What is rock bottom?

One size does not fit all

I’m always somewhat amused when normal people talk about the concept of rock bottom. What I mean by “normies” is anyone who hasn’t struggled in some way with addictive behaviors in their own lives. As if there is actually anyone like that.

“Normie” isn’t the Norm Peterson character on Cheers, although Norm is made to appear pretty normal. There wasn’t even a Norm character in the original pilot entitled “Give me a ring Sometime.” Show co-creator Les Charles has said that Norm was created based on a regular customer he’d had while bartending in college. Norm was added after both auditioning actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger made a great impression. There’s little debate that Norm wasn’t a “normie” when his only line for many of the initial episodes was “Beer!”

More Beer

Rockbottom is described by most dictionaries as “at the lowest possible level.” The way normal people think of the concept of rockbottom is—well—pretty normal. Going out of business (again?) sales regularly tout rockbottom prices. Relationships hit rockbottom. In Denver in 1991 a brewery opened by Greg Koch and Dave Cole parlayed the name Rock Bottom Brewery into some regional fame, expanding quickly, going public, going bankrupt, selling to a private equity firm, closing many locations during Covid, and now operating around 17 locations under different ownership. I know of the owners from my many years in Denver, but I’ve not met them or spoken to either of them, so I don’t have a clue if the naming was a reference to a rocky Colorado river bottom, an alcoholic reference, or a prescient choice for their business future.

For our purposes here today on “Of a Sober Mind” I’d like to discuss Rockbottom as a singular term to mean the point at which a person simply cannot go any lower in their lives—the point at which the only way is up—the point at which the choices are change or die. In AA and in recovery culture rockbottom is where one must get before one truly “gets” the willingness to get clean and sober.

But is it? And what is it?

The oft-repeated movie scene of the AA meeting, with the surly group sitting in the church basement, slurping their coffee and sucking the very life out of their cigarettes. OK. That happens and I’ve been in those meetings. What they don’t ever show is a room full of 100+ gleeful former drunks of all ages laughing their asses off, clapping, and bear-hugging one another on a Saturday morning. But I digress…

Back to our scene: There’s the serious meeting facilitator saying to the newcomer with the angry face, “John would you like to share?” John jumps up and flees the room, leaving the nodding faces behind in the circle of hard card table chairs. The facilitator quips “He hasn’t hit rockbottom yet.” More nodding. “Oh yes, he’ll find out.”

Bottoms up

In recovery, people talk about high bottoms and low bottoms. Many an AA oldtimer, when confronted with the relapse of someone they know from meetings or someone they’ve worked with as a sponsor, might say “well I guess they needed to go out and do more research!” It sounds glib and it is. But it’s also true. Sometimes we need to experience a whole heap more of negative consequences before we can finally say, “I’m done.” I tried to get clean and sober many times over in my thirty years of active drinking and using. Mostly the attempts were as a result of external consequences or pressures. Ultimatum from employer, business partner, or lover. Add to that the many attempts to just quit on my own. “Never again!” I’d proclaim, only to find myself in the same situation once again a few days or weeks later. As inevitably as rain in the Spring, I’d be fucked up and fucked.

There is no such thing as “the bottom.” There, I said it. Everyone has a different place where they go “thud.” Evidence is all around us of people who live on the bottom and seem to either enjoy it or simply know no other way. While a relatively small percentage of the homeless population is actually experiencing a short-term crisis that is temporary, most of the population living on the street these days is in the throes of serious addiction and mental illness simultaneously. Perhaps one begets the other. For sure one exacerbates the other. No matter how low one goes in life there’s always a landing place a few rungs down the ladder. Until there’s not, and a life ends tragically.

Going Down?

Moreover, there are many levels at which the thud or hard landing can occur. Think of it like an elevator going down inside of a tall office building. You leave at your floor. You have the option of getting off at any floor along the way simply by pressing the next button below the one you’re currently descending past. If you press it too slowly or hesitate, you’re on a longer ride down. You might stab at the keypad madly and press a bunch of floors that you’ve already passed. You might also light up a few floors below you—like a child having fun with the elevator at the expense of the other riders stuck in the car with you. The elevator car stops at floor after floor, and with the doors standing open in front of you, you refuse to walk off at that floor. Everyone glares and sighs—exasperated because you’re impacting their journey with your antics—and they just want you to get the hell off. The car reaches the lobby, where the other passengers disembark. Yet you stay. When the doors finally open onto a darkened parking garage you walk out. You’re dumbfounded as to why you’re here, but you’re thankful to have at least stopped falling. There is no car waiting to transport you back to your unmanageable life, so you turn around slowly taking it all in. Maybe you lie down on the cool pavement. Lower is the only direction you understand. You have several choices at that point.

