The Devil's Tongue at PageMaster Books

The Devils Tongue

Merv Lien

$19.95

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The story of a man who spent fifty-two years an an alcoholic before finally turning his life around.

Our logo is two simple white roses. One rose is a bud tightly bound, waiting for the appropriate elements that will allow it to bloom and grow. The second rose is open, in full bloom, announcing life in its truest sense. It stands with a quiet dignity, able and willing to deal with life and all it has to offer and in return offering to the world its tranquility, joy, peace and love. This is my sense and understanding of Serenity. Symbolically, we see the client, Merv, enter our program as the tight rosebud and leave as the rose in full bloom. With the love and understanding of our staff here and the offer of tools to reshape and build a new life, we know that if a person can give themselves completely to our program they too can, and will, bloom and grow with Serenity.

All the elements of the program are brought together to form a simple beginning to a new and wonderful experience, one that will be treasured always for it is the beginning of a journey through life. A journey filled with growth experiences as yet unknown or even imagined. Like the rosebud that blooms and grows with the help of elements of nutrients, sun and rain, so we as a people can grow to the experiences of openness, joy, peace and love. Sometimes we too need some help to do this.

We Will Do Together What We Could Not Do Alone. Merv is an example of what the result of this process can be.All the best in all your experiences Merv.

It has been a privilege to work on your book from beginning to end – to see how it all began, and to read about the progression and the final step to sobriety. I feel privileged to be a part of your healing process. Each step that you take is one step closer to peace in your life.

You have had a lot to put behind you and it is something, that even though your wife Jean and your family benefits from it, you had to do it for you. The love you have for your family is very obvious in what you have written and why. I truly hope that other people gain from all your hard work. If even one person takes a step back and takes a good look at their life then all that you have put into this great book will be worth it.

I found your book to be very interesting and educational because it shows the twisted thinking of an alcoholic. It is also very encouraging because it shows that people can overcome their alcohol abuse and regain a normal and happy life again – no matter how long the abuse was carried on.

Every alcoholic affects a number of other people in his or her life – these are people who can also make tremendous gains from reading your book. Perhaps they can influence their loved ones to read the book and speed them on the path to healing.

The turning point in my life came when I was pulled over for impaired driving on a visit to Washington state. I was out for a night of drinking and dancing on a Saturday evening in 1992 – and I decided it was time to drive home. There was some police officers driving behind me, and they thought I was driving a little erratically, so they decided to pull me over to see if I was impaired. One of them got on his loudspeaker and told me to pull my vehicle over, so I pulled into a nearby parking lot. When I got out of my vehicle, there were two police cars and four officers waiting for me.

They gave me the usual dancing lesson that they give to people they think have been drinking: take four steps forward, swing around and walk four steps back. Bend over and touch the ground. Take six steps backward without falling down. Now take a few steps forward so we can smell your breath. No – I’m afraid that those breath mints don’t hide the smell of the booze!

Then it was time to stand steady with my arms outstretched. After that I had to stand with my head up high, close my eyes, and touch my nose with my hand. Then came the literacy portion of the test where they had me recite my ABC’s. I must have been a bad boy and failed my tests, because after I was finished, they told me to hold both of my hands out in front of me and they slapped on a pair of handcuffs so I couldn’t get into any more mischief.

I got to go for a complimentary ride in a police cruiser, complete with the Christmas lights on top flashing away and the sirens blaring. They took me to their station downtown and made me blow into a breathalyzer machine. The officer examined my driver’s license, which was from Alberta, and he also looked at my registration. When he was checking on my registration, he found that my license plates had expired, and that my vehicle hadn’t been insured for over a month. I wasn’t thinking very clearly in those days, and I thought that I still had at least another month to go before my vehicle’s license plates and insurance expired.

The reading on my breathalyzer showed a 0.10 % blood alcohol level. At the time, that was exactly the legal limit for Washington state. The officer had two choices, he could be lenient to me and let me off because my reading was right on the borderline, or he could go ahead and charge me. He stopped to think about it for a minute. He told me that in most cases like this he would let the person go – but the fact that I was driving without valid license plates or registration made him decide to go ahead and charge me.

