There are a few attributes, one might say gifts, that I inherited from my Irish heritage, or so I believe. I’ve been touched with a bit of the blarney even though I have seen, but never actually kissed, the Blarney stone. That inherited story-telling ability helped me through school, in my professional life, as a university teacher, and in many social situations where any substantive skills on my part were decidedly lacking.

I credit my father, a 100 percent Irishman, for this fortunate and useful blessing. As I have often said, if you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. That seldom fails. I was blessed with an abundance of BS.

However, there is another side of my Celtic heritage. It is far less glamorous, deadly in fact, even though it often is romanticized. That would be a fondness for the spirits typically found in the local pub. The lure of booze to the sons of Eire is a well-known weakness among my tribe. It is known as the Celtic curse, an affliction from which many of us have suffered. In the extreme, it has killed some of us.

Booze was ever present in my home and culture. I grew up in an environment where the consumption of alcohol was ubiquitous and continuous, or so it seemed. It was the lubricant that eased all problems, deflected disappointments, and offered solace in the face of unmet aspirations. It was the go-to cure-all for those whose lives did not match expectations.

I recall the day I turned 21. My dad took me to the pub he frequented after-work and bought me my first legal drinks. I was determined to keep up with him, but it was a struggle. After all, he had several decades of experience on me. I was so relieved when he said it was time to go. I rose and aimed for the exit, hoping I wouldn’t hit the floor in a drunken heap. That would have been so embarrassing. I made it, and he seemed proud of me. In retrospect, not a good omen.

I recall my mother most mornings. She would be on the phone, drinking her first beer, and smoking a cigarette. It never even struck me as odd that one would start drinking in the morning. When they got together with friends, often to play cards, the booze flowed freely. Everyone drank … a lot. I am amazed that there were no DWI tickets or accidents. Intoxication was seen as normal in those days.

While I had a few beers in high school, it was not until well into college that I started any serious consumption of spirits. Being afflicted with serious self-doubt, a form of imposter syndrome, liquor took the edge off. It gave me the confidence I did not naturally possess. I thought a few drinks made me funnier, smarter, more sociable, and sexier. I absolutely felt I needed something to attract the opposite sex, mostly by diminishing their judgment and lowering their standards. Booze was the ultimate remedy for a wanna-be neurotic, or so it seemed.

In the early days, I prided myself (as did others) on my ability to ‘hold my liquor.’ Much later, I realized that was another early warning sign. I also began to experience occasional anxiety attacks. Alcohol, at first, seemed to relieve the distress. That proved to be the onset of a crucial causal error … booze as an anesthetic. Finally, the amount of my intake increased slowly, so incrementally that it escaped my notice for a long time. In those days, it seemed we all drank socially. You went to someone’s house and you were offered a drink. You met friends at a bar. Most never went beyond social drinking while a few of us went well beyond. Those days appear yo be past, thank god.

Of course, over time I experienced more and more warning signs. I would sneak drinks, hide the extent of my drinking, and engage in an array of denial and evasion tactics. By my late 30s, it was clear that I was sliding into full-blown alcoholism. As I approached my 40th birthday, I was on the verge of losing everything … my job, my marriage, perhaps my life (if I didn’t change course). I won’t even attempt to describe the dark days at the end other than to say I was desperate indeed. I had become a maintenance drinker.

One day, right around my 40th birthday, I read about a new program being started through a local hospital. I sat looking at my phone for a long time. I had never felt so exhausted in my life. You cannot imagine how draining it is to hide things from the world and from yourself. Eventually, I did pick up the phone and made one of the most critical calls of my life, one that (no hyperbole here) saved my life.

I remember going through a triage interview where a savvy intake worker drilled into my drinking habits and my life. I am a slippery character who can think quickly on his feet. But these guys are skilled in detecting bullshit. I knew he really wanted to put me into an intensive hospital treatment modality. But I managed to convince him that an alternative outpatient program would work just as well. Thank God it did.

I’m not going to explain the program. Perhaps I was simply ready for change and any treatment would have done the job. Nevertheless, three things still stick with me. The social workers running the program were highly skilled. That helped. In addition, the discussion in the group sessions was enlightening. I could see that what I considered my private hell was not unique to me. It was a more universal experience, an insight confirmed in later AA sessions.

The 3rd factor is more surprising. They suggested a book at one point. Being an academic, I grabbed on to that immediately. I am probably the only ‘patient’ to devour this work from cover to cover. While I cannot recall the title some 40 years later, it struck me like a thunderbolt. Here is the gist. At one point, they explained how the bodily chemistry of addicts differs from non addicts. I have no idea if this was bogus science or not. It did, however, totally convince me that alcoholism indeed was a disease rooted in our biology. An alcoholic was not someone who drinks too much but someone who can not drink at all simply because we process alcohol differently.

A second point (there are likely others now long forgotten) hit me with equal compelling force. Why are some ‘tribes’ like the Irish and Native Americans so susceptible to alcohol addiction while other ethnics who start drinking early in life tend to escape this disease (e.g. Italians)? Their explanation seemed plausible. Alcohol was first fermented (more or less) in the Eastern Mediteranian. We might assume that the proportion of the local population who were biologically disposed to addiction was a constant across groups. However, after many, many generations, those who tended to be drunks did not survive as long (for reasons we can all surmise). Thus, they were slightly less likely to pass on their faulty genes and impaired chemistry. Over a long time, the proportion of those susceptible to addiction declined.

Now, it took a long time for the technology of booze to drift north. There also were mini ice ages to slow the spread. By the time that booze reached the outposts of civilization … Ireland, Scandinavian outposts, and Natives in the America’s, there was not enough time to weed out the susceptible through evolution. Besides, other advances in civization permitted people to live longer and to pass on their poor genes. I have no idea if this passes scientific muster, and I won’t ask. All I can say is that it helped me to get and to stay sober. Good enough.

After the program, I did attend AA for a while. I liked the discussions but never could get into the spiritual side of things (that struck me as falling back into the moral failings trap) nor the 12 steps. I found other aspects of my recovery to be more essential. For one thing, I finally got the causal direction right. Alcohol did not relieve anxiety and stress. Rather, it exacerbated such bad outcomes. For another, I realized that being sober did not diminish my humor, intelligence, curiosity, or all the other attributes that I cherished. These were my traits, not something enhanced at all by booze. And finally, I discovered that a sober life was liberating. All seemed fresh and worthwhile. After many sad years, life was again worth living.

Perhaps, I am just lucky. I know that others struggle mightily to stay sober. For me, every day in the subsequent months was a freaking delight, if not a miracle. If there was any temptation to fall back, I simply remembered just how miserable I had been. As a handy reminder, I still have a couple of scars from falls I had taken during blackouts. If I had not changed course, I would likely have died many years ago.

We all have bad times in life, challenges that bring us low. The Celtic curse was mine. But I am yet here to talk about it. I am thankful for that.