(Chapter 1 – Cont’d)
Where did I Go Wrong?
3:45 PM
Two nurses quickly attach leads to my chest, the monitor is beeping and I know I will be taken care of. I give the quick recap of the meal that led to all of this, still hoping for food poisoning, but knowing better. One nurse asks me if I have been drinking today. “Of course not”, I reply. And truthfully, on any other given early afternoon, I would have had several glasses on the plane and while in the car to the hotel. Today however, was not like any other day. I have completely forgotten about all of the bourbon and rum in Phoenix I’d had between 8am and 9:30am. That didn’t really “count” as today anyway…that was this morning.
Besides, as much as I drink and with my tolerance for alcohol, that is clearly not the problem here. After 15-20 minutes of extremely close monitoring, it is determined that I do have an irregular heartbeat, but I am not having a heart attack. I am moved to another examination area. Another nurse is getting me situated and hooked up to the monitors in this area. Blood is being drawn; oxygen tubing placed in my nose and the question is asked again, “How much have you had to drink today?” “Nothing today”, I let her know. Again, I am not intentionally lying, I am just unaware of just how bad things have gotten and not really grasping the severity of what has happened over the last few hours.
My mind is struggling to keep up with how I got “here” – not just the emergency room in San Francisco 750 miles away from where my day started, but “here” as in…life. As my body and internal organs are shutting down, the details may not be all that important. I’m trying to keep calm as the next 25 minutes are filled with nurses and technicians coming in and out of the trauma unit. I know I’m dying. Deep down, I’ve actually known it for quite some time now. It’s not even the first time in my life, I’ve known Death has come for me. “I’m still not ready to go”, I think to myself, but the thought of the pain leaving me if I just accept this fate is pretty tempting. I wonder to myself if anyone would really miss me if I die right here, right now. These dark thoughts and almost accepting this fate were put on hold, as some of the test results began coming in. The results would inform the emergency room doctor and nurses who were working to keep me “here”, my internal organs were shutting down. They were stunned to see this much damage done to someone not even forty years old.
The doctor says he believes I am in this position due to alcohol. Again, I let them know I haven’t been drinking, but just then, in that moment, I realize it wasn’t just today, but I’ve been drinking non-stop for nearly 25 years…and for the first time in more than a decade, I have an honest conversation about my . The doctor uses the word “alcoholism” several times, as he’s talking to me about the plan of treatment. The word seems to hang in the air before hitting me right in between the eyes each time he says it. Alcoholism?!?!?!? This has got to be a mistake, I think. Sure, I might drink a lot and I’ve known deep down it’s too much. Heck, I even know I’ve been sick for quite some time, but alcoholism?!?! I’m NOT an alcoholic! I’m not!!!
Some tests will confirm my pancreas is dying, my liver and kidneys are severely damaged, and my body is filled with a bacteria called C. difficile (a killer of 30,000/year in the US). This bacteria infects the intestines; causing some pretty disgusting symptoms and come to fine out, it’s actually raging throughout my entire body. The reality all of this was happening due to my drinking was completely overwhelming. In this moment, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to even think about it. All I really wanted was something for the pain. I was letting them poke and prod at me. They were running their tests. All this time I’d been there, they had still not given me anything for the pain. Now, he wants to talk to me about my drinking?!?!? Still somewhat defiant, I let him know I need something for the pain. I will tell him anything – even the truth about how much I drink and how often, if he’d just give me something. A few short minutes later, they put some morphine in my IV bag and the pain is instantly…tolerable. It was not gone, but at least it was lessened a bit. Finally!!!
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I had a plan…a good one at that. I had planned to QUIT drinking on my fortieth birthday. I wanted to show people we can quit whatever we want, when we want. This plan to keep this absurd amount of drinking up until my fortieth birthday was a big part of my vision to build an online community at ifinallyquit.com – although not in existence yet. Although I had been able to hide my excessive drinking from so many people, for so long, it was pretty scary to think it had caught up with me. When I say “caught up with me”, it would still take days and days for my brain to catch up on what was actually happening here. The reality was had I not made it to the emergency room when I did, I most definitely would have died. How do I know? For starters, just about everyone I would encounter in the hospital was about to tell me how lucky I was and the transformation my body was about to go through was pretty frightening. Actually, I would not leave the hospital for fourteen days; eight days of which, I spent in the Intensive Care Unit. The ICU is by far the last place a person or any medical staff wants a patient to be. The hospital employees as a whole do everything in their power to get a person out of the ICU as quick as possible, due to the cost of keeping them in there. The more time that went by, the more time I had to think about… How much damage had I done? If my body is truly falling apart, how have I been able to function for so long? It was time to face reality, but it would still take some time…
I would lay in the ICU for more than a week, scared and embarrassed, and soon came to realize what a blessing this time really was. With each passing day, I would continually have to deal with the reality I was dying – my internal organs were in turmoil and the negative thoughts of my mind were racing. Fear, shame, and self-doubt were running rampant in my mind, as I wondered if I would be able to hold on to this second (or was it the fifth or sixth) chance? Later, I’ll reveal to you, it wasn’t just a daily struggle, but actually minute by minute, people fought to keep me alive.
Could I use this dying experience to motivate myself to change or better yet, could I motivate and encourage others? Yes, that is what I’d do, I’d show others that change and quitting are possible. But where to begin? To understand how I got to this place in life, I want to take you back and look at what I had done with my life the last few years, not just the last 24 hours. This type of mental and physical damage didn’t just happen overnight, but it had been building for years. For me to explain to you, the reader, how I ended up in the ICU in 2011, I’ll take you back to where most of this began just six short years before…
(Chapter 2)
Somebody to Love
April, 2005
La Jolla, California
Six years before I would fight for my life in the ICU of San Francisco, I was living in a pretty affluent area of San Diego called La Jolla and life was good. Not only did I have a great apartment within walking distance of a few bars and restaurants I liked to frequent, but I had a few friends in the area too. On the weekends, we’d usually start at my apartment for “pre” happy hour cocktails and…
