A Short Evening with Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 4
A Short Evening with Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos
I had to re-register for some reason. Haven't been on here for a while but thought I'd share a thing.
----------------
Moderator:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce our Debate participants tonight for what should be a one hour give and take between the beliefs and challenges of our speakers, Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos.
<applause>
Moderator:
Now gentlemen, we'll start the evening with an opening argument from Dr. Jay, as at 43 years of age he is the elderstatesman of you two.
Mr. Santos:
That's fine, I usually don't awake until 1AM or so anyways.
Moderator:
Ok whatever. Dr. Jay, your opening statements please.
Dr. Jay:
I am an alcoholic. I have been this way since I was about fourteen or fifteen years of age when I first had a true taste of two or three beers late at night on the banks of Saranac Lake or somesuch as a boy scout. Don't ask!
<audience laughter>
But seriously, I am an alcoholic. I've known I was an alcoholic since the age of probably 22 or so. I didn't drink a whole lot in high school but I sure as hell knew how it made me feel. But I was a good boy overall, and the abuse was intermittent and and predicated on opportunities that others afforded me as I could not purchase alcohol on my own. I looked forward to it, and I abused it when the opportunity presented itself, but I was not yet dependent on it as I could not yet dictate when it was available to me. When I did the typical upper middle-class thing and went off to college, with no known motive other than I didn't want to embarass my family, those opportunities became available seven nights a week, and I took advantage of them.
College was basically a drunken stupor for me, but I graduated in 1991 and, after a year of living dangerously waiting tables <more laughter>, I finally took my father, whom I resented highly because of the fact well, he was an ******* to me and mentally abusive during my adolescence, I finally took him up on an offer to get me a job interview for a professional position - to start my professional career as it will.
Moderator:
So, you got a job interview to get you out of the 'waiting-tables-and-watching-sportscenter-with-some-occasional-porn-sprinkled-in-for-a-living' lifestyle?
Dr. Jay:
That is correct. My father worked in the telecommunications industry and was able to secure a job interview with a company he had previously worked for. This offer was out there for the better part of a year but I never took him up on it because he was a *****.
Moderator:
Yes, your Dad got you a job interview so he must be a *****. Got it.
Dr. Jay:
Are you hear to moderate or be my father? Were you there when he F'ing crucified me night after night because he thought I wasn't applying myself, telling me nightly that I wouldn't amount to ****, then when I was accepted into a top university in the state wanted to somehow take credit for it and do the "let's let bygones be bygones" thing with me? The man never hit me, but plowed my ego into the ground on a nightly basis...
Moderator:
Gee, that's so terrible compared to the lives others have lived.
Dr. Jay:
I didn't say I grew up in hell. I didn't. My mother was a good woman who cared about her children very much. Unfortunately, she didn't always stick up for me when my father decided to lay into me each night as a teenager. I know other have had far worse. I'm just telling it like it is - do you want me to apologize because I didn't have it as bad as others?
Moderator:
I'm sorry. Go on.
Dr. Jay:
As I was saying, I landed an interview, received a job offer, and my professional career was on its way. Entry level night shift position -- and I felt great about it. Suit and tie every day, feeling super important. I knocked off the drunken stupor stuff for a while and settled in to my calling - enslaving myself to enrich others. Ah, but the benefits. Getting to wear a suit everyday, occasionally travelling to far off exotic places like Sacramento. This was the life for me. With a ten month transfer to California in between, I moved from Virginia to Colorado in 1995, still on the fast track, but allowing myself the occasional night of drinking. As I made drinking friends in Colorado, that eventually moved from an occasional night of drinking to drinking four nights or so a week, but going out and doing it right. I was not yet drinking alone.
And my career continued its upward spiral. By the age of 25 I was managing folks that I probably had no business managing, or maybe I did.
