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I saw a story earlier this week from the New York Times about a surprising spike in the number of car crashes the past two years. Researchers were stunned because serious car crashes had steadily been going down for decades, and the assumption was that there would be a significant drop because of less people leaving the house during the pandemic.
Instead, they found the opposite: The past two years have seen the biggest increase in traffic fatalities since World War 2.
The story cited two primary reasons that both hit home for me. One is drug abuse, specifically opioids. I drove my car many, many times when I had enough painkillers in my system that I was a danger to everybody around me. So I certainly felt a pang in my stomach as I identified with that.
The bigger problem, according to the researchers in the story, is aggressive, angry driving. That’s something I have never, ever been guilty of…
Of course I am kidding. I get it. It’s pretty easy to lose your mind on the roadways some day. Luckily, I am at a place in life where my road rage is usually just mild aggravation. So I haven’t had issues myself with road rage in many years, but in my experience, angry driving is usually an obvious sign that I am not spiritually fit, and that stuff is coming out sideways for me. Every time I’ve seen any kind of angry driving incident, it has felt like there was something else going on with the person—that some other thing in their life was causing emotions to spill over on the roads.
And don’t mistake me saying I haven’t had a road rage problem with me thinking I couldn’t have a road rage problem. Because I absolutely could. I find myself simmering behind the wheel from time to time, and it’s always because there is an underlying issue that has nothing to do with driving.
I also have all sorts of other places, besides the roads, where I see fear and anger pop up in sober life. It’s usually with my family. I’ll get a shitty email or have a bad day of foot pain or something else that has nothing to do with my family, and the easiest way to blow off some steam is to ream out one of my kids, or my wife, for nothing. It’s just so easy to let ‘er rip, and there aren’t always repercussions like there probably should be. They love me, so I know they’re not going to kick me to the curb. Not right away, anyway.
So what’s the solution? I always start with feeling anger and then immediately saying, “What am I REALLY angry about right now?” It’s almost never the thing on the surface that I initially think I’m angry about. I find anger to be like a rock in a creek—you lift it up and all sorts of weird s**t scurries out from under there. When I have gotten mad on the road, it’s rarely about that guy who didn’t use his turn signal.
You know how I know that for sure? Because I don’t get angry every single time somebody doesn’t use their turn signal. Some days, it burns me up. Some days, I just keep chugging along. That means the spiritual axiom definitely applies to the road: Whenever I am disturbed, there’s something going on with me.
Once I identify that there must be something else going on, then I have to ask, What is it? What is the thing beneath the surface making this come out sideways? I’m always surprised at how often the answer is the H, L or T from H.A.L.T.—I’m hungry, lonely or tired. The answer often is that I either need a sandwich or a nap, and sometimes both. So I know I need to lay down in bed with ham and cheese on wheat bread and doze off.
The rest of the time, when I notice something coming out sideways, there is a clear answer if I sit with it for a little while. It’s always something else going on in my life. Sometimes I still am a little fired up with whatever is happening in front of me, but that sober approach of pausing and analyzing it for a minute usually relieves a good 75 percent of the anger. Which is usually enough to keep me driving below the speed limit.
Well, okay, fine, it’s enough to keep me driving a few miles per hour near the speed limit.
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
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:
Any old drunken bum can get into AA. But to get into Al-Anon, you've got to know someone.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, from November 2004, by Anonymous)
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