I was an alcoholic
…not the kind that you would imagine – the derelict on the street holding a bottle, or the boozed up husband staggering around the house. No, I was the cool kind. The one dressed in a business suit with a high paying executive job and success that flowed like lava because of my competitive edge. Yet, I was a time bomb waiting to explode. Ticking away to the destruction of all that was around me – my precious wife and children, the corporation that I worked for and even the mere existence of my life.
When my taxi cab driver’s body crashed through the window after I had driven him to excessive speeds, while he swerved to avoid a little girl in the road, (he died and the girl survived), that was my “come to Jesus moment.” I am here so that you will never have to come to experience the worst of what alcoholic depravity can unleash.
Mind on Fire
I am Philip Muls and chose to write a book called “Mind on Fire: A Case of Successful Addiction Recovery.” The book is raw and authentic, even to the point where I allow my psychiatrist to pen the pages. It is only when you become raw that true recovery can take place.
I hope to flush out the alcoholics, especially the cool ones and get them off the path to destruction. I believe that recovery is waiting for anyone that rises to the demand of it. Recovery will demand things. It will demand that you become very real with yourself, stop making excuses and get on with clean up. My day to get my *** together was when my wife said…that’s it.
My book Mind on Fire addresses my life as a high functioning alcoholic. Many people do not know what that is. A functional alcoholic – like I was- continues to work, travel, and create the appearance of living a “normal” life. I could even say that I reached ‘peak performance’ levels during a certain time, until I fell off a cliff. During that time, I seemed to have everything going for me, I even was promoted up the corporate ladder several times because of my excellent business results in Asia.
Before I spiraled down, I managed to hide the alcohol abuse for years without suffering any major losses. But under the surface, this caused severe psychological and emotional damage to my family and myself.
Losing Control
In my book, Mind on Fire, my alter ego Peter Baer goes to Bangkok (Chapter: Hubris) where he hosts a group of business people to a dinner meeting, but gets drunk to the point of not remembering the evening and wrecking up outrageous expenses. He must then contend with the consequences of having to explain this to his company or pay the expense out of his own pocket. It’s dangerous because there is a tipping point when the functional alcoholic loses control.
The main reason why it is so important for high-functioning alcoholics to excel on the job is because the appearance of success, in spite of the addiction makes them forget the precarious position they are in and allows them to continue to live in deep denial about their drinking problem. The success works against them, making them think they have their drinking under control based upon their achievements. But eventually, the disease will catch up with them.
What is perverted about the phenomenon is that high-functioning alcoholics often have friends, colleagues or even loved ones who help them cover up the consequences of their drinking. They may unconsciously enable the alcoholic’s behavior by allowing him to avoid the negative consequences of destructive drinking.
The Functional Alcoholic
The functional alcoholic are often well-educated, intelligent and hard-working. But their substance abuse may mask certain psychological disorders such as severe existential anxiety, as was the case for me. Let me stress the importance of this by reciting a piece from the book here: “Would you say that this preoccupation with death is your primary concern in life?” He looked very alert now. I could tell this was very close to his core. He hesitated. “Yes, I would. Every morning, I wake up to yet another day without a solution to my mortality problem.” He looked at me carefully, to check my expression. When he saw that I was not about to scoff at him, he continued. “Every day I realize, as if for the first time, that my life will eventually end. And every day, this weighs down on my chest, like a foot of fresh earth on top of a coffin. My coffin.”
At this point in my life I am happy to say that I have lived five years in sobriety, after having lived more than ten years as a high-functioning alcoholic. If I can be set free, so can you. I didn’t do it alone. I would encourage you to do like I did and get help. For me it was my psychiatrist along with a supportive family even though they hated the lifestyle that I had chosen.
Climbing Mt. Everest
If I had one message to share with a struggling alcoholic it would be this. I’d like to use the analogy with mountaineering, elaborated as a theme throughout Mind on Fire: If you yourself are to embark on this sobering ascent, make sure you do not go it alone. Prepare your journey well, make sure you take sufficient time to acclimatize to the new heights, and most of all, get a guide to go with you to the mountaintop. Your chances of reaching it will be so much higher.
There are two other references in the book with regards to the parallels between mountaineering and recovery:
From the chapter First Love: If we were on Mount Everest right now, I’d say that over the last two days, you crossed over from Base Camp to Camp One, with bragging rights. And with me as your Sherpa to now further help you ascend further to Camp Two. It was necessary for you to spend these past days and nights alone, without my direct supervision, to acclimatize to this new height.
And from the chapter Locked in the Basement: Remember our Mount Everest analogy? This is your window to ascend further to the top, because the sun has just come out from behind the clouds. You have a narrow but clear corridor to the summit. Just find the audacity to pack up your gear and get going!” “Okay—let’s see if I get this right. So you’re saying that by moving forward in a single-minded way, by recovering the gutsiness from my younger days, my fears will eventually lose their powers?” “Yes! Trust me, this is a track you will want to follow all the way to the end. And that end could be happiness or at least peace of mind. Whatever happens, try to reach the upper floors in your house of consciousness. The view is so much better from up there.
My highest aspiration for your life is that you find a pathway for recovery. There is a better life ahead for anyone that is courageous enough to take life back.
Philip Muls the author of Mind on Fire is a senior business executive in a global corporation, who has been traveling on the job through Asia for the last twenty-plus years. He holds an MBA from Leuven University and has been granted various sales and management awards in the software industry. After quitting alcohol in his mid-forties, Philip started to research and experiment with a variety of recovery treatments on the level of mind and body and also on the level of his deeper self. This book blends his amazing travel stories with an authentic account of how alcohol affects the brain and how recovery from addiction can be like navigating a minefield of existential fears and obsolete beliefs. When he is not off traveling in China or India, Philip lives with his wife Natja and his two children Monika and Alexander in Grimbergen, Belgium. You can find Mind on Fire on Amazon.com or anywhere books are sold. You many also contact Philip Muls at www.philipmulsauthor.com