My peers were years older than me. I was the smartest guy in the room when most subjects at work came up, yet I never had a big picture in my head as to where I was going. My rush came from asking myself "am I doing a good job boss?" and my boss telling me "Yes, Jay, you're a good boy". And so it was.
In 1996 I met my soon-to-be wife at my job. At the time, like all previous times in my life, I had zero confidence with anything, including members of the opposite sex. In this girl at work I found someone who had a social awkwardness that matched my own, and she was smoking hot to boot. Jackpot. I was still drinking quite a bit after work, but hell so was everyone else and I was not drinking alone. Deep down I knew..
Mr. Santos:
Can I cut in here?
Dr. Jay:
Cut in? You didn't exist in this part. You were gone by then.
Mr. Santos:
Well that's not entirely...
Moderator:
Mr. Santos, please refrain from speaking unless told to do so.
Dr. Jay:
Thank you. Now, as I was saying, Deep down I knew at this point I had a problem. But everything was still coming up Aces, so why change? Besides, I was only now 25 or 26 at the time -- plenty of time to change.
Anywho...my wife-to-be continued to date, even after I left the company for a more lucrative opportunity with a competitor. Months later she was laid off at the company where we both worked, and was convinced it was because of me jumping ship to a competitor and still blames me to this day for it. We married in 1999 - an awkward ceremony where she refused to invite most of her family for reasons to this day she still will not tell me. She has her own issues. And she was and is still a beautiful angel to me.
Early in our marriage, my wife, my angel, would come downstairs, get real close to me as I lay sleeping on couch, smell my breath, and curse me out for not being what she thought I would be when we married. The alcohol and tobacco smell still clinging to my breath and clothes. And I would retort in some way about her being a nutjob, which she really is and remains to this day - but not for her hating me for drinking/smoking. She is totally and positively rational in her assessment on these matters. But she carries her own baggage, baggage that I must bear the burden of -- which, as an alcoholic, is GOLD. For those with the disease, you know of what I speak. Ammunition.
<mild applause>
We had children, two of them, one in 2001 and one in 2003. They are beautiful and my beautiful wife and I have raised them beautifully so far. They, today, are 11 and 9. And we both love them. And I like to think I am a great father to them -- providing certain elements of parenting and love that my wife is unable to give to them for her own reasons - and on occasions she would acknowledge this. I honestly believe I have been a very good father.
Yet all this time I drank. The nature of my drinking, though, has changed dramatically. I became a closet drunk. To this day, I drink at night, after my father and husband duties are done for the evening, when both my wife and children are asleep. My children have never seen me drunk, and have never seen me smoke (another problem I have after all of these years). My wife, earlier in our marriage, would detect alcohol on breath and would curse me out for it in the morning when she detected it - as she has every right to do. But still, the hours of 11PM to about 3AM, when my Dad and husband duties were over, three or four nights a week, became my sanctuary. My sanctuary with a six pack of beer. Late at night, just me.
Me and my thoughts. And as my children became older, memories of my own childhood came pouring over me as a physical wave as I watched my kids go through the same periods of their lives that I did when I was so innocent. My son turns seven, suddenly my thoughts of myself at that age become clearer, and memories rush upon me. My daughter turns eight, and the same thing happens, again and again. I would find myself searching for that which is pure in me, that which is clean, that which is innocent and before I became what I am today.
Mr. Santos:
I think you're referring to me.
Dr. Jay:
Yes, I'm talking about you. We are here to debate, but I know deep in my heart I love you.
Mr. Santos:
And I love you too. I'm still here now. I am you when you were innocent. There is nothing to debate.
Dr. Jay:
But I can't find you anymore when I look for you at night.
Mr. Santos:
You and I are one in the same -- only I remain 12 years old, and always will.
Dr. Jay:
But why can't I see you in the daytime? And why is it now that I can't always find you at night? If you and I are one in the same, why are you not always there?
Moderator:
That's a good question. Mr. Santos, where are you for Dr. Jay? Where will you be tomorrow?
