Ramblin': 5,000 days of sobriety for Marion man

MARION - Four weeks sober, Steve Sellers thought he had his drinking problem licked. His addiction, over the years, had increased to two fifths of vodka a day. Knowing his wife might leave him, that he could lose his job, Steve become an outpatient at the Sedlacek Treatment Center at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids.

As new snow fell one late January day in 1996, Steve rejoiced.

“It's a sign of purity,” he thought, surrounded by the whiteness. “God is telling me it's a clean start. I was so excited.”

Steve relished life with his wife, Mary, and daughters Katie and Laura. He was fired up about shoveling snow. He walked down the stairs into the

basement to change into work clothes.

His coveralls felt heavy. What was this in the front pocket? A fifth of vodka. A recent relic of his drinking days.

“There I am,” he says. “Confronted.”

Steve thought about past hallucinations, about confrontations with his wife and boss, about the goodness of sobriety.

“All I had to do,” he says, “is take that bottle up to my wife.”

Instead, he walked into the bathroom. Locked the door. Drank half the bottle.

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“I remember sitting on my father's lap and sipping Hamm's Beer when I was

8 years old,” says Steve, now 54. “It was the greatest thing.”

He remembers, at 16, driving around with friends, drinking until one of them vomited. “We thought it was the greatest thing in the world.”

He remembers, as a high school English teacher and basketball coach in Ruthven, Iowa, in the early 1980s, walking into a tavern, watching a businessman tumble drunkenly from a bar stool. “I'm not as bad as that guy,” Steve told himself. He and his friends usually drank at home.

When Steve came to Marion to teach language arts at Vernon Middle School in 1988, his wife stayed behind to sell the house. On his own, drinking was easy. At night, even after his wife joined him, Steve stayed up playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” on his computer. With a glass of vodka at his side, drinking became easier.

A year later, after switching careers to sell insurance at Millhiser Smith Agency, drinking became easiest.

Steve sucked on peppermint candy constantly. He blamed bloodshot eyes on long hours at work. He drank out of the bottle so his wife wouldn't see empty glasses, carried a bottle in his briefcase, hid a bottle under the bed.

“It was by the clock. ‘It's only two more hours until I can drink. Only one more hour.'”

Every couple of weeks Steve sneaked home midday to remove empty bottles from the basement's drop ceiling. He knew the location of every unlocked Dumpster in town.

“Still I'm thinking, ‘I'm not that bad,' not realizing I'm probably the guy other people are looking at and saying, ‘I'm not as bad as that guy.'”

After shoveling snow that January day in 1996, Steve drank himself into a stupor.

Years past, Steve would forego cocktails at parties to prove to others he didn't have to drink, even though he arrived drunk. He faked attendance at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, drinking instead and buying a box of poker chips so he could show his wife a single white chip - proof he'd been at the meeting - and say, “I did it, I surrendered.” He would rise in the morning, with no hangover because he always was drunk, and stand in front of the bathroom mirror, a razor in one hand, a bottle of vodka in the other.

Still, he thought, “I'm not that bad.”

“Alcoholics,” Steve says, “are good at denial.”

Before his first stint at Sedlacek, Steve had tried to dry up on his own.

“Dec. 30, 1995,” he says, “I snapped. I hallucinated all day. I saw things, I was afraid. I thought there were people in my house. The devil had me. I was convinced Laura (his youngest daughter) had been kidnapped. I called the police.”

He was hauled off, medicated, to the psych ward and then Sedlacek. It didn't work.

This time, Steve's boss asked him to resign. Mary filed for divorce. His doctor said he was destroying more than his liver.

Still, Steve drank. He was drunk in Minneapolis when relatives had him locked up overnight in a detox center.

“Feb. 22, 1996, was my God moment,” Steve says. “I was visited by a spirit of the Lord. It overwhelmed me.”

In Cedar Rapids the next day, he was committed to the hospital.

“You've hit rock bottom,” his counselor said. “You have no other reason to be here except for you. Everybody else is going about their lives. You need to ...”

The switch flipped. He embraced the program. But upon completion, he had nowhere to go.

With financial help from friends, Steve checked into the Red Roof Inn. He bought a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, a big bag of Doritos and a pack of Salems, even though he didn't smoke.

“I knew it was going to be a tough night.”

The next morning, Steve's new life began.

For a while he sold hearing aids in Davenport. In 2000 he returned to insurance, in 2001 he returned to Cedar Rapids, in 2002 he joined United Insurance Agencies in Marion.

He's become friends again with his ex-wife and children. He remarried in 2006.

On Nov. 1, as national Red Ribbon Week, which promotes drug-free living, comes to an end, Steve Sellers will celebrate 5,000 days of sobriety.

“I wasn't a very good husband. I wasn't a very good father. I wasn't a very good son,” says Steve, who now is a regular speaker for Sedlacek, wrote a book about his recovery and founded Ship Recovery, a resource for battling addictions. “I got an opportunity to play the roles I threw away 15 years ago. To have that back is a true blessing.”