I HAD A THOUGHT....

Daryl and Kim delve into the themes of ego vs humility and how this change in perspective has become a guiding principle in Daryl's recovery from alcoholism. It begins with a story from Daryl's high flying days as a hard drinking pharmaceutical representative with zero humility and zero serenity to today where, through his recovery program, he has achieved a level of both serenity and humility. 

True Stories of Alcoholics and Addicts.  Struggles, insights, physical, emotional and spiritual recovery.

Transcript

Daryl 0:09

Hi, Darrell. Hey Kim. So what do we have on the docket for this week? Well, I'm certainly glad you asked Kim. Oh, and first off. We received such a beautiful message from a listener this week. Yeah. It truly reinforces the why behind our efforts in producing the show. Yeah, it really did. Can you read the letter to us? Yeah, so this listener wrote and I quote. I want to applaud your amazing show. Mm-hmm. I'm so inspired that you are taking the time to help share stories of addiction and alcoholism to help listeners out. Your show is single handedly making people feel less alone. Mm. Wow. That is so beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. It made me feel really good about the whole process and putting all the efforts in, you know? Yeah. So thank you to the listener who took the time to write us. And uh, also just as an aside, Darrell promises he did not pay his mom 20 bucks to write that. I knew you were gonna go there. Uh, so we really appreciate all the feedback. We want to hear your thoughts, and as always, we want your story submissions. It's important to. This podcast is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12 step recovery program. Now, please enjoy this week's show based on the story titled I had a Thought. Okay. what a great drunken life. I led nice career back in the day 1990s, taking doctors out to nice dinners where I could drink along with my doctor friends. These were considered evenings for medical education as long as we talked at some time during the evening of the drug's, name, use, and side effects that my company produced and I promoted. It was considered education and was fully admissible as company expenses. My company paid for other educational opportunities, also like offshore fishing trips, my favorite and occasionally the unmentioned activities that ensued during after dinner hours, I made a practice of inviting the right people out to these events that I learned through experience were the fun doctors and friends of those doctors, those that liked to drink like I did and weren't afraid to continue the evening into the following day. I spent several years honing my skills as a host for these educational sessions in Eastern North Carolina. After an evening was complete, I would drive home. I'd learned the back roads well and felt pretty good about my chances of getting home without being lit up by any blue lights. I repeatedly found that I was correct, no run-ins with the law while homeward bound after these nights terminated, and generally not even any traffic scene during the late night hours on these roads. One evening while driving the hour or so to the venue that I had selected for educational dinner presentation that night, I had a thought. I don't think I'll drink tonight. I was not sure why I made that decision or that it was any big deal. I wasn't trying to quit drinking or even having thoughts in my life that I needed to cut back. Nonetheless, I decided not to drink, and though my customer friends were a bit surprised, it didn't stop them from enjoying their share of beverages that night. I knew though, I hadn't admitted to myself yet, that if I had one drink, I would have many drinks I completed that evening without taking a single drink of alcohol. This was 25 years into a life of progressive drinking. I certainly didn't consider it alcoholic drinking or consider myself an alcoholic. It was just how I got business done on my way home that night around 10:00 PM I took the same safe back road route I always did. As usual, there was virtually no other traffic on this route. As I turned a corner just before the small town of Maysville in North Carolina, I saw bevy of flashing lights and assumed that someone was in trouble for something. As I drew closer, I saw that the North Carolina State Police had set up a sobriety checkpoint on my safe driving route home. And though I instantly received a shot of anxiety driven adrenaline, it quickly changed to a sense of well awesomeness. My thought was, I am awesome. I was uniquely insightful. I was super intuitive. I had an all powerful, all-knowing sense of the world, man, am I good at this? Of all nights? I knew not to drink tonight. I passed through that checkpoint with sober flying colors. I was impressed with myself and well, the officer seemed depressed with me too. To this day, I believe I may have been the only car that passed through that checkpoint on that night. Fast forward a few years, life had become not so fun. I had a life changing experience. Great story, but not for now. Found AA and started learning about what drove my alcoholism, what I needed