Remember When?

     For the last few weeks while driving in my truck, I have had the obsession to drink come back.  Usually it is a fleeting thought, but not these.  And it is pretty scary.  I have been having this brief conversation with myself that a Budweiser would taste so good and that I could handle it.  Surely this time I could drink and not do Cocaine.  Then I have to force my mind into playing that tape out.  It is amazing to me to realize how strong my disease is and how much it wants me out there getting wasted and killing myself.  So in the attempt to remember how bad it was at the end I am going to share the last moments of my drinking on that last day.  This is a day I can never forget.

     I had already made my plans to leave Colorado after my girlfriend called the police on me in a drunken stupor.  I went out seven days later on my last Saturday in Denver, thinking to myself what is the worst thing that could happen?  My girlfriend and I had made up and she admitted that calling the police on me was a horrible mistake and that she was sorry.  We had spent the entire week together and I thought we were in a good place despite me leaving to get sober.  She had friends in town and she went out with them and I went to my bar to see everyone one last time and have a good night and say goodbye.  Next thing I know I have lost my keys and I am at my dealer’s house around 9:00 AM Sunday morning.  My girlfriend is not answering her phone and mine is dying, so I figured I would walk to her place and knock on her window to let me in.  Thinking she was just passed out.  After my arrival at her apartment I figure out she is not home.  So I sat down on the benches in front of her apartment thinking she would come home at some point.  By now my phone is dead and even if it wasn't I was way too intoxicated to call my landlord so I waited.  Well I was right and eventually she arrived and shit went sideways.  She was with a friend who did not like me and they had obviously been up all night as well. Next thing you know my girlfriend and I are arguing.  She was mad for just showing up and I was trying to explain the situation.  All the while her friend was threatening to call the police.  I am begging her to give us a minute and to mind her own business.  We are now drawing attention to ourselves and the argument is getting really loud.  Soon enough a woman on a bike decided to intervene and the friend calls the police.  Still having drugs on me I knew it was time to leave and high tailed it out of there.  I finally was let in my building and I kicked in my door breaking the dead bolt and the insanity ensued and I broke down completely.

      I am shaking now that I have gotten all that out.  This was exactly the personal response I wanted.  That day is tied for the worst day of my life.  And both of them could have been a lot worse.  I need to reread this over and over.  This was my last day of drinking and using.  I am sure it looked like a bad scene to all the people in the neighborhood that could see us.  I had turned into that guy.  I was completely crazy, messing around with a woman that was pissed that her boyfriend had shown up because he was locked out of his house and throw the third nut job in the mix and it is a recipe for disaster.  This is a perfect example of bad decisions on my part all the way around.  I can never forget this.  This is where I will end up if I pick up that first beer.  Right back on the madness railroad headed to an early grave.  

I Can Get Better or I Can Get Drunk

     It occurred to me in my first of two meetings tonight how great and amazing my life has become.  The further into the topic of complacency we went, the further my mind went in to that dark place full of fear.  Holy shit your life is amazing right now.  You better not fuck it up. Once that thought ran through my head I realized I am still a very sick person.  I am absolutely a drug addict and an alcoholic.  If one were to look at the entire reel of my life, there are two things that would happen.  First they would realize that I am the common factor in all the dumb shit that has ever happened in my life, and two, that it was obvious that I was never afraid of dying; it was living that really scared me.  In that moment of clarity tonight sitting in that club house for the first time ever I saw myself screwing up before it actually happened.   The fear of success is no longer living in the subconscious. It is out, real, raging, and ready to take all of my hard work and opportunity and toss that shit right out the window…  I have been listening to Lucero’s new album and there is a line that I keep hearing over and over.  “I can get better or I can get drunk.” So what is it going to be this time around?

     Last night I interviewed a band from Denver over the telephone.  They were calling from the studio in LA, and we discussed the things that are happening from doing the work.  As the conversation went on and we dipped in and out of spirituality, I realized how aligned our timing was and that great things were happening for them and me in a similar manner almost on the same calendar.  It was at that point I thought about how much has come my way in the last few weeks.  I am experiencing real opportunities for the first time ever.  What I mean by that is very small pieces of a very large puzzle have been laid at my feet, now it is up to me to fit them all together and put it all into action.  This is much different from landing a great job where my buddy is my boss.  The path is not laid out for me yet but I have been given the tools to do the job.  And I will be honest, this has never happened to me before.  Everything that I have been promised that would happen from sobriety is literally landing at my feet one by one.  So I am at a cross roads.  I can do what I have always done and sabotage the whole damn thing and blame it on anything but myself.  Or I can slowly, and faithfully, put one foot in front of the other, staying focused on doing what is right and not what feels good.  This means I have to dive further into my recovery and continue this self-examination and face the dark side in me and fix what is broken.  It means that I need to go to more meetings than I am now, do more service work, be more honest, and most importantly be more forgiving.  I must let go of more and give away all that I have.  Any deviation from more action in my recovery will be devastating.  Sure I already do a lot.  But as my father says, “You can always do more.” Exercising is my path to meditation and a conscience contact with my higher power today, and in the last week, my ugliness has diverted me from that path.  So before I get too far off and sink the entire ship it is time to pull out my trusty map and navigate back to the correct course.  Or I will surely loose it all!

      I will have eighteen months sober on the 14^th of May.  That is not a whole lot of time in sobriety, but it absolutely puts me in the big boy phase of my recovery.  I am now sober, the fog has cleared and this where the real work begins.  No more time outs, I am getting sober left.  It is time to be a man and handle my business and achieve everything I have ever wanted. So like the song says, “I can either get better, or I can get drunk.”  So I think I will leave the getting drunk to the one that has not had enough yet.  I have places to go and things to do.