By BRENT AMBACHER | STR and LaSOR State Peer Recovery Support
Specialist, LDH
(Note: Brent Ambacher is sharing his recovery story in honor of National Recovery Month, observed every September as a time to increase awareness and understanding of mental and substance use disorders and to celebrate the people who recover. Learn about recovery resources in Louisiana here.)
The last time I had a drink —
April 29, 2012 — I didn’t even want one. After about 10 days of AA meetings,
I’d heard enough to make me decide I was done, and had given up for good (I
thought) about 72 hours earlier. The problem was, after 27 years of consistent
and ever-increasing drug and alcohol use, my body wasn’t down with this plan. I
was unable to hold down food or water, and had started vomiting blood.
Alcohol is one of the few
substances that can actually kill you if you stop abruptly. I sort of knew
this. I was fully aware that I was a hopeless alcoholic who hadn’t gone a
single day without drinking myself to “sleep” in probably 10 years. But I
wasn’t able to connect the dots. I was told I needed to go to the emergency
department, but the prospect of waiting for hours in that condition was too
horrifying to contemplate.
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| Brent Ambacher |
So, instead of my usual vodka
intake of more than a liter, I was sitting on my back porch, crying, sweating,
shaking uncontrollably and trying to choke down a glass with a mixture of
two-thirds beer and one-third honey.
I could not for the life of me
understand how this was helpful, but I knew enough to know that I was in
serious physical trouble and that a guy with 20 years of sobriety probably knew
more than I did about quitting. The drink was his recipe. It took me two hours
to get it down, but it worked. How does somebody end up the way I did — 46,
jobless, divorced, broke, homeless and staying with my eldest sister?
Struggling to cope
I was a missionary kid who grew up
in Hong Kong and moved back there after college. I’d been a successful
photographer, journalist, advertising executive and spin doctor. I’d lived on
three continents, married a beautiful, smart and talented English woman, spent nine
years in London, moved to New York, traveled the world. I was SOMEBODY. But
that was just on the surface.
Inside, I was desperately
frightened that one of these days, everyone would figure out that I was a fake,
with no talent, and that I didn’t deserve anything I had. I had also been
struggling with anxiety and depression for as long as I could remember. Drugs
and alcohol were my way of trying to cope with feeling like a failure and prop
myself up so I could keep impressing everybody else.
I guess I thought if other people
loved me enough, I’d be OK.
I wasn’t. I was a pathetic drunk
and I was close to death.
Climbing back from the bottom
That was seven years — and an
entire lifetime — ago. I had to start over, from the bottom. I delivered auto
parts for a while, and then someone suggested I might look into becoming a Peer
Recovery Support Specialist. I’d never heard of one, but I gave it a shot.
Besides getting sober, it was the most important thing I’d ever done for
myself.
I went to work at a treatment
center and spent a little over two years helping people like me. Another person
suggested I apply for a job that I never would have dared to try for, but they hired
me — as the Statewide Peer for the STR Grant, here at the Louisiana Department
of Health’s Office of Behavioral Health. Then they asked me if I wanted to try
my hand at facilitating Peer Employment Trainings, so I said yes to that, too.
I’ve learned that I don’t often know best what it is that I’m supposed to do
next, but saying yes is usually the right idea.
I make about a quarter of what I
used to. I don’t jet off for the weekend because I feel like it. But in return,
I have so much more than money could buy me. I was able to be present and help
nurse my father through the last four years of his decline from Parkinson’s and
dementia, and I was at his bed when he died. I have a job where I’m allowed to
be useful, and where the pain of my past can light a pathway forward for people
who are looking for a way out of substance use and mental health challenges.
And, for the last 2,600-and-something days, I haven’t needed a drink or a drug
to be OK with myself. It sure seems like a good trade to me.
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