to do to change my life and stay sober. I had long forgotten this experience until I was at a meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous one evening in Florence, Oregon. We were discussing the third step and how God, as we understand God sometimes has to protect us or minimize the consequences of our self-induced disasters. That evening's events came rushing back to me and I was overwhelmed with understanding and a sense of gratitude. I considered myself an atheist during my drinking years. Today as a result of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I see that evening quite differently, even with the undeniably massive ego I lived with back then. God in his way perfectly orchestrated a way for me to not completely blow up my life and career. And though the learning took years to come to fruition for me. He provided a very powerful lesson to share with others, struggling with the concepts around a higher power. I can share how God has worked in my life, even when I denied his existence. Talk about the good life. I have it today and is a direct result of AA and the relationship I have developed with my God, the 12 steps outlined in the big book and all the members of aa. I have learned to maintain an attitude of gratitude for all the different ways that my higher power directs and teaches me. Today when I have a thought, I know to check internally to see if that thought is coming from my brain, that's me, or that quiet inner voice. That's God. And as always, if uncertain, I ask a sober friend. So, let's set the scene again. Darrell. It's the mid 1990s. Yeah, the economy is just absolutely booming and you're working as a pharma sales rep. Yep. You're young, you're hungry, and you've basically got the keys to the kingdom. It sounds like the money is flowing. Everything's correct there. Except I wasn't that young. You're right. It was a different time in pharmaceutical sales. It's changed a lot since then. The expense accounts were effectively bottomless at that point, as well as the ethics. Let's just say the guardrails were a lot looser back then. It was kind of the wild West in a suit and tie. We're also talking about a time when pharmaceutical medical education often meant nothing more than taking doctor out for like a $70 steak and well, lots and lots of good wine. Yeah. And today we heard your story. That takes us right into the belly of that beast. Your personal reflection titled, I had a thought and I did have a thought. And on the surface it almost sounds like a war story. You know, from the glory days of sales, that whole work hard play, hard thing that so many people in that industry still talk about. But as we'll see as we dig into this story, it's not a how to win it sales story of course, but it's rather about your total shift in perspective. Mm-hmm. It's about how two versions of the same person me, the then and the now we can look at the exact same Tuesday night drive. And see two completely different realities. Yeah. It's a story about the psychology of the high functioning alcoholic and how the ego protects that addiction and a moment of, well, what you call an intervention that just defies all logic. It all centers around one specific drive on a back road in North Carolina. We're gonna dissect that shift in interpretation from, I'm a genius. I'm invincible to looking back years later with humility and the realization that actually I was saved from myself. So let's start with how you described your life and career back then. You know, I often thought what a great drunken life I led. And you're not being sarcastic. Nope. Not at all. At least not about how it felt at the time. Right, right. I mean, you paint a pretty vivid picture of these top tier fun dinners. And the corporate policies at the time, it kind of feels like you could teach a masterclass in taking advantage of bureaucratic loopholes. Well, the reality is we all did it. All the pharmaceutical reps did it. Now, not all of them drank like I did and the customers that I took out, but these dinners were, you know, they were strictly for medical education. Right. But the rule was surprisingly flexible. As long as we talked at some time during the evening of the drug's, name, use, and side effects, it was okay. It was considered education and fully admissible as company expenses. That is wild. So basically you could eat lobster, drink expensive wine, rack up a huge bill, and as long as you just slip in a quick, oh, by the way, this med causes nausea between courses. You were in the clear, yeah, but you shouldn't take the med between courses. You'll probably get nauseous. But the education was the ticket to the party, so to speak, and greatly encouraged. So this was the business model. And it's not just dinners, right? No. Some of my best times were, uh, during offshore fishing trips, when I would hire one of the doctors, I'd take five or six of them out on an offshore trip and hire one of them and pay them extra money to go fishing with us and at least mention the drug on the trip. And it made it, uh, expensive. So it increasingly became a lifestyle. It sounds like it was built around booze. And you were