<But Mr. Santos is gone, he is no longer on the stage>
Dr. Jay:
Moderator, I don't find this fair. I can't find Mr. Santos to have him answer my questions. This simply isn't fair.
<But the Moderator is gone, he is no longer on the stage>.
And the audience is gone too. No one remains except Dr. Jay, clinging to the thoughts he scrambled down while trying to post his innermost
emotions to some message board in the internet ether.
Both Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos are different incarnations of me, as if that weren't obvious.
This story has no ending, yet. Somewhere in the ether a ghost of a little boy is still hitting rocks for home runs with a whiffle ball bat, and in that ghost lies my spirit. He is trapped somewhere - and he can't get out. And I believe that little boy will save me yet from the way that I carry on my life on a day to day basis - he's the only one that has the strength to pull that final mask off I wear each day to fool everyone I come across each day. And the day that he does will be the day I break from the life I have lived as an adult, with one hand tied behind my back, hoping no one ever notices - although I suspect they do.
----------------
Moderator:
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce our Debate participants tonight for what should be a one hour give and take between the beliefs and challenges of our speakers, Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos.
<applause>
Moderator:
Now gentlemen, we'll start the evening with an opening argument from Dr. Jay, as at 43 years of age he is the elderstatesman of you two.
Mr. Santos:
That's fine, I usually don't awake until 1AM or so anyways.
Moderator:
Ok whatever. Dr. Jay, your opening statements please.
Dr. Jay:
I am an alcoholic. I have been this way since I was about fourteen or fifteen years of age when I first had a true taste of two or three beers late at night on the banks of Saranac Lake or somesuch as a boy scout. Don't ask!
<audience laughter>
But seriously, I am an alcoholic. I've known I was an alcoholic since the age of probably 22 or so. I didn't drink a whole lot in high school but I sure as hell knew how it made me feel. But I was a good boy overall, and the abuse was intermittent and and predicated on opportunities that others afforded me as I could not purchase alcohol on my own. I looked forward to it, and I abused it when the opportunity presented itself, but I was not yet dependent on it as I could not yet dictate when it was available to me. When I did the typical upper middle-class thing and went off to college, with no known motive other than I didn't want to embarass my family, those opportunities became available seven nights a week, and I took advantage of them.
College was basically a drunken stupor for me, but I graduated in 1991 and, after a year of living dangerously waiting tables <more laughter>, I finally took my father, whom I resented highly because of the fact well, he was an ******* to me and mentally abusive during my adolescence, I finally took him up on an offer to get me a job interview for a professional position - to start my professional career as it will.
Moderator:
So, you got a job interview to get you out of the 'waiting-tables-and-watching-sportscenter-with-some-occasional-porn-sprinkled-in-for-a-living' lifestyle?
Dr. Jay:
That is correct. My father worked in the telecommunications industry and was able to secure a job interview with a company he had previously worked for. This offer was out there for the better part of a year but I never took him up on it because he was a *****.
Moderator:
Yes, your Dad got you a job interview so he must be a *****. Got it.
Dr. Jay:
Are you hear to moderate or be my father? Were you there when he F'ing crucified me night after night because he thought I wasn't applying myself, telling me nightly that I wouldn't amount to ****, then when I was accepted into a top university in the state wanted to somehow take credit for it and do the "let's let bygones be bygones" thing with me? The man never hit me, but plowed my ego into the ground on a nightly basis...
Moderator:
Gee, that's so terrible compared to the lives others have lived.
Dr. Jay:
I didn't say I grew up in hell. I didn't. My mother was a good woman who cared about her children very much. Unfortunately, she didn't always stick up for me when my father decided to lay into me each night as a teenager. I know other have had far worse. I'm just telling it like it is - do you want me to apologize because I didn't have it as bad as others?
Moderator:
I'm sorry. Go on.
