’d gone to AA meetings before—it was required after getting two DUIs—but I hadn’t been ready to change. Dr. B had been in recovery for twelve years and offered to be my sponsor. With medication I could think clearly and felt ready to face the alcohol demons that had tormented me for so long.
My faith deepened as I worked through the first eight steps of AA and committed to the program. I’d come to know Christ before I robbed the bank but most of my bible reading and studying occurred while I was stoned or drunk. Now I could see things clearly. I learned that alcohol is only a symptom of much deeper problems. For me, those issues involved my childhood and family life. Just as Christ had forgiven me, I needed to forgive myself and those that had hurt me.
Now I was ready to seek forgiveness from those I had wronged. Harboring shame or guilt from past offenses can be a thorn that drives alcoholics to drink again. I couldn’t afford to take that chance.
With the phone to my ear I waited for Sheryl to answer. We hadn’t spoken for twenty years.
“Hello?”
I took a deep breath.
“Hi Sheryl, this is Matthew. Matthew G.” I heard a pause.
“Well…Matt! How do I rate a phone call from you?”
“I need to make amends for something.” My hand clenched the phone. “Do you remember missing a VCR when you unpacked your moving van in 1987?”
“Hmmm…You know, I do remember missing one.” She sounded confused.
“I stole it Sheryl, when I helped you guys pack up. I sold it and used the money for pot and beer. I hope you can forgive me. I’d like to send you some money for it, too.”
Sheryl didn’t miss a beat.
“Matt, I don’t want your money. Thank you for calling but I don’t want you to waste another moment worrying about that, okay? I forgive you.”
I forgive you. Three short words that offer freedom whether on the giving or receiving end. I hung up the phone. No drug or alcohol buzz beats the feeling of having a clean conscience, of being free in every way from the chains of addiction.
|
|
|
|