pretty strategic. Mm-hmm. You weren't just taking any doctors out? No. I was really good at headhunting. The fun doctors. I knew them. I knew who they were. You mean like the ones who drank, like you did? Yeah, exactly. This was the functioning part of my functional alcoholic life. I was strategic about it. I sought out clients and friends. Who wouldn't judge my consumption because they were matching it. So you were effectively sounds like building a network of enablers disguised as a client list. Yep. And it was pretty effective. Yeah. As you say, this is how business got done. But that's the trap, isn't it? Yeah, it is. When your addiction is fueling your professional success, or at least running parallel to it, it's incredibly hard to see it as a problem. I mean, I had a boat. I actually, I had two boats, a nice car, a beautiful home on the water, a wife and a kid on the way to the outside world. I was a big success. But you also mentioned that you were 25 years into a life of progressive drinking. Yeah, I was. So on the inside, things probably weren't so great. That being the said at the time. You said you didn't see yourself as an alcoholic. I didn't. I saw myself as a successful rep. Who knew how to close deals. Mm-hmm. And closing deals took booze often. Mm, yeah. Validation. It's a hell of a drug. It can mask everything. If the company's paying for the drinks and your sales numbers are up. Yeah. My ego is up and it told me I'm winning. There is, uh, like zero incentive to look in the mirror then at that point. So now part of maintaining this lifestyle involved. A lot of logistics. You were based in Eastern North Carolina and after these education quote unquote sessions, you had to get home. Yeah, for sure. So this is where the story got a little darker for me. Can you talk to us about your routine? Yeah, sure. Well, remember I was drinking, so my driving was well drunk driving. And I learned the back roads of Eastern North Carolina very well. For that reason, I felt pretty good about my chance of avoiding the police. But this wasn't really in anxiety induced driving, right? This was confidence. Yeah, for sure. It was actually arrogance I felt, I had it down to was science, honestly. And I found I was generally correct. These roads were desolate, late at night. Zero traffic. Zero cop, zero consequences. So you felt like king of the road. It's that invincibility complex. You weren't just driving home drunk, you felt like you had outsmarted the system. I kind of had, I felt I'd mastered the variables. It just reinforced my ego that we talked about. I believed I was in total control of a situation that was completely out of control, which is a classic logic fallacy. But one that feels very real when you're in it. Yeah, it sure did. So we have this set up. You were confident, successful, and routine oriented in your drinking and driving, but then we get to the anomaly, the incident that anchors this whole story. Yeah. I was driving to a dinner program about an hour away from my home, and uh, it was in Kinston. Yeah. So just like you'd done a hundred times before For sure. Yep. When suddenly you had a thought. Just a random thought. I don't think I'll drink tonight. Yeah. Okay. I wanna pause here because it's easy to gloss over that. Why was that thought so weird for you? I mean, you explicitly state you weren't trying to quit or even cut back. Nope. I wasn't, hadn't had a thought about it. I didn't have any external trigger. No healthcare scare, no ultimatum from my wife. No warning from hr. Just a random unexplained thought popping into my head. I didn't make too big a deal of it. Yeah. So a man who's been drinking progressively for 25 years and knew the mechanics of your addiction, even if you didn't call it that. I never thought of it as addiction, very honestly. But I did know that if I had a drink, one drink, I would have lots of drinks. That's the allergy concept that we learn about in recovery. Once I start. I can't stop. So for you to decide not to drink at all that night, that was just a huge deviation from your entire operating system, shall we call it? It just didn't make sense for who you were at the time, how you'd constructed your whole life. For sure. Craziest thing is I actually followed through, which is hard for me to believe. Now, looking back on it, I got to the dinner and the booze was flowing. The doctors were getting loose, having fun as they normally did. I mean, that's why they were invited, right? The ones who could drink like you. That's exactly right. But tonight, their drinking buddy, that's me, was on water and they stuck to it all night. Not a drop of booze. Which brings us to the crux of your story. The drive home. It's about 10 o'clock at night. You take the same safe back roads, the ones with no traffic, and presumably no cops, right? Yep. You're cruising along, feeling fine. Maybe even feeling a little smug about your discipline. Like, see, I can stop whenever I want. Oh yeah. I did believe I could stop whenever I wanted. And just before I got to the small town in Maysville that night, there they were a bevy of blue lights. Oof that feeling. Even if you're sober, that