ROBERT ST. JOHN: Marching to beat of different drummer

Many businesses have been severely affected during the COVID-19 crisis. Restaurants and live-music venues may have been hit the hardest. On the other hand, grocery stores and liquor stores have seen phenomenal sales increases. Reports indicate that liquor stores are up anywhere from 27 to 40%. That’s great for the package store retailers, but there’s a high likelihood that rehab centers will be overcrowded once this is all over.

I am fortunate that I won’t have to worry about that. I have been clean and sober for over 37 years. It’s something that I don’t normally write about – not because I am embarrassed or ashamed – it’s just a topic that I usually reserve for one-on-one conversations with people who come to me (or have been sent to me by a loved one) for counsel. I typically don’t give advice. I just tell them what it was like for me during active alcoholism and drug addiction and what it is like now. With all that is going on in the world, now seems like a good time to tell that story.

I had an amazing childhood. Despite the loss of my father when I was 6 years old, my childhood years couldn’t have been more fun, enjoyable and meaningful. My mother raised my brother and me on an art teacher’s salary. We didn’t have a lot, but we didn’t miss much. I had great friends, but there was always a voice deep inside me that told me that I didn’t belong. Eventually, I started hanging out with older kids and drank my first beer – a Miller pony – when I was 14 years old. Five years later I was sticking needles in my arms because I couldn’t get the cocaine into my system fast enough. I was an alcoholic and drug addict from the time I took that first drink.

I started working in the restaurant industry at 19 and instantly fell in love with the business. I knew what I wanted to do for a living, but I had no idea how to reach that goal. I had been living with my mother but came home one day and everything I owned was in garbage bags on the back porch and her locks had been changed. She had reached a point where enough was enough. It was a tough move for her, but it ended up being the beginning of the end for me, and a blessing.

I was fired from several jobs, and moved from friend’s couches to other friend’s couches until I was finally evicted from a ratty trailer park. Without the love of a caring grandmother, I would’ve been living under a bridge.

On May 25, 1983, at 2 a.m., I was driving 90 mph down 4th Street in Hattiesburg – loaded – with my car lights off and three police cars in pursuit with their blue lights on. I got a DUI that night. Surprisingly – other than my marriage and the birth of my two children – it was the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me. I haven’t had a drink of alcohol, or anything stronger than an aspirin since that night.

Days later, I ended up in rehab in Jackson. I spent nine weeks in a six-week treatment center. I was a hard case. It was a lifesaver. When the rehab center told me that I would be going to Omaha, Nebraska, for a secondary treatment they handed me a one-way ticket, drove me to the airport and put me on a plane to the Midwest.

When I arrived at Saint Raphael’s Halfway House in Omaha – a facility operated by the Catholic Church and located in a former mortuary – I had to go through an interview process with other young clients. During the interview they said, “You have to get brutally honest with us, or we are not going to let you in.” All I had been given was a one-way ticket to Omaha. I had no choice. I got gut-level honest in that room with those young men for the first time – maybe ever – in my life. I was admitted.

I arrived in Omaha on a Friday afternoon. Once I was shown around the facility I asked if they were able to go out at night. Yes, they said. It’s Saturday night, we’re all going out tonight. Excellent, I thought. I had been living in clubs and bars for several years, though the previous nine weeks I had been confined to a rehab center. A night on the town would be nice.

“So where are y’all going tonight?” I said.

“We are going to the skating rink!” one answered with no sarcasm or irony in his voice.

“Skating?” I was 21-years old. I hadn’t been skating since I was in the sixth grade. How lame, I thought. This is what sobriety is going to be like. Hanging out with a bunch of guys at a skating rink. There was no way this lifestyle was going to offer any fun or good times. But anything was better than sitting alone in a creepy mortuary on a Friday night. So, I went skating.

Granted, I haven’t been skating since, but I am here to tell you that something substantial changed in me on a skating rink floor in Omaha, Nebraska, in August 1983. I had fun. There was no alcohol or drugs anywhere in the vicinity, and I had fun anyway. I learned that it’s not what you do, but who you’re with and how you feel on the inside when you’re doing it. It was that precise moment that I realized, maybe I can have fun, maybe I can have a normal, enjoyable life without alcohol and drugs. As it turns out I haven’t missed a thing. My life – for the most part – has been a blast.

In the early days of sobriety, I probably spent a good bit of wasted time lamenting the fact that I had the incurable disease of alcoholism. Today it never crosses my mind. I am an alcoholic. Big deal. Some people have psoriasis. Others have diabetes. Still, others have cancer. Some people rub a cream on their problem, others take insulin. Still, others take radiation treatments and chemotherapy. I’ve got it easy. I just work a simple 12-step program, maintain a spiritual relationship with God, and don’t drink.

If you’re having trouble with alcohol or drugs, you need to know that there is a solution, and a better life out there. I am free to talk anytime, day or night (601) 270-7129.