GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1083: FOUR YEARS

My first author photo.

Whenever I talk with a friend I haven't heard from in a while, as I did recently, they inevitably say something along the lines of how they thought for sure my drinking was going to kill me. There are a lot of people out there surprised by the fact that I'm still alive. I am one of those people. As of today it's been four years since my last drink.

It's been four looooooooong years. I thought maybe I'd still drink for special occasions, like my birthday and Christmas and so on. In fact, I lied my ass off so I could get out of detox and get something to drink in time for my birthday. I planned to buy a fifth of Wild Turkey 101, but when I went to the liquor store, I drove right past without stopping. I still have no idea why. All the same, that special occasions plan would have failed. That was my SOP for maybe a year back in the early 2010s, and I strained to find ways to qualify stuff as a "special occasion."

I miss the whole thing. I miss hanging out in bars and bullshitting with my fellow drinkers. I miss the fucked up adventures boozing used to bring. I even miss hangovers, the price to pay for greatness.

Who knows? Maybe I'll take it up again. There are a few things that might force my hand, like losing my bad foot or getting fired. Or maybe I'll live to one hundred and figure, fuck it. What's the worst that could happen?

Probably not, though.

I beat my alcoholism without AA, and that makes me proud. I think of all the court ordered AA people get stuck with and think, that sounds like a First Amendment violation. AA claims to be a non-religious organization, but they're lying. It pleases me that I beat this without the industry standard. All I needed to do was beat the physical addiction. The rest of it was a breeze.

I'm not condemning AA. It didn't work for me because Step Two sounds like a great excuse to blame my problems on something other than myself. Make no mistake, I am to blame for going down this path. But they do help people, so if you need help, give them a try. Or you can do what I did and go to RCA (Recovery Centers of America). From what I understand, they have locations across the country. I personally went to the one in St. Charles, which is pretty nice. It costs, yes, but if you have medical coverage, you'll be OK.

There is an added benefit to writing about this stuff here, and that's you lovely fuckers. I typically don't give a fuck what people in general think of me, but for some reason I do in this case. I think of all the people who congratulate me, and I realize I'd let them down if I started boozing it up again. That disappointment is one of the things that prevents me from drinking on shitty days, so thank you.

Have I done anniversary posts every year? I'm too lazy to check, but I suspect I have. Maybe I'll do one for five years, but after that? I won't bring it up again until the 10 year anniversary.

Unless I've been killed in a horrific car accident. I probably won't post if that happens.

Anyway, goodnight fuckers.

For many years I had that author photo on my business card, too. A friend of mine said, "You have a picture of you drinking on your business card?" I nodded, proud, and said, "Of course." Bliss in ignorance? No, bliss in stupidity.

Special thanks to Alicia and Chris Stamps, who always remember my anniversary.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1034: LIKE FATHER . . .

 I was trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of family stuff I managed to hold on to when I found the pile of yearbooks. Some were mine, some were Mom's, some were Dad's. I'd found a few notes to Mom from her friends when she was a kid, so I was looking for them in her yearbooks to put a face to the names. I didn't find any of them, but I looked through Dad's for . . .

You know how I say that the universe sends you messages all the time? I got a pretty big message once. Waaaaaaaaay back when, when I was drinking heavily and dating a woman I'd been with on and off for about 20 years at that point. She was always trying to get sober, always trying to drag me to AA. I was perfectly happy drinking like I was, but I agreed to go with her to meetings provided I could drink from my flask as soon as we were done.

So I went to AA with her this one time, and she said when they ask if it's anyone's first time, I should raise my hand so I could go through the welcome process. I would also get the Book for free, and I was to read from it whenever I got the chance. And I did read it. The stories are the best part. Everything else? Including the steps? Not so much.

I raised my hand, and these two guys took me upstairs to introduce me to the AA life. I had no intention of following through (and I never did; I'm a non-AA recovering alcoholic, 3 years and 194 days), but I heard them out as I'd promised, and I kept an open mind.

We started making small talk, and it came up that I lived in Elmhurst. One of the guys said he grew up there. I told him I'd graduated from York, and he said he had, as well. "Class of 1996," I said.

He made some self-deprecating comment meant as a joke about being much older, and then he gave me the message from the universe: "Class of '76."

The year Dad graduated from York. Holy shit, this guy went to school with Dad!

"Did you, by any chance, know Frank Bruni?" I said.

He got this grin on his face and nodded. "I knew him well."

I told him that was my dad, and he went crazy with laughter and exclamations before asking the inevitable: "How's he doing?"

