The Wreck Wasn't My Wake-Up Call

A cinematic recreation of Shawn at about age 23 sitting beside the wreckage of his black pickup truck after a drunk driving accident. The truck lies destroyed beside a broken utility pole as the sun rises, representing an event that nearly killed him but still was not enough to change the direction of his life.

I hit a telephone pole hard enough to break it into three pieces.

My truck was destroyed.

It landed on its side.

The police told me it was a miracle I was alive.

I didn't have a scratch on me.

And somehow, that still wasn't enough to make me stop drinking.

I was about 23 years old.

That night, I had gone out to the bar and closed the place down.

But when the bar closed, I wasn't ready for the night to be over.

That was pretty normal for me back then.

So I got in my truck and drove into Green Bay, calling everyone I knew who was probably already several hours into sleeping.

I was looking for an after-bar party.

Anything to keep going.

Nobody answered.

Eventually, the sun started coming up.

I finally gave up and headed home.

Then I hit the pole

I don't remember exactly what happened.

Knowing me at the time, I was probably screwing around with the CD player trying to put something else on.

Whatever happened, I left the road and hit a telephone or electrical pole.

Hard.

Hard enough to break it into three pieces.

My truck was totaled.

It ended up lying on its side.

Somehow, I crawled out.

Then I sat there waiting for the police.

They couldn't believe I wasn't hurt.

Neither could I.

Not a broken bone.

Not a cut.

Nothing.

They told me I was lucky to be alive.

And you would think that would've been the moment.

The wake-up call.

The thing that finally made me look at my life and say:

What the hell are you doing?

It wasn't.

It should have changed me

That's probably one of the hardest things to understand if you've never lived that way.

You would think nearly killing yourself would be enough.

You would think wrecking a vehicle would be enough.

You would think sitting beside the remains of your truck while the sun came up would suddenly make you appreciate being alive.

It didn't.

That was already the second vehicle I had wrecked because of drinking.

There would still be another.

There would be another drunk driving offense.

And eventually, instead of turning my life around, I moved into harder drugs.

Things got much darker.

Looking back now, I can say something I probably couldn't have admitted then:

I was on a voluntary course of self-destruction, and I wouldn't be happy until I ended it all. Death just wouldn't accept me.

That's exactly how I was living.

I wasn't accidentally drifting in the wrong direction.

I was participating in the destruction of my own life.

And every time I survived something that should have forced me to change, I kept going.

Consequences weren't enough

People watching someone destroy themselves often wait for the thing that's finally going to straighten them out.

Maybe losing the job will do it.

Maybe the relationship ending will do it.

Maybe getting arrested will do it.

Maybe the accident will do it.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Because consequences aren't always enough when the person experiencing them doesn't believe their life is worth protecting.

Back then, I didn't think I would live much past 25.

And on some level, I seemed determined to make sure I was right.

Other people could probably see things in my future that I couldn't.

Possibility.

Relationships.

A different life.

A future worth sticking around for.

I didn't see that.

When you're in a dark enough place, everything gets filtered through where you are.

You don't look ahead and imagine something better.

You assume tomorrow will feel like today.

So you keep escaping.

You keep numbing.

You keep making decisions that create more of the exact pain you're trying to get away from.

I know what that's like.

The wreck still wasn't enough

The accident didn't change me.

Neither did the next wreck.

Neither did another drunk driving offense.

And when alcohol still wasn't enough to finish the job, I moved into harder drugs.

Things got worse from there.

There eventually was a moment when the script changed.

Sitting with this story now, I remember it.

There was a point where something finally reached me in a way the wrecks, the arrests, and everything before it hadn't.

But that belongs to another story.

Because this story is about something else.

It's about the fact that nearly dying still wasn't enough.

Sometimes a person can stand in the wreckage of their own life and still not be able to see another way to live.

I know because I did it.

The guy who didn't think he'd make it

The strange part is looking at my life now.

I'm 52.

I've been clean and sober for 22 years.

I have a life that the 23-year-old sitting beside that wrecked truck wouldn't have recognized.

And now I spend a big part of my life helping other people change theirs.

There's something almost impossible about that when I really stop and think about it.

The guy who didn't believe he'd live past 25 now talks with people who can't imagine their own lives becoming different.

Maybe that's part of why I understand them.

I'm not looking at somebody who's making terrible decisions and thinking:

How can you possibly keep doing this?

I know how.

I've been there.

I know what it's like to be in the depths of hell and make your life worse trying to escape it in the only ways you know how.

I know what it's like to keep reaching for relief while creating more pain.

But I also know the other side of that.

I know how good life can become when the filters you see everything through begin to change.

I know what it's like to build an entirely different life.

And maybe more importantly, I know what it's like to discover that the person you became while trying to survive isn't necessarily who you really are.

Maybe it was part of the bigger plan

Sometimes I wonder if all of this was part of some bigger plan.

Maybe I survived things I probably shouldn't have because someday I was going to use what I learned to help somebody else.

Maybe not.

I don't pretend to know.

But I do know that nothing about my life today would've made sense to the guy I was at 23.

He couldn't see this far ahead.

He couldn't imagine 22 years sober.

He couldn't imagine helping other people.

He couldn't imagine actually wanting to be here.

He only knew what his life felt like at that moment.

And he assumed that was all there was.

He was wrong.

That's something I carry with me now when I talk to somebody who believes their life is already decided.

The version of your life you're living today doesn't necessarily get the final word.

Neither does the version of you who is living it.

At 23, I hit a pole hard enough to break it into three pieces.

The police told me it was a miracle I walked away.

They were right.

It just wasn't the moment that changed me.

That came later.

And that's another story.