Today I have been sober for 10 years.
📸| my daughter
Year 10
A Letter to My Former Self
There have been many times over the years when I’ve wanted to speak to you. The words have changed, the further I’ve gone from you. At first I was angry. I thought of you as weak for not hitting back. Then it was embarrassing to think about and to be reminded of being degraded. Finally, I think about you and just get sad.
There are common themes for recovered addicts, survivors of near death experiences and trauma. It’s the second chance. You have this new lease on life and you’re determined to make every second count. I think I mistook this for being driven and goal obsessed while not reminding myself of “why“.
It’s not like I’ll ever forget why I’m sober now. I don’t go to AA anymore but I acknowledge the choice I made to get sober and stay sober frequently. The physical and mental health improvements speak for themselves too. I’m trying to acknowledge something different, the dark side of The Drive.
Everything eventually has its tipping point if left unchecked. I’ve had many irons in the fire for several years to the point where I don’t remember what it was like before I had such a full schedule. Now it’s at the point where if I’m not moving, I feel “lost”. Going somewhere. Training for something. Volunteering myself for whatever. The Shark has to be in constant forward motion.
This wasn’t the plan I had for myself it just kind of happened. I didn’t want to be that person standing there getting punched in the face by their spouse, cursed at and pathetic. Codependent No More and never looking back is how I thought of myself once that was over, and that meant always striving to be strong, to be powerful and never treated like that again. They were correlating goals in my eyes.
But when that’s the sole source of The Drive you won’t ever be content. You’ll get to the false finish line of endless races and you won’t find it here.
So to My Former Self, if I could talk to you now I would finally give you Grace. I would tell you we’d never be back here again. We’d have nearly a decade of sobriety someday. That we’d get FULL CUSTODY of our daughter. That it’d be ok once we were finally able to walk away. You’ll get to where you were destined to go and I’m sorry you’re having to experience this in order to get there.
– your friend, you
9.06.2024
Year 9
Today I have been sober for 9 years.
Every year has been a unique timeframe of personal growth, personal setbacks, triumphs and disappointments. All have the common theme of not having the specter of addiction hovering over each moment, waiting to derail everything. There have been times over the past few months that I have felt lost as I took a step back from ultra running and focused more on being a full time parent. I know that might sound disappointing, but I will admit it. As I’ve said on these annual musings before, not everything is a positive experience just because you get sober. Alcohol whisked away the responsibilities before, I had a built in subconscious excuse to every selfish action I took. As easy as it may sound to every rational parent out there, just having my babies with me every day that I spend at home should be “enough”. So why have I felt so lost lately?
Traveling with my daughter as she nears the penultimate moment in her young adult life has been a revelation. I didn’t want to try and make up for lost time once I returned from my time with the Navy, I just wanted her to have a chance at a normal healthy life. The chance to travel with her and show her so much of the world, however, has been some of the most enjoyable experiences of my entire life. Our trip to Seattle, my first time back as a sober person, was a huge moment for me personally. Seattle was place where I had gone through so much personal adversity yet came away with a degree from UW that continues to open doors for me to this day. Unfortunately, it is also where my addiction went to a very dark place. Instead of partying and revelry, it was many nights drinking alone and an emotional rollercoaster that plummeted further and further away from who I should have been. I should have been a better parent. I should have been a better son. I should have been a better student. I should have been a better athlete. I should have been a better person. Instead, I was none of those things and in the back of my mind I felt like a failure, even walking across the stage during graduation inside Husky Stadium.
Going back there and having every minute of every day we spent together seem like a joyful dream, was therapy that I didn’t even know that I needed. I’ll remember them fondly for the rest of my life.
The ability to mentally handle the hard times is one of the blessings of sobriety. When things are a challenge, I do try and acknowledge that I can sort through them so much better now that I’m sober. Feeling something, even if it’s an unpleasant feeling, is better than feeling nothing at all. Feeling lost is better than feeling empty and the crushing weight of nothingness. Eventfully, I am going to find what I am supposed to find, when and where I am supposed to find it. The Universe Speaks.
Year 8
Today I have been sober for 8 years.
As I looked down at my son this morning as I held him, the weight of those words were far more of an impact than when I have wrote them the seven years prior. I am a full-time father to two beautiful healthy children and have a wife who has stood by me and supported all of my goals and dreams. I am acutely aware that none of that would be the case if I had never made the decision to Change.
Sometimes people ask me how I knew that I had a problem and what it was like towards the end. My answer is that I never ever acknowledged that I had a problem until it was practically over, and that the end was the same as the beginning. I didn’t drink to drown anything out, it was something that I did almost every single day as routinely as getting out of bed and getting dressed. Good times, bad times, this didn’t matter. I was going to do it no matter what. When it all ended eight years ago, it was like a constricting snake finally had wound so tight around my throat that I had only two choices: to Change, or to die.
