How It Works
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
…
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it - then you are ready to take certain steps.
-Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 58 [emphasis mine]
I have been challenging myself to think deeply about the motivations, vision and finally the execution and delivery of Chapter 3 Stigma. By nature, I am a fairly cautious and conservative person when it comes to exposure and action. I actually see that reflected through my own son’s behaviors in new scenarios. He really scans any new environment that he finds himself in, seemingly does a deep and thorough analysis of the situation, and then decides himself if this new space and people in his world are worth engaging with.
The concept of Chapter 3 Stigma has been with me since roughly 2019, when I entered into my last major macro-cycle with alcoholism after a 7-8 month stint of being painfully and irritably sober. The way alcohol re-entered my life was with a vigor that still frightens me today as I write this out. One of the major differences about my drinking cycle post reintroduction around 2019 was how painful the detoxes* were.
*Note - for those new to my story, I refuse to use the word hangover. I find there to be too much glorification surrounding that word and concept, so I call the time period where your body is coming off of one of the most dangerous substances what it is - detoxification.
For me, when I completed what was typically a 3-5 day bender of drinking in isolation and trying my best to hide it from everyone, I entered into this mini-cycle of hell that I intensely feared. I didn’t sleep. I would shut my eyes and stare at my eyelids, counting the minutes until I had to wake up and somehow try to make it through the workday. I had major tremors. There were mornings where I couldn’t type in my password for my work computer because I was shaking so bad. I would have to have one hand hold the other while I used a single finger to laboriously type out each word. Then there was the time at church I had to have my wife hold my communion cup because I knew I didn’t have the fine motor skills to hold it without spilling it all over. Finally, the crippling acute anxiety coupled with the inevitable crash into a depressive state. It was my own version of hell that I had created.
During these periods of detoxification, I would sit there (sometimes literally curled up hiding in the deepest corner of my basement) and wonder what was “wrong” with me? I felt so alone, so insane, so foreign to others in my suffering. I had a deep seeded idea that I struggled with alcohol, but I did not want to believe it in a large part because I felt the rest of the world had it together, so why couldn’t I? I desperately wanted to search out videos, read books and understand how to address my struggles with alcohol (yet I wasn’t ready to call myself an alcoholic… yet), but I was genuinely afraid of how each system’s algorithms (I’m looking at you, YouTube) would flood my feed with pages and pages of videos about addiction and alcohol, and I didn’t want that. I just wanted to know that I was not alone and to be able to begin my healing journey.
Yet, that soft entry into accepting myself as an addict didn’t exist, or at least I could not find it. So I went the hard and extreme route… you know, tried to take my own life with alcohol, went to a 28 day inpatient rehab facility and did continued intensive therapy following my stint in rehab. This really disrupted my life, but in a manner that I needed and which saved my life. In the time since my entry into recovery, this concept of a soft entry for others to enter into recovery has not left my mind. Not everyone should have to go to the extremes that I did to accept themselves as an addict or an alcoholic. I believe Chapter 3 Stigma can be that soft entry that an alcoholic like myself needed in my lowest times.
At its core, the vision of Chapter 3 Stigma is simple. To communicate and facilitate to the potential struggling addict that -
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
You are not alone in your thought patterns.
You are not alone in the way you behave.
You are not alone in fighting what feels like a constant losing battle.
You are not alone feeling that life is not worth living.
I was set free from the inner turmoil I had with my addiction and how it manifested in my life when I sat across a table from a cocaine addict and alcoholic and heard his story. I found out that while he and I were certainly different from an outside-looking-in perspective, our behaviors and thought patterns were nearly identical. I could practically complete his sentences for him. It made me realize that the loneliness and isolation that I felt in my battle with alcohol was me misunderstanding that I was the only single person in the world who thought and behaved the way that I had.
Through the various channels and methods of communication available, I will offer up my story to the struggling alcoholic or addict to do my best to convey my mental patterns, my behaviors and my emotions when I was in the most difficult parts of my battle with alcoholism. As you’ll see in my story, I believe that alcoholism is a gift given to all us alcoholics to prepare us for the real purpose in our lives. As an alcoholic, you will never be freed of the addict inside of you, but you can learn to live with you addiction and use it and its lessons in an unbelievably powerful way.
Welcome to the Chapter 3 Stigma. I am glad you are here. Know that you are loved, cared for and not alone. You have the opportunity to create a wonderful, beautiful and meaningful life.