Selling Sobriety

A collection of my thoughts on various subjects in various forms. Including academic, poetry, and autobiographical.

8/1/2022 One Year Down

One year. An entire year has gone by since the day I begged a friend to let me swig the warm half-empty bottle of Smirnoff from her car. I was just a few days away from my three-month mark, but I told myself that I might as well take another drink now before my sober streak got too impressive. My friend knew I had stopped drinking, but convincing loved ones to enable me have always been my forte as an addict. Looking back, I can still see her face in my mind. I don't know if it was a look of judgment she had or that of amazement. After all, it was amazing! I had just told her I was excited that I hadn't been drinking for almost three months! But hypocrisy is my party trick, and it's a wonder how quickly the excitement fades when you see the bottle, the opportunity, right in front of you. And with alcohol, it is ALWAYS in front of you.

Five years ago, when everyone told me I was an addict, there wasn't much to argue. It's hard to deny you have a problem when you are half dead with a needle sticking out of your arm. But who are you to tell me that I'm an alcoholic when you have a drink in your hand? I wouldn't hear it, and I wasn't convinced. There was no way I could believe what I was doing was wrong. After all, I don't shoot heroin anymore. I don't smoke meth anymore. I stopped snorting coke, and I stopped crushing Xanax. So why is everyone still riding my ass? What I'm doing is legal. Except, I never understood limits. Maybe if I did, I would have listened. I would've understood that the beer in the hand of the person raining on my parade was minuscule compared to the full-size vodka bottle I brought to the party just for me.

I may call myself an artist, but no one draws lines more delicate than American lawmakers because the line between legal and deadly is practically inexistent. Thank you oh so much for putting laws in place to stop me from being drunk behind the wheel, which, disturbingly, never once happened in the probably hundred times I drove while under the influence. Even more so, thank you for making it so easy for me to drink my life away. Because there are no sirens or flashing lights to hold you up from walking out of a Fry's just before they close with two bottles of Titos just in case you didn't feel up to returning for more the next day.

So as I sit here, one year without a single shot, beer, sip, swig, bottle, pint, glass, or handle, I am the proudest I have ever been. I did it. I made it. I survived, and I am still surviving. Giving up my drug of choice was hard. Heroin is an unforgiving bitch. And it was hard deleting dealers' phone numbers, cutting ties with actively using friends, and ignoring offers on the street even harder. But at least I don't pass billboards promoting black tar or see commercials of people doing lines. There is no better or worse. A vice is a vice, and an addict is an addict. I fight hard every day, and each drug I crave has unique skills to trigger me, but I have made up my mind. I have made my choice, and it is that I will continue to fight every day for the rest of my life.

That's all I can say, I guess, for now. Today was a perfect day.