I ended up getting stuck with two tickets – one for driving while under the influence, and one for driving without a current license plates and registration. After they finished charging me, the officer took the handcuffs off. He knew that I obviously wasn’t violent or dangerous, so he decided to let me stay at a motel for the evening rather than locking me up behind bars.

The next day was Sunday, and I had to go back to the police station to get my driver’s license and the keys to my van. I got my keys and my license back, but I still didn’t have any insurance on the van, and my vehicle license was still invalid. My mind was still a little fuzzy from the booze I had the night before, and I was having trouble deciding how I should go about getting back to Canada. Should I call my son in Burnaby and have him come down and give me a ride home? Or should I just jump in the van and drive home – taking my chances that I wouldn’t be stopped again on the way home.

Well, I stopped to consult with an old friend of mine – the beer bottle – and he advised me that I should hop in the van and take my chances. I’d been listening to his advice for fifty-two years – and I decided to take his advice again this time. I made it home safely, and this just served to reinforce my faith in my old friend.

When I got back to Vancouver Island, where I was working, I got in touch with a lawyer about my charges. He lined me up with another lawyer in Washington.

Before I went to see the American lawyer, I did some thinking. My driver’s license was issued in Alberta. If they took that license away from me, I wouldn’t be able to carry on in my business as a cabinet maker. More importantly, it was four miles from where I lived to the nearest liquor store – how was I going to get alcohol if I couldn’t drive? I considered going to the motor vehicle bureau for British Columbia, telling them that I misplaced my license, and get them to issue me a new one for the province of British Columbia. That way when they took my BC license away, I would still have a valid license. Of course they do crossreferences on driver’s licenses, and it would only be a matter of time till I was caught – but in my alcohol addled stupor, I didn’t really think about any of those things.

When I went to court, the judge dismissed the charge of driving without a license and without insurance. It turns out that the arresting officer had written it up wrong – he wrote the charge down as driving without a license. When I showed the judge that I had a valid new BC driver’s license, he threw that charge out. My lawyer was able to plead the Impaired Driving charge down to dangerous driving and reckless endangerment. The judge gave me a fine of $1,075 and one year probation – and told me that I had to attend AA meetings and go to counselling for my drinking problem. But I didn’t get a criminal record and I didn’t lose my license.

This should have been enough to stop me drinking – or at least stop me drinking and driving, but two weeks later I was at it again. I went to a dance on Vancouver Island – one of those boy meets girl dances where you had to buy tickets for the booze. At the end of the night, I had three tickets left over, so I ordered one double and one single whisky and drank them down right away. This was after all the other booze I had already had to drink that evening. If the tickets had been for food, I wouldn’t have had any problems just throwing them away at the end of the night. But after fiftytwo years as an alcoholic, I had come to the conclusion that it was a crime to waste booze.

The dance was over, so I got in my van to drive home. I had to drive because I was too drunk to walk. I got stopped by the police once again. The officer who stopped me didn’t arrest me. He just said “we’re putting your vehicle under 24 hour suspension and calling a tow truck. I don’t know why he did this – maybe he felt sorry for me or something. I had to wait twenty-four hours, then I went to the police station to pick up my car keys and driver’s license, and went to the impound yard to pick up my van. It ended up costing me $85.00 for the towing charges.

I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. How many people get stopped for impaired driving twice in two weeks without even losing their license? When I went drinking at the legion, I kept telling everybody about my good fortune. I thought I must have had a lucky charm hanging over my head – I didn’t think about how unfortunate it was that I was still drinking so heavily!

Every so often, I had to report to the probation officer in Washington. That was one of the conditions of my parole. A few months after being sentenced, he asked me how many AA meetings I had attended. I told him that I hadn’t attended any yet – after all, I was just a social drinker, not an alcoholic. The next week I reported back to him, and there was another officer with him who asked me if I had been to any AA meetings yet. I told him I still hadn’t gone to any, and he calmly told me that if I didn’t go to a meeting before I came back to see him again, he would send me back to court and let the judge decide what to do with me.

