Eventually, I came to understand that my “problem” wasn’t my problem. In other words, just as alcohol drowned whatever bad feelings I didn’t want to feel—abandonment, loneliness, frustration, anger, confusion, grief—my addiction masked the real issue: my father wound.

Because my father had chosen to leave me by killing himself when I was just eleven years old, I was angry with so many people for decades. I was chiefly angry with my father, but I was also angry with God for allowing something like that to happen. As I grew into a man...

The first time I encountered the phrase “father wound” was in Gordon Dalbey’s Healing the Masculine Soul: God’s Restoration of Men to Real Manhood. I read that book in 2007, and I was shocked to learn that this “father wound” thing had been named fifteen years earlier,...

During my twenties and thirties, Goodtime Johnny was my best friend on the road. In fact, he was my only friend. Whenever we were away on business, he’d usually take me out drinking. Sometimes he’d buy drinks for strangers. Everybody could tell he longed to be th...