That is a realization that only the recovering addict can describe in full. You simply don’t know how to describe it unless you have been forced to reconcile with that split fork in your life’s journey. Until that moment is upon you, no amount of AA, therapy, intervention, whatever you want to try and do to put a band-aid over this is going to work. Rock Bottom is a unique place that is decorated differently for every soul who finds themselves there. I appreciate the creative, beautiful moments portrayed on social media, I really do. I just think we should also talk openly about the other side of the coin, and that dialogue would if nothing else, let human beings know that they are not alone. Which is a bigger deal than most realize.
“The darkness in me recognizes the darkness in you”.
Nole’Core, 2016
I find it morbidly ironic that today is Groundhog Day. If I had a dollar for every time I sat in AA and heard the phrase, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” then I would have quite a few bucks in my pocket. That is quite accurate though. It is like you are stuck. You do the same fucking thing no matter how counterintuitive, self-destructive, and hurtful to your loved ones it is, on repeat. Yes the locations change, the bars you frequent vary, the relationships collapse and reignite with a different cast, but the results don’t. ever.
Until one day it finally does.
One thing I am proud of and I will readily acknowledge as a reason I was able to get sober, is that I always told myself no matter how difficult this situation was, it wasn’t going to be permanent and it was not going to last forever. I spoke that into existence. I never said a single woe-is-me. I think that’s a big component in this. Accepting responsibility and always leaving the door open for optimism.
I am up to 155 pounds now (10 pounds heavier than when I finished Moab a few months ago!). I usually state my weight on these posts because of how gaunt I was during my first year of sobriety. I went through the awful withdrawals, got pretty sick, and also had my 2nd hernia surgery. I was in the 130s and looked like absolute shit. I feel really good at this weight.
I am very excited about the changes that have happened over the past eight years and continue to set goals at the age of 40. I think that is important, to keep pressing forward and challenging myself. My career in the Navy has provided infinite opportunities to see what I am capable of and I am eternally thankful for that. Becoming a father to a little boy is quite a different set of challenges, but I am having so much fun being Dad that I really can’t complain about any missed sleep. Running 240 miles on 5 hours of sleep is nothing compared to being on a newborns sleep schedule, right?
So as I sit here and acknowledge this day, I can smile knowing that I will go to bed tonight in the same house as ALL of my family, and wake up tomorrow one day closer to whatever adventure the universe has in store for me.
I didn’t arrive here by having everything go right. In fact it went very, very wrong at times. I arrived here Because I finally made the decision to Change.
Photos by my good friend Brandon Stutzman (@shotbystutz) while we walked the Arizona Trail a week after I finished Moab, talking about the ideal lighting that evening and what drives and motivates us to be the best versions of ourselves.
Moab: The Aftermath
2 years. That’s a long time to prepare for anything, especially a race. It’s an especially long time when it’s coming off the heels of the only DNF of your career in that exact same race.
My biggest takeaway from the 2020 Moab 240 was that I have to be able to sleep during a 200. I’d made it 73 hours of being awake before I ran out of time at the now-defunct Wind Whistle aid station, mile 153. I hadn’t even landed back in Florida before my wife vowed that she’d be there for me next time with a crew vehicle. There were other lessons learned, but I’d say this was the most important and had the biggest impact in 2022.
Preparing for Moab wasn’t my only focus throughout the past 2 years, but it did always seem to be lurking in my thoughts. Every workout I did, run I went out on, always had me thinking about how this would make me more likely to finish the 240 miles. I remember laying in my rack at bootcamp, staring at the bunk above me, thinking long and hard about what had gone wrong. My fellow recruits were curious about me and why I joined so late in life, and my ultra running stories were the late night topics of several of those nights in Great Lakes. This was a preview of how conversations inevitably turned towards with people I’ve met the past two years as my budding Navy career had me meeting new people constantly. Moab always came up. “Whats the furthest you’ve ever ran?” “153 miles”, with the caveat that it had come during a failure.
We reserved a cabin right at the start/finish line at the Moab RV park. Any advantages I could have, I tipped in my favor this time. No parking a mile away and rushing to the start line this year. My crew consisted of my wife, Whitney, my friend Matt, and the pacer/crew combo of Mindy and her fiancé Rob. Mindy had finished the Bigfoot 200 in August and was also a nurse. I felt extremely fortunate that I had people in my life who would take the time to come all of the way out to a remote desert town and suffer through this with me. The adversity of the experience wasn’t limited to just me though; my wife was 7 months pregnant, and Mindy had stitches in her knee from a fall during a trail run the week prior. Nevertheless, on Friday morning October 7th, our team was on the starting line of the 2022 Moab 240.
