Not that I'm necessarily part of any AA community, but it feels nice to follow along with their system of sobriety coins. I'm not literally going to a meeting and getting a 90-day sobriety chip, but it was cool to wake up on that day in my journey and think to myself, "Cool, I earned my 90-day chip today." It's interesting to note we start with a 24-hour chip, then it goes 30-day, 60-day, 90-day. After that, it switches to months: four-month, five-month, etc., up to a year. Anything after a year is marked by years, not months or days or hours. It's helpful to think about your sobriety like a newborn baby. You're only talking about days when they're
real young. No one is saying that their baby is 987 days old, just like I'm not going to be talking about being sober for 987 days, if I'm lucky enough to reach that point.
Last week's
100-day milestone felt big to me, even though it wasn't an official chip. Something about triple digits reads to me as "big deal." Henceforth, I'm really only going to be thinking about "length of sobriety" on the 15th of each month, i.e. the whole-month values. Eventually, I'll shut up about it all of this and just live my life under a regime of the New Normal, but for now, the chips.
One more exception to that AA-coordinated chip system for me: 113 days. I'll reach that milestone next Wednesday, July 5th. On that day, I will have been sober for more days in a row than I have since I had my first drink. And the fact that this personal milestone falls on Day 113 implies that there was a previous 112-day attempt. That is correct. Let's talk about it.
I was sober from September 24, 2017 through January 13, 2018 (though maybe I should say that "I didn't drink" during that time period, since I was still pretty drunk on September 24th from the previous night). There's a lot to
say about that four-month period of my life, but the most relevant to the proceedings in today's blog post is that this previous streak of sobriety looked and felt and functioned nothing like this current, hopefully longer streak that I have going right now. The comparison is natural, and I suppose to a certain extent I'm comparing them through the simple matter of keeping track of the days. But the comparison also makes me a little uncomfortable, because what I'm trying to do now is completely unrelated to whatever I was trying to do then. And I don't want to go back.
If we're talking about that first streak, then it's probably necessary to discuss the why. What motivated me to stop drinking, even temporarily? Here's the problem with that: it's not completely my story to tell. I mean, I was there. I was the catalyst in what happened. This isn't me passing blame or whatever. I was completely at fault. But also, I didn't technically bear witness to what happened either. That seems like a contradiction, but it's not when you take blackouts into consideration. On the night of September 23, 2017, I blacked out, badly, and fucked up, badly.
When I say it's not my story to tell, I mean that I wasn't the victim in the incident, and so it's my responsibility to hold back explanations and details, due to the risk that re-exposing those details to the victim would entail. Going into the nitty-gritty would rip old wounds that I've tried really hard to facilitate healing over the subsequent almost-six years. Perhaps even alluding to it here is doing damage, and if that's the case, I'm sorry. That's not my purpose here. I'm not trying to make things better or worse at this point, I'm just acknowledging the fact that there was an incident, and that I responded to that incident with temporary change. (A lot of people reading this already know what happened anyway, so it's unnecessary on at least two levels to rehash it again.)
So my thought process went like this: if I'm going to say that the impetus in this gigantic fuck up was the unreasonable amount of alcohol that I consumed, then the problem is the alcohol. It felt like at that point that I needed to prove—to the victim, to the witnesses, to myself—that I was more than my alcohol consumption. Moreover, that I could prove that I was a good person, that the incident was an anomaly, and that, through sobriety, I would be able to show who I really am.
Here, then, are two of the biggest difference between the sobriety of Then and the sobriety of Now. One, that my current sobriety was not a response to any sort of incident that could reasonably look like someone's rock bottom. Two, that I am not currently trying to "prove" to anyone anything about myself. I'm not doing this for anyone but me. I appreciate the approval and support of my loved ones, but this thing I have going doesn't hinge on it. It's different now because I think—I am so so sorry for the lack of humility in what I'm about to say but just bear with me because I'm trying to prove a point here—because I think that I was a good husband and a good father, regardless of whether I was drinking or not. I don't need sobriety to prove that because I already fucking proved it. Yes, sobriety helps me be present, and I am indeed finding tangible emotional benefits in the relationships I have with my immediate family members (wife, daughters), but that's not why I'm here. I'm here for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone else but myself.
So there's that. And it's an important distinction, because it really speaks to how unserious I was that first time around. Yes, ostensibly I was trying to "prove" something, but how long was that supposed to be before it was "proven"? Apparently 112 days? Why such an arbitrary number? And as Dave noted
in our conversation at the beginning of this week, it wasn't like I had the right mindset during those 112 days anyway. Dave has memories of me telling him that I was "miserable" while sober. I don't doubt him, and I don't doubt I felt that way. Despite the fact that I had fucked up while intoxicated, fucked up perhaps irrevocably, I was still just biding my time and waiting to get the fuck off that wagon. I talked a big game in late January 2018 about things being
"different," but y'all know how that shit goes. You change for a bit, then you slip back into old habits. Not even two months later, I'm getting blackout at the friends-only after hours baby shower.
I needed to be sober for that time period, and I do truly believe that if I hadn't done that and hadn't reached triple digits, then my life would be unquestionably different in ways that are hard to even fathom now. I'm talking divorce. I'm talking estrangement. I'm talking a steep mental decline. I'm talking death. But at the same time, the idea that there was some emotional change happening during that time period is fucking laughable. I did what I felt like I had to do and then it was right back to my old tricks. Time slowed me down enough anyway so that I could get by, at least for a few more years.
That's why it doesn't feel right or responsible to say that I "did this before," because I didn't. Yes, technically, the days were there, strung out in a row. But that wasn't sobriety. That was just a quick break between blackouts.
I've
said before that I don't want to be too harsh on myself for the drinking, but I don't feel the same obligation when it comes to sobriety. I should be harsh on myself for thinking that any half-measure was worthy of remembering. 112 days?
Fuck you. That's nothing, especially when you spent those 112 days just waiting for that next PBR and knowing full when that it would arrive eventually.
I mean, this is the real reason why I'll be celebrating 113 days next week. Not because I think that 113 is any better than any other number of sober days—let's celebrate 24 hours, let's celebrate ten years, it's all fucking great—but because 113 days sober will excise a demon that has been living within me since January 14, 2018. I can finally put to rest the bullshit facade that I built during that first go-around, and finally start saying, truthfully and honestly this time, that I've never been more sober.
I think a lot about
BoJack Horseman when I'm writing these things. Not that the show was
about sobriety, but it was mostly about the titular character, and a huge facet of BoJack's day-to-day existence was his substance abuse. And also, I decided to be sober during a
rewatch of the series, so the thoughts about this character is for better or worse tied to those concurrent thoughts I was having during late-stage abuse and early-stage recovery. Today, I'm thinking about a conversation that BoJack and Todd have at the very end of the series (spoilers?), when BoJack is talking about his current stint of sobriety (in prison), and how he's kind of afraid of what will happen if he slips up and has another drink. And Todd's like, "Well, then you'll just get sober again."
I'm thinking about that because it speaks to how the idea of "days sober" is both important and not. It's important because it's something you can be proud of, and it gives you real momentum to keep going. But at the end of each day, the only thing that actually matters is that one day, and how you spent it. Doesn't matter if you have one day of sobriety, or 1000, or 112, or 113, or 0 after a fuck-up, what matters is that you were able to hold on for that one single day that you just went through. There's power in large numbers but I'm hesitant to assign
too much power to them. My 113th will be the same as any of the previous 112. Except maybe I'll feel a little more free.
