Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2006-07 Winter Issue -- My ‘Solution’ was the Problem

It was about 3 am, when in desperation, I called the suicide prevention center. I spilled out my story to the woman who answered.

“Are you drinking?” she inquired.

“Yeah.”

“You need to stop!”

“You’re not serious. This is the only thing holding me together.”

In my muddled mind, drinking wasn’t the problem, it was the solution helping me to cope with what I believed to be a mental illness. I hung up on her.

The fear of impending doom had come to dominate my thoughts. It seemed that something horrible would happen at any second. The dreaded event never did occur, but the feelings of terror continued. It seemed there was nowhere to turn.

I chugged straight Scotch all the way to a mental hospital two days later, but the booze no longer provided even a whisper of relief. The day I entered the mental hospital was the worst day of my life. It contrasts greatly with the heady times I experienced through drinking exactly 10 years earlier as a high school senior. My popularity seemed to soar. Alcohol took away my anxieties about talking with girls. I went away to college with the idea that booze was the solution to any problem I might encounter.

Christians are told to cast their anxieties on God because he cares for them (I Peter 5:7). I turned to alcohol and worshipped an idol that came in clear, green and brown bottles.

Even if I had read it, I wouldn’t have heeded the warning from Proverbs 23: 31-33, which was, “Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things.” (NIV)

One of Satan’s lies is to make sin look good. However, the good times don’t last for long.

With my mind poisoned, I perceived God first as irrelevant and then, non-existent. I viewed as old fogies and kill-joys the people at the church where I had grown up and was baptized.

Denial occurs when Satan has people believing their own lies. My denial about alcohol’s effects started early. I attempted to drink away the “nervous problems” I experienced in college, but the problems only grew worse.

By the time I was a junior in college, I was drunk just about every day. That’s when I started consuming beer before my morning classes. Otherwise, I was so anxiety ridden that I could hardly sit still. I pulled a D- average that semester, and the university asked me not to return.

I transferred to a Christian college and soon found the school was really serious in enforcing a rule against drinking. I heeded the warning. Without booze, my anxieties started to disappear. I made decent grades and a lot of friends.

If there was a lesson to be learned from my Christian college experience, I forgot it and started drinking right after graduation. The anxieties came back in spades and continued to get worse, but deep denial prevented me from making the connection between my escalating problems and drinking. I looked for answers in psychology books but never found them. For a while I excelled as a newspaper reporter and editor, but booze took a toll there, too.

I had an enlarged liver from drinking at age 26. A year later I entered the mental hospital on November 6, 1973.

How ironic that I originally drank to overcome a few adolescent anxieties and ended up with anxieties taking over my life. Irony is also evident the fact that I found my long-needed solution in the hospital from a fellow patient who worked as a trash collector. He suggested that I might get help from a program he’d previously attended for people with drinking problems.

I left the hospital after two weeks and started attending the meetings of that organization. I learned that alcohol was the problem and not the solution. Also, I was told that my best efforts would not keep me sober but God could and would if I would seek Him. My anxiety and depression brought on by the abuse of alcohol gradually disappeared.

After a few months of sober living, I wanted to return to church. I prayed for guidance and felt led to a congregation in Allen Park, Michigan. There, Maurice and Marie Hall, the minister and his wife, told me they could use someone like me.

The last drink I took was in the parking lot of the mental hospital. Now I share my story of addiction with church groups and try to help others who have addiction problems. (See 2 Corinthians 1: 3-7.)

The Lord used the worst day of my life for good. I have been able to earn a masters degree and Ph.D. and spent the last 27 years teaching at the university level. I’ve also written several books. Five years ago I married a wonderful lady I met at church.

Look at what the Lord has done in my life!

Don Umphrey and his wife, Kim, attend the Prestoncrest Church of Christ in Dallas, Texas. Don is a professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University. His books about Christian aspects of addiction recovery may be found at www.quarrypressbooks.com.