D&D and Recovery
*This article includes subject matters involving alcohol, drugs, and addiction. It may not be for everyone, but it is a subject extremely important to me.
I'm an alcoholic and addict.
The fact is I drank way too much for way too long, was addicted to painkillers, and it almost cost me my family and my life. People in recovery often talk about how wonderful their lives have become, and while I honestly believe them, it also makes me wonder. Yes, my life is way better than before, but that doesn't make it any easier. Life is hard. Having to face it head-on all the time can be challenging. I understand that's what healthy people do, but when you've spent 25 years of existence avoiding the hard things in life, it's a skill you need to learn, and I'm still learning.
I started drinking in college as a way to fit in. On top of that, I loved the way it made me feel. I was a nerd for the first 18 years of my life. Being interested in comics, reading sci-fi, and playing D&D wasn't cool in the 1970s and '80s. You kept your head down, talked about the latest X-Men or Batman comic in hushed tones with your friends, and tried to avoid those that beat you up for being interested in these things.
Going to a college 500 miles away allowed me to reinvent myself. I played a couple of sessions of D&D with people I met but slowly removed from that group once I discovered drinking and getting high. It was such a great feeling for two reasons. First, it made me feel like I could do anything. Secondly, I stopped being pushed around and fought back when someone got in my face. I was an angry drunk, and I have the scars and concussions to prove it.
Fast forward to graduation. I entered the workforce in the restaurant industry, which turned out to be the perfect place for a novice alcoholic. I started off in the front of the house, wearing a suit and tie, mingling with guests, and barely controlling the dining room staff. There were plenty of people willing to mentor me on becoming a drunk. They would show me what to drink, when to drink, and how much to drink so that I could maintain my constant state of supposed bliss and still function at work. Day drinking was encouraged. Late-night alcohol was required. It was vital never to drink so much that you couldn't come to work. Not being be to hold your liquor was a major sin. If you missed work, you could plan on spending the next day in the kitchen dicing a 50-pound bag of onions.
It was also the place where I began my foray into drugs beyond pot. Not only was working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, required, but it was also a point of pride for many of us. Much of the time, we would have to be at work at 10 am and would work anywhere from 11 pm to 2 am the next day. It wasn't always that bad, and some days you only had to work 5-6 hours, but those days weren't often, maybe once a week. I once worked 23 days in a row and bragged about it, thinking it made me better than my co-workers. As you can imagine, I wasn't getting much sleep. Working that much takes a heavy toll, and much of the time, you'd need something to help you through. Energy drinks weren't a big thing yet, and aren't very effective past day two.
A little bump here and there helped you get over the hump at work and stay awake through the late-night drinking hours. The lines got longer and more frequent as the days went on, but you would eventually get a day off and crash. If you were fortunate, you got two days off in a row, so you could actually accomplish something like laundry or spending time with your significant other. Yes, I was dating someone during this time, and we were together for almost 5 years. She understood what my work entailed and was mostly OK with it. No, she didn't know about my drug habit. I did a good job hiding it, but I'm sure there was some denial on her part also.
Of course, nothing lasts forever, and everything came to a screeching halt. I lost my job. There are only so many times you can tell your boss he's an idiot or to fuck off before you get canned. You should see my HR folder. It was huge, another misguided thing I was proud of. I lost my girlfriend, who was actually my fiancee at that point. She moved out to the West Coast to grad school, returned for Thanksgiving, and promptly dumped my ass.
I started to spiral. My dad came to visit and saw what was happening. He convinced me to go back and stay with him and my mom for a bit (my parents are the most loving and amazing people in existence).
They were currently living in upstate New York. Going from Washington DC to a small town 60 miles east of Syracuse was a huge culture shock. The primary employer was a lumber mill that had closed. I didn't fit in and went out of my way to make people think I was better than them. I stopped doing drugs during this time only because I couldn't get them. Got arrested twice. Spent a little time in jail but had a great lawyer and got off both times. In my mind, though, the most significant crushing blow was working for parents at McDonald's. Polyester uniform, getting yelled at by people I thought were ignorant hicks for cold fast food, and working a job I thought was beneath me. I did this for over 2 years. To me, it was quite the fall, and my ego was destroyed.
I could go on and on, but here are the next 12 years in a nutshell. I met an amazing woman at a friend's wedding. Moved from New York to Houston and started living together. Got a new fancy food service job. Got married. My wife got a great job offer in Indianapolis; I could transfer, so we moved. I had 2 kids, quit my job, and opened my own restaurant. Ended up with 3 locations. My wife got promoted 3 times and had to travel a ton. I sold the restaurants, and became a stay-at-home dad. During this time, I would string together a few months and even a full year of sobriety at one point.
I was only drinking until my first knee surgery. There's a saying I've always liked to describe my addiction. You can pick up and put down drugs until you find the one you can't put down. Oxy was, like so many other people, that drug for me. This was back when they were giving it out like candy. I ended up having a total of 4 surgeries over 6 years. By the end, I had a never-ending prescription and would take anywhere from 300 to 400mg daily. To put that in perspective, most doctors prescribe around 10mg every 10-12 hours and no more than about 250mg a day. Add drinking on top of this, and the bottom was near.
