Runner-Up | Embrace the Culture

I chose to ignore the signs that I was an alcoholic until I returned home from a three-year tour in South Korea. My drinking was steadily ramping up, and it was common to kill a six-pack after work each day. I often blacked out on the weekends with a bottle of Jameson and a 20-pack of Miller Lite. 

The people I was stationed with in South Korea treated it like the Las Vegas of Air Force bases. Spouses used it as a yearlong break from their significant others and children. Bar fights and brawls were regular occurrences right outside the main gate. Adultery often happened between coworkers with few or no repercussions. So, nobody in my chain of command recognized when my alcoholism started to take its toll on my mental and physical health. 

My unit commander once stood on the stage of a musty movie theater where the silver screen was slightly too far away and the speakers would crackle when the noise got too loud. It doubled as an auditorium. The officer’s bald head glinted and the digital camo was tight around his shoulders as he spoke.

“It’s not the American service members that have a drinking problem,” he said. “It’s the Koreans. They created an environment of alcohol abuse, and we’re trying to embrace the culture.” 

I wasn’t embracing the Korean culture when I self-medicated to hide from a toxic relationship and the stress of my daily duties as a Federal Law Enforcement Officer. It was easier to drown myself in cheap beer than to accept my reality, which was: that I was stuck working a job that I didn’t like, in a relationship that wasn’t working out, all while being thousands of miles away from home. I had no passions or hobbies besides drinking, and booze was my entire identity.  

I took the first step to shake this identity when I went to a chaplain to vent about my issues. As a man of God, a chaplain is supposed to provide unbiased and confidential support for service members. While talking to him, I struggled to vocalize my suicidal thoughts and the omnipresent anxiety. My tongue resisted each time I tried to tell him: 

There’s no point in being alive if I’m going to be drunk the whole time. My drinking is going to kill me anyway, so why not just do it now? 

I was tormented as the pastor sat across from me clicking away at his computer, distracted by his email inbox. I paused after a few minutes of tripping over my words and waited for his response. 

“Well, it sounds like you need to man up,” he said. “Try exercising a couple of times a week and I’ll give you a self-help book when we meet again.”

I didn’t show up to our next meeting.

Alcohol continued to torture me for the next four years. Each shot would bring out an angry fire that would haunt my sober consciousness. I was tired of feeling guilty and ashamed of my actions. I was ready to move on with my life and leave the destructive habits from the Air Force in the past. 

I finally broke on Memorial Day, 2020. I chain-smoked cigarettes as I told my best friend all about my self-hatred and the internal battles. I told him about putting the barrel of my pistol in my mouth and all those nights stumbling around the back alleys of Seoul, not knowing if I was going to make it home. 

I’m grateful for his next step because the next day he called my older brother and relayed everything I said. My brother quit drinking years before and responded to my dangerous rhetoric appropriately. He and my sister called me the next morning.

“Stu, we love you,” they said. “We’re happy we’re able to talk to you today.” 

I muted myself as I held back tears. That was the final push to make me shake my identity and quit drinking.  

Sobriety has brought on a slew of new struggles and forced me to confront the issues that I tried to self-medicate away. Sometimes, I reach for the frothy comfort of a Miller Lite, but I stop myself before taking the first sip. It would take no time at all to lose control and slip back into the same destructive routine.