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When I was drinking and drugging