I told him he'd just passed away. We talked about Dad for a while, and he said, "I once saw your dad out by the smoking area, and he had this tab of acid. We had to go take a test, so he just popped it in his mouth, and we went to class."

Which sounded like a very Dad thing to do. I asked him about Mom, but he didn't know her. "The name sounds familiar," he said. He also asked if Dad was an alcoholic. I think he expected me to say yes. Dad loved his booze, but he wasn't an alcoholic. There are some alcoholic problems on that side of my family, but I explained that it was my mom who was the alcoholic.

But what are the odds that my first real AA meeting would put me right next to someone who was friends with my dad in high school?

I wanted to look that guy up. I suspected he didn't know my mom because he didn't go to school with her. She'd graduated the year before Dad. Sure enough, I didn't find him in those yearbooks.

What I *did* find amused me to no end, and it brought back a memory from my own time at York.

Sophomore year. All my yearbooks are signed back and front except for that year. The reason is, it got printed late that year, and school was already out. I felt kind of bad about that because I'd wanted all my yearbooks to be signed. I'd told Dad about this, and I said, "I might sign it myself. Just so I have something in there."

He got this smile on his face. He had a great smile. I remember thinking back then, I wish I'd gotten that smile instead of the one I had. I'd find out decades later that I inherited my maternal grandma's teeth. I'd only known her when she had dentures. But that was my thought in that moment.

He told me I should do it. And now I know why:

I'm just noticing now, but it's also a little weird that I got someone else signing "DAD" in there, too.

If ever you wondered where I got my sense of humor, I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, DAD!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #871: 2 YEARS AND 1 DAY

My first author photo. Of course I'm drinking.

 The leap year threw off my two-year anniversary of not drinking, so this is the actual date of the day I went to detox two years ago. Yeah, I know, my birthday is still on the same date even though I lived through X amount of leap years. I was also inside my mom for nine months, and you know what many people in this country believe about when life begins. Unless it fucks with doing taxes, so capitalism does, indeed, trump religion here.

But even if you don't want to count yesterday, you have to admit I made it to two years today. So that's the end of that discussion.

When I first showed up at detox I thought I was going into withdrawals, but it turned out I was still drunk from the night before. That makes me wonder how many times, over the years, I've gone to my various jobs still drunk, just not knowing it. Good thing no one thought to test me.

I was dismayed to learn that I would have a roommate, at least for the first half of my stay, but it turned out that he was a pretty good guy. I fell out of touch with him. I hope he's doing OK. I know when we did IOP together he fell off the wagon a couple of times. He was kind to me when I had no idea how he was keeping himself together. He'd only arrived 30 minutes before me.

I wasn't a great fan of communal living. What I really wanted was time alone, but that was pretty hard to come by. I don't recall how many people lived in that space. Maybe fifteen? When I first arrived the plan was to stay for three months, and I didn't really want to do that, not with so many people always being around. I don't mind saying I was hurting pretty bad. Not just the withdrawal. There was that, but there was also Ativan to keep me from seizing up. I mean the swift change in my life. I was living with just my brother (Grandma had just passed, what, a couple of weeks before?), and all of a sudden I found myself in the midst of this crowd? Changing one of the most powerful parts of my life? I didn't feel confused or even weird. I felt fucked up. Just fucked up. I hadn't even thought about the food they'd serve. I'm pretty particular about what I eat, and I knew they'd be serving shit I wouldn't like.

I will say this. Being in detox was a lot better than the psych ward. The only thing the psych ward had up on detox was the food. Psych ward food wasn't great, but it was good. Detox food was downright awful. At the very least I didn't have to ask permission to go to the bathroom. That was nice.

The only comfort I found was in writing. It would turn out to be a story I started while still in the throes of booze but finished on the other side of detox. If you want to read it, it was published in The Rainforest Strikes Back. I also found solace in Julian by Gore Vidal. When I was waiting for the driver to pick me up I had the wherewithal to grab the nearest Vidal book I had. If I have to go to institutions every once in a while, it might be a good idea to bring Vidal with me.

The only other thing I enjoyed while I was there was the environment outside. Yeah, it was hot as fuck, but it was beautiful out there. We were supposed to walk back from the cafeteria to our living quarters together, but I regularly fell behind so I could admire the beauty of the land around me. One of the therapists saw me, and I explained what I was doing.

"You're the only one I've ever seen who does that," she said.

To be fair, the people I was staying with had their minds occupied elsewhere. Everyone was there to dedicate themselves to being sober. Not me. I was there to put drinking behind me. Except . . .

I don't think I've told this part before. I may have mentioned it to a couple of friends, but I don't think I did.