Dr. Jay:
As I was saying, I landed an interview, received a job offer, and my professional career was on its way. Entry level night shift position -- and I felt great about it. Suit and tie every day, feeling super important. I knocked off the drunken stupor stuff for a while and settled in to my calling - enslaving myself to enrich others. Ah, but the benefits. Getting to wear a suit everyday, occasionally travelling to far off exotic places like Sacramento. This was the life for me. With a ten month transfer to California in between, I moved from Virginia to Colorado in 1995, still on the fast track, but allowing myself the occasional night of drinking. As I made drinking friends in Colorado, that eventually moved from an occasional night of drinking to drinking four nights or so a week, but going out and doing it right. I was not yet drinking alone.
And my career continued its upward spiral. By the age of 25 I was managing folks that I probably had no business managing, or maybe I did.
My peers were years older than me. I was the smartest guy in the room when most subjects at work came up, yet I never had a big picture in my head as to where I was going. My rush came from asking myself "am I doing a good job boss?" and my boss telling me "Yes, Jay, you're a good boy". And so it was.
In 1996 I met my soon-to-be wife at my job. At the time, like all previous times in my life, I had zero confidence with anything, including members of the opposite sex. In this girl at work I found someone who had a social awkwardness that matched my own, and she was smoking hot to boot. Jackpot. I was still drinking quite a bit after work, but hell so was everyone else and I was not drinking alone. Deep down I knew..
Mr. Santos:
Can I cut in here?
Dr. Jay:
Cut in? You didn't exist in this part. You were gone by then.
Mr. Santos:
Well that's not entirely...
Moderator:
Mr. Santos, please refrain from speaking unless told to do so.
Dr. Jay:
Thank you. Now, as I was saying, Deep down I knew at this point I had a problem. But everything was still coming up Aces, so why change? Besides, I was only now 25 or 26 at the time -- plenty of time to change.
Anywho...my wife-to-be continued to date, even after I left the company for a more lucrative opportunity with a competitor. Months later she was laid off at the company where we both worked, and was convinced it was because of me jumping ship to a competitor and still blames me to this day for it. We married in 1999 - an awkward ceremony where she refused to invite most of her family for reasons to this day she still will not tell me. She has her own issues. And she was and is still a beautiful angel to me.
Early in our marriage, my wife, my angel, would come downstairs, get real close to me as I lay sleeping on couch, smell my breath, and curse me out for not being what she thought I would be when we married. The alcohol and tobacco smell still clinging to my breath and clothes. And I would retort in some way about her being a nutjob, which she really is and remains to this day - but not for her hating me for drinking/smoking. She is totally and positively rational in her assessment on these matters. But she carries her own baggage, baggage that I must bear the burden of -- which, as an alcoholic, is GOLD. For those with the disease, you know of what I speak. Ammunition.
<mild applause>
We had children, two of them, one in 2001 and one in 2003. They are beautiful and my beautiful wife and I have raised them beautifully so far. They, today, are 11 and 9. And we both love them. And I like to think I am a great father to them -- providing certain elements of parenting and love that my wife is unable to give to them for her own reasons - and on occasions she would acknowledge this. I honestly believe I have been a very good father.
Yet all this time I drank. The nature of my drinking, though, has changed dramatically. I became a closet drunk. To this day, I drink at night, after my father and husband duties are done for the evening, when both my wife and children are asleep. My children have never seen me drunk, and have never seen me smoke (another problem I have after all of these years). My wife, earlier in our marriage, would detect alcohol on breath and would curse me out for it in the morning when she detected it - as she has every right to do. But still, the hours of 11PM to about 3AM, when my Dad and husband duties were over, three or four nights a week, became my sanctuary. My sanctuary with a six pack of beer. Late at night, just me.
Me and my thoughts. And as my children became older, memories of my own childhood came pouring over me as a physical wave as I watched my kids go through the same periods of their lives that I did when I was so innocent. My son turns seven, suddenly my thoughts of myself at that age become clearer, and memories rush upon me. My daughter turns eight, and the same thing happens, again and again. I would find myself searching for that which is pure in me, that which is clean, that which is innocent and before I became what I am today.
