Goodbye, Johnnie Walker

“Goodbye Johnnie Walker,” by Neil Davidson [July 1998], was an eye-opener for me. My father’s battle with alcohol began long before he met my mother. She blindly married him, and together they brought my sisters and me into a world ruled by alcohol. Although my mother is not an alcoholic, she qualifies as a drunk by association. She has stuck by my father, even when he turned into a thief.

I grew up prematurely, because of the need to act as a shield between my father and others in my family. My father is a verbally abusive drunk. When he is sober, however, he turns back into a gentle, friendly, humorous person. I wish this person would stick around.

My father has never spoken to me about what drives him to drink, or why he can’t stop. Reading about Davidson’s struggle with sobriety has given me insight into the difficulty my father may be having.

I’ve learned to accept my father’s alcoholism. Sadly, I am used to being the daughter of an alcoholic. I know no other kind of father-daughter relationship. Having offered all the support I can, I have nothing left to do but watch him rise and fall, and patiently wait to help place my father’s feet in his ragged sneakers when he is prepared to walk down the road to sobriety again.

As soon as I received the July Sun, the title “Goodbye, Johnnie Walker” jumped out at me. I’m a recovering alcoholic, so anything even remotely related to drinking will always get my attention. I was truly disappointed by Neil Davidson’s lack of courage when it came to attending AA. He showed tremendous resiliency while in treatment, and didn’t run away from there, even though I’m sure there were moments when he felt rejected. Each AA group is fully autonomous. One group may have tossed him out, but there are many others where that would not happen. I wonder if Davidson was ever tossed out of a bar. It happened to me as a practicing drunk, and I know I always went back.

I don’t know any other way to be “engaged” in recovery but to be with other sober alcoholics. Yes, doctors and loved ones can be helpful, but I can lie to them. I cannot lie to other AA members, who sometimes know me better than I know myself. AA may not be the best choice for everyone, but I can’t help feeling that Davidson should give it another chance.

Reading Neil Davidson’s remarks in the October 1998 Correspondence, I immediately thought of a friend of mine who gave up drinking about six years ago. Like Davidson, he, too, went to a few AA meetings and found them wanting. He currently sees a therapist once a week, stays sober, and has returned to college. I asked him once what keeps him sober without AA. He, too, said he realized that if he drinks, he dies. I am grateful he and Davidson have translated that idea into a firm, immutable stance.

I was surprised, though, by the tone of Davidson’s response to his critics, which was so nasty and defensive it seemed as if he actually felt guilty for not attending AA. His comment “I think it’s wonderful that these intellectually insipid meetings seem to work for so many people, but it ain’t me, babe” serves only to piss off those who take AA seriously. I wonder how long he’ll stay sober on his own with this attitude. I’m not saying he should return to AA — AA is better off without him — but if I were him I would question the need to be so smug toward people who have only his continued well-being in mind.

I read with mixed feelings Neil Davidson’s honest description of the disease of alcoholism and his struggle to gain sobriety. As someone who drank heavily for fifteen years and at the end found himself in a place similar to Davidson’s, I can truly relate to his story. I was troubled, however, by the total absence of a spiritual dimension in his recovery. Maybe he was trying to avoid writing a “smug and self-congratulatory” piece, but when I think of sobriety, I cannot help but think of the miraculous. In March 1986, I went from drinking a twelve-pack of beer and half a fifth of bourbon each day to drinking nothing at all. I went from a world of self-hatred and failed suicide attempts to a life that has possibilities. I was dead and now I am alive.

I also can’t agree with Davidson’s decision to give up on Alcoholics Anonymous because of one negative experience. He’s right: the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Having attended meetings all over the country in the last twelve years, I have on occasion observed intoxicated people in attendance — given the nature of alcoholism, it would be surprising if this were not true. In fact, when I hit bottom, I could muster the courage to attend a meeting only by drinking. In spite of my bourbon-scented breath and generally confused state, people reached out to me and made me feel welcome. Eventually, with their help, I was able to stop.

Like Davidson, in early sobriety I struggled with my writing. Alcohol had always fueled my creativity, or so I thought. For a while after I stopped, the poems weren’t there, and I became depressed. I was forced to make a decision: I could drink again and write the way I had before, or I could accept the possibility that I might not write again. I stayed sober and discovered that I can live without booze and write at the same time. In fact, I’ve written a great deal more sober than I did when I was drinking, and the results have been better. That’s because I’m truly alive, and not killing my emotions with liquor. This gift was given to me not by a high-dollar treatment center or repeated visits to psychiatrists, but by my fellow drunks in AA.