This was near the end of my time in detox. I'd beaten the physical addiction. But I wanted a drink badly. Maybe even needed a drink. So I decided I was going to get the hell out of there specifically to drink the instant I got home. Not putting it off until my birthday, like I told everyone.

I worked as diligently as I possibly could. I canceled the three months, explaining that I felt pretty good now, pretty confident. I wasn't. Those were flat-out lies. After signing a mega-shit-ton of paperwork they finally packed up my things (the stuff they didn't allow me to have) and got someone to drive me back home. This driver went a different way, a longer way, which irritated me to no end. I could practically taste the bourbon I was going to get as a gift to myself. Congratulations! You made it through detox!

Dammit, why is he taking the scenic route? I need to get home so I can get in my car, go to Williams Liquors and get a bottle for myself. And I wasn't going to cheap out on myself, either. I was gonna get me some Wild Turkey 101. Maybe a handle!

I finally got home and dragged my shit inside. My brother, who expected to be living alone for three months, was surprised to see me. I got up to my room and knew I had to take a shower first. Detox showers suck. They're better than psych ward showers, but not by much. I needed to take my first shower as a free man IMMEDIATELY.

Then I got dressed and grabbed my car keys. Out to the car. I was hungry for anything that wasn't detox food, so I stopped at McDonald's, a couple of blocks from my actual destination. And then, as I approached Williams Liquors, I . . . just drove past. I still have no idea why I did that, but the urge to drink was suddenly gone.

Don't get me wrong. I miss booze. A lot. But the urge to drink only happens every once in a while, and it's easy to fight.

So. How did I make it to two years? When so many alcoholics fail within the first week? And not being in AA? There are very few people in the world who think that an alcoholic can get away from the drink without AA. Everyone I was in IOP with was in AA, or at the very least they attended meetings. The therapist in charge of IOP is one of the few people who understood me when I said I only have a problem with booze. I'm OK with other drugs. And then even she said that it's a difficult row to hoe without AA.

But I can't stand AA. I know it helps others, and that's a good thing. But it is NOT FOR ME. I'm fine with Step One. Every alcoholic really does need to start there with admitting that you have a problem. I did that on Facebook, called friends and told them about it, had in person conversations, you name it. The one thing I most definitely did not do is proceed to Step Two, which is the problem for me.

If you're an alcoholic reading this, AA is probably a good idea, especially if you're not an atheist like me. It's a good place to start, and who knows? If you don't have a god, you might find one there. The first AA meeting I went to where I actually talked to people, they wanted me to take that second step. If you don't know, you have to acknowledge a greater power than you and that you have to place your trust in that power, that the power will get you to stop drinking. All you have to do is ask. All of them, each and every one of them, says it doesn't even have to be a god. It could be a doorknob. It could be a paperweight. And because a friend of mine had dragged me into the meeting, one of them said that I could even choose her as my higher power.

Incidentally, I told her about that on the drive home. Even she, an addict herself, said that was a bad idea.

I'm not such a staggeringly big asshole in that I don't believe there is a greater power than me. There are plenty of greater powers. My go-to example is the ocean. The ocean is a greater power than me. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with my drinking, so fuck the ocean. It's not going to help me. None of the greater powers is even sentient, so how could it know anything? Much less a method of getting me to stop drinking?

I am, however, kind of an asshole, so I suggested that I use myself as the greater power. Everyone said that was a bad idea. Really? Everyone?

If the ocean isn't going to give a shit about me drinking, and I'm not going to pray to a god about it, then the ONLY thing to do is put it all on me. And it's not really that hard. All you have to do is keep telling yourself NO. And you know how I feel about that word.

So I don't know how I do it. Probably not willpower alone. There *is* a reason I had to go to detox, after all. But here's what I think.

Even though I didn't drink on that very first day out of detox, I made a promise to myself. One day I absolutely will drink again. It will happen. Because I came up with a list of things that could get me to drink again. Some of them happened, and I didn't start drinking. A lot of these are not very likely to even happen, but I'm sure eventually one of them will knock me off the wagon.

The key is to make sure that day is as far as possible into the future. And if I die before that day comes? I win.

If you're an alcoholic looking for help, don't listen to me, even if you're an atheist, too. What I'm doing is very unusual and off the beaten path. It seems to be working for me, but addiction is fucking crazy. There seems to be very few hard and fast rules in overcoming such an addiction. AA isn't the worst place you could start. Hell, you might even get something out of it. A lot of alcoholics do. Just in case, here's the link to their website.

As one friend on Facebook said, while congratulating me on two years free from booze, good work. Now I gotta do it again.