A WHISKEY WITH GOD
THE MORNING AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD was July 22, 2023. I awoke hungover at 5:00AM with a pounding headache from the 16 oz, no ice, Pendleton whiskey I poured myself the night before. Our three kids and I were heading out fishing with my father and brother-in-law. My wife and I have a rule: If you leave the house before the other is awake, you have to kiss the other and say good-bye even if they don’t wake up. Mehri (my wife, pronounced “Mary”…Persian spelling) rarely wakes up if I wake up this early. This morning she did.
Mehri asked, “How did you sleep?”
I replied, “This is so random. But I had this incredibly vivid dream right before I woke up. It was of my grandpa (who had died of a heart attack in his sleep 20 years ago) and it felt as though he was actually with me. I can remember every word he said, what he was wearing, and every detail about the way he looked.”
Mehri followed up with, “What do you think it means?”
There was a moment of silence as I tried to think through my pounding headache. “I don’t know, maybe he was sending me a message about Grandma (who is 96)? Or maybe about me? Maybe about my heart? Grandpa did pass of heart issues?”
“I don’t think you should go fishing!” Mehri said with conviction. “I have a bad feeling about this trip.”
Her comment annoyed me and thought her suggestion was silly, to which I said, “Well we are going. I love you babe.” And off we went.
Fifteen minutes after the above video, we floated to the dock after a long day of fishing. The kids caught some Crape and some Bass. It was a good day. My hangover had even faded away from sweating out the alcohol in the 100+ degree heat.
When we arrived on shore, I walked to my truck to turn the ignition on to cool off the cab. Then I felt off. My heart fluttered for a few seconds. I forced myself to cough hoping it would subside.
Then my heart turned OFF.
I dizzily began to black out as I grabbed ahold of the steering wheel with my left hand to keep from falling down. With my right hand in a fist, I began hitting my chest as hard as I could. It must have been ten seconds that passed without a heart beat when everything went black.
Then my heart fired back on with a vengeance and kicking into rapid atrial fibrillation, beating around 300 beats per minute. I stumbled over to my brother-in-law, doing my best not to panic my children.
“I think I’m having a heart attack,” I whispered in his ear.
I crawled into my dad’s truck with my 12-year-old daughter. My brother-in-law and two sons followed us in a separate truck as we raced to the nearest hospital one hour away. Fully reclined in the front seat, I tried to mask my fear so as not to frighten my daughter. But at this point my whole body was in shock and trembling. From the engine sounds I could tell dad had the truck pegged. We had no cell service.
My daughter prayed out loud, “God keep my daddy alive.”
I thought, “Lord, do not let me die in front of my daughter!”
She squeezed my hand and continued her prayer…..”Hail Mary, full of grace…..”
9 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I felt as if I was on top of the world. I had an amazing career, a beautiful home, kids in private Catholic School, a healthy family and Mehri had her dream daily routine as well. LIFE…WAS…GOOD!
8 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD my entire family fell crazy ill. My youngest was throwing up and having stomach pains daily at school for months. My daughter was having mysterious bouts of endless screaming fits and intense mental pain and anxiety. My wife had what seemed to be an endless three month flu. I went to the ER twice in three weeks with perplexing neurological issues. It felt like I was having a stroke with internal tremors, vibrations and limb numbness.
7 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD a disgruntled employee from work contacted human resources with the claim that I was having an affair with a woman whom I had promoted at work. That night I had to drive home to tell my wife. Thankfully, she knew it was a baseless lie, but asked me a question that crushed me. A question that I would have asked her if the roles were reversed.
“I don’t believe it for a second, Logan,” she said. “But you do have a drinking problem and can get out of control when you are drunk. What could you have done that would have given this person that idea?”
That question crushed me.
To make matters worse, it crushed my wife. I was so pissed that my integrity was put into question. I was angrier than I had ever been that this hurt my wife.
6 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD our youngest son’s pediatrician had a hunch as to why he was so sick. After completing tests, the doctor’s hunch came back confirmed. He had mold toxicity. Mehri phoned me with the news, and when I got home from work I climbed into the attic.
POOF! The musky smell hit me like a brick as I stuck my head inside the attic access hole.
It was everywhere. We had been living in toxic mold for three years. All I could think was “Why me?”
5 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD we got first, second, and third opinions from various doctors. They all told us the same thing. “You have to move, and you can’t keep anything.”
Insurance covered nothing. We would have been better off having a house fire. We lost several hundred thousands of dollars worth of belongings and every keepsake we had. We left that home with only my wife’s wedding ring after we soaked it for days in a formula made to kill mold. Even that was a risk. Our family’s genes made us especially sensitive to mold.
My wife’s mental health was declining. My anger drew deeper. My three children’s health was worsening. “Why me?” I was the main character in my life at this time, and I felt attacked.
I was scrambling with every scenario, trying to fix everything myself. I could not keep up. It felt like I was in a sinking boat, and every time I plugged one hole, another one would spring up.
“What the hell was happening to my life?”
4 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD at the age of 43 I had to move my family of five into my parents’ home. Awesome. “Hey mom and dad, I’m back.” So embarrassed as man to have to move home.
3 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD we had no vehicles, no home, no clothes, and no end in sight. Our banking account hit $0 and we decided we would have to pull the kids out of Catholic School. The pain kept piling up inside of me. Treating my pain with whiskey became a nightly habit, drinking 5+ double shot whiskey drinks, as my alcohol tolerance kept increasing.
2 WEEKS BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD Mehri and I fought more than we ever had in our marriage. Knock down, drag out fights, and neither of us were apologizing. I drank more as she grew deeper in pain and depression. She grew resentful of our situation. We began pointing fingers. I was not the leader of our family anymore. Whiskey was. I put whiskey before my wife, my family and even worse…God.
1 WEEK BEFORE MY WHISKEY WITH GOD was the heaviest I had ever been and full of anger, I picked a fight with Mehri. Yelling and filled with rage, I began to see floating stars. I used to be the stable one. “How have I become this?” I had convinced myself I could solve EVERY problem that faced my family and life. I no longer could. I couldn’t solve this monumental mess.
My wife had an idea, after a friend had mentioned to her all of this could be diabolical in nature. She called our priest (an exorcist) to set up a meeting. We wanted to know if our family was being spiritually attacked. After a long discussion, he strongly advised us to start a prayer prescription. Thirty straight days of praying three times a day at 6:00AM, NOON, and 6:00PM, without any technology in our lives other than for work or school.
If this was something evil, the idea was to create some structure in our prayer life. Evil hates structure.
After two weeks into the prayer prescription, nothing had improved. In fact, life was exponentially worsening (later we learned that evil spirits will increase their attacks when prayer is increased, so as to get us to stop praying). But the whole family persevered, not missing a single day or hour of prayer, despite not loving the early morning wakeup calls. I was as skeptical as I was helpless, so I kept a sliver of hope that this was real, and this could help. There’s more to this story, but for another time.
THE NIGHT OF MY WHISKEY WITH GOD with all the chaos that life had become, I was done! Overwhelmed and desperate, I found myself after everyone was asleep at my favorite place…the liquor cabinet. I took out a bottle of Pendleton 1910 whiskey, and poured almost the entire remaining whiskey bottle into a 16 oz glass. No ice. Just whiskey. I wanted to feel it burn.
My glass of whiskey and I walked out to my dad’s barn, and grabbed an old metal folding chair.
It was time for me to have it out with God.
Chair in my right hand, whiskey in left, I trudged out into the middle of my parents’ twenty acre alfalfa field. As I reached the middle of the field, my legs sunk to my knees in mud as irrigation had just begun.
Covered in mud, and now even more enraged I thought, “Of course this would happen to me, damnit!”
As I unfolded the creaky metal chair, I took a giant sip of whiskey.
“In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit…Amen. Me and you Old Man. I need you to give me answers. And I’m not leaving until I finish this whiskey, or you give me direction.”
THE MORNING AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I kissed my wife at 5:00AM. I told her about my dream. She told me not to go fishing. And my heart stopped.
1 WEEK AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I had survived, but was filled with a deep understanding that the me as I known myself, had to die. I had been been the main character of my life, and my priorities needed a huge shift.
God
Mehri
My kids
Work
2 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I placed a rosary in my pocket. I didn’t say the rosary, I just put it there. It felt like the right thing to do. I used to do this from time to time after hearing Mario Enzler (former Swiss guard for St. John Paul II and author of, I Served a Saint) speak at a Catholic men’s conference several years back. Recalling Mario’s dynamic talk and what he shared that St. John Paul II had said to him about the rosary, “The rosary is the only weapon you will ever need.”
I sure could use a weapon to fight off, and battle all of the evil in my life right now. So I kept a rosary in my pocket.
3 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD was the last week of our prayer prescription. I slowly began to view life through a different lens as the prayer prescription went on. It was as if the darker lens got a shade lighter after each prayer, each day. I was praying the rosary more and more, and ALWAYS kept it in my pocket. If I put my hand in my pocket, it reminded me of HIM, and that HE was there. I no longer had to be the main character of my life because HE was. I was giving it all up, my pain and overwhelm, to HIM. “I surrender Lord, take my burdens.” Prayer was not making my problems go away, but it was changing my heart.
4 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD Mehri and I had an appointment with a marriage counselor. His advice to us was to “date each other again.” He said to me, “Date your wife, Logan!”
5 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD the kids went to my parents, and I took Mehri out to dinner. We had a beautiful evening, talking about the kids, our marriage, and our faith. And all we had been through. We laughed for the first time in a while.
When I went to pay, my rosary fell out of my pocket. My wife smiled as if proud I was carrying one, “Your rosaries are falling out everywhere. I find them in our furniture, on the floor and in the washing machine!” I leaned back to make room for my hand to slide the rosary back into my right pocket when I scraped the back of my hand on my pocket knife. It stopped me dead in my tracks….
“Mehri!”
“What?!” She asked.
“That’s it,” as I showed her my pocket knife. “It needs to have a pocket knife clip.”
I’ll never forget what she said to me next, because it was and is the most proud I have ever been as her husband, “You know Logan, you are more of a man now than you have ever been.”
Man that meant a lot. I needed that. Thank you Blessed Mother, thank you Jesus!
6 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I made one (a rosary with a clip) myself. I ordered rosary kits for the whole family and we spend half a Sunday making rosaries. Each bead we added to our rosaries, we said the prayer that accompanied that bead. An amazing day of prayer!
I took one rosary that I completed to the garage and took apart an old pocket knife, removed the clip and added it to my rosary. I loved how it felt, how it looked. In my pocket, it looked like a weapon, because it was!
“The rosary is a powerful weapon. Use it with confidence and you’ll be amazed at the results.”
7 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD I am carrying and praying the rosary every day. Praying it each night when my daughter can’t sleep. I was praying it on every drive into work, and I was praying just a bead or two every time I place my hand in my pocket and accidently brushed across it with my fingers.
We we still battling health problems, financial struggles and pain. But I began thanking HIM for all the pain, and it changed everything.
8 WEEKS AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD
I was blessed to see my wife try on her first new dress. She was so beautiful in it.
My girls still were battling their mental health. But I got to lay and cry with him. We were blessed to have each other to suffer with.
We bought a new home. It is tiny, and we crawl all over each other. We fight, laugh and don’t own any furniture. It’s funny…kind of.
Tons of doctors came to our side to try to help our health issues. Many failed. But some helped. We knew we couldn’t give up.
Mehri lost everything beautiful she loved, all of her belongings. She was angry, then at at peace at being humbled. She became less and less attached, and cared less and less what other’s thought of her, us and our financial status.
I gave up alcohol, it was no longer my love.
I fell in love instead with Mary the Blessed Mother with every bead I prayed and more in love with Mehri every day.
I realized the rosary is a love story, and the last weapon a man could ever need
Our marriage had a foundation it never had before. Me as the spiritual leader as a husband and a father.
1 YEAR AFTER MY WHISKEY WITH GOD were all my problems solved? No not at all. Quite the contrary. But what fully changed was my reliance on myself and a substance to get through life and pain. What changed was I now give it all up to HIM, and don’t let it weigh me down. What changed was I grew closer to God through the rosary and daily prayers.
We have hope. But not the hope you might expect. We do not have hope that things will return to the way they were. That we will have all our worldly possessions back and that we will have a big home again one day. I don’t have hope that I will one day be able to have a casual drink again, or a not so casual tons of drinks again.
We have hope in HIM, and that’s all we need.
My wife needed me to be a strong husband and my kids needed a loving father; and I now know that I can not do it on my own. I needed to be the spiritual leader of our household. I needed to learn it the hard way. As men, we tell ourselves we can fix everything and I needed to know that we can not. I could not.
And I would have never known, if I never had a whiskey with God.
God Bless,
Logan Coulter
