Heather Harpham Kopp - Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk

I never saw the end of my drinking days coming.

But then again, maybe most alcoholics dont. By the time the end comes, were so attached to our addiction that if we knew what person, event, or twist of fate was going to eventually result in our deliverance, like a drowning person who fights her rescuer, wed do everything in our power to make sure it never happened.

So instead, God comes to us disguised as our life, wooing us through our misery toward surrender.

At least, that was how it was for me.

When I trace my story back to find the beginning of the end of my drinking, I arrive at a wedding. It was September 2006, and Daves best friend, Larry, was getting married to an actress and writer from Los Angeles.

I met Susan for the first time at her rehearsal dinner, the night before her wedding. She struck me as bright, funny, and down to earth. I liked her zany, irreverent style. She and Larry exchanged vows the following day, and as they shimmied back down the aisle to James Browns I Feel Good, I had high hopes for a friendship with her.

Soon after, Susan and Larry came to visit us for a weekend. They arrived on a brisk but sunny fall afternoon. We all sat in the living room and chatted about how amazing it was that Larry at fifty, and Susan, in her forties, had finally found one another (it was a first marriage for both)and through an online dating site, no less.

After a while, the four of us bundled up in coats and hats and took a walk through the tiny Central Oregon town where Dave and I were living at the time. As we strolled past gift shops and tourist boutiques, Susan regaled us with funny stories about acting auditions gone wrong. I particularly loved the one where she tried out for a diaper commercial by crawling around on the floor like a baby.

We got back to the house around five oclock. Since our dinner reservations at a nearby restaurant werent until seven p.m., I did what any good hostess would do: I opened up a nice bottle of white wine and put out a cheese plate for my guests to snack on. That was when it happened.

Susan said, Do you have any tea?

I stared at her blankly, willing her to take it back.

Actually, she added, if you have hot water, I brought my own loose leaf.

Her request instantly brought to mind another couple Dave and I had visited in their home in Ashland, Oregon. Upon our arrival, this husband and wife cheerily explained that after developing bad martini habits, they had both quit drinking. We have tea for happy hour now! they exclaimed.

They said this as if it were good news. As if they had no idea (which they didnt) that I could never subsist for several days on the limited amount of alcohol that was hidden in my suitcase. The extra four-packs of mini wine Id brought were meant to supplement the generous amount of alcohol I had expected to be served by our hosts.

I dont know how I made it through. I think we left a day early. And now, here was Susan, saying it again: Tea!

Later at the restaurant, my worst fears about Susan were confirmed when she ordered tea with her dinner, and casually confided, I dont drink.

My heart sank. And she had seemed so hip, so funny, and likable

Throughout dinner, and for the rest of Susans stay, I felt sad about the friendship with her that would never be. But I felt even sorrier for Susan. What would it be like to drink tea with dinner? To wake up every day knowing you were going to feel the same way at seven p.m. as you did at seven a.m.?

It was a life of such vast meaninglessness I couldnt wrap my head around it.

* * *

By the time I met Susan, I knew I was an alcoholic. It was something Id been feverishly working to hide for almost twelve years. Of course, Dave knew I had a serious drinking problem. But even he still had no idea that in addition to the three or four glasses of wine he saw me drink each evening, I was covertly consuming several times that amount from a secret stash in my closet.

Lately, however, the constant effort it took just to keep this stash stocked at all times had come to seem like a part-time job. The covert shopping trips, the rounding up of the hidden empties, and the weekly unpacking and repacking of the garbage can on pick-up days had left me demoralized and exhausted.