The Exceptional Alcoholic

Family and friends, what follows below is a guest post from my insanely talented and awe-inspiring fiancé, Weston. I hope you, like me, are inspired by his words and the sheer bravery and courage he exudes in this essay (and in his daily life). — Matt

Having had a year of healing and reflection, I often wonder what the months would have looked like if I had not made that seemingly impossible decision on a blurry March day. The day was blurry because I had started it the way I did every other day- heaving into the toilet, crying, and begging my loved ones for forgiveness for the previous night’s myriad mistakes. This hadn’t stopped me before. What was it that made me finally say enough?

Just as I don’t clearly remember what it was that brought me into sobriety, I do not clearly recall taking my first drink. It was sometime when I was sixteen and beginning to experiment with more than just booze. At sixteen I was freshly “out of the closet” and still grappling with anxiety, panic, and depression which had fully onset at age nine. Adolescence is turbulent for even the most stable of teens, and to throw mental illness, drugs, and alcohol in on that created a heap of risk factors. Luckily, protective factors were in place in my life thanks to my parents. If it were not for their constant support, love, and patience, my life trajectory would be far poorer.

Living with any mental health diagnosis is difficult. Similar to how the archangel Gabriel descended from heaven to deliver the glorious news of Jesus’ conception to the Blessed Mother, I, too, was visited by an unearthly force at age nine. What had seemed like a normal morning in 4^th grade turned into a living nightmare which I can only describe as being entrapped by an inhuman entity and cursed into psychosis forever. I had my very first panic attack under the breakfast table, and clearly remember my mother’s frustration at a child who just seemed to want to get out of school. Within a week, I was homebound and attached to my mother’s hip. I wish my parents and I knew what we were getting into and that we had more answers like we do now. Of course, much is left to the unknown regarding anxiety and the way it manifests — we were just out of our depth.

It is the singular worst feeling in the world to experience a panic attack. It is the hardest thing in the world to see a way out of one once you’re in it, and almost just as hard to explain what it feels like to someone who has never experienced panic before. Yes, it feels demonic, which is exactly my reason for using the previous allusion. I remember having an episode this past Christmas, and remarked on how I can understand how, back before modern mental health medicine, people considered those who lived with anxious disorders as possessed. It feels that way sometimes, to be content one second and then the next, enveloped by a darkness so deep, dark, and profound that even God can’t save you. You fall into the most desolate pits of Hell in slow motion, painfully conscious of every second yet blank with the terror of generations past. You are forsaken, damned, and tortured relentlessly for eternity. A person either has or has not experienced a panic attack, and to explain the experience to the latter is like explaining the feeling of sex to a virgin. You either know or you don’t.

That is why it can feel so isolating at times to be someone living with anxiety and panic. Who even wants to hear what it feels like to experience a panic attack? Who wants to hear my anxious worries and irrational fears? Even I don’t! For twenty years I have made every attempt one can think of to tame, if not kill, the beast that is my anxiety disorder. I have taken or tried nearly every common antidepressant on the market and fallen prey to sadistic psychiatrists over the years. I’ve read self-help books, prayed, exercised, and taken up hobbies. But no medicine was as ever as good as alcohol.

The constant radio that played in my head could finally be silenced. At long last I could be my true effervescent, cheerful self and people could see me for who I really am. The shame with which I had become so comfortable was washed away like pollen in a late-Spring storm. I moved out of my parents’ place and into an apartment with my now fiancé in 2019, getting that sweet taste of freedom every 20-something craves. As normal, responsible drinkers, my parents never really kept booze around the house and only really indulged on special occasions. Now, I could drink whenever and as much as I wanted. What began as extra refills of my wine glass turned into vodka shooters at 7am on a Tuesday. My drinking problem developed over five years into a beast I could not control. When I was at the club in my early 20s getting drunk and having a great time, or when I took that first drink I don’t clearly remember, I can’t imagine myself foreseeing what my drinking would turn into.

It took me failing out of graduate school to realize that I had a drinking problem. I was nearly 90% done with my Masters in Social Work, and it all came crumbling down because I chose the bottle over the books. To have been so close to success and failing so miserably at achieving my dream was devastating. The anxiety caused by school, work, and other outside factors was intense, therefore I reached for vodka as my medicine. In fact, I was compounding my anxiety a hundredfold by drinking, and it is now in my sobriety that I can see the agony I was putting myself and my loved ones through.

Just as other worldly as I had been cursed with anxiety disorder on that scary morning, I somehow miraculously gained clarity about my drinking problem on that blurry March day. After making my calls to apologize for the previous night’s drunken antics, I decided to cry out for help. It was my “Papa Can You Hear Me” moment. I was desperate, but finally listening for an answer to prayers not said by me, but for me, as God and I had not been on the best of terms for a good while. Through divine intervention, I found my way to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

For three months I attended AA through Zoom every single day. There is an unsaid rule that one who is new to recovery should attend 90 meetings in 90 days. I exceeded that, sometimes attending a virtual AA meeting 3 times daily. It was my anchor to the real world and grounded me in gratitude. The people who I met, the drunks and fools, made a significant impact on my sober journey and life in general and I love them dearly. They taught me that I was not alone by any stretch of the imagination, and that I, Weston Juan Diego McNeely, was not an exceptional alcoholic. They, too, ruined relationships. They, too, had run-ins with the law. They, too, had anxiety disorders. And they, too, were brought to sobriety by a power greater than themselves.

It was trite, but true. Something in those Zoom rooms was more than human. I am not touting our founder Bill as some sort of messianic figure, but to say I felt God in my interactions with others like me is real. The connections I made and the healing I experienced was nothing short of divine. I thank my fellow problem drinkers for opening my eyes and ears to blessings and gratitude. AA mended my warped way of thinking about alcohol, and undoubtedly got me sober long-term. I am more open to the concept of an all-powerful being influencing my life for the better, because that is what the God of my own understanding does. MY God leads us to greener pastures, and finally I have gotten a taste of the good grass.

I will be celebrating one year sober on March 11, 2025. Aside from deciding to marry my fiancé, it has been the best decision of my life to stop drinking. My relationships are the strongest they have ever been, I am seeing a phenomenal therapist regularly, my medication regimen is the most stable it has ever been, I am marrying the love of my life, and I am starting a new chapter in my career. I still live with persistent panic and anxiety disorders, but they are at the most manageable levels as they ever have been in my adult life. I realize that my mental health is something that I will have to address for the rest of my life, but I am not discouraged because I can finally see a long, happy, and healthy life ahead of me. Prior to getting sober, I could only see as far as my next drink.

Nuh-uh. Shame will no longer be a part of my narrative, and I will choose the light over the darkness. Anxiety and panic will not prevail, and alcohol will not be the death of me. As my mom sometimes says in jest: “You’re just another Bozo on the bus”; no, I’m not. I’m beating anxiety’s ass every day. I’m choosing not to drink every day. I am the best I have ever been. I am the exceptional alcoholic.

Sobriety feels so, so good. I want to thank every single person who I met through AA, my best friend, my parents, my brother, my loving fiancé, and the God of my own understanding that led me to the sunny meadow. I couldn’t see through the trees, now I’ve got a blanket laid down and a doe eats out of my hand as I sing sweet hymns up to the sky. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have great memories while drinking, but the inner peace created through my sobriety has expanded my ability to create new, more meaningful, lasting memories. Now, I can remember every night before, every laugh and joke made. Even better, I’m no longer the joke.

As beautifully flawed human beings we must remember to keep our eyes and ears open for blessings, for if we only listen for evil, then it is evil we shall hear. I wish the peace brought to me be spread to you, and that you take with you from this a lesson in acceptance and understanding. Understand that if you struggle with drinking, you are not alone. Understand that if you live with mental illness, you can overcome. And finally, understand that through a loving, merciful, and mysterious force we call God (and sometimes Hello Kitty), you can do fucking anything.