My Name is Jesse Draham and I’m an Alcoholic
And if you’re reading this…go fuck yourself.
Nah, that was too harsh. You’re a nice person. In as much as any human being can be free of sin.
(If Jesus Christ is reading this…take your judgey ass elsewhere…destroying money changers tables was a sin bruh…)
Let’s start at the beginning.
My alcoholism started with the death of an alcoholic. My Dad. I wonder how many alcoholics share this same story. I know plenty who turned to drink and had problems long before, because that was their parents dealt with stress or lived their daily lives.
I enjoyed my booze. Due to my friend’s family connections and impressive cheapness, every Monday night of my early 20’s was spent at Cookie’s Tavern on Oregon Avenue in Philadelphia. Technically a Marine bar. More accurately a mob bar. Even move accurately a townie mob marine bar.
Our drinking schedule was based around the nights his cousin Sal was working the bar. This had originally started due to being the only place that would let us drink underage (we were 20, not exactly “Youth Gone Wild”). We continued there due to hilarious Italian-American customs, and the fact that Sal couldn’t let me friend pay for his drinks, because he was his younger cousin. This would escalate, when my friend attempted to pay and tip, to threats of physical violence. They were incredible times.
As soon as you put your drinking on a clock, you’re kinda fucked. I had Monday’s and Thursday’s set aside for drinking at Cookie’s, though I still lived at my mom’s in New Jersey. But soon, as I was in a rock and roll band and enjoyed creating, I slowly started to need alcohol to stay on track, to spend my nights inspired, writing lyrics and riffs in the pre-streaming era, when entertainmant was harder to find.
I made an extremely misguided move 40 years too late, and decided if I wanted to make it in music, I had to move to San Francisco. This would be the 2022 equivalent of moving to Seattle in hopes of buddying up with Soundgarden.
One night, I went out with my roommates Carlos and Marvin, returned home, and at 3am, clearing my bed of laundry to sleep, noticed my phone ringing. It was my youngest brothers phone, only 12 years old… Why the hell would he be calling? It’d be 6am back home.
It was my mom. “I’m so sorry Jesse….you’re father is dead.”
………
Since that day, I have been an alcoholic. I have drank every day, almost, to deal with the stress of that initial blow. That morning, I walked down to the closest bar and ordered a shot for myself, the bartender, and the one other patron. They protested at first, and then I explained it was for my father, who died today, and they joined me.
Then I left that bar, hopped in my car…and proceeded to drink almost daily for 14 years.
Dad had been an alcoholic. Mom had too, though I hadn’t realized that yet. Hilariously, after my maternal grandmother died, we saw her diary, where she flippantly wrote “There are a lot of alcoholics in my family.” With no further insight or though. Same here, Memom. Same here.
I still hold grudges against my dad. It feels childish, but I felt an immediate disconnect from his family, which led to a feeling of disconnect from him. It wasn’t like he was a ghost. I was confronted with the horrible pain that he’d never been there. He was one of eight siblings, and only six weeks before he died, his mother had died after suffering from lung cancer for years.
It’s hard not to criticize him today, still. He was a mama’s boy, and he was also a stereotypical afraid of his feelings white suburban Irish Catholic man. I was driving him from the funeral to the burial for his mother. He asked me to put on some music. I’m somebody who chooses to wallow in the moment, to maximize the pain I’m already feeling.
I asked if he wanted me to put on Simple Man. A song to enhance the feeling of the moment.
He looked at me like I had four heads.
“Put on Ted Nugent. Anything to distract me.”
Seems we processed grief differently.
We buried Marge. Then I moved to San Francisco. Then dad died.
He’d fallen off of something at work at Boeing. Cracked his pelvis. They prescribed him oxycontin. He went to a card game, August 2, 2009, drinking whiskey and chewing oxys like candy. He walked home with some floozy. Went to bed, fell asleep, and never woke up.
I then travelled home and paid tribute to him. How? By living in his home, and drinking every single day and night, only fifteen feet from where alcohol and pills had taken his life.
Maybe if I’d had that context at first I could’ve helped myself. But I was so alone in my pain. My mother’s grief was too much and intermingled with an ongoing divorce. My stepfather, good man though he was, was not only also an alcoholic, but an extremely weak man and unable help me at all. Honestly, the best help during those early days was the lady friend who gave me some much needed sexual attention. If I’d had a girlfriend at the time, I may have been able to avoid the trap.
Instead, I buried my feelings and salved my pain with alcohol. My connection to my fathers feelings and his 7 siblings fell apart quickly. They’d lost their mother and were still reeling when JD childishly decided to use his pain as a license to medicate however he felt necessary. And six weeks later…
I have almost no spiritual belief. It makes death much harder, as I lose that connection.
But one thing that keeps me guessing…
Grandma had been diagnosed with cancer at 79 years old. She was almost happy to be done with life. She’d refused any treatment. Meeting with a dietician at the hospital who suggested foods that would prolong her life, Marge assured her, “Honey, I’m dying. It’s cheesesteaks from here on out.”
She slowly got worse, but mostly seemed okay, for roughly 2 years. Then the end came fast.
On one of the last lucid days, before she succumbed to the throes of death, she suddenly demanded of her children, “Don’t put me in the ground.” Her husband Joseph had been dead 30 years, 1979, and her name had been etched on the stone since then. Waiting for her to join him.
Out of nowhere, this longstanding faithful Catholic woman demanded to be above ground in the mausoleum, and not with her former husband in the ground.
And six weeks later, her son JD was dead. And there was an open plot next to his father that would never be filled.
She knew.
She told me as much. “You’ll need to be there for your father after I go.” He was such a mama’s boy. With the exception of the 5 years he was married, he’d always lived at home. Even when I was born, he’d visit me at my maternal grandmother’s house, then back home to mama, not even spending the night to help my mother with the annoyances of a newborn’s sleep schedule.
Grandma Marge suddenly made a decision that would leave a grave open, only temporarily, to be filled by her son directly behind her.
And then, much like he did and I judged him for…I turned to the bottle to lick my wounds.
And have stayed there, ever since.