I’ll spare you the race report rundown and focus instead on what made this year different than my previous experience. Unlike in 2020, I ran the majority of Day 1. There were several miles at a pace that I knew I’d only sniff during that first day, with the mentality of getting through the first 100 miles in the low 30-hour range. Despite the usual oppressive heat throughout the desert and canyons, I got to the first sleep station, Indian Creek, with over 10 hours before the cutoff. I immediately went to the vehicle and slept soundly for an hour and a half while elevating my legs.
The time in the bank plus the good sleep was something to feel positive about, but I was dealing with some awful chaffing around very sensitive areas. Every step from that point on, I felt the constant papercut feeling across my ass and genitals. Yep. My ability to run slowly slipped away, and brought me closer to something I vowed I’d never be: a thru hiker.
I was able to do some slow running mixed in with power hiking over the next 50 miles. Getting to Bridger Jack at mile 100 in broad daylight was a huge mental win, as one of the focal points of reliving my 2020 DNF was my midnight mountain lion encounter out on the mesa. I left the aid station and headed up Shay Mountain with another runner named Elliot and his pacer, powering our way to the summit much quicker than I remembered doing before.
With the race halfway point behind me, I slept for 2 hours and received another mental boost: I would be with a pacer for the remainder of the race. My entire crew was at Shay and took care of the details while I changed into a fresh shirt and ate everything put in front of me from the aid station. As the sun began to cut through the cold mountain air, Mindy and I headed out on the road back down to the desert.
I didn’t run at all on Day 3. At this point the chaffing was pretty bad, and it felt like open wounds down around my nether regions. We still were power hiking at an average of 20 minute miles, but it was a tough pill to swallow knowing I should have been running plenty of stretches of the mostly flat trail and roads that stood between Shay Mountain and the next sleep aid station, Road 46. When we neared The Needles, which had replaced Wind Whistle, things went sideways on me.
I don’t know if it was the bad memories of 2020 or just the 154 miles, but it was a deja vu meltdown for me at the exact same place that I fell apart on my prior attempt. I just couldn’t get out of my head, and anxiety started to rise as I failed to see where in the hell this new aid station was. I cursed loudly and couldn’t even describe to Mindy what was bothering me so much. I called Whitney in a panic, which is exactly what I did in 2020. The road bent and turned, with still no welcoming lights signaling our arrival to warmth and fuel. The aid station locations in Moab are an exercise in calculated cruelty.
Finally, mercifully the aid station lights appeared at the top of the hill. Rob welcomed us, as he had been volunteering here for several hours to allow us crew access. I’d had a feeling getting past where I’d DNF’d would be a milestone, and having Rob there with the vehicle was huge. After shivering quietly for a few minutes around the fire, I slowly walked to the jeep and collapsed into a slumber. When Mindy woke me up, I panicked thinking I’d been asleep for hours and had missed the cutoff. Mindy informed me that I’d been asleep for a whopping….15 minutes! I have no idea how I’d time traveled while sleeping but I swear I felt rejuvenated from the quick nap. We made some wardrobe changes and went back to the fire to chow down on pancakes and one of the treats of the race, the cans of coffee coke Mindy had brought.
The last stretch of the night to Road 46 was fairly uneventful. It was simply a road through the desert. We passed a bizarre looking “house” facade in the side of a mountain, but otherwise didn’t get to see much. We passed a few runners moving slowly or sleeping in bivys along the road. When we arrived at Road 46, it was the same winning formula. I ate and hopped into the car, this time sleeping for just 45 minutes.
Day 4 was all in the La Sals, and I spent it being paced by Rob. I still couldn’t run because of the chaffing, but it was almost entirely uphill anyway. An endless gradual ascent of rocky trail, heading towards an oasis of fall colors up near the top of the mountain dominating our view. We reached Pole Canyon and the fantastic aid station where I had my feet taped by a medic. There were blisters beneath my toes on both feet, but neither felt serious enough to drain.
We headed out for the 15 mile stretch up to Geyser Pass and eclipsing 10,000 feet above sea level. I could almost immediately feel the effects of the elevation, with my breath getting heavier and my vision slightly narrowing. While we enjoyed the beautiful aspens surrounding us, it was absolutely the toughest stretch of the race for me. The 15 miles ended up taking 9 hours, and my cutoff time buffer withered away. By the time Rob and I stumbled off the trail onto the road up to Geyser, I’d had to take a trail nap and also lost my beanie and cell phone. Thankfully Rob backtracked and somehow found the phone, but this was a an absolute beatdown on me physically and mentally. We had to stop and collapse onto the road, which was a steep grade upwards with no end in sight. Finally, with our breath wheezing out in ragged gasps, we made it into the aid station. 3 hours before cutoff, and I was determined to sleep for an hour and a half for the final push to the finish.
