You Can Choose Your Bottom

I’m Todd.  I’m an alcoholic.

My parents were both the first—and only—people in their respective families to go to college. Not just college: professional degrees. They worked their asses off and built a legitimately good life. Dad had a thriving accounting practice. Mom was a nurse until she had me, then she stayed home and played a lot of tennis. We had a large suburban house, the club memberships, a beach condo, and a lake place. From the outside, it looked like a clean, stable upper-middle class win.

My dad’s drinking, though, led to the kind of trouble that quietly destroys a family’s foundation: broken trust, chaos, bad decisions.  In my dad’s case, it also led to unpaid income taxes and financial implosion. We lost most of the trappings of the good life. So whether I wanted it or not, alcoholism was a central theme from early on. I didn’t grow up afraid of alcohol, necessarily, but did get to see what it does when it’s in charge.

Dad sobered up in 1980 and mom stuck it out.  Despite the hardship, they put my brother and me first. I got a great Catholic high school education. I did well academically and athletically. There was drinking, sure, but nothing that would’ve stood out in my environment. I was intrigued by alcohol, but I wasn’t “that guy,” yet.

I worked my way to Washington & Lee, played baseball and got good grades.  I also found a crowd where drinking and drugging weren’t a weekend hobby—they were a culture. Here’s the part that tricked me for years, though: I didn’t look like the stereotype. I didn’t black out constantly, get arrested, or end up in fights. Even when I was really impaired, I stayed weirdly collected. I could talk my way out of trouble. I thought that meant I had control.

It didn’t.  It meant I was getting better at being sick.

I met Ashley when I got back to Atlanta in 1995. We did the normal mid-20s Atlanta thing—work hard, go out a lot, and pretend we weren’t tired.  In 1999, she finished business school, we got married, and I started law school.

And that’s when the slide really started.

Nobody wakes up an alcoholic. It’s a progressive relationship with the drug—one that gets more demanding and less forgiving over time. In retrospect, the red flags were everywhere. I started grabbing drinks for the hour-long commute home from school. I noticed I really enjoyed being buzzed while doing normal-life things that normal folks do sober. The alcohol wasn’t just “fun.” I thought of it as a performance enhancer. It made the mundane feel like a win. It should’ve scared me; instead, I upgraded it in my mind to a feature.

A couple things accelerated the decline.

First: I realized I was a good liar. That’s not a compliment. I could hide drinking, hide bottles, hide the “extra” stops, and still show up looking functional. Second: I discovered “hair of the dog” worked. It didn’t cure anything; it just bought time.  Once I learned I could drink away the consequences of yesterday’s drinking and effectively lie about it, I was off to the races.

(A quick aside, because this matters: I don’t usually broadcast how much I drank because it gives struggling people an excuse to say, “Well, I’m not as bad as Todd, so I’m fine.” That’s nonsense. Addiction isn’t a comparative contest. It’s about your relationship to the substance—how much headspace it occupies, what you’ll risk to keep it going, and whether you keep doing it even though you know it’s hurting you. One definition of addiction is continuing the behavior despite knowing it’s harmful. So whether you’re at one drink a day or twenty-five, the question isn’t “How much are you drinking?” It’s “What is drinking doing to your life?”)

As Ashley and I started our family and careers, my drinking devolved. And it wasn’t glamorous. No flameouts, handcuffs, mugshots, or bar fights. It was worse in a quieter way: it was just gross. It was daily. It was all-day. It was secretive. It was so so lonely.  Booze became my central focus, and I’ll say this plainly: I lied and manipulated to get it. Constantly.

Ashley—who also came from a family steeped in alcohol—caught me hiding bottles and lying more times than either of us want to count. It never “blew up” into one big dramatic event. It was just a steady glide toward a life where my alcohol was almost everything.

On Sunday, September 24, 2006, Ashley caught me drinking in the morning—again. It might’ve been the 20th time. It might’ve been the 200th. This time she wasn’t mad. She looked done. Not angry. Not hysterical. Just resigned. I knew she was leaving—and taking our two-year-old.

And that was my bottom. That was my last drink.

I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: clarity. Far from comfort, and certainly not confidence, but clear nevertheless. I saw plainly I was about to lose the life I actually cared about, and I couldn’t talk my way out of it.

I went to my first AA meeting. I found a sponsor and started working the steps. I admitted I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. I worked with a psychologist who specialized in addiction. I went to meetings regularly. I learned to be useful—especially by helping other men get sober.

And by the grace of God, the obsession was lifted. That doesn’t mean life got easy. It means I got free. As I’ve written elsewhere, so much of a good life comes down to acceptance, courage, and wisdom about the difference between what you can control and what you can’t.  I couldn’t control my drinking by myself, so my Higher Power, Ashley, Dr. Gore, and very good friends helped me dry out.

Within two years, we had our second son. Within five, we started Stanton Law and Ashley was able to quit a job she hated.

Life still happens.  We’ve had stress, grief, pressure, fear, and the usual human messes. But we’re stronger for our troubles and more durable because we’ve walked through them with clear eyes.

Here’s what it’s like now: I’m not perfect, but I’m not imperfect and drunk. I wake up without dread. I don’t have to manage lies. I don’t have to do mental math about when I can sneak a drink, how I’ll cover it, whether someone will smell it, or how I’ll pretend I’m fine. I’m present for my wife and sons. I ask for help. I can lead my firm. I can be trusted. I can be useful.

If you’re reading this and wondering—quietly—whether alcohol (or drugs, or some other compulsion) has gotten too much influence in your life, here’s the hopeful part:

You don’t have to wait for handcuffs or a hospital bed to change course. You don’t have to “earn” recovery by suffering more. If your relationship with alcohol or drugs is costing you peace, integrity, health, or connection, you don’t have to struggle any more. There is help and a way through. And there is a fulfilling, happy, ambitious, high-performing life still available.

If you want to talk, I’m here. If you want a meeting, I’ll help you find one. If you want to keep your life from shrinking down to the size of a bottle, I’m happy to help.  It’s so much better on this side.