Mr. Santos:
I think you're referring to me.
Dr. Jay:
Yes, I'm talking about you. We are here to debate, but I know deep in my heart I love you.
Mr. Santos:
And I love you too. I'm still here now. I am you when you were innocent. There is nothing to debate.
Dr. Jay:
But I can't find you anymore when I look for you at night.
Mr. Santos:
You and I are one in the same -- only I remain 12 years old, and always will.
Dr. Jay:
But why can't I see you in the daytime? And why is it now that I can't always find you at night? If you and I are one in the same, why are you not always there?
Moderator:
That's a good question. Mr. Santos, where are you for Dr. Jay? Where will you be tomorrow?
<But Mr. Santos is gone, he is no longer on the stage>
Dr. Jay:
Moderator, I don't find this fair. I can't find Mr. Santos to have him answer my questions. This simply isn't fair.
<But the Moderator is gone, he is no longer on the stage>.
And the audience is gone too. No one remains except Dr. Jay, clinging to the thoughts he scrambled down while trying to post his innermost
emotions to some message board in the internet ether.
Both Dr. Jay and Mr. Santos are different incarnations of me, as if that weren't obvious.
This story has no ending, yet. Somewhere in the ether a ghost of a little boy is still hitting rocks for home runs with a whiffle ball bat, and in that ghost lies my spirit. He is trapped somewhere - and he can't get out. And I believe that little boy will save me yet from the way that I carry on my life on a day to day basis - he's the only one that has the strength to pull that final mask off I wear each day to fool everyone I come across each day. And the day that he does will be the day I break from the life I have lived as an adult, with one hand tied behind my back, hoping no one ever notices - although I suspect they do.
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,442
Welcome back 
acceptance was the key for me - using your metaphor, acceptance was about all parts of me (the good the bad and the downright ugly) accepting the problem, accepting the need for change and all parts working in tandem to move forward.
The first step can be as simple and as difficult as not drinking tomorrow
I was a splintered human being.
Recovery's given me the gift of reintegration
I've rediscovered the innocent me that was lost...but I've also discovered an adult me I aspired to, but didn't think was there within me
My advice is don't wait for the day Jay- make the day.
You're obviously an industrious and intelligent man, a hard worker with a lot of imagination drive and talent...
grab the wheel
D
acceptance was the key for me - using your metaphor, acceptance was about all parts of me (the good the bad and the downright ugly) accepting the problem, accepting the need for change and all parts working in tandem to move forward.
The first step can be as simple and as difficult as not drinking tomorrow
I was a splintered human being.
Recovery's given me the gift of reintegration
I've rediscovered the innocent me that was lost...but I've also discovered an adult me I aspired to, but didn't think was there within me
My advice is don't wait for the day Jay- make the day.
You're obviously an industrious and intelligent man, a hard worker with a lot of imagination drive and talent...
grab the wheel
D
instant
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 5,711
In retrospect alcohol has impeded my full emotional development. I guess different folks drink for traumas in the past. I think it prevents any kind of healing progress. Means we all have our work to do when we sober up.
I think the little boy can get out but it's a journey.
I think the little boy can get out but it's a journey.
Forward we go...side by side-Rest In Peace
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Serene In Dixie
Posts: 36,740
That was an interesting read about your present situation ..
Do you have a plan in mind to begin your sober journey?
Many of us are winnning over alcohol useing various ideas/concepts
and some like me ....found our silution came from AA.
You too can find a future without alcohol...and it's so liberating
when you live without a liquid toxin...
Welcome back..
Do you have a plan in mind to begin your sober journey?
Many of us are winnning over alcohol useing various ideas/concepts
and some like me ....found our silution came from AA.
You too can find a future without alcohol...and it's so liberating
when you live without a liquid toxin...
Welcome back..
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