The MirrorWhy I Stopped Drinking Alcohol

On 12/24/17 I made the decision to stop drinking alcohol.

Fourteen months earlier, our oldest son Seth was found dead in a hotel room. Needle in his arm. He’d run into fentanyl at 23. His belt, which had become the tourniquet, was on the bed a few feet away. He never made it out of the chair.

He started drinking at about the same age I did.

I started at 16 and drank all the way to 52. I called myself a “high-functioning” alcoholic. I came from a small town in Iowa and that’s just what you did. Grab a case of Miller Lite, drive the gravel roads, find a kegger in an old barn, and solve the problems of the world and create a few along the way.

One drunk driving charge in 1997. Other than that, no real issues. I liked to drink. My wife and I never fought. We drank, we laughed, and we went to bed.

Like most addictions, it’s not a problem that is, until it becomes one.

Honest truth? I stopped to support my wife. She was 9 years younger than me, and in the 14 months after Seth died, her drinking and prescription addictions made her look 9 years older.

The narrative I told myself: I had failed Seth as a dad and now I was failing Prudence as her husband.

I looked in the mirror and said out loud: “You pathetic piece of $hit. How much do you have to lose to realize you’re not worthy of being a dad or a husband?”

That was it. The mirror doesn’t lie. I never have had a thought about alcohol since.

She died at 46, on 6/29/21. We were married for 21 years.

When people ask about my sobriety, I’m honest about my pathway. Everyone has a different one and plenty of people will tell you they know THE answer: