Sometimes I forget just how long ago that was — the Challenger space shuttle explosion stands as an ominous marker in memory, a national tragedy illuminating the end of a personal catastrophe. Since putting down the bottle, I’ve been free to pursue a journey of the spirit — following a path of regeneration that would not have appeared had I not drunk self-destructively. I was spared through grace. The irony: I am grateful to be an alcoholic. Because in the past four and one-half years, I have finally discovered that which I’ve always been longing for. In tenuous glimpses, in sudden moments of clarity, I’ve experienced that undeniable place in my heart where reason and belief intersect: the crucible of faith.

In her latest nonfiction book, Practicalities — an amalgam of candid reminiscence and imagination — the French novelist Marguerite Duras reflects on the subject of alcohol. She offers details about her fight to quit drinking; she speculates on the deadening power of the drug itself. Unashamedly, she declares: “I became an alcoholic as soon as I started to drink."

I have heard this statement uttered time and time again by recovering alcoholics. It is true for me also. Twenty- three years ago, just barely a teenager, I had my first taste of beer from an unguarded keg; a generic family picnic at El Monte Park became a swirling and ecstatic adventure. The walls of one world fell away, and I entered another brighter, warmer, more joyful place. I was transformed. One drink led to another, and — as they also say, time and time again — one beer was too many and a dozen were not enough.

Earlier this year, scientists claimed to have discovered the alcoholic gene. As Richard Wright explains in a recent New Republic article, these scientists “looked at cells taken from 70 dead people, half alcoholics, and found that the alcoholics were markedly more likely to have the gene than nonalcoholics.” Wonderful. Science can warn of a predisposition to a life-threatening disease. The myth of willpower crumbles (“You just have a drinking problem; buck up and take a deep breath, and fight it!”). In recovery I have been relieved of the obsession to drink. This obsession was removed, quite honestly, by a power greater than me. Genetic restructuring or biological forewarning had nothing to do with it. I am convinced this most recent transformation in my life came about through nothing short of grace.

When I was in the Army (led into service, no doubt, by an internal alcoholic compass), soldiers’ whining or even genuine calls for help were rebuffed with this chilling phrase: “Sounds like a personal problem.” The implied slap in the face was, plainly,“I don’t want to hear about it; keep it to yourself.” Alcoholism is certainly that — very personal — but the social conditions in this country that nurture any genetic warp for self-destruction seem to touch us all, alcoholic and nonalcoholic alike.

For instance, addicts are caught up with the need to control. For decades, I attempted to control every aspect of my life — and I failed. Time and time again. Each failure drew me to the bottle for longer and deeper drafts. Question: Is this control problem also genetic? Is it possible to isolate the control gene? Or did my environment make a contribution? A further for instance: Quite rapidly, in very recent memory, American troops and aircraft and warships were deployed to the Persian Gulf, to Saudi Arabia, in response to Saddam Hussein’s Kuwaiti anschluss. Baghdad was out of control. Baghdad committed the despicable crime of replacing an unfavorable government with one more to its liking. Baghdad had to be controlled. Don’t mention a similar undertaking in our own hemisphere some months ago; don’t recall American combat troops murdering Panamanian civilians; don’t remember the papal embassy in Panama City besieged by teenage warriors in camouflage, blasting David Bowie jams throughout the night in an attempt to wear down another out-of-control dictator, Manuel Noriega. This is not to suggest the butcher of Baghdad is not a despicable tyrant; it is to suggest that our options might have been broader and not limited to preparation for war.

What could all this be leading up to: alcoholism, militarism, addiction, and the spirit? Sounds like a personal problem. A backhanded response: This country’s war on drugs is a joke. The question I wish I could answer: Why does America need such a massive quantity of drugs to begin with? A footnote closer to home: Why has San Diego County become the methamphetamine capital of the world? Apparently, our country has become a black hole of illicit need, sucking in cocaine through every orifice, by the unholy ton, bending and tweaking the laws of gravity, of supply and demand. Add plenty of other domestic drugs to keep things interesting, to maintain the buzz, to fuel the violence and the self-destruction. Something is rotten in River City. Intelligent answers seem unavailable or are unheeded. The genetics boys crack open more codes while we witness the Big Diversion: American troops in out-of- character desert camouflage standing tall along the Saudi- Iraqi border, while Dan Rather in dusted-off Afghanistan- vintage mufti cheers from the wings. Sadly, hopefully, I see no immediate solution to our massive personal problem. Outside of grace.

The human heart never ceases to amaze me — all those inter- sections of motivation and confusion; emotion and logic; fear and domination. A novelist, if he does anything, serves as cartographer of this thorny region. In my capacity as map-maker, following my best instincts as novelist, I journeyed recently to a wild isle — an Assembly of God church on a balmy Sunday evening — to witness a crusading fundamentalist lecture on Satanism.

The house was fairly packed with all manner of good bedrock Christians. The church was new and clean; the stage, referred to as an altar, was functional — devoid of icons and art. A muted neon cross graced the back wall, in front of which stood a large choir and a small band of musicians (drums, piano, trumpet, tambourine). An enthusiastic young pastor led the congregation in an upbeat sing-along; the lyrics praised Jesus, while the music felt as cheery as the Tonight Show theme.

Between choruses this pastor paused to address the flock directly. Attired in a three-piece gray suit, all the while handling his microphone and long cord skillfully, the pastor told of bringing the evening’s guest of honor to the church a few hours earlier. “I picked him up at the hotel,” he said brightly,“and the desk clerk told me he couldn’t wait to get off work so he could relax and top off his evening with a couple of beers.” The implication was clear: the desk clerk was another lost soul. The pastor smiled broadly and shouted, “But we don’t have to worry about that. After tonight, we won’t go to bed with a hangover. Praise Jesus!”

Drinkers don’t go to bed with a hangover. No matter.

Another implication presented itself, perhaps unbeknownst to both pastor and audience: that topping the evening off with alcohol, certainly a negative and numbing indulgence, was undertaken in somewhat the same spirit as attending an evening worship — to receive a charge, a jolt, a rush: to escape from the cares and woes of another exhausting day in the world. This is how he couched the conceit, despite his obvious devotion and good intentions.

The songs continued: the tambourine jingled crisply; the pastor sustained the appropriate pitch of merriment and gratitude. From the balcony, a projectionist beamed lyrics onto a screen above the stage/altar. Another bearded pastor followed; the choir dispersed; the live music continued, and the microphone was passed deftly. The anti- Satanist crusader would speak in a moment, but first his warm-up act would appear, a soloist — a gentle-looking young man, also in a three- piece suit, his skin pale and his hair combed in a modified pompadour. His uniform placed him from somewhere in the South — Mississippi, Texas, perhaps Louisiana — in marked contrast to the primarily casual dress of his audience. A prerecorded tape kicked in; slick upbeat music flowed through the loudspeakers; the soloist sang with feeling and skill — forcing close scrutiny, to determine if he was actually singing or merely mouthing the words.

The combination of song, movement, and projected images was cleanly presented yet undeniably theatrical and not a little manipulative. However, there was nothing devious or condescending about the display; rather, the slickness of the staging seemed perfect, in context, like the opening moments of a televangelism program on cable TV, and something the flock would consider quite appropriate — tastefully contemporary yet rooted in the deep traditions of fundamentalist appeal.

The most compelling aspect, however, was the fact that this warm-up for the ensuing anti-Satanist passion play took place on a relatively barren stage; candles and podiums and ornate religious iconography were replaced by a multimedia arrangement of songs, smiles, and succor, which in itself appeared as nothing short of ritual — the liturgy of the Hard Sell.

Everything I knew and felt about addiction and control — the dynamic of fear, followed by control, leading to inevitable failure, followed by more fear and further attempts at control — struck me at that moment with the same force that seemed to galvanize those around me into a flurry of excited hand-clap- ping and hosannas. I squirmed with discomfort.

During my drinking days, I enjoyed extended trips to Mexico — where liquor seemed to flow more naturally. Mexican bartenders didn’t set their bar clocks ahead in order to hasten “Last call!” and closing time. Once I journeyed to the town of Tequila, in central Mexico not far from Guadalajara, and I thought I had found heaven — luscious green spikes of cactus serrated all the hills and valleys, each one pointing to any of hundreds of tiny, flashy liquor stores teeming wall-to-ceiling with white and yellow bottles. Or so it seemed.

I had built a barren altar to alcohol in my imagination, whether I wanted to admit it or not. And I lived out a bizarre multimedia performance piece, twisted by a fear of people, of love, of connection — while simultaneously tormented by an unquenchable need to control the world around me, to force it to conform to my selfish wishes. Despite its miserableness, this is the small, circumscribed world of the alcoholic, the taut and restrictive realm wherein he enjoys his ironic comfort.

Mexico. The word conjures visions of possibility. Is it any wonder that Baja California has become an unofficial national park for roughshod-riding Americans, who troop southward aboard chunky RVs and sky-scraping four-wheel-drive trucks, with all-terrain vehicles and slippery fishing boats in tow? Their quest for deliverance from the rigors of stateside workaday madness competes in intensity with an opposing force: the grinding current of aliens and immigrants surging northward in quest of that American dream-cum-horror that gringos pursue so unhappily. Quality Is Job One. I Will Work for Food.