• Continue to lie there until someone finds you and helps you to your feet.

• Lie there until a car runs over your prone and indecisive ass.

• Do the one next right thing in your choice matrix. Stand up and press the button and wait for the elevator to come back.

If the elevator takes too long to arrive you might change your mind. But you stand there and say a little prayer asking for help. “Please Lord let this motherfucking elevator come now.” It does. It opens. There’s a handful of people waiting inside the elevator for you. Wait—these aren’t strangers—these are your family, your friends. Some of them are crying. A couple of your knucklehead buddies are actually smiling. Fuck them. “Going up?” one of them says with a grin. Your head bows, you walk aboard, and you begin your journey upward.

It’s a useful image and analogy. In my particular experience, the floor at which I was confronted with the choices, and made my decision, was a few floors off the parking garage. My first sponsor referred to it as a luxurious bottom. For him, a desert rat from Indio, California who is now serving life without parole for murdering his girlfriend in a meth-induced rage, I guess it was rather luxurious. I had sold my company, had more money than I’d ever seen before in my bank account, had a beautiful, historic home in a desirable Denver neighborhood, and a respectable job as a corporate Vice President. With all of those trappings that we so readily accept as success in our culture, I was a fucking mess. I couldn’t stop drinking. Couldn’t not put more Bolivian marching powder up my nose. I was incapable of telling the truth to people who loved me and had known me for years. While I was surrounded by friends, colleagues, party pals, arm candy, and hangers-on—I was utterly alone and isolated. I was, as they say in the program, circling the drain. Still, by the absolute grace of God, there was no judge ordering me to rehab. I had no sentence or probation to serve. I was caught up on my taxes. My house was paid for. I owned my vehicles. I had not killed myself or anyone else yet. But it wouldn’t have been long.

High but not soft

Yes, that is what they call a high bottom in AA. But spiritually I was completely bereft. What changed? As I’ve written about in essay “The Intervention” just last week, I had been found out. What I thought I’d been effectively hiding for a very long time was in fact not hidden at all. The faces of my mother and father and two brothers and sisters-in-law staring back at me, tears running down their faces, with a look on their faces that was equal parts hopeful, resigned, and scared to death. Something clicked—and it clicked immediately. “Yes, I said. Why didn’t you do this sooner?”

Back to the idea of rockbottom. It cannot be defined except by the individual experiencing it. It is all relative. As I’ve outlined, privilege doesn’t guarantee a soft landing. Many of the most privileged people I know have the hardest time staying clean and sober and working an effective program of recovery. They’re too smart for this. Too rich. Too something—to work this simple program of honesty and service.

For some, rockbottom is the divorce of a decades-long marriage. For others it might be a DUI. Others still, loss of job or professional status. Others might get tossed out on the street by a landlord. Going broke might be the straw that finally breaks that big-assed, sturdy camel’s back. For me, it was the sheer duplicity of living a life that others may have envied on paper—while being utterly miserable in the process. AA calls this coming face to face with the Four Horsemen: Terror,
Bewilderment, Frustration, and Despair. Or in my own language, “how the fuck does none of this great stuff mean anything, and how did I get to be this miserable?” I had tried everything to hide it, lie about it, quit it, deny it—every attempt. And I’d failed miserably and been found out. The shame was rockbottom. That’s what rockbottom felt like to me. Buckets and buckets of shame poured over my poseur head.

Here’s the thing. Getting clean and sober isn’t the end of a disastrous run in your life. It doesn’t fix anything. What it does is clear your head so that you can begin the hard work of examining your life and your choices without the consequences brought about daily by addictive behavior. It’s a beginning. There are still going to be consequences. The accountability built into a program of recovery ensures that if you work it, you will be able to clean up your past, keep your own side of the street swept and free of debris in the present, and have a decent chance of being able to accept and deal with what life throws at you in the future. And you might actually have one—a future. I had miles and miles to go back in 2009 when I finally got it. I had to figure out how to stop spending money like water (still working on that one). I had to make amends to friends and loved ones. There was no shortage of old, nasty thinking and knee-jerk behaviors I had to examine and try to find another way (still working on that one too). My shoes were too big. I kept stepping on toes—and they would retaliate. I pissed off colleagues, smart-mouthed my way into plenty of pickles. I am selfish and self-centered—and now I’m painfully aware of it. Geez what a combo. Nobody said it would be easy. As the big book said, I have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about myself.

But slowly it started to fucking work. It’s better. If the elevator goes down again, I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy the view and the velocity. The most important thing of all: I cannot control other people, places, or things. I cannot control what life throws at me. I can only control my reaction to it. Thank you, God. Going up please!