Washington Window: June 2007: Sobriety, with help from a higher power

[Back to index of June 2007 articles]

By Lucy Chumbley
Washington Window
Vol. 76, No. 7, June 2007

"There's an old saying: If you get four Episcopalians together, you're bound to have a fifth," said John F. Pontius, co-chair of the diocese's Task Force on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, "which is in many ways true."

It's an old joke, but the reality - that one in 10 Americans will become chemically dependant and that one in three families are affected by alcohol and drug misuse - is far from funny.

Pontius, who will celebrate 30 years of sobriety next year (March 30, to be exact), understands the seriousness of alcoholism as well as anybody: In 1978, he was pushed into a local treatment center in a wheelchair.

"I was shaking. I looked like a lobster," he said. His health had given out, he was out of work, his wife was meeting with a divorce lawyer and he just couldn't hold his life together anymore. At age 44, he had bottomed out.

It didn't start out that way, of course. Back in high school, Pontius said, alcohol seemed like a blessing.

"I was a very shy, reserved man," he said. "Never could talk to girls, usually sat at the side of the room. When someone gave me alcohol, it was like an epiphany: I was better looking, I had better luck with the girls."

A heavy drinker from the start, Pontius drank his way out of a scholarship to the University of the South - "I thought it was much neater to go to the parties" - and joined the United States Air Force.

He became a linguist, learned Russian and Arabic and "got in some small trouble from the alcohol" during his 10-year military career. Returning to Georgetown - where he had studied Arabic - after his discharge, he met his wife, Ruth, and proposed.

"I would like to say the suave me, with the suit and the brandy snifter," he said. "But it was not like that at all."

The couple bought a house on Capitol Hill, had a son, and tried to pretend they were living a normal life.

"At age 39, I had a heart attack that was directly related to my drinking," Pontius said. But that failed to stop him. After leaving the hospital, "I just completely ignored, 'Don't drink,'" he said. "Alcohol was the only thing holding my life together - I thought."

As his alcohol-related troubles increased, so did his consumption of alcohol.

"I drank anything that was available," he said. "Toward the end I was drinking vodka because at the time they had an ad, 'Smirnoff leaves you breathless.' … But the alcohol was not working for what it was supposed to do."

A "cradle Episcopalian," Pontius had drifted away from the church as his drinking problem got worse.

"It got to a point where I just completely left it," he said, describing his disappointment with religion. "I would pray for help and I didn't get it. Of course, I kept drinking."

But during his 30 days in treatment, Pontius had another epiphany.

"I felt that this was going to be OK, that there was hope," he said. "But this wasn't something I could do myself. There was a reliance on what we call a 'higher power'. All of a sudden, the desire to drink was lifted from me. How do you explain it? It was the grace of God."

A period of "spiritual awakening" began, and after several years of sobriety, "I realized there was a real hole in my psyche," Pontius said. "That I needed to go back to the Episcopal Church."

He headed back to Christ Church, Capitol Hill where he had previously been a member and "like most recovering people, whenever we get involved, we really get involved." He has since served as the parish's senior warden, as a delegate to the Diocesan Convention and as a member of the Diocesan Council, to name just a few.

Through the church, Pontius began to reach out to other alcoholics in need of help, serving on CHAAOS, the diocese's now defunct Committee on Healing of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Substances, and as part of an intervention team.

"In the past years, some of us have been trying to get another committee organized," he said, and last June, the Diocesan Council voted unanimously to create the Task Force on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, which will present its first report to the council this month.

Pontius also takes an active part in Christ Church's Recovery Sunday, an annual liturgy that celebrates sobriety. He'll stand up in front of the congregation, share his story.

"Every time we celebrate recovery, somebody comes up to me or the person who has preached and says, 'I really want to talk to you about recovery,'" he said. "It's amazing how it happens.

"It's a crazy disease, but it's a recoverable disease. Once you stop [drinking], it does get better." But, he stresses: "You don't do it on your own. You don't get sober on your own. It's a group effort."

Sobriety requires ongoing vigilance and support, he said, and the task force hopes to serve as a resource for people working to become and remain free from addiction. Pontius knows this is important and necessary work, because even after almost 30 years of abstinence, he knows he is still a recovering alcoholic.

"I know the addiction is still there," he said. "I don't have the desire to drink, but I can pick up on certain things."

At a recent picnic, for example, he sat down at a table where someone had abandoned a can of beer. "I moved it, but while I was moving it, I noticed it was half full," he said. "I was eating my hamburger and drinking my soda but I was focused on it. I was thinking, 'Why did somebody leave half a beer?' That's addiction."

And often, Pontius said, it takes the help of a higher power to break free.

[Back to index of June 2007 articles]