They say when you drink and/or do copious amounts of drugs over a long time, you end up in one of three places; jail, hospitalized, or 6 ft. underground. Well, I'd been to jail and ended up in the behavioral wing of the hospital after trying to accomplish the third item on the list. It's an odd experience when you go to the hospital and the door locks behind you. After detoxing, I got out and went to an intensive outpatient rehab program or IOP. I can't say that it was the highlight of my life at the time, but looking back, it saved my life. I had a fantastic counselor who drove me to take a hard look at my life. What she taught me I took to heart. I've now been clean and sober for 7 years come December.
If you've managed to read this far, you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with D&D. It's only because I got my life together that I started playing D&D again, and it turns out to be an integral part of my recovery. This may sound odd to people who haven't had a life as "colorful" as mine. Hopefully, a few people who've struggled with addiction will read this and understand where I'm coming from.
A crucial part of maintaining your sobriety is to work your program. Many of the people I know in recovery swear by and are very active in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). Both are outstanding programs that have kept people sober for months, years, and decades. I have a higher power. I have a AA sponsor. I've read the Big Book (the 'bible' of the AA program). I've worked and completed the twelve steps once. I've been to many AA and NA meetings, mainly in the first two years of recovery. I strongly recommend that people in the early part of their sobriety utilize this program and build relationships with the people in the program.
AA was a stopgap for me. It helped drive home the importance of staying sober, but I found myself enjoying the meetings less and less after a while. I tried several different meetings with different people. I tried different types of meetings. For those that don't know much about AA, there are lots of different meeting types. There are Big Book meetings, where you have candid discussions about recovery from parts of the Big Book. 12-step meetings are group study and discussion meetings. There are gender-specific meetings, LGBTQ meetings, and so on. I’ve been a sponsor twice, but it was never the right fit, so we'd work to find them a new sponsor that could meet their needs and depart friends. AA just didn't feel like a part of my recovery that was helping me improve my recovery, so I started going less and less. I still would meet up with my sponsor once a month for lunch until Covid, then I'd check in by text once and a while. I go to a meeting once or twice a year now.
** Again, I want to make it crystal clear that AA is one of the best tools out there for many people to stay sober.**
Why would I do this? Because it didn't work for me. Everyone is different, and you need to create your own program to keep you sober. I've met people in recovery that I know I can call when I'm struggling. I go to a weekly recovery management meeting at the rehab center. My core philosophy is to throw as many things as possible at the wall and see what sticks. It turns out I'm terrible at yoga (can't relax enough), nor can I write code anymore (but if you need something done in Basic, I'm your guy). I'm godawful at drawing and even worse at painting. The important thing is I tried, and by trying, I found things to do that help keep me sober.
One of those things was to get back into D&D. If you remember, I stopped playing in college, so I hadn't played since 1e. It took a lot for me to find the courage and search out a place with weekly sessions. Indy has a fantastic store named the Game Preserve, and I worked up the courage to ask them about it. I got the information and then spent another month or so working up the nerve to go. At its core, addiction is extremely isolating. For me to walk into a room full of strangers and ask for help was nerve-wracking.
That first session, Stephen was my DM. It was loud, I didn't know how the 5e rules worked, and I could barely create a character. I was reticent and worried about looking like a fool. Stephen sat me next to Alex, who walked me through everything, answered all my questions, and provided friendly advice as needed. Also new to the table that night was Christian. He had also never played before but was excited and brought a level of positive energy I didn't think was possible.
I still play with all three of these gentlemen and consider them my friends, and I'm pretty sure they feel the same way, even Stephen.
You see, that first session introduced me to people outside the typical AA program. They didn't know my struggles, just to play a little D&D and have fun. I was rebuilding my relationship with my family. We can be around each other without everyone being on pins and needles. We could laugh with one another and explore new places. Beyond them, I had forgotten how to have fun with other people. I thought I was having fun in the past, but it turns out I wasn't. I was just feeding the insatiable beast that was my addiction. I eventually told my D&D friends about my struggles. They have always been supportive and don't give a shit about the person I was, but like the person I am today.
D&D has also provided me with a purpose. Stephen and I started Dump Stat three years ago, and we've always treated it like a job. We put a ton of work into it, follow a schedule for articles, and except for one or two occasions, have posted them accordingly. We've created adventures. We had a podcast that we had to pause for health reasons but will come back very soon (spoilers!). We started our own online store, created a ton of homebrew (OK, that's mostly Stephen), and several other things.
Do we make money? Very little, and what we do make goes right back into Dump Stat. That's OK. Of course, we'd love to be wildly popular and make good money in our store and have hundreds of patrons. But that's not why we do it. Stephen does it because he loves to create and is fantastic at building systems and making useable homebrew for 5e. It's crazy to me how he can keep coming up with cool, original stuff every single week.
As I said before, I do it because it gives me purpose. I always liked working and never realized how much I missed it. I'm too old, plus my body is too broken down to go back to the restaurant business. It wouldn't be a healthy thing to do for my sobriety, and on top of all that, I don't want to do it anymore. The drive I once had for it is gone. Writing about D&D is something I enjoy doing. I do most of the promotion and "look at us" side of Dump Stat. It works out well because I'm pretty good at it, and Stephen has no desire to do it.
I know all this may sound silly to people, even those in recovery. That's OK because it works for me. D&D and Dump Stat aren't all I do for my recovery; not even close. But it's a big part of it. It doesn't matter that I have 8 years under my belt. Staying clean and sober is something I have to work on constantly. There is no finish line, no giant victory trophy, or being "cured." I'll keep working on my recovery until I die, which now, hopefully, won't be for a very long time.
Thanks for listening.
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