Category: Recovery From Addictions

If you have read any of my previous postings, then you are probably already somewhat familiar with the term “dry drunk” by now as I’ve used it to describe how I was during most of the early years of my sobriety.

To put it quite simply, the best broad definition of a “dry drunk” is someone who is no longer active in their addiction, but still has their addict state of mind. Unfortunately, that actually happens quite a bit to many people and it usually starts at the very beginning of one’s sobriety from whatever their addiction was, just like it did for me.

The first day I was ever able to draw a sober breath was on June 11th, 1995. On that day, I no longer had any alcohol or drugs that were numbing my mind and body and suppressing all those demons that lived within me. Some of those demons included my dysfunctional childhood, my alcoholic parents, my insecurities, my sexuality, and being molested. At the time I faced several choices on how to deal with all those demons. One of those choices would have led me back to using alcohol and drugs to continue numbing me. A second choice was to to get a good therapist. And a third one was to go into the 12 Step recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Right away, I eliminated the first choice because I knew the depths of despair that it had caused me. For awhile, I chose the second choice which helped me to get comfortable with my new found sobriety and sexuality. But as for that third one, I went a few times to some meetings where I judged what I saw and heard and decided it wasn’t for me. That’s when my path of “sodriety”, as I fondly nickname it now, began, and where I started to become that dry drunk.

Discovering alcohol and drugs was a miracle in my brain because they were a magic elixir that I used to make those demons disappear for awhile. Through all those active years of using those elixirs, I developed many glaring character defects that only compounded my disease of addiction. Those character defects were front and center the day I drew my first sober breath and what I never understood back then was how AA and the 12 Steps could have helped me to remove them. As my sober years passed by one by one, each of those character defects grew worse and worse and I developed even more of them.

If you took a snapshot of me during the five years I drank and drugged, and then took another of me five years into my sobriety, you would be able to see how my character defects looked very similar. In the first snapshot of my active days of alcohol and drug addiction, you would notice I was lying, cheating, manipulating, and guilt tripping my way through life. In the second snapshot where I was five years sober, you would notice not much had changed with any of those negative behaviors.

The sad reality for someone who ends up on a path of being that dry drunk and does not find help through some combination of therapy, 12 Step recovery, and a Higher Power is that it’s as much of a dead-end as it was when they were active in their addiction. It took me somewhere between 12 and 16 years of sobriety to fully realize this. Ironically, I hurt more people and caused more damage as a dry drunk then during the days I actively drank and drugged my life away. This is an unfortunate truth for someone who becomes that dry drunk. It’s common for a dry drunk to either find other new addictions to continue numbing themselves from those demons, or to relapse altogether back into their former addiction. Thankfully, I never had the latter happen but the former was definitely true for me.

I just couldn’t face my demons or my character defects so I used combinations of sex and love, codependency, gambling, shopping, caffeine, and geographical cures to continue eluding them. Sadly, some people will choose to stay as a dry drunk the rest of their lives. For those that do, they usually become just as miserable, if not much worse, in that state than when they were active with their addiction. Often, those people will discover that nothing ever seems to bring them peace, happiness, and joy. And if you think about that for a moment, isn’t that no different than how a person feels when they are active in their addiction?

Today, I can safely say that I have fully realized this principle and have moved very far away from the state of being a dry drunk. I’m extremely active in my 12 Step recovery now and even more active in my quest to grow closer to my Higher Power. Most of my demons and characters defects have been completely removed and for those that are remaining, they are on their way out as well. While there are many paths out there that can help both the active or dry drunk find healing, I have found that those 12 Step recovery programs were enough for me. They led me to facing all of those things I used so many addictions to numb myself from, and they helped me as well to find my Higher Power who has been in the process of removing them all.

There is a bottom line I have wanted to get across to you with all of this on what a dry drunk is…

Just know that becoming a dry drunk will do nothing more than eventually lead a person to even greater depths of despair then all their days combined when they were active in their addiction(s). Hopefully knowing that, it’s enough to deter anyone from ever ending up that way.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

It’s been a rather long time since I was an employee at any type of company. The last time I had a full time employer was all the way back in December of 2004. At that point I had been working in the computer consulting field since graduating from college back in November of 1994 and by that time I had achieved over nine years of sobriety. But ironically, my track record at every place of employment, including that last one I found myself in, was quite terrible. And there was only one reason for that: my alcoholism, yet I wasn’t even drinking.

