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Matty Matt
Part 1
From Wall St. to the Street
My name is Mathieu and I am an alcoholic.
I am the oldest of two interracial kids. When I was born, my white grandfather hung up the phone on my father. Set the stage for my feeling different.
I was always bigger, smarter, darker, fatter, and poorer than everyone else around me growing up.
Then, at a family reunion in 1983, I was introduced to alcohol....
Suddenly I felt alive, equal, no longer "less than". I chased that feeling for twenty years.
Anyway, I was always very good in school...near or at the top of my classes. I was also one who always craved attention. I usually got both, and not always the good kind.
I started really pounding the brewskies in senior year of high school. Growing up in NYC, I was able to easily purchase the stuff and for others (I was already 6'4" at 14 yrs old). I was "the life of the parties" (if standing in the middle of a major street with a bottle of tequila yelling "don't drive drunk!" to passing drivers is "the life!)
In college, I truly honed in my beer guzzling skills. It was the only way this lower middle class minority city kid felt comfortable in its upper class New England prep school.
Junior year on the advice of a buddy, I started bouncing at nightclubs n NYC. Women galore, status (finally! I was important!), and decent money for a 19 yr old...also, I was introduced tot he wonderful world of cocaine!
Traveling to France introduced me to socially acceptable daily drinking...I had found my true calling!
After graduation and my year abroad, I decided to go back to France (wonder why?) I was truly a jet setter and important! A bouncer in night clubs in NYC during fall and winter, and St Tropez, France in the summer! I had found my true calling in life...small New England college education to nightclub bouncer and rugby player!
Well, when I decided to finally try to get serious about my life, Law School called me. That lasted for a year, as it got in the way of my partying! By this time, I was doing a fair amount of cocaine as well...Of course, I stopped working in clubs when I found myself in the infamous tombs of central booking in lower Manhattan after a particular bar fight (word to the wise, DO NOT do 6 shots of tequila after pummeling a guy and then start quoting first year law rulings to the police when they arrive for questioning!)
So, I did what any other law school dropout would do, I went to work on Wall St! My first week, I worked like 80 hours, went to the bar for the customary two hour Friday afternoon open bar offered by our boss, then went clubbing with another coworker, tons of coke, after hours club, then got a hooker.....this was a sign of things to come for me....MAN, did I think I had it made!
Well, only this alcoholic could make good six figures and be broke all the time! of course, my four figure weekends had nothing to do with it. I would regularly get up Friday morning at 5:30, go to work at 7:30, work till 9 or so, then go out partying until Sunday evening straight.
Relationships? Is dating your secretary, and screwing a different woman every month count as relationships?
Anyway, sooner or later, you lose your edge...it hit me hard when I found myself blowing thousands of dollars once again during a weekend when I promised myself I wouldn't...By this time, I was supplementing my income with two different loan sharks (if you wanna call that supplementing...I ended up paying triple what I borrowed over the years)
Well, my drinking buddy was in the rooms already by this time, and I called him up. OF course, I started going and checking it out. My life was totally unmanageable, but I was powerless over NOTHING! Heh heh...well, alcohol sure showed me who was boss! when guys I befriended in the rooms told me that "the great I am" would have to speak and do service at 90 days...I showed them by going out on my 89th day! SO THERE!
to be continued!....
Matty Matt
Part Two
From Wall St. to the Street
Figured I might as well get to the end...of a new beginning!
OK, this set a precedent for me....I could GO OUT & then come back to AA? I could still drink? Heck, the 3rd Tradition was my mantra for two years! (the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking).
So, for two years (1997-1998) I proceeded to go in & out of AA. I tried every step in the book. I would go to meetings Mon-Thurs & go out on weekends, I have been drunk at meetings, I would avoid people/places because I knew AA people were in that area...etc, etc, etc. By this time, my monthly bar tab was more than my rent (and I lived in a swank area of Manhattan at the time).
Dec 9th, 1998....I was drunk at work on the trading desk. I placed some erroneous trades, and when it was found out, the boss flipped out! I was fired on the spot. THIS TIME however, no other firm or company was soliciting me. Word had gotten out on the street (over 50,000 people work in the Wall St area, but it is a VEEERRRYYYY SMALL community & PEOPLE TALK!)
I received a phone call the next day from a former coworker who happens to be in the program. Seems I had called him late the previous night in a stupor and told him what happened. We proceeded to go back & forth & he finally got me to go back to a meeting. At this time, I didn't care if I lived or died. I thought I had "failed AA" and I wasn't worthy of its grace. BUT GOD HAD OTHER PLANS.....
I proceeded to actually stay sober this time, and actually got another job through a friend (former drinking buddy) on Wall St. Man, had I come down from my perch by this time. I was still making a rather decent living, but it palled in comparison to the paychecks I was making years previous. However, I pressed on...30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months....OMFG! A YEAR?! WHOA! Mat had licked his addiction! (Or so I thought)
Fast forward to 2000...I was now back to making good money again, I was sober for 20 months, I was chairing TWO meetings...but I wasn't doing any step work & had told my sponsor to buzz off, because I thought he was interfering with my personal life too much. I started noticing these changes/uneasiness in me...called FEELINGS & EMOTIONS! I couldn't handle it. I started to think to myself "You didn't go through this when you were drinking Mat..."
August 18th, 2000...I had enough. I had a surrogate sponsor at this time...a guy who basically backed off & let me do as I pleased...hey, he saw me at meetings, so I must be good, right? I called him that night, knowing good & well he wouldn't be home. I needed an alibi. Hey, at least I called my sponsor, right? Not MY fault he wasn't there for me in my time of need. So I had a beer, then another. Then went to the liquor store and purchased TWO fifths of Gin (my drink of choice in the good times). I drank one...then decided it was time to hit the city.
I went to one of my old stomping grounds...my former dealer greeted me with open arms at the door. "Where ya been, Mat? We missed you!" 8 ball in pocket, gin in my belly, I did what any normal alcoholic would do...I ordered two bottles of champagne! My dealer then introduced me to three young ladies & there I was. In the bar, champagne, broads (I KNEW I was getting some that night), money in the pocket.....but I was miserable. As they say in the rooms, it is a really miserable existence to have a head full of AA & a belly full of booze. I told the girls to scram and I left....in disgust. I had failed once again!
So, I went home feeling miserable. What would normally have been a spectacular night for me was a total disaster! So, I did what any normal alcoholic would do...I finished the SECOND fifth of gin I had bought not 12-13 hours before...then passed out.
I was sick for two days...felt I had let the whole world down. I would try once again, but I would do it my way, because I knew better!
What proceeded was two years of hell. A dry drunk is the worst. My life was in utter chaos, my career sputtering into oblivion, no relationships, distant (at best) friends...in AND out of the rooms.
In 2002, I started my own little hedge fund with some of my better clients still around. I would make money out of my home! 9/11 had destroyed my office (39 B'way took three weeks to fix back up) & I had the super computer system at home! I was barely making enough to get by, I wasn't going to meetings, and I was "white knuckling" it...FOR TWO YEARS!
April 2003. I had one of my clients pull out of a deal that would have made me big bucks. I was furious. ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP, I decided...and I proceeded to go on a run to end all runs. I mean I was drunk 23 out of 24 hours of the day. I ate potato chips and a cup of rice a day. I was getting creative too! I was taking these big 32 oz mugs and mixing cheap gin and malt liquor in them. My own lil concoction...I REALLY needed a super buzz!
I decided the weekend of June 20th, 2003 that I needed to "get away." So, I packed up a couple things and went off to a hotel across town. Just so happened, it was a CRACK HOTEL (funny how alcoholics find these places through thick & thin, eh?) Needless to say, I hooked up with some street dealers...they turned me onto crack cocaine. This was something I had never tried before. I smoked that pipe like it was luscious caramel! I was upset, because I wasn't feeling a buzz. Where was this "insane high" that crack is supposed to give you? Anyway, while I was smoking up, the dealers had ripped me off behind my back...took hundreds of dollars I had laying on the counter & one of my watches.
Then it hit me.....
The rush form the crack was so damn intense I nearly fell over. I grabbed some gin to try to cool myself down.
The next thing I knew, it was night time, I was literally sitting in the gutter on the other end of Manhattan, and my father & my sponsor were standing over me.
I WAS DONE! FINISHED!
I burst out in the biggest bawl I have ever conceived. For the first time in my life, I knew I was done. I forgot to add that I had been in some kind of accident too. Oh yeah...and it was THREE DAYS LATER! I was in a three day crack & gin induced blackout!
Turns out I messed up my back getting hit by a truck. I have herniated discs, damaged nerves and the bottom five facettes on both sides are bruised and damaged. Don't ask me what happened.
I was admitted into the hospital & placed under suicide watch & had mental health experts examining me. I was in a fucking psyche ward! How the hell did I go from TOP OF THE SIXES & THE OAK ROOM to here?
THIS WAS JUST THE BEGINNING!
After I was released from the hospital a few weeks later, I went straight to rehab. Three weeks later, I went to live in a sober home (three quarter house). My father had moved all my stuff out of my apartment, gave my cat away to someone, and put my crap in storage. I would spend the next 9 months living in a 9 x 9 room.
But I stayed sober!
I said to myself....."If THIS is where alcohol has taken me...I don't, no, I CAN'T ever touch the stuff again! I AM DEFEATED. I SURRENDER! GOD HELP ME!
So here I am two and a half years later...still sober, still rebuilding. I just got my own apartment again after years of roommates and sober homes. I have a very decent job (NOT on Wall St). I have friends that I share with, and a sponsor that I call EVERY DAY!!! I work steps! I GO TO MEETINGS. I actually spoke at the flight deck I was sent to not too long ago...one of the nurses remembered me.
I have a sponsee! Someone actually thinks I have something to offer!
As I once heard in a meeting YEARS ago....
I am now becoming the man that I drank to be!
My name is Mathieu & I am an alcoholic...