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I was at a meeting recently where the topic was how important it is to remember your last drunk. Not your last drink; your last drunk. For me, they’re the same. For some people, though, they drink a little while after their lowest point, then find recovery.
One of the things that I shared about was how I always thought you had to have a Hollywood ending to your drinking. In movies and TV, you need a clear, concise turning point moment, and screenwriters often go with a terrible arrest, a car accident, an intervention, a trip to prison, somebody dying, a liver cancer diagnosis… something very easy to wrap your head around as a pivot point. I get why they do that—it’s very easy to convey a need to change by having one huge event, then the change begins.
In reality, that wasn’t my experience. My bottom was alone, in my basement, sad and wasted for the 1000th day in a row, telling myself I can’t go on like this any more. Then doing it again. I think that sort of bottom is more common than the fiery car crash.
That reminded me how in my last year or so of active addiction, I got a BlackBerry from my employer. So now I could check my email at any time, at home or on the train or wherever I went, 24 hours a day. I know it’s hard to remember the days when you left work and ACTUALLY LEFT WORK. But I swear, that’s what people used to do.
Once I had my handy dandy BlackBerry, I can’t tell you how many times I rolled out of bed hung over, groaning about another miserable night of beer, painkillers and Ambien, and then I would check my email and see a note that I had sent myself in the middle of the night.
The emails were the heartbreaking, drunken ramblings of someone with no hope and lots of desperation. I’d often tell myself, “You can’t do that again. You tripped and almost fell on one of the cats, and you could have killed it. You threw up five times, and you’re mixing sleeping bills with beer in a way where you might not wake up.”
Then I would do it again the next night.
There was something about reading about the suffering I was doing, sent from myself, that made it extra gut-wrenching. And then to make matters worse, I almost always stared at the emails and then deleted them and did exactly what they were pleading with me not to do. So it felt like twice the failure every single day. Oof.
Luckily, I got sober and I got a freaking iPhone. No more BlackBerry. No more terrible emails. If they ever do make a movie about my life, I’m going to ask that my bottom be captured by me walking to a dumpster and lighting my BlackBerry on fire before heaving it into the dumpster, and I’ll look to the heavens and vow to never ever ever drink or do drugs again as the BlackBerry burns in the background. How’s THAT for a Hollywood ending?
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS: “A meeting is like an orgy. When it’s over, you feel better, but you’re not sure who to thank.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2002, Roger D. from League City, Texas)
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