By December of 2004, I had worked at somewhere around thirteen different computer based jobs in just under 10 years. At that time in my life, my employer was U.S. Customs and I was more sick then I was nine years earlier when I found sobriety. My ego had grown to be a mile wide. I lived in a ton of self-will. And I rarely turned anything over to God. Because of this, I harbored many character defects that ran rampant in every area of my life, especially at places of work, such as U.S. Customs. Prior to that job, I had either quit out of anger or been fired from all of my previous places of employment. The truth was that I hadn’t changed much for the better since finding sobriety. How could I? I was nothing more than a dry drunk who had no recovery program. I had done no step work, and was actually adding to my character defects rather than lessening them. This spilled into every job where I became just as selfish and self-centered as I was when I had been drinking and drugging. Rarely was I a team player. I was always conveniently busy when my jobs wanted me to help out on nights or weekends. I had the best excuses as to why I hardly attended any company social gatherings. Essentially all I did at every job was show up on time, do my work as I was asked to, and go home as soon as the clock hit the hour I was allowed to. So when my reviews came up, while I always received good marks for my attendance and what I actually worked on, I got horrific ones for everything else, like my attitude, my personal behaviors, and my interpersonal skills with others.

The reality was that I got in a lot of arguments with my teammates and my bosses. I probably should have been fired from every single job I ever worked at, but like a good alcoholic I always had to have the last word so I would quit if I knew things were heading that way. In the few times that I did get fired, I was totally surprised and became extremely angry and full of rage. My sickness had me so convinced that those jobs couldn’t survive without me and that I had been the best thing to ever happen for them. Once I even threatened to sue one of those companies that fired me for the most ridiculous of reasons. While that reason is unimportant, the fact was that I had become seriously sick. My disease had progressed so much to the point where I felt I was never the problem at any of these jobs and that it was always them.

In that last place of employment, U.S. Customs, I was also simultaneously trying to start up my own business on the side with an ex-partner. Every Friday, I’d leave my corporate job at 1pm and drive three hours to that business that my ex-partner was running full-time in my absence. I started to get disciplined by my corporate job for leaving at 1pm because it was required for all government employees to leave no earlier than 3pm. For awhile, I whined to my boss about how bad my commute would be on a Friday leaving that late and it worked. But my teammates started to complain as they weren’t getting the same privilege. Finally I was given the mandatory requirement by my boss that I had to stay from then on until 3pm. My response to him on that day was, “I quit!!!” I spent six more years after that running that business into the ground until I lost everything from that venture. Since then, I hit a major bottom and turned my will COMPLETELY over to the care of God and asked for guidance to rebuild me from the ground up. And that has definitely been happening.

Because of that, I know that things will be vastly different for me now at any place I become employed at. While I haven’t officially worked since January of 2010, I have been a team player with many other things I’ve been a part of. I have also done my best to go above and beyond the call of duty in each of them. For these reasons, I’m convinced that when I return to the active workforce, as I plan on doing in the very near future, I will be nothing like I once was in that U.S. Customs job or any of the others prior to it.

Thankfully today I’m able to see that it was my disease of alcoholism that led me to jumping from job to job to job after quitting or being fired at each of them. I know now that it was my character defects that led to my demise with all of them. I’m grateful that I can see now it was never my bosses, my teammates, the type of work, or the companies that were to blame. It was always me, the dry drunk and alcoholic me. With God at my helm now, I can safely say I really don’s see myself having to face the day again where I end up screaming at a boss and saying the words, “I Quit!!! or “You Can’t Fire Me!!!”

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I believe that one of the most difficult things to face in life is temptation. It’s something that’s around us all the time and constantly beckons us in. It often seems to come at us in the weakest of moments and usually shows up in the least suspecting of ways. And the worst part about it is how good it feels when we give into it and how bad it feels once we’re done with it.

