Why Did I Start Drinking?

Why did I start drinking?

2020.

Column done*.

But before I finish, I present to you another edition of:

Bryant’s Super Scientific (but also not really) Top Three!!

Here’s the thing, as I write this on Monday night there’s still one game to be played tonight and one game to be played tomorrow. So take this top three with a grain of salt. But, in my estimation at least, here are the top three teams in the league after week 5(ish)

1. Nathan (probably 4-1). His team just keeps putting up big numbers despite the fact that Lamar hasn’t been what he was last year. 
2. Chris. As of this writing, Chris is projected to beat Jensen (another 3-1 team) and has put up the top score at least once this year. Chris is a force to be reckoned with. Somehow. 
3. Adam. I guess? I mean, it looks like he’ll be the only other 4-1 team besides Nathan and Chris. So on record alone I have to give it to him despite the fact that his team is only projected to score in the high 60s. (I suppose there’s a chance that Kyle could beat him… but it’s Kyle cmon.)**

**10:35 Monday Night UPDATE: Kyle is beating Adam***. Adam Sucks. I guess Jensen is actually three. 

***3:53 PM Tuesday Afternoon UPDATE: Adam beat Kyle… by .22. So I guess Adam can stay 3rd. What a joke.

On the way out, here’s the two teams in the most danger of finishing last as of right now:

THE KYLES!

Alright fam, that’s all from me. Here’s to a good (and COVID free) week Six!

The Commish

*Oh, you’re still here? That’s weird. 

I guess blaming the year isn’t really a satisfying explanation for why, after 30 years of avoiding alcohol, I had the first drink of my life this summer. It is a good joke though. 

You really want to know? Fine. Buckle up though because it’s a doozy. 

One of the core memories I have of my mother is finding her black out drunk one day in her bed at two pm in the afternoon after I got home from school. This was problematic for two reasons:

1. She was a grown woman with three children
2. She was supposed to be at work at noon, and we needed that paycheck. 

(The mere fact that I knew my mother’s work schedule better than she did says a lot about our relationship)

Now I’m not sure how much experience you have with people of the “blacked out drunk” variety, but they’re usually incredibly hard to wake up. So, despite the most annoying “MOM” yell I could muster, she wouldn’t budge. It was then that I decided that I was going to have to get physical with her. 

I climbed up onto the bed to shake her awake, which only kind of worked in the sense that she woke up just enough to violently push me off of her. I tumbled off the bed and onto the ground on the other side of the room, the side of my mother’s room I never really saw because it was obscured by her bed frame. I remember landing and hearing a loud “crunch” followed by a searing pain in my elbow. The ground on that side of her bed was covered by brown paper bags. There must have been a hundred of them at least. Enough to render the carpet hidden. 

And then there were the empty bottles. Dozens upon dozens of them. Everywhere. Many of them were glass bottles, including the one I had landed on. It had shattered upon my impact and the glass left a deep gash in the side of my elbow. I still have the scar.

I remember standing up as fast as I could and storming out of her room, horrified. I knew my mother drank, I knew it was bad, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality of that moment. The sheer depth of her disorder and dysfunction couldn’t be ignored anymore.

It was that day, at the age of fifteen, that I made my first phone call to a rehab center (while holding a towel to my elbow to stop the bleeding). I had to pretend to be my Father (which was a necessary evil), but I managed to convince the intake experts that she was a good candidate for rehabilitation. Later that week, I would drive my mother (despite being too young to have a driver’s license) to her first rehab center and sign her paperwork myself when the nurses weren’t looking. 

It was on the way back from dropping her off that (in between praying that I wouldn’t get pulled over) I made an inner vow. I would NEVER EVER EVER drink. 

And, for the next fifteen years I didn’t. Going to ALC and being around Jeanne basically closed the door on drinking in my 20s. Her attitude toward it was pretty easy for me to adopt without too much thought. Alcohol led to the type of dysfunction that ruined my mother’s life and worked against you as a Pastor. Why would I ever step into that world. If it was a good enough standard for Jeanne Mayo to uphold for 40+ years, it was important for me to hold onto.

Then ALC blew up. 

I don’t really have words (or time) to accurately describe the effects that ALC imploding has had on myself or my community. It has been, and will continue to be, a HOT FREAKING MESS. But even though that program, and Jeanne Mayo’s Youth Ministry career, came to an end on one particular day, it was more of a process for me. 

I had spent the past five years or so quietly (at least at first) questioning the validity of Jeanne’s ‘expertise’. Her ministry decisions were short sided, outdated, and often negligent. She prioritized ALC and Cadre over the Youth Ministry. The staff who directly worked for her (the ones with brains anyway) would often confide in me about her lack of management, care, and sound decision making. Every leadership decision she made seemed to lead back to “We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it because that’s what has put the spotlight on ME.”

Her and I got into more and more disagreements and eventually we didn’t speak at all. Often, she would suggest something in the Ministry and I would internally think to myself “That’s an awful idea, we’re not doing that.” And we wouldn’t. That’s obviously not the kind of input and impact you want from your ‘Director of Student Ministries’. 

For me, Jeanne Mayo slowly transitioned from “The Motherly Figure who cares about me and is an expert at Youth Ministry” to “The Old Woman who has no idea what she’s talking about and maybe only cares about her own legacy.” 

When all the stuff about Jordan came out and she was gone, there was a very large part of me that was relieved and felt vindicated. Finally it was over! I wasn’t crazy, she really didn’t know what she was talking about. Her influence over me, and many of the people I loved, was done. Right?

One day, about a month later, Allison and I were in a grocery store. We were walking through the alcohol aisle to get to the other side of the store when she stopped and just kind of stared at the bottles on the shelf. 

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to drink?” She asked. I honestly hadn’t thought about it. For me, alcohol was just a non factor. But something about the way she asked that question hit me differently that day. She wasn’t asking “what kind of drinkers” we would be, she was asking a deeper question. 

“Would we still Bryant and Allison if we drank?”

I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what type of people we would be if we began drinking because, if I was honest, I didn’t really even know who we were having decided NOT to drink. The truth is, ‘not drinking’ wasn’t about me. It had never been about me. 

As a kid it had been about my Mom, and the demons she failed to contend with. Alcohol was the idol she consistently chose over my siblings. Instead of providing and caring for us, she retreated into her room night after night to indulge in another bottle out of another paper bag that would soon be discarded to the hidden place beside her bed. 

As I grew older, not drinking became less about my physical mother, and more about the other woman I now called ‘mom’. Drinking alcohol became the thing ‘irresponsible and sinful’ leaders do. To do so was to spit in the very face of the responsibility of “Pastorhood”. At least that’s how Jeanne saw it. 

But I’m not Jeanne Mayo. I’m not ego obsessed or driven by the desire to please others the way she is. I’m not hell bent on people remembering me and I don’t find value in others referring to me as ‘family.’ Ministry is something I do, it’s not who I am. 

And I’m sure as hell not my mother. I’m not an addict (well, mostly, I eat a lot of candy). My brain hasn’t been hardwired to need substance to the degree that I neglect my family and loved ones. I’m not perfect, but I don’t hide away my problems in dark places the way she did. My darkness isn’t who I am, it’s what I allow The Lord and others to heal inside me. 

So why didn’t I drink? Because I had internalized the brokenness of not just one, but two mother figures in my life. 

All of us internalize things from other people. We buy products without realizing that brilliant marketing strategies influenced our decision to. We value people based on cultural, economic, or social biases. We even manage our own Fantasy Football teams based on other people’s ‘rankings’ and advice. 

If we’re not careful, we can even internalize OTHER PEOPLE’S dysfunction as our own.

I think it’s healthy for all of us, from time to time, to take stock of what we’ve internalized from other people and simply ask the question: “where did this come from and is this for me anymore?” 

Am I only voting this way because it’s how my parents voted?

Am I only starting DJ Moore because the ‘experts’ still have him ranked in the 20s? 

And, at least for me anyway, am I only abstaining from alcohol because my fake mom convinced me that it would transform me into my biological mom? 

A couple of weeks later Allison and I bought our first ever bottle of wine, a Riesling. We both really enjoy it. It’s something we can do together that has injected a bit of fun into an otherwise hellish season. 

And, you know what? I feel really good about it. I feel like, despite the fact that I haven’t spoken to my biological mother in years, she has less control of me than she ever has. I also feel like I’ve been able to distance myself from the ‘death by duy’ obsession that embodied Jeanne Mayo’s leadership and influence in my life. 

Whatever you do, do it because it’s what YOU want to do. Start the fantasy football players you want to start. Love the people you want to love. And drink the things you want to drink. Life’s too short to let the downfalls of others dictate what we do and what we value. 

Also, Whiskey is great. I’m mad it took me 30 years to discover that.

– The Commish.