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In 2017, I started having all sorts of cognitive issues. I couldn’t remember things. I felt hazy and tired all the time. It felt like the world was moving 65 MPH and I was in the right-hand lane going 35. It was scary as s**t.
So I went to my doctor, who eventually pinpointed a busy life as the likely main cause but also that concussions may play a part. I had had a nasty concussion in 2015 in a sledding accident—that is not a joke, I totally ate s**t sledding with my kids—and I think it was probably about my fifth concussion. I think I had had a few playing sports over the years, and then I got one in college during a drunken scuffle with a guy in the dorms.
My doctor sent me to a neurologist, who ran me through a bunch of tests and put me on some vitamins that are supposed to be good for brain health. The tests didn’t really show anything obvious, and in conversations with him, he definitely thought the concussions were bad for my brain health and a possible culprit in my issues. But he also mentioned to me that people who did as much drugs and alcohol sometimes fry parts of their circuit board.
I had about 10 years clean and sober, so that was perplexing to me. I remember having that fear on a regular basis during my drinking and drugging days, but I didn’t notice any cognitive decline during those days. And to get away with what I was doing every day, you kind of had to be a criminal mastermind. So I kept telling myself that the drug thing was really bad… but I was still a borderline genius.
But now when I think back on the cocktail of crap I was taking every day—something like 50 painkillers, about a six-pack of beer every night, Ambien before bed time, then a s**t-ton of caffeine in the morning to do it all over again—it’s pretty terrifying and I am convinced that I did actually sizzle some of the circuits. I definitely think if you could run one of those scary futuristic sci-fi movie scans on my brain, you’d find some of the screws got knocked a little loose by the constant flood of uppers and downers every day.
Is that actually true? I don’t know. Does it matter today on Jan. 25, 2024? Not really. It doesn’t matter in the sense of living a healthy, spiritual life today and going forward. But I do feel gratitude about it. I feel like I am in a good head space these days, and it didn’t have to be that way. I did an insane amount of drugs and alcohol in a short amount of time, and looking back, I could have died in my sleep or on the road many times, and I could have had some kind of health issue where I didn’t die but had a catastrophic brain event.
This came up for me recently in therapy, because my psychiatrist was talking about how delicate the brain can be. I couldn’t help but think that any issues I might have had before I started killing myself with substances probably were exacerbated by all the chemicals I poured in. I mentioned that to her, and she shrugged her shoulders. She’s not one of those people who likes to make sweeping conclusions, and I appreciated that. But she did say that the intake I was describing would definitely be a lot for any brain to handle.
So I left there feeling a sense of gratitude. I definitely think there are parts of my system that were damaged a bit—my impulsivity being the biggest one. But I also felt like I got out before they became impossible to repair those, or at least figure out solutions to work around the fried wiring. If you’re nodding along thinking about this, I’d encourage you to take a moment to feel grateful for the wires you didn’t sizzle, too!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
The young man was sharing at an AA meeting. "This hasn't been a good day for me. I wasn't centered, I wasn't in touch with my feelings, and my inner child felt deprived. I just wasn't comfortable in my own skin."
An old-timer leaned over and whispered to the woman next to him, "I'm hard of hearing. What did he say?"
The woman replied, "He says he's hungry, angry, lonely, and tired."
(Credit: Grapevine, April 2009, by anonymous)
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