This really scared me. I was on probation for 365 days – and I could spend the rest of the time in jail if I didn’t meet the conditions of my probation. This was even more serious than losing my driver’s license – it might mean a whole year without booze! I had to do something right away, so I went to an AA meeting at 8:00 p.m. that night. I thought to myself “here goes – if I have to go, I have to go. Nothing says I have to like it, though.”

I was half tanked when I walked into my first meeting. Isn’t that what meetings are all about – a bunch of drunks sitting around and talking about drinking? Everybody at the meeting was really friendly and welcoming, but I thought “everybody seems friendly when you are drinking.”

I went and sat down as far away from anybody as I possibly could because, to tell the truth, I was pretty embarrassed about having to be there. I didn’t say anything that night – I just listened.

A couple of weeks later, I went to another meeting. I wasn’t drunk this time, so it was easier for me to make sense of what was being said. People got up and talked about themselves. They talked about what drunks they were – or what drunks they had been. Then a couple of guys got up and told stories about how their drinking had cost them their families, their homes, their cars, and all their assets. I actually thought they were talking about me. I thought that they had somehow learned about my past history, and they were repeating it just to pique my interest.

When that meeting was over, I went home. I didn’t stop off at the legion first for a drink. I got home, opened a bottle of beer, set it on the table next to me, and sat down on the bed. As I sat there thinking, it finally dawned on me that those guys were talking about themselves, not me. I was simply in the same situation as them. I pondered over what they had said for hours. It was November 27, 1992 at 9:30 p.m. I never did touch that can of beer, and to this day, I still haven’t touched a drop of liquor.

I started going to the AA meetings regularly and getting up to tell my story along with the rest of them. It was a little bit scary at first, but after awhile, it got so that I was actually very enthusiastic about it. My mind started clearing up for the first time in years.

I started going to counselling every week, in addition to going to the AA meetings. It was as if the clouds and the fog started clearing away. I was thinking back on my earlier life. But I wasn’t ready to think back too far just yet. One of the things that was constantly on my mind was my treatment of my common-law wife, Jean. We were together for over fifteen years, and she finally gave me the boot when she couldn’t put up with my alcoholism anymore. I wondered if she would be willing to talk to me now that I wasn’t drinking anymore. I gave her a call to see how she was doing, and the reception wasn’t as cold as I had anticipated. At first, she was understandably a little sceptical. When I told her that I wasn’t drinking anymore, she asked “Why not, did you run out of money for booze?” I explained to her that I finally realized I was an alcoholic and I was attending counselling and going to AA meetings. She got on a flight and came down to visit me in Vancouver. To make a long story short, she realized that I was serious about giving up drinking – and moved in with me in the lower mainland in BC. She went along with me to my counselling sessions, and she even tagged along to some of the AA meetings.

While my mind was clearing up, my stomach wasn’t. It was getting back at me for all my years of drinking. I experienced some pretty severe withdrawal pains for the next three or four months.

My body kept demanding sweets as a replacement for the alcohol that it wasn’t getting – so I kept feeding myself sweets. Before too long, I ended up with sugar diabetes, and I had to give up on the sweets. What could I do to replace my addiction to alcohol. I didn’t smoke anymore, and I wasn’t the least bit interested in starting again. I didn’t want to substitute one type of poison for another. Then I got another idea. Why don’t I write a book about the effect of alcoholism on a person’s life using myself as an example. After fifty-two years of hard drinking, I managed to turn my life around and give up on alcohol – if I could do it anybody can do it – and maybe reading about my example would give them a little bit of encouragement.

I started reading books, taking clippings out of the paper, writing notes, going to the library and spending hours there reading. And, of course, I was still going to my AA meetings and going to counselling. The more I got into my book, the more enthusiastic I got about it. It has helped me come to terms with a lot of things I have done over the years, and has helped in some small way to right some of the many wrongs that I have done.