Thirty-six years ago today I was a raging alcoholic . . . [View all]

and the next day I was on my way to sobriety: I had taken my last drink. I was hungover, still drunk, but I had stopped drinking. That’s how quickly it can happen.

My drunken years are like a disjointed “daymare,” a faded blur punctured by vivid memories of shocking detail. I still cringe in fear of myself. But I’ll provide no drunkalog. I’m pretty much the same as everyone else, distinguished only in that I was a rummy: I loved to drink rum. And while I’m asked often what happened to cause me to stop, I find it easiest to sum it up this simply: I couldn’t drink anymore because I couldn’t drink any less.

Towards the end, I’d lost all control. This was not just the inability to stop or moderate, but also the ability to gauge what even a single drink would do. And there was no “lots” or “little,” there simply “was.” I was going to drink. I may drink more or less depending on circumstances, I may drink because I was angry or sad, or I may drink to celebrate, but I was going to drink . . . and I had no control over how much or how it would affect me. Drinking had become a form of Russian roulette: I could drink all night and show little outward effects or one drink would send me into a blackout.

My sobriety has been a group project. Without the example of all the others I’ve known through the years, I’d never have learned how to live sober. And without a sober life, I’d never have found how much I care for the people around me. With each passing year, all I hope is that I’ll measure up to the gift so freely given me by so many others, and in the measuring find the means to pay it forward.

Famously, alkies want control, and the Big Book says we can never have it. But paradoxically, we gain a measure of control over our lives when we stop drinking.

Without the tragedy I have suffered, I would not have been motivated to get to know myself as well as I have. I might have died a stranger unto myself. I might have died before I lived. How ironic — that partly because I felt so bad in the past I feel so good today.

I know now, nothing is so bad that alcohol won’t make it worse — conversely, nothing is so good that alcohol won’t destroy it. And I realize that while in some ways things are no better than they were before, in no way are they worse.