As defined by Wikipedia, temptation is the desire to perform an action that one may enjoy immediately or in the short term but will probably regret later for various reasons such as legal, social, psychological, health-related, economic, etc. There’s temptation for those on diets when they pass by a bakery. There’s temptation for those in monogamous relationships when they see someone extremely attractive flirting with them. There’s temptation for those newly sober when they attend their best friend’s wedding and are asked to share a drink with them. There’s temptation for those that quit smoking when they’re offered a cigar by their boss. And so on and so forth. Honestly I could probably give a million examples of the many ways that temptation rears it’s ugly face and lures us in.

In my case, alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes don’t tempt me in the least bit anymore. But there is one thing that constantly does and I think that’s because of how long I allowed myself to be drawn into that temptation. And that’s with sex. The drive to have sex is something that is a part of all of us. Unfortunately, especially in the gay male community, it’s also something that usually turns into promiscuity. Whether it exists to the same extent with the majority of the heterosexual male community I don’t know. What I do know is that from the moment I came out of the closet and began to explore my sexuality, sex was constantly being thrown in my face. No matter where I went, whether it was to the gay bars, the gay bowling leagues, the gay social clubs, or some type of other venue where a large amount of gay males were attending, it was as if sex became a natural byproduct of them all. And for the longest time, I acted out on many of those urges until it eventually became an addiction for me. By the time that happened, the Internet had emerged and became an online menu of sex for me as well. At certain points, I did grow bored with the swinging bachelor lifestyle and tried to settle down into a monogamous relationship for a period of time. Although I never physically broke my monogamy in any of them, I still gave into temptation every time that I looked at porn or fantasized about other people that I found attractive. So regardless of whether I was in a relationship or not, I consistently fell into some form of sexual temptation and felt amazingly good for a brief amount of time because of it. But a day always arrived sometime later, after giving into that temptation, when I would feel completely awful inside because of it.

The best example I can provide of my battles with sexual temptation is one I’ve already written about many times before. I spent two years of my life pursuing and engaging in a sexual relationship with a married man while I remained active friends with his wife and family. Every single time I got around him I became seriously tempted, even though I knew what I wanted to do was completely unspiritual, unhealthy, and wrong on so many levels. Sadly, I gave into that temptation over and over again because I got an extreme high off of engaging in something that I knew was so wrong. Over time though, the guilt, remorse, and shame of doing that repetitive sexual behavior grew worse and worse until I became extremely sick on all levels. That’s when I started working more deeply with my Higher Power to strengthen myself enough to resist all forms of sexual temptation. It became easy for awhile to avoid any of it because I didn’t feel well at all. But now that I’m starting to feel better, the real challenge begins. I’m noticing all the mine fields of sex that seem to be suddenly reappearing in my life now that I’m finally getting to the stage where my mind and body have healed enough from all my past transgressions. Thankfully though, my relationship with my Higher Power is helping me immensely to withstand all of them.

It’s been 18 months now that I’ve stayed monogamous on every possible level with my current partner. While that sexual temptation entices me all the time when it shows up, I can still remember all the pain, guilt, and anguish I felt afterwards from constantly going down that path. That alone makes it not worth pursuing on any level. I pray that I won’t find sexual temptation to be as much of a struggle to combat down the road like it has been for me lately. But as they say in recovery, all I have is today so the first thing I do each day is to turn this over to my Higher Power. Because of that I find it’s much easier now to avoid those people and places that might directly tempt me. And for all the others I’m not able to avoid, I ask my Higher Power for the strength to never walk down that road of sexual temptation again.

The bottom line I’m trying to tell you in all of this is that regardless of whatever temptation you may face on any given day, know that acting out and giving into it will never be worth it. While you might get an initial pay-off that feels great from engaging in it for awhile, in the long run, that pay-off will become less and less until you are left with nothing but regret from having done it at all. So maybe the question you should ask yourself the next time you’re facing any form of temptation, is whether it’s really worth pursuing when it only will bring you pain and misery down the road? If it is, then you’re a lot like I once was and are just being a glutton for punishing yourself…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson