Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje held a secret, an unknown compulsion she hid for decades. She drank excessively and without consequence.
Stoeltje excelled as a student, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, built a successful career as a journalist, winning awards with three newspapers and enjoyed life at home with her husband and son.
For 34 years, she never blacked out, never lost a job and never got arrested for driving under the influence. She could chug beer on the way home from a newsroom without drawing police attention. Stoeljte was, in her own words, “a highly functioning alcoholic,” living in denial.
Until her drinking buddy husband left her.
One nightmarish evening at the Majestic Theater spun two lives around. Stoeltje went to rehab and recovered. Her husband joined a support group for those affected by alcoholics. Out of a long, excruciating journey came a memoir, “Drunk Love: A Marriage Under the Influence.” It comes out on Tuesday.
“Alcohol brought us together,” Melissa wrote in the prologue of her book. “Would my sobriety tear us apart?”
A former columnist with the San Antonio Report, Melissa will sign copies of her memoir on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., at The Twig Bookshop at Pearl. She will also give a reading.
“For most of my thirty-plus year drinking career,” Melissa wrote, “I managed my buzz effortlessly, a feat finessed with nary a thought.”
Drunk Love tells the story of a reporter, wife and mother who concealed her addiction from friends and colleagues until it splashed into the open. What began with a first taste in high school escalated to a blackout at age 52. During a performance of “Jersey Boys” at the Majestic, Melissa’s brain went dark. Every moment and image of the musical went unrecorded.
Light returned. Melissa gained sobriety and won an against-all-odds battle to save her marriage.
“Alcoholism kills relationships,” Melissa said. “When an alcoholic gets sober, a majority of their marriages end in divorce because so much damage gets done. Alcohol drives people who love us crazy.”
With raw, unflinching honesty, Drunk Love reveals how the couple navigated addiction, enabling and recovery. They met on a blind date at a bar, fell in love and forged a relationship centered on cocktails and wine. What nearly tore them apart has brought them closer together.
“Some of the stuff we went through is pretty painful,” said Mark Stoeltje, a retired nonprofit executive, artist and writer. “Yeah, it’s raw. But it’s a journey we had to go through to get to where we are today. I don’t have regrets.”
The Stoeltjes will celebrate 40 years of marriage in November. They almost didn’t make it to 30.
Mark left home after the blackout 25 years into the marriage. Melissa decided to get help and Mark drove her to rehab.
Four weeks later, Melissa returned home sober. Six months after that, Mark talked again about separating. Alcohol had become such a major part of their lives, fueling joy and intimacy, they had become strangers without it.
“We both thought that once I stopped drinking, all the problems in our marriage would be over,” Melissa said. “That certainly wasn’t the case. We had developed some unhealthy relationship habits. We had to learn to be together without me drinking.”
The Stoeltjes saw a counselor. They determined that they would beat the long odds and save their marriage. Over time, they broke destructive habits and formed healthy ones. The process was long. It was hard.
“If we weren’t both in recovery programs, there’s no way this marriage would have survived,” Mark said. “That’s the sad thing about alcoholic marriages. We go to a speaker meeting every Sunday morning. There’s probably 100 or 120 people in attendance.
“Sometimes we have gone and Melissa and I are the only couple there. Everyone else is single. It’s hard to keep relationships. And when people do get sober, they have to figure out how to do relationships without alcohol.”
Melissa never wrote under the influence. She didn’t drink on the job or show up with alcohol on her breath. In 2010, Melissa told her boss at the San Antonio Express-News that she was going into rehab. “My editor was stunned,” she said.
The idea for a book came in rehab. With Mark’s support, it took six years to write. It took longer to find an agent and publisher.
Melissa took a buyout from the Express-News and joined the San Antonio Report in 2022. That same year, she won first place for general column writing in the annual Texas Managing Editors contest.
Retired from the grind of daily journalism, Melissa is promoting her memoir, hoping its message inspires.
“Recovery is possible and relationships can survive addiction,” Melissa said, “if both people are willing to do the work. I didn’t do this on my own. It’s by the grace of God. It’s a freakin’ miracle. It just is.”