This was really the only time during the race I’d felt rushed or concerned about the cutoff, so things were noticeably hectic. Getting ready in the dark, I tried to quell the emotions rising up in my mind. I’d made it to 200 miles. I still had a full day to finish. I’d barely ran at all in 2 days, so if push came to shove, I still had my speed, right?
Mindy and I headed out in the dark, and as we trudged upwards, she read all of the birthday and well wishes from our friends back home. I’ll admit that I’d already envisioned crossing the finish line and having my emotions erupt. I didn’t even make it that far. I was so overcome hearing how much love and support I had during the race of my life, that the tears started flowing down my dirt streaked face. Ill always remember that moment.
There were still about 5 miles spent ascending above 10,000 feet amongst the aspens. The sun began to trickle through and soak the trail. We passed several cows as we began to make our way down the mountain along a paved road. About 5 miles from the final aid station, we’d pushed my cutoff time back to 3 hours as we’d power walked downhill. I think this rhythm while moving downhill constantly caused my calf to feel tight. When I stood up from our quick fuel break, I felt it tighten painfully. By the time we got to Porcupine Rim aid station, it was causing me to limp noticeably. 18 miles of slickrock trails stood between me and the finish line.
Now up to this point I’d had minimal interaction with any aid station volunteers or medics, except at the aid stations with no crew access. So I really never could discern between who was “officially” working for Destination Trail, although I guess the giveaway would have been the race tee-shirts. When I hobbled into the aid station and said my calf was tight, someone who definitely was NOT a race medic offered to work on my calf. I swapped my shirt and tried to eat, thinking this was going to be a quick stop. The dude working on me had other ideas.
As he roughly dug his fingers into my calf, he spouted off multiple theories as to why I had a tight calf. Dehydration. Lack of electrolytes. Nutrition. Finally, he gripped my calf like it was in the jaws of a starving Rottweiler and I screamed bloody murder. My calf locked up and I was terrified my race was over.
In the minutes that followed, I sat dejected with a blanket wrapped around me. My eyes glossed over and I was vaguely aware of runners coming and leaving, their race against time reaching a frantic pitch as I continued to sit sedentary. Another volunteer noticed my plight and came over to ask if he could help. He offered to get some tiger balm and massage my calf until I could move it. As he went to get the tiger balm, I tried to walk to the bathroom. I could barely move.
Now I’ll say this: I’m not sure entirely what is in tiger balm, but this volunteer worked magic on my calf. He told me to pop 3 ibuprofen, which I’d carried the entire race but hadn’t taken anything up to that point. The combination was effective immediately. Mindy helped me put on my vest, and I began to Frankenstein lurch down the trail.
As we powered down Porcupine Rim, my confidence grew. We hit mile after mile under our target pace. The sun began to set, and as darkness fell one final time on the Moab 240, my pacer became possessed. We made no wrong turns despite the pitch black surroundings up on the rim, and we caught up to several runners before we made the final bend in the trail. We could see the cars far below and it signaled our final descent of the race.
Those final 3.5 miles were the most pleasant ones I’d experienced. Not because it was almost over, but because even after nearly 240 miles, I was still able to run. We ran an average of 12 minute miles for most of those road miles. It was so easy. I was free at last.
As we rounded the turn underneath the highway into Moab, I tried to savor the feelings. I was all the way alive. Matt and Rob met us at the RV park entrance and I picked up the pace even more. I could see Whitney at the bottom of the road leading into the finish line area jumping and waving her phone, our little son along for the ride in her belly. We jogged across the line and I spiked my trekking poles into the ground. It was over. I hugged Whitney and felt everything melt away. It was over.
The other finishers serenaded me with Happy Birthday, making this 40 year milestone one for the ages. Then it was time for the true ending of my Moab redemption; the finish line mugshot. I took off my pack so the Navy emblem would be visible, a signifying difference between the runner who failed in 2020 and the Sailor who had far more than what the eye could see this time around.
Redemption. Writing this a week and a half later, it still feels surreal. The culmination of two years of training ended in success, and I definitely have not processed it yet. I’m not sure what the future holds for me as a runner, but I feel like I can finally move on. Special thanks to my amazing wife and crew, everyone who cheered me on from all over the planet, and anyone I met and shared miles with the past two years and listened to me talk about my plan for Redemption. You know who you are.
📸| @_anastasiawilde , @sarahattar , @jdpetersdotcom
Year 7
Today I have been sober for 7 years.
I’m writing this on my back porch after dropping my daughter off at school. Just writing the last part of that sentence still seems like a miracle to me. I’m a full-time dad now, something that I thought I’d never get to experience after 13 years of waiting. The decision I made 7 years ago today is what made much of my current life realities possible.
Now that I am back in Santa Rosa Beach, I decided to start going to a new AA meeting close to home. My old home group was in Fort Walton Beach, almost an hour away. One positive aspect of life post-pandemic has been accomplishing a solid amount of work in the immediate vicinity of my own house. The group I go to has been a nice change of pace and it’s a diverse cast of characters with whom I feel comfortable talking to. There is raw power in that room when someone peels back their inhibitions and expresses their emotions and stories of combating an addiction. For a while I thought that I didn’t need the meetings, but I have changed my viewpoint since I have been back. The meetings need me. It is a duty of an alcoholic to assist those who need or want help.
Being gone for 10 months and adapting to the rigid lifestyle of what the military demands was a challenge, but one that I embraced. It was a time to block out external distractions and confront what had been bottled up in my mind for several years. There are no AA meetings in bootcamp. By the time I got out I felt like a well oiled machine, completely comfortable in my thoughts and decisions. Again, being sober for this many years put me in a position to join the Navy and thrive. I would have been no good to them 7 years ago.
Every day when I wake up, I am in control of the following things:
- My second thought
- My first action
I choose what I decide to do, and my aforementioned drive-my-daughter-to-school routine makes it pretty easy to start my day on a positive note and wipe away any frantic thoughts I wake up with.
Over the years, I haven’t read many books or sought out content from many people in recovery. I guess I thought I had enough positivity coming my way from the meetings I went to or just by continuing to be sober. A bit selfish on my part actually. This is by nature, a selfish condition, and even when you achieve sobriety I think it is a process to not put your own self-absorbed existence before other people. Fortunately, I recently was able to hear the words of two very public figures who are in recovery from their addiction: Ryan Leaf (former NFL QB) and Randy Blythe (lead singer for Lamb of God). Leaf is best known for flaming out of the NFL and battling addiction to pain medication. I distinctly remember being in highschool and rooting against him (he went to Wazzu), and then making fun of his fall from grace as one of the biggest “busts” in NFL history. Fast forward almost 20 years and there I was listening to him talk about his journey and multiple failures before finally achieving stability and a family once he was able to make the choice to change who he was. Ironic right? You never know when your own life will end up mirroring someone you once mocked, so maybe try a different approach when you see someone going down in flames. Ryan was a guest on one of the local sports-talk radio shows, and I called in before his segment. The host kindly relayed a message to him and I guess in my own mind that was my way to apologize for being such a hateful jerk back in the day. His podcast is incredible and brutally honest, which is so much more valuable for anyone either in recovery or who has a loved on going through this. The title is “Bust”, an ode to Ryan’s sense of humor which I found refreshing and relatable.
Randy has had a book published for a few years called “Dark Days”, and I had thought it was written about his unfortunate incident in the Czech Republic that landed him in court (and prison!) after a fan died at one of his shows in Prague. It turns out that he is in recovery after spending his entire adult life as an alcoholic doing many of the self-destructive behaviors that so many of us can relate to. I first met Randy at a club show in Tallahassee back in 2004 while Lamb of God was still able to play smaller venues. Afterwards I drunkenly introduced myself to him, and he was gracious enough to put up with my blabbering in the parking lot behind the club. I’ve met him several times since that night, and thankfully was able to attend his photography exhibit in D.C. last summer when I was at Fort Meade (which is where he was born!). Getting to re-do that conversation with both of us being sober now was a cool experience (he got a kick out of the fact that my wife mailed him his EyeHateGod coffee mug – she manages their online store), and had I known his book had so much relatable anecdotes on being an alcoholic, I would have read it sooner.
My biggest takeaway from both of those, is that the honesty it takes to finally change who you are as a person has to be directed at yourself. You can promise everyone else that you’ll change this time until you’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t matter until you make that promise to yourself. When you finally say back to your own reflection in the mirror “I am done being this person”, the cycle can finally be broken. If you are in a relationship or family with someone battling an addiction, just know that the promises they make to you also have to be made to themselves, for they are the only ones who can hold themselves accountable. Whether that is done by going to AA meetings, talking to a therapist or sponsor, a treatment facility, however they feel like this change can be realistic and obtainable – it has to be something they seek out and truly want.
Christopher
