I know that I've detailed how I got started going to meetings; the last time I got high, and other things. This is how I ended up with the birthday (or lack of) that I've carried all these years.
At the beginning, I was counting my recovery date from when I last used pot and coke. Since I didn't intend to completely abstain from alcohol, I wasn't changing my date when I'd have one or two beers. I was there for pot and coke, not booze.
Now, I was receiving a bunch of flak from people at MSA for this. I would have shouting matches where I would defy anybody to show me where abstinence from alcohol was a requirement for membership, or attendance of meetings. I'd ask them if they felt they were up to escorting me outside.
Hint: if you want influence the opinion of the new guy, confrontation may not be your best bet.
But, what I was finding was every time I drank a beer, I'd want to smoke some weed. Really want to. And, every afternoon, I was thinking about my afternoon drink (or two). All day, until I could have that couple of beers.
This hadn't gone on very long, when I got together to shoot some pool with a couple of my old friends after work.
We went to some wanker sports bar on Aurora. The kind of place where twenty-somethings went to go listen to shitty generic rock, drink shitty generic beer, and have generic shitty conversations. You know the place. Back in 1988, it had Spuds MacKenzie posters, neon lights, and all the crap that the beer distributors hand out, because the owner sure as hell wasn't going to spend a dime of his own money giving the place any individual character, right?
Luckily, I never found any cool bars until after I was a decade sober.
Anyway, I ordered a San Miguel Dark (Philippine beer), and headed to the pool table. As we played, I finished my drink, and started on another. No biggie, right? Two beers ain't that much. And, I was a buck-eighty - not like I was only ninety-five pounds.
When I finished my second beer, one of my buddies wanted to buy me one of what he was having. Some bottle of European road tar or something. About halfway through the bottle, I felt the beginning tickles of a good buzz starting. Which shouldn't have been surprising. Two and a half beers in quick succession on an empty stomach... you shouldn't be on your lips, but yeah, you ought to feel it a little bit. And then a realization hit me: this wasn't sobriety. This wasn't the way of recovery. I wasn't drunk - yet, but I wasn't really sober, either.
And it was right then that I had what I can only describe as a spiritual experience.* I felt like time stopped, and I had a space of time to think this through - which all happened between split seconds. I didn't hear my companions, or the background of the bar; I didn't really even see anything around me. I was absolutely still, and felt like I was standing, perfectly balanced on the edge of a razor blade. If my heart was to beat, it might knock me over to one side or the other. Yeah, I know that sounds a little "woo-woo" and trancendental, but, what the hell, it's the only way I know how to describe it.
Anyway, I stood there, frozen. And, I knew - no, make that KNEW that I had a decision to make. Right then and there. That nobody could make it for me; that nobody could change it.
The decision was whether to finish that beer or not. But, it wasn't about that one beer; it was about the rest of my life. It was clear to me that if I chose recovery, that I wasn't going to be able to drink casually. And, I was going to have to make other changes. But, if I chose to finish that beer, I was never going to stop; there would be no recovery. I was going to keep running until the end.
I don't really know how to describe what it felt like to make that choice. It was like all of the stuff I'd experienced up to that point, all the fears, all of the pretense and posturing, all the façade was all gone. All that was left was me - the real me. The original me. Me at my most basic. And, it was that 'me' that made the choice.
So, I took that last half a beer, walked across the room, and set it on the bar. As I turned around to return to the pool game, the bartender saw me leave my drink. He looked at me like I had seven heads, or something, and asked if there was something wrong with the drink. I answered, "no, I'm just done with it, thanks."
Now, I wish I could say that I went and talked about this at the very next MSA meeting, and changed my birthday. But, I didn't. I'd made such an ass of myself about refusing to quit drinking that I really didn't want to change my date on the sign-in sheets.
By the time I got honest with myself about this, I'd forgotten what the date was. I know it had been in the latter part of June, but I can't remember exactly when. So, for the last twenty-plus years, I've had to write my sobriety date as a month and year.
-M
*read the appendix at the back of the book Alcoholics Anonymous; it describes a spiritual experience as a "profound" alteration to one's outlook on and reaction to life.
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