initial shot of adrenaline, when you see police lights, it's universal. Your heart just drops to your stomach. Yeah, for sure. An immediate shot of anxiety and adrenaline. Right. My first thought, interestingly was someone else is in trouble. An accident maybe because in my mind I don't get in trouble in this road forces. I got closer. I recognized it as a North Carolina sobriety checkpoint. On my safe route on the back road where nobody ever goes. The irony is just, well, it's just dripping off the page here and your reaction is priceless. It's like the nerve, like how Yeah, how dare they put a checkpoint on my personal drunk driving route. I truly felt offended that the police would disrupt my carefully orchestrated plans, even though these plans involved committing a crime, a crime. See, I didn't think about it that way at all, but it's a little cringe worthy now. I know. But then my anxiety shifted and this is where we really get into the core of this story. What happened next? I felt awesome 'cause I didn't think, wow, that was lucky. No, I thought I was uniquely insightful, super intuitive. Man, am I good at this? I took complete credit for that random thought I'd had. I was the genius who just happened to pick the one night out of thousands not to drink. You call it your all powerful, all knowing sense of the world. Yeah. I passed through the checkpoint with flying colors that night. So you drove away from that checkpoint thinking, I'm a God. I beat the system. My intuition is flawless. I'm the master of my own universe. You know, it's interesting. I never put the word God to my thought process then. Mm-hmm. But it did validate everything I believed about myself. It reinforced the drinking, the driving, the whole lifestyle. It reinforced my massive ego. See, I can handle this. I know when to stop. It actually probably made my addiction worse because it gave me this false sense of control. Hmm. Thankfully that is not where this story ends. Let's fast forward a few years. Life eventually became, well, not so fun. You had a life changing experience and eventually found your way to Alcoholics Anonymous and the sober life. Yeah, and I'll say it again. Thankfully that's not where the story ends because you, my dear friend Kim, would be dealing with a very different individual. I was sitting in an AA meeting. They were discussing the third step. Okay. And for any listeners who might not be familiar, can you break down what that third step generally entails? Yeah, for sure. The third step is basically about making a decision to turn your will and your life, or my will and my life over to the care of God. As I understand God, it's about surrendering control. It's admitting that your way of running the show isn't working. And in this particular meeting, we were discussing a specific part of that step. How a higher power sometimes has to protect us from our self-induced disasters. And the memory of that North Carolina checkpoint rushed back to me. So you're sitting there sober, looking back through the lens of that experience now through the lens of recovery and you realized, yeah, that wasn't me. That wasn't me being a genius. I was an atheist back then. I denied God's existence. But looking back, I saw the causality completely differently. I realized that despite my ego, my massive ego, something else was at play. I believe God or higher power orchestrated away for me not to destroy my life and my career that night. Wow. It's such a complete 180. Yeah. One, I'm a genius who predicted the future, and two, I was saved for myself. By something I didn't even believe in. For me, this highlights a core struggle in recovery, which is the role of the ego. When I was active in my addiction, my ego claimed credit for everything. Even blind luck. I decided not to drink, but in recovery, I recognized I had absolutely no control over my drinking. So where'd that thought come from? That's the key logical leap. If your brain was wired for addiction and your habit was to drink. The don't drink command couldn't have come from that same faulty operating system. Exactly. Had to be an external intervention or protection. But it took many years to get there, didn't it? Yeah, it sure did. Even though the learning took years to come to fruition, it gave me this powerful lesson and for a guy who didn't even believe in a higher power. That seems to be a very big deal for you now. It is. It is number one in my life, and it validates the idea that maybe we aren't the ones flying the plane. Even when we think we have our hands on the yoke that grace is available even to the arrogant. Indeed it is. So let's bring this to present day. How does this realization affect your life today? Well, for one thing, I now live in the Pacific Northwest. Mm-hmm. I didn't run from North Carolina for any criminal reason, and I've retired from the high flying pharma job. But more importantly, it's affected my decision making process. It's a practical tool. I developed for myself, based on this experience. When I have a thought, now I run it what I call a diagnostic check on it. Hmm. A diagnostic check. I like that. It sounds almost technical. Yeah, it's