Alcoholics love to run away. I ran into Mexico time and time again, searching for something truer and freer than the ossified life I knew in San Diego. I’ll never forget — no matter how incomplete my memory from blackout gaps — one particular trip to San Felipe, on the shores of the Gulf of California and a day’s drive southeast from the Pacific Coast. Here, fear and control played themselves out once again, under the gracious eyes of a higher power no doubt, yet infinitely removed from squads of laboratory assistants reading the runes of human chromosomes and genetic ciphers.

Music flowed through the loudspeakers — this time from the in-dash stereo of my friend’s pickup truck. Early in the morning, we stopped at a supermarket to load up on cases of beer. These supplies seemed more important than sleeping bags or food. As soon as we hit Interstate 8 east, with the sun just over the horizon, we were on our second bottle each, and long before El Centro, a pool of empties lay at our feet.

At that period in my life, I was taking graduate English courses in the evening at SDSU while laboring as an alleged technical writer for a dental appliance manufacturer during the day. Majoring in English was always a fearful enterprise; one’s future is never certain, and teaching seemed to be the ultimate goal, by default more than by design. And my day job was merely temporary — I was hired on to create some operating manuals required by the PDA (how the company operated without these manuals remains a mys- tery). Fear shivered through engineers and managers alike; the CEO was rumored to be an insatiable beer drinker; we staggered toward deadlines worrying about the eventual inspection by government agents. So the trip south to Mexico — through some of the most barren and forbidding landscapes I had ever seen — was not undertaken as a reward as much as it represented an opportunity to escape and avoid and elude.

While we tossed down brew after brew, gliding through the salt marshes just south of Mexicali — silently daunted by the lunar crags and precipices that used to lie at the bottom of a timeless ocean — the trick was to remain in control. Men. Partners. Compadres . Drinking as much as they could without losing control. I’m a stud. If you can’t keep up with me, if you get sick — if you can’t maintain — you’re a wimp, a weasel, a fag, a suspicious tangle of malformed sexuality. This distorted doctrine of manhood ensured a relent- less ritual was acted out — punctuated by another tape in the stereo, another search through the cooler, another belch, another cigarette. The stage was set, the theater all too familiar. We were prisoners of traditions that extended much deeper than any lies we ever swapped about sexual prowess and appetite.

As reserved and shy as some alcoholics might seem, they nonetheless crave connection and affection more than anything. A quality of the self-destructive dynamic of this disease seems to be self-flagellation before self-expression. In my case, a prison fear was created, within which I suffered in solitary confinement, despite any public face I might be hiding behind, despite any momentary excursions into braggadocio and boasting.

Onward we rode in my friend’s manly truck, cutting through desolate, inhuman stretches of sand and butte and mesa, my soul as brittle as any of the twisted green cactus surrounding us, their skins withered and scabbed from the ravages of rodent teeth and vulture talon. We pounded down beers like there was no tomorrow — or even a today. The road became a thin strip of asphalt, a tenuous thread traversing an eerie salt lake; we passed a tractor-trailer rig half-submerged in the briny muck, rusted and abandoned, the only sign of a human presence aside from the road itself. Each swallow of tepid alcohol tasted of metal and mud; each rasping sip brought the possibility of death that much closer. These thoughts could not be expressed. Instead, silence inside the cab of the truck was punctuated by the rhythmic opening of the cooler, the extraction of another brown bottle, the twist and zip of the cap wrenched free. No words. Trapped inside. Let’s get out of here.

A succession of about a dozen beachfront campgrounds lies outside San Felipe proper. Unseen from the highway, each camp — to include one called El Paraiso (Paradise); every place in Mexico catering to tourists seems to have an El Paraiso — is introduced by huge billboards boasting of facilities and pleasures. We found ours and hastily set up a temporary home, which entailed nothing more than staking out a plot of sand surrounded by RVs and trucks by tossing down a pile of sleeping bags and rucksacks. This is ours; don’t sleep here. Then we lurched into town to find a suitable bar. Not a restaurant, despite the fact that we hadn’t eaten anything at all the entire day. But a bar. And I wouldn’t see that camp or my friend again for over 24 hours.

What follows is blurred and sad, in memory. An alcoholic wages a fierce battle while confined in his self-made prison of fear. Each drink represents the possibility of extinguishing that continual terrified feeling that the alcoholic many times accepts as natural and necessary. He knows no other way to live. Yet something inside, some tentative glimmer of hope — the germ of faith and deliverance — fuels the battle. The irony is grotesque. While drinking, the alcoholic cannot win. He fights and thrashes and suffers terribly, crushed within a vise driven by a deadly force: that which was once a will to live — in the absent freshness of his youth — now is transformed, following years of relentless drinking, into a bruising, imploded violence. He is overwhelmed by corrupted emotions, compounded by a crushing need for release. Yet at this stage, his attempts toward freedom are nothing less than devastating. Liquor is seen as a liberating agent; in reality, it has- tens his demise.

In the bar — a crowded disco at the end of San Felipe’s main drag, not far from a fleet of grounded fishing boats awaiting repairs or the next high tide — we elbowed our way inside, ordered more drinks, and began our search. Cross-purposes confounded our efforts. On the one hand, we were men on the hunt, in competition; on the other, the hunt masked a more genuine need for love. Plain and simple.

The disco was jammed with gringos, elbow to elbow. Music throbbed and boomed from speakers in every corner, throttling easy conversation. You tried to speak to whomever you were crushed against, repeating yourself, raising your voice, watching shoulders shrug and mouths harden into smiles. Thick. Deafening. Clumsy. A young local boy threaded his way through the crowd, pausing when he found another sucker, another mark. From his neck hung a leather strap that sup- ported a heavy black box decorated with dials and switches. He held out two thin chrome cylinders. His game: Inside the box was a strong battery; an electrical charge flowed into the chrome wands; a rheostat atop the box regulated the intensity of the charge. Studly gringos would pair off, mano a mano , each one grasping an electrified metal tube while the boy cranked up the juice. The first guy to drop his wand was a wimp, a weasel, a fag.

As drunk as I was that evening, I was still standing, despite having consumed beer at a near-nonstop pace since sunup. My twisted alcoholic thinking, fed by pernicious cultural myths, accepted this unlimited capacity for booze — the hollow-leg syndrome — as a badge of manhood. Now, today, in light of having made the decision to get sober, I find this former condition of mine quite absurd and somewhat comic — but only because I survived. And the fact that I survived — the reality of having lived through dozens of San Felipes and Tijuanas and Mazatlans and Ensenadas — allows me to say with conviction, especially when I pass a slumbering drunk on the street or read about a hit-and-run murder or watch friends still suffering,“There but for grace go I.” Which genetic marker determined that I would drink furiously for 13 years yet be spared from an early death, an asylum, a prison term?

My cells spasming from alcohol overload, I lost my friend in the disco. Stumbling (I assume), I slipped outside, intent on finding a more suit- able drinking establishment — something quieter, cozier, more Mexican. Ah, yes. In my wayward quest, guided (I know) by a yearning for society, for intimacy, I waddled from saloon to saloon, swilling my way (what a man!) to a tiny deserted dive — El Perro Negro (The Black Dog). The hound of heaven. Surprisingly, memory at this point is quite clear: a Mexican couple huddled in a booth in the back; the center of the joint was a bare concrete slab; the bar was ringed by empty stools. I sauntered up and ordered yet another beer. End of recollection, Black- out. What happened after that is anybody’s guess.

The following day, I woke up flat on my belly, hugging a pile of dirt at three in the afternoon. Never in my life had I felt that sick; raising my head was impossible; the throbbing was murderous. Paralyzed, I peeked from side to side and discovered myself lying in a dumping ground just off the business district. Amazingly, my wallet was still inside my back pocket. I was encircled by little mounds of dirt; wisps of white toilet paper fluttered in the stale breeze atop each one. The rusted husk of an old refrigerator lay close by, under a crooked tree. Across an empty field rose small hills, near the road into town, topped by a ramshackle crucifix. More than anything, I wanted to be dead.

It wasn’t until dusk that I managed to scrape myself together. Wandering around town, searching for the way back to the beach camp, I walked in circles, feeling invisible — hoping I was invisible. When sickness became hunger, I stopped for greasy tacos from a street vendor; a crew of tourists exited a souvenir shop; the kids pointed and stared at my matted hair, my haggard expression. I felt suddenly ostracized and cast out — an exaggerated icon of the alcoholic’s worst fear. Too afraid to ask for help (the alcoholic’s second worst fear), I retraced my steps three or four times before stumbling onto the road north. Past remote homes, I trooped along, rehearsing possible excuses for my friend. Scrawny guard dogs (more hounds!) raced to meet me, yapping in chorus from a safe distance; the bravest ones nipped at my boots, pursuing me tenaciously until I had drifted far enough away.

At the campground, my friend had already settled himself in and was drinking beers and telling jokes around a community bonfire. I told him this story: After leaving the disco, I found a great, homey bar, El Perro Negro, and there I met a wonderful Mexican couple. After a few rounds, they took me home, fed me, gave me a place to sleep, talked politics, fed me again, shook my hand, commiserated about this and that and everything in between, and invited me back some other time. I don’t know if he believed me or not, and I was too stupefied to care. One thing was certain; I wasn’t going to tell him the truth. The alcoholic’s credo.

I did accept another beer, and it wasn’t long before I was pounding them down. Again. And the night didn’t end before a trio of renegade bikers rolled up, loaded and disoriented. They descended, parked their hogs, and stumbled through the fire pit right toward me. Or so it seemed. The leader turned out to be a long-lost friend of mine from high school who had quit the Hell’s Angels to lead his own gang of motorized misfits. What a coincidence (Chesterton called coincidences “spiritual puns”). What a sign. What an emphatic affirmation of my closeness to death. Needless to say, the party broke up shortly there- after. And I kept drinking for another five years.

I tell this story without shame — perhaps against my better judgment — yet with no small amount of gratitude. Because the person who endured that anguish, for all intents and purposes, is gone — a previous incarnation at best. Thankfully, the memory remains. Therein lies the value — as a touchstone, an emblem, a confirmation of grace. The story about the Mexican family — embodying the alcoholic’s longing for succor, comfort, connection — was not a lie as much as it was a desperate need expressed as fantasy, a most crucial form of wish fulfillment. A cry for liberation.

As I recall that experience with my friend, reliving our passage southward on a tide of cheap beer and Mexican promises — myself disabled by a double-stranded lash of fear and control — I’m doubly struck by the memory of last week’s fundamentalist preacher, the anti-Satanist crusader. In the course of his lecture, he verily taunted his audience — calling into question their faith and the quality of their spiritual lives. He remarked, on the heels of a particularly graphic description of the circumstances of a teenage suicide: “Some of you are just playing church. And Jesus knows which of you are sincere and which of you are not.”

In our shrinking world, we’re cursed with Great Satans and Evil Empires. Dubious rhetoric is too often taken seriously by those who reject the bumper-sticker wisdom, “Question Authority.” Sadly, one man’s vision of the Fiend incarnate is another man’s vision of truth, justice, or democracy. Addicted to Oil. I Will Kill for Exxon.

The fundamentalist crusader, Jerry, begins his anti-evil presentation with a film. In the first few frames, he is depicted speaking with teenagers at a school rally. With G-man severity, he stands by, neutral and without pity, while these kids offer their worst stories: “I’ve tried to kill myself six times”; “My father gave me herpes.” The voiceover, a semi-friendly authoritarian male, declares, “And Jerry brings an authentic love to the children of America. At the end of every high school assembly, he plays a dramatic suicide tape. The students are asked to relive the last minutes of a disillusioned young man tripping on LSD and recording a goodbye message to his parents. You can see the impact of Jerry’s message on the faces of the kids that fill his assemblies. Although the Gospel cannot be preached at these public school assemblies, Jerry concludes with a special invitation to an evangelistic pizza blast on Friday night.”

End of film. As I listened to this man speak, watching him shower the congregation with statistics and occasional inaccuracies (the McMartin preschool was not located in Huntington Beach, for example), and as the crowd echoed his more colorful pronouncements with breathy “Amen”s, I nonetheless did not question his sincerity. He was preaching to the choir, and he could rest his argument on appeals to emotion (primarily fear, such as his descriptions of prior engagements, which included prominent Satanists in attendance; these anecdotes introduced peculiar notes of paranoia into his otherwise practiced and relentless delivery). Still, he seemed clearly a man with a mission — someone who had genuinely devoted himself to a cause he believed in thoroughly. As a trespasser, though, I could see around the game. Unconditioned by the instinctive call-and-response dialogue or the indisputable premise of us-versus-them salvation, I could appreciate the workings of an elaborate and collective closed system — not unlike the perilous closed system of addiction.

Certainly I don’t seek to discredit this evangelist or his religion. In fact I admire his devotion, considering the falls some of his brethren have taken recently. What struck me first and foremost was this notion: As a recovering alcoholic, I often considered myself damaged or broken; I viewed my recovery as an attempt to mend and heal, and ultimately as an attempt to reconcile with my society, my culture, my Southern California version of America. However, I am beginning to see that this society, in many important ways, is just as damaged and broken as any addict. If this is true, what happens to the idea of reconciliation? How does one aspire to wholeness in a fractured world?

Today I attended an exhibit of powerful art — installations, drawings, sculpture — all of which represented five years in the healing process of the artist, an adult child of alcoholic parents. One participatory section of the exhibit included a large wooden cross resting on the floor, surrounded by a basket containing smaller flat wooden crosses, a pair of hammers, and a request: to write the name of a loved one who had died of alcoholism on one of the small crosses before nailing it to the large host cross. I did so, contributing the name of a grandfather who died more than ten years before I was born. The large wooden cross was covered over.

Microphone in hand, Jerry continues: “Satanists have a communication network as sophisticated as the FBI.... I compare the revelation of the widespread existence of Satanism to the disclosure nationally of the incest phenomenon 15 years ago.... In two weeks, I will be traveling to Germany to speak to the soldiers — because Satanism in Germany is at an all-time high.... By the way, we had 91 decisions for Christ this morning at College Avenue Baptist Church.... Next to the jambox was a letter that his mother gave me, addressed to the Prince of Heavy Metal, Ozzy Osbourne.... The Judas Priest album does not have backward masking only; it also has audio subliminals, which, up until this time, have never been discussed on a national level.... When I begin talking specifically about the topic, I ask, unless it’s an emergency, for you to move as little as possible. We’ve found when you address the topic of Satanism, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. At one church, there were huge globes strung throughout the auditorium, and as I was giving this address, one of those globes fell and shattered all over the piano.... Just thought I’d warn you in advance. Listen very carefully, very prayerfully.... Make those checks payable to.... Sean’s babysitter was a covert Satanist.... He started sacrificing animals, he took up a preoccupation with the color black.... After killing a Circle K convenience store clerk.... He knelt before the altar in his bedroom, after he donned a black cape, under- wear, and hood.... I said,‘Son, how could you kill your parents?’ and he said, ‘Because I loved them’.... Flip Wilson’s old comedy line now has a completely new meaning to it in 1990....”

Jerry’s book on the rise of Satanism in North America was available in the lobby (Visa accepted), with a foreword by Geraldo Rivera.

In the grip of ruthless denial, an alcoholic will refuse to accept the fact that he might have a “drinking problem,” even when he is lying face-down in a foreign refuse heap. His position is rigid; he is right and you are horribly wrong. As I left the church, slipping through the crowd that pooled around the table where Jerry signed autographs, I squirmed with discomfort. Again. As it has been said before, the spiritual life can be compared to walking a razor’s edge. But by design, so hard-line and absolute? That’s where I

came from. That’s what kept me sick .

The irony: I have been given a new life, and in a fundamental way, I have been born again as well. I have seen too much death and half-death, and I have struggled to rise up from the grip of the nonliving. Certainly I have had help, not the least of it from hundreds of souls like me who have tasted a piece of Hell. We all know where it is and what it’s like — and now, amid grace, this new journey takes on an entirely different meaning. Life. Survival. And more. Serenity. Possibility. Strength. Re-creation . As I write these words, I strive to celebrate, to ease free of shackles and restraints, to live a life of faith, to exorcise that demon I call fear. These words, the act of stringing them together, is proof, is witness, is testimony. How- ever trendy in the eyes of skeptics, recovery is possible, recovery is reaffirmation, recovery is real. Re-creation.

Pen in hand, Marguerite Duras continues: “No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book, or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.” How long I suffered under this crushing misconception. In struggling to realize writing aspirations, I swam in liquor, blindly believing I was cutting through all life’s constrictions and inhibitions. I didn’t need a teacher or a muse — I had alcohol. Strangely enough, the illusion of creation was so overwhelming that for years I was able to ignore the fact that I wasn’t creating anything but trouble. Whatever I have written that could be considered successful or substantial was created when I was sober.

In his book The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer, Tom Dardis writes, “In the 20th century, the idea of the writer as drinker seems to be a particularly American one: no such line of thinking prevailed among European or English writers, suggesting that on the subject of alcohol we are a nation apart.” When I teach literature to community college students, a frequent complaint arises after we study authors such as Poe or Hemingway or poets such as Richard Hugo, Hart Crane, or James Wright: “Are all writers drunks? Why do we have to study these crazy people anyway?” I’ve never come up with a suitable answer, something that would reaffirm my conviction and faith in literature and sustain this faith for my doubting students (I once had a student, a science major, possessed by a seething rage, who violently declared D.H. Lawrence’s prose to be no more worthy or stimulating than Karen Carpenter’s song lyrics; what was he afraid of?). Yet their questions and complaints presuppose a certain understanding about American society — that it is fundamentally okay and that these crazy writers are aberrant and dysfunctional. Bad genes, maybe. Never is this possibility entertained: that the society itself is flawed and that these artists were destroyed — sooner or later — largely through misguided or misapplied attempts at deliverance through creativity. I write, therefore I drink. Or for much of my life: I want to be a writer, therefore I swill uncontrollably. Only the engine of fear drives a man to such excesses. Now that much of this fear is dissolving, I’m able to look around me and see how deeply this same fear surges through others — individuals and institutions. I’ve worked in colleges where administrative policy is partially based on fear of the lawsuit. Measures are taken to implement curriculum plans that will head off possible (feared!) student- initiated litigation. Certainly these districts are obsessed with the bottom line at the expense of the student mind — and watch them all tremble as the state coughs up another slashed budget. Still shaking, administrators reward and perpetuate mediocrity, terrified of risk and innovation. Students suffer. Inquiring minds don’t. I Will Work for Nothing.

A wise man once related to me this allegory: A cagey old lion was approaching the twilight of his life. Each day, it became apparent that he couldn’t capture prey with the speed and skill of his youth. So he retired to a comfortable cave to live out his last days, but not before sending notice throughout the land that all animals should come by and pay their last respects. One by one, rabbits and squirrels and such would approach his cave with trepidation. The lion would feign a hearing problem, luring them closer. When they got too close, he would snatch them up and swallow them whole. One day a wise fox stopped by. The lion implored him to come closer. The fox replied, “Sir, I would, but I notice hundreds of tracks leading into your cave. None, however, lead back out.”

In my role as teacher, I have for years considered the primary saving grace to be my students. My first obligation has been to them, and I focus my efforts on providing education. Simple. What else should a teacher do? For some time, though, I have noticed the tracks of many teachers leading into the campus, but very few lead back out. I teach creative writing, and the more of these particular classes I teach, the more I feel like a squirrel or a rabbit.

The upside: This class represents an opportunity for students to use their imaginations, to cultivate a respect for the power of language, to explore the possibilities that words can trigger. In my wildest idealistic moments, I see creative writing as a colorful oasis in the midst of an otherwise fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice academic world, where the Scan-Tron sheet and the almighty empty grade become the be-all and end-all of instruction. I also see creative writing as a refuge from the controlling English teachers who regard mechanics and form as paramount, unable to appreciate the flesh-and-blood dimension of their students’ writing. These teachers, who use fear to maintain order, have a tendency to make students feel like scum as they batter them with grammatical baseball bats and five-paragraph lead pipes. (A dyslexic student of mine recounted a painful episode during which her carefully wrought yet incorrect prose was read out loud by her teacher to the class as an example of inexcusable writing.) These teachers often view students as The Enemy. Why? Fear: generated by a reluctance to admit their skill in the classroom falls within human levels. Good, compassionate teachers are consumed in the cave; or, they grow to resemble the numbing system they serve. Thus, too many of my students seem uncertain and afraid.

The downside: Years of being restricted and controlled and psychically bludgeoned in public school have taken their toll on many students by the time they reach community college. How often have I begun a new class, trusting the Socratic Method, only to discover that my students have collectively trained me to answer my own questions by the end of the second week? Why? Because they are afraid. So in my little oasis of creativity, upon assigning a wide-open writing exercise — something challenging, something demanding thought and imagination — with unfortunate frequency I hear this student refrain: “This is too hard. I never had an assignment like this before. I can’t do it.” The implied whine: there are no blanks to fill in, no multiple guesses to make. Quashing Is Job One. I Will Bite the Hand that Feeds Me.

In the face of such difficulties, I sometimes revert to the tools of the trade — falling prey to the unforgiving system that crackles and slithers all around the classroom — and I issue commands to my students who sit trapped within constrictive plastic chairs. It goes something like this: “You will write 16,000 words this semester or you will not pass this class.... Plan on keeping a journal more sophisticated than the FBI.... I compare the revelatory powers of creative writing to the widespread need for validation that has plagued us for years.... By the way, I had 23 students pass this course with the grade of C or better last semester.... You will write relentlessly, all the while striving to discover who you are, even if you have to make it up.... Words are that strong.... Work, work, work.... All papers must be typed, and late work is not accepted.... Creative writing is not easy, your instructor is not a magician, you will suffer and strain if you’re doing it right.... When I begin talking specifically about creative writing, I ask unless it’s an emergency for you to move as little as possible. Once, when discussing the fine points of plot, this podium exploded, sending splinters flying, and not one student blinked!... Read this story by Hemingway, the Prince of Modernism, and analyze it for the presence of symbolic subliminals, which up until this time have never been discussed on a national level.... After two unexcused absences you will be dropped.... Just thought I’d warn you in advance.... Because I love you....”

My novel on the terrors of repression in America is available in the campus bookstore (checks okay), with a forward momentum that’ll singe your synapses.

I explain to them once in a while, as I take roll with meticulous regularity, something that must sound like this: “Creative writing would be different if you were taking this class with the absolute desire of a drowning man gasping for breath. It would be more fun. It would be important. You would learn and you would discover. But no one really wants this to happen. Instead, there are three units at stake here, which fake precedence above all else. We are responsible to strict state guide- lines. Even though the center will not hold, we must do this, and we must do that. Grades must be both means and ends. The college receives cash payments from Sacramento based on attendance levels.

“Nothing else matters. Don’t be late. Don’t. Don’t. And you will be creative.”

This I hate. And I strain for answers, for causes, for reasons and rhymes. This system is cunning, baffling, and powerful. Solutions are not forthcoming. The cave grows darker, and I lose sight of my role, my purpose — as the susurrous torch of literacy flickers grimly. Those who cannot do, teach. Quisling Is Job One. I Will Not Write for the Sake of Writing.

The critical idea, then, is this: Once the alcohol is gone, how is “real creation” realized? More critically: How is “real creation” engendered in a classroom, in line with the current educational system, without resorting to control? And above and beyond yet oh so all-important: How do recovery and grace figure into this equation? Truly, this is the story of my life, as yet unfinished. Now, to spell it out more clearly and tip my hand completely: If my experience and observations, however personal and unique, are nonetheless universal in the sense that, shall we say, my classroom is a microcosm of societal dysfunction in general, I want to know, how do we lose this grip of fear and control? As any recovering soul soon discovers, to change the world before changing one’s self is folly. The answer must be in there someplace.

In the beginning, we are told, there was the Word. And the Word, they go on to say, was God. Creation. Creative writing. Re-creation. In a dozen different ways, I remind my students that writing — if it is creative — is essentially an act of discovery. One does not know, completely, what one is going to write about until one sits down to write. We use language to uncover what it is we truly want to say. In the West, we’ve been conditioned to think of creation as producing something brand new. But I prefer the Eastern way of looking at creation. Great thinkers and philosophers in India, for example, have likened the process to uncovering a primeval path in a jungle as opposed to hacking out an entirely new course. In this sense, creation becomes rediscovery. Recovery, then, for me, is rediscovering who I really am. That is “real creation.” The act of writing amounts to nothing less than a search for our ancient path, using words to chop through tangles of creepers and vines. How do you teach that in an English class? And, if indeed an entire nation stands in need of recovery, what then?

In The Thirsty Muse, Tom Dardis asks, “If alcoholism does have a genetic factor, why haven’t European writers been victimized to the same degree as the Americans?” (In a dissatisfied review of The Thirsty Muse in the London Times Litrerary Supplement, Jay McInerney adds an interesting corollary: “Meanwhile, how come British rock and rollers, including notorious substance abusers such as Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, have such admirable longevity compared to American counterparts such as Hendrix, Joplin, and Jim Morrison?”) Writing in The Atlantic Monthly, Stanton Peele attacks the genetic theory of alcoholism and concludes:

Addictive drinking is one of a range of dependencies that people may acquire in attempting artificially to regulate their sense of themselves and their world. Some people become compulsively enmeshed in destructive drinking as they pursue sensations that they are progressively less able to attain through any other means. And yet we cannot take the power and the seeming inevitability of this self-destructiveness for proof that it is written in the genes.

For an American writer, particularly a recovering alcoholic American writer, creative life revolves around the notion of regulation versus recovery. The drinker plays a wicked game of managing, combating, and drowning his feelings in the name of regulating his life. This is control at its worst. The result is too often death or insanity; the condition is classic denial, grounded in fear. In recovery, however, one is free to uncover his sense of identity, not remanufacture one from useless macho American models — embarking on a journey of true self-understanding that ultimately must lead to a clearer under- standing of the world.

Duras again: “Drunkenness doesn’t create anything, it doesn’t enter into the words, it dims and slackens the mind instead of stimulating it.” This is reality. The drinker, however, possesses another version, and in the grasp of alcohol, he truly feels, as Dardis explains, that “drinking [can] open the windows of the soul; true vision is achieved only when the mind has been liberated by liquor.”

However, at this moment, my recovery cannot be separated from my creative life, which cannot be separated from the divine. As I look over the history of my struggle with alcoholism, first and foremost I acknowledge the existence of a higher power, which for too long I shut out and rejected and which all the while — despite my protests and denials — was always there. Another irony: in the most accelerated and violent period of my drinking, when I hammered down liquor at a furious pace, momentarily condemned to slaking an unquenchable thirst, I was even then yearning for some- thing spiritual. In a letter to a recovering alcoholic, Dr. Carl Jung succinctly brought this situation into focus: “You see, ‘alcohol’ in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum .” In other words, there’s a big difference between wine and the divine.

Outside my window, I hear a Navy man speaking with one of the neighbors, an elderly woman. The wind blows holes in their dialogue, but I do know they’re talking about Iraq, and I do know the Navy man is shipping out for the Middle East within the week. He says, “They’re fanatics.” The old woman nods her head and responds; her words are unclear. But the sailor’s comeback is distinct: “In that case, we’ll just have to kill ’em all.” I smell big, bad American trouble up ahead. I see thousands of bodies strewn across foreign refuse heaps. I Will Write for Light.