Faces of Recovery: Sean Mortimer

Faces of Recovery is a column begun by Wendy Weicki of Oxbow Center about people in the community who are in active recovery from addiction. As both a newspaper reporter and a recovering alcoholic, I’m in a unique position to bring back this column with the story of my own journey.

Hi, I’m Sean and I’m an alcoholic.

My addiction began at 19, my first year of college. That was the year I first tried alcohol and marijuana, though my use was still infrequent. That time is mostly of note for traumatic events that negatively affected me.

My best friends I grew up with and went to college with grew distant in a matter of weeks of starting school. I disliked someone they became friends with because they treated me poorly, and it drove a stake in our friendship — in their defense, I fell into a deep depression and I probably wasn’t fun to be around anyways.

Despite being a perpetual mope, I made two friends that year.

The first was a kid named Billy from Jackson Hole. He was on a full ride academic scholarship, was an excellent tennis player, World of Warcraft prodigy, and he cared deeply about his friends. Just when I thought I had no value to anyone he invited me to live with him our sophomore year.

I came back from Easter Sunday that year to the news that Billy was missing. After days passed his room was searched and his body was discovered. He had died by suicide. Although I was interviewed by police about the incident, I don’t know how or why it happened and I probably never will.

My second friend Stephan, I met in the back of calculus class when we both showed up late and talked about League of Legends. Somehow that interaction created the longest lasting friendship in my life. He becomes more relevant to the story when we get to rock bottom.

After my freshman year of college, I learned two things: I can’t get hurt by people if I isolate from them, and I can shut off how alone I feel by drinking — at least for a little while.

The use in my addiction went from occasional to whenever I was awake after I turned 21, and I could get my own. My drug of choice bounced back and forth between marijuana and alcohol, but ultimately, I settled on alcohol to self-medicate; it was more accessible in Wyoming than weed, less stigmatic, and had way better dissociative effects — I loved the way it melted away the thoughts that I couldn’t seem to get out of my head any other way.

The simple reason that I didn’t do any harder drugs is that you have to know people; I didn’t know any people.

Addiction had a strong showing the year I turned 21, and I got professional help for the first time when I was 22; I left school to go to inpatient treatment in Cody for 2 months after I spent all my money on weed and my parents got concerned. It was a good experience and I returned to Worland, but I relapsed with alcohol alone in my room while my parents were at a Super Bowl party a couple days later.

I hid and diminished the severity of my problem to my family while I was at school in Laramie, which developed to the point of physical dependency on alcohol more than once. I made efforts to cut back when I came home, until I couldn’t. I got a DUI in January 2021, after having around 30 drinks that day and driving to town to get more.

After a summer of mostly drinking, I slept off delirium tremens at Wyoming Behavioral Institute and went to treatment at Central Wyoming Counselling Center in Casper for 30 days as part of the sentencing in my DUI case. I don’t have anything good to say about that treatment center. I had my relapse planned out before I walked out the door.

I put on a show that I wanted things to be different, but I lied like a sociopath to protect my addiction. While living with my parents in Worland in 2021 and part of 2022, it got to the point that they lost sleep over what I was doing at night unless they had my car keys and wallet.

That didn’t stop me. I used loose change or bills I stashed and my passport for identification, and I rode a bike four miles roundtrip in the dead of night to the liquor store.

Rock bottom for me was two parts; I’m not sure how close together they were because I was drinking, of course, but the memories are seared right next to each other. My childhood dog Sophie passed away in our backyard on an afternoon that summer while I was passed out drunk. I stumbled out of my room as the sun was setting and she was gone.

I agreed to go to treatment for a third time, and I got a bed date for Sept. 2. I wasn’t very confident that anything was going to change, and I didn’t make any efforts to change my ways leading up to that day.

On Aug. 6, I was alone in my house with my brother Will while my parents were camping. I drank heavily, and my brother confronted me about it. My relationship with Will had worsened due to my drinking and came to a head that night. He got a syllable out before I threw punches until I couldn’t breath. I can’t speak to how effective they were, but it got him to leave to my grandparents for the night.

This gave me time to myself to drink more and consider how irredeemable I was; my thoughts spiraled, and I decided that once I finished my fifth of Potters I was going to kill myself. I was tired of myself and I didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with me either. I got a ladder out from the garage, looked up a YouTube video on how to tie a noose and I slung it over the pergola my dad built over the back patio.

Before I went through with it, I thought about what I wished Billy did before he died; I wish he at least said goodbye.

Stephan was the only friend I still had at that point, and I wanted to give him that courtesy so I texted him. He asked me to give him a song to remember me by, and I had to think about it. I came up with “The Sound of Silence” by Depeche Mode. I thought it did a good job of capturing the way I felt, plus it’s one of my mom’s favorite bands.

I was satisfied that the song to go with my eulogy was decided, but meanwhile a police officer was arriving at the house that Stephan had requested while he was talking to me.

I laugh now, but I remember thinking I didn’t want the officer to do something irrational so I had better just get the door. I slept in the hospital that night thanks to Stephan.

Shaken from what I nearly did to myself, I went into treatment for a third time at the start of September. It took 30 days to complete, and afterwards I came home and got a job at the newspaper within a week. You’ve had to deal with me here ever since, and I’ve been sober for a little over a year and a half.

I honestly can’t say that I feel any less alone than I did while I was drinking, but I’m not letting it be the reason that I drink anymore. I’ve had support from my family, staff at Oxbow Center, 12-step meetings and most recently the Reach for Recovery group. I know that my relationships with my family will never be the same, but they’ve been improving as I continue to put in the effort. Will and I haven’t gotten along very well our entire lives, and his move to Texas has honestly helped my recovery, but I’m slowly working on that one, too.

My depression is still around, but it doesn’t control me like it used to; it turns out it’s more manageable when you’re sober. I do what I can to give meaning to my life and make myself happy, and right now that entails walking the badlands, listening to music and putting 100 plants in my living room.

Sometimes I consider how different the world would be if I made a different choice on Aug. 6, 2022. When I’m down, I can subscribe to the idea that it would be largely inconsequential; my family would grieve but ultimately move on. People I used to know might post about it, remembering something funny I did in high school, and someone else would be writing the news.

I have been remembering something that I forgot for a long time, though; that I matter. I matter to my family, my coworkers — I matter to myself, and I hope my story matters to anyone reading who has gone through addiction or seen it firsthand.

From my position as a reporter, I want to continue to share such stories from our community to support recovering addicts like me. I mean it when I say this; you are not alone.