Pressing Your Luck

You don’t often recognize it as it’s happening, especially if your judgement is impaired.

It’s more likely that you brush it off and move on, especially if it is a result of your own bad choices.

A narrow escape. A fortunate outcome. Someone looking out for you…

The capacity for denial is deep; the fear of change, paralyzing.

For those caught up in the drinking lifestyle, it can feel like an episode of Press Your Luck, that game show from the ’80s (ok, I dated myself there) where contestants risked winning progressively greater amounts of money in hopes they didn’t land on a Whammy and lose it all.

You experience an unpleasant consequence as a result of having a few too many: memory loss, physical illness, an embarrassing memory played over and over in your mind. You consider changing your ways, but you soon fall back into the routine (the trap), clinging to the belief that there is still something beneficial in the bottom of a bottle. You vow to be more careful next time, more mindful. To drink “responsibly.”

But then the unpleasant consequences occur more frequently and eventually become the norm. Intestinal distress during the workday. A fall down the stairs. Constantly questioning whether you’ve told that story before. (Hint: you did. Last night.)

Then, it is just a matter of time before you finally hit the Whammy that changes life as you know it. Maybe the Whammy is physical (serious injury to yourself or others, terminal illness, car accidents), or maybe it’s financial (loss of job, insurmountable debt), or psychological (loss of a marriage or significant relationship, or a mental health crisis). Sometimes it’s even a double- or triple-whammy, and those are very hard to come back from, if you even get the opportunity.

But somewhere between the “why do bad things keep happening when I drink?” question and the dreaded triple-whammy, you usually experience one or more “close calls.” These should not be ignored; nor should you view them as an invitation to Press Your Luck. Sadly though, they often are and you often do.

Several years before I quit drinking, I experienced a close call and explained it away to myself and others.

The capacity for denial is deep; the fear of change, paralyzing.

It was a dark and stormy night, and both my sons were playing basketball at staggered times in two different locations. I did what I always did when I felt rushed and frustrated that I couldn’t clone myself; a few glasses of wine getting ready, a few mini bottles in my purse. Who had time to eat?

Heading home after the games with the boys, and still in a rush to get to my parents’ house because they are watching my three-year-old daughter. This is when I get stuck behind an elderly man driving 15 mph in a 35 zone on a two-lane road with a solid yellow line. I slow and sigh. I inch along for what seems like ages, look at the clock and sigh louder. Why is he going so slow?

My son gave me a quick side glance, sensing I was about to go rogue. I made the move to pull out into the oncoming lane and around the truck. My son yelled, “Mom!” just as the old man turned his truck into the side of my car. Seems he finally found the place he was supposed to turn, just as I lost my patience and decided to pass illegally.

I pull off the road just as I see a police car mere yards away. What are the odds? The old man pulls over. The cop approaches and asks if we’d been in an accident. I shakily answer yes, we had, as I hear a crackly voice cut through on his radio. Just as I was preparing to make a full confession, he asked if we were all okay (thankfully we were) and said he had to go. That he’d been called to an emergency.

Turns out the old man (who was also okay physically) worked for a volunteer charity organization delivering food and necessities to shut-ins, and I’d given him a huge fright. I didn’t take it in. And that sizable dent in the car was on the passenger side where my son sat, inches away. I still didn’t take it in. I called my parents, crying, saying I’d been in an accident, and I’d be a bit later than expected.

At their house, I explained that I was stressed and overly busy, which made me in such a big hurry… all over a big glass of wine.

Looking back, I see what led me to make such an inexplicably dumb driving decision. I see the impaired judgement. I see the angel on my shoulder as the cop drove away without looking into it. I see myself brushing it off to my kids, my husband (who was out of town), and myself. “I was just in too big a hurry! Stupid Mom! Don’t ever do what I did, son.”

No, don’t…

I didn’t heed the close call then, or even label it as such. I didn’t consider the fact that it could have very easily been so much worse. I continued to press my luck.

The Whammy that did finally catch up to me years later was a moment. A heartbreak. The metaphorical death of myself. I had lost myself. I felt it deep in my soul. And I did not want this “death” to be my life.

In her book, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Anna Quindlen writes about giving up booze as her “near miss:”

“Many years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to be any worse than my shortcomings made me if I could possibly help it. At the end of a dim tunnel I could see the possibility of a life in which I would be defined not by who I was but by what went from a bottle into a glass and then into my mouth. Worse still, I imagined the lives of those I loved being defined by it as well.”

You don’t have to wait until you hit a Whammy to change. To stop. You can choose to pay attention to those close calls, those near misses. You can see the red flags and weigh the risks. You can decide to fold and walk away before you lose it all.

My drinking career lasted way longer than I would have liked and my children witnessed more than they care to remember, I’m sure. But I am hopeful that the summation of my life, the whole of it, will not be defined by those unfortunate years.

Sometimes we are able to pick up the pieces and rebuild, and our story of defeat becomes a story of triumph. But sometimes, we are not given that chance.

Is it really worth pressing your luck?