pretty technical in a way. It is. Anyway, these days when I have a thought, I ask if this thought is coming from my brain, which I equate with my ego, my self-interest, my old patterns, or is it coming from that quiet inner voice? Which I now call God or my higher power, I've learned to distrust that loud. I'm a genius voice. I know that voice leads to checkpoints and disasters. Instead, I listen for the quiet one. And you have a fallback too, right? I do, yeah. If I'm uncertain, which I, I am often I ask a sober friend, just such a huge departure from the, I alone know the back roads guy. I'm not who I used to be. I've moved from isolated and arrogance to community and I hope humility. It's the antidote to my old alcoholic way of thinking. So the good life that you talked about with the expense account, fine dining and offshore fishing. All gone. Can't afford 'em on my own today, I have a new definition of the good life. It's a life of peace, serenity, and often most often acceptance. One in which I'm not constantly thinking about how when and where I'm going to drink and get home without getting lit up by the blue lights today. That's the good life. I have it today and I credit AA and the 12 steps and my relationship with that quiet inner voice. It really makes you think about the narrative we tell ourselves about our lives. At the time that checkpoint was a victory lap for my ego. Yeah. And now it's a testimony of grace. Yeah. Same event. Totally flipped meaning, and it raises the question, how many checkpoints have we passed through in our own lives? Situations where we thought we were just clever or lucky, but maybe we were actually being steered away from a cliff. We didn't even see if I hadn't had that one thought, that inexplicable random thought to skip the booze that night. My life could have completely imploded right there, right then. The stakes were super high. I didn't realize it. A DUI in a company car as a pharma sales rep, it's immediate termination. Yeah. Career over reputation. Destroyed. Exactly. I would've been blacklisted or worse, much worse. I certainly could have hurt someone. I could have killed or been killed, but I was too wrapped up in the game to see it. It's a fascinating look. At the human brain on autopilot and alcoholism versus the human spirit waking up, it really challenges the idea that we are always the masters of our own destiny. I don't believe that anymore. I do not believe we're the masters of our own destiny. I went from a man thinking I was the center of my own universe, to the realization that I'm a very small part of something much, much bigger. So the takeaway really is about that quieter voice, no question. But it can be harder than it sounds because our brain, yeah, our logic, our ego, it's always screaming. Correct. We live in a noisy world. Our internal monologues are even noisier. We all have those moments. You're driving, you're about to send a fired up email. You get that sun inexplicable thought, don't send it or go this way instead. And usually our logic tries to overwrite it immediately saying, no, that's silly. But I found that just maybe that quiet voice knows the roadmap much, much better about my life than I do. That intuition isn't just random neural firing, but maybe a protective mechanism. At the very least, it's a call to pause just for a second. When you get that thought, don't just dismiss it, right? Run that diagnostic check. So here's a provocative thought for you to take with you. I believe that random thought was my higher power saving me. Can we have those random unexplained impulses to change our routine, to take a different route to call a friend to put down the drink? Is it just biology or could it be that something is trying to save us from a checkpoint we can't even see yet. Yeah, sometimes the smartest thing you can do isn't to be a genius, but just to shut up and listen to that inner voice. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for digging into this story with us. We've enjoyed it, and we look forward to seeing you next time. This podcast exists to share experience, strength, and hope, not advice or instructions, and it's not a replacement for meetings or professional help. Support is always available through the national help line at 1-800-662-FOUR 3 5 7. We are producing this as a not-for-profit project. Nonetheless, we are asking for donations. Only to help defray the costs involved in producing and publishing the podcast. There is no obligation. But if you feel inclined to donate to Miles of Recovery, it's easy at buy me a coffee.com/miles of recovery. Thank you, and we hope to hear from you. If something you heard today resonated, we'd love to hear your take on it. Feedback and story submissions are welcome at Daryl r@milesofrecovery.com. That's DARY, lco r@milesofrecovery.com. And if you enjoyed this podcast, remember to like, share and follow. Join us next week for a story we'll call levitation and remember what Fred Rogers, everyone's favorite neighbor says. There's no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth. We're looking forward to sharing with you next week. Thanks for being with us. I.