If you have been sober a while and something feels off, you might already know the signs. Meetings have slipped. Prayer has thinned out, your temper is back, and you cannot quite figure out why your wife is looking at you the way she is.
You might be a dry drunk. The drink is not in your hand. But everything that lives underneath the drink is back.
That is what happened to Clay D after about 15 years of sobriety. A dry drunk after long term sobriety is what nearly took him down, and he tells the story on Sober Speak with the honesty that only comes from someone who almost lost everything twice.
Clay got sober on March 27, 1974. He came up in old-school Navy AA in Hawaii, where they called each other names meant as terms of endearment and dragged people into meetings drunk.
His first sponsor, Shep, stayed his sponsor for more than 40 years, until Shep passed with 53 years of sobriety. Clay has stayed sober for more than five decades.
And in the middle of all that, he had a stretch where he stopped praying, stopped going to meetings, and very nearly lost his marriage to a woman he calls his beautiful bride. He did not pick up a drink. But he says it plainly.
“I did not drink, but I went into a horrible dry drunk.”
What Is a Dry Drunk in AA?
Clay said something in this episode that is worth reading twice. He was talking about how relapse actually works for the person with alcohol use disorder, and he laid it out simply.
The second step says we came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. The third step is the spiritual one, where we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. When you relapse, Clay says, you do all of that in reverse.
You let the spiritual go first. Then you let the sanity go. And only then do you pick up a drink.
Clay did not make it to the drink. But he let the spiritual go, and then he let the sanity go, and the things he did during that stretch he still talks about with a grief that does not fully heal.
He had retired from the Navy and started climbing the corporate ladder. The chains were off, and he was making real money. He stopped praying and stopped going to meetings on any regular basis.
His ego, he says, convinced him that someone as wonderful as he was could not possibly be doing the things he was doing. So he must not love his wife. That is where the disease takes the mind, even when the bottle is nowhere in the room.
Sobriety vs Not Drinking: The Difference That Pulled Him Back
Two things pulled him back, really. One was Linda, his wife, the same woman he met in a Waikiki bar in 1969 and has been married to for 52 years now. The other was the program.
He went to a man up in Dallas who had less sobriety than he did and asked to be taken through the steps again. The man laughed and said Clay had twice the sobriety he did. Clay told him the truth.
“I don’t have a day of sobriety compared to you. I just haven’t drank.”
Read that line slowly. You can stack up years of not drinking and still not have sobriety.
Sobriety is the spiritual condition. Not drinking is the floor.
Clay flew to Hawaii to make amends. He flew to Florida to do another fifth step with an old friend, and he did about five fifth steps in that stretch. He came back to the program the way somebody comes back to a marriage they almost wrecked.
The Third Step Prayer, Put to Practical Use
The thing Clay leans on hardest, and the thing he passes along to the people he sponsors, is what Shep called the practical application of the third step prayer. Clay did not believe in God when he came in. His parents had raised him to think church was for hypocrites.
He told Shep he could not pray to a God he did not believe in. Shep put his hand on Clay’s shoulder, which Clay says was never a good sign with these old-timers, and told him to try praying to whom it may concern.
The idea was simple. A Higher Power does not care what it is called, only that it is called.
That prayer became the tool Clay used in his marriage, with his children, and with his grandchildren. It became the tool he used for his son Cliff, who was born with albinism, was not expected to live past 18, and is now in his 40s with an MBA.
It became the tool he used when he wanted to punch somebody and did not dare, because he had to stay spiritual. He offers people up. He lets them go.
What He Would Tell Someone Walking In Tonight
Clay’s advice for a newcomer is exactly what you would expect from a Navy man with 44 years. First, do not drink. Second, keep coming back whether you drink or not, because the magic cannot happen unless you are available for it.
He sponsors the way he was sponsored. No pretense, real love, and the kind of honesty that does not let you fool yourself for very long.
He says it is not because he is a gracious guy. He does it to save his own skin. And in saving his own skin, he ended up with a purpose he never thought a man like him could have.
Clay’s full episode on Sober Speak goes deeper into it all. His father died in the ninth month of his sobriety, the night his son was born, and the gentle giant of a former pro wrestler who told him God must love him a lot.
If anything here sounded familiar, the whole interview is worth an hour of your time. Listen to the full episode here.
If you are in that strange place where the bottle is gone but something is still wrong, you are not crazy, and you are not alone. People come back from where you are. Clay did.
The way back is usually smaller than people think. Sometimes it is a phone call, a meeting, or a prayer to whom it may concern.
And if all you have tonight is the not-drinking part, that is still the floor. Start there.
Sober Speak was founded by John M. as a place for honest conversation about recovery, the kind of talk that happens in meetings but rarely makes it online. New episodes drop every Friday, featuring people sharing their experience with the 12 steps, sobriety, and the work of staying well.
You can listen on Podbean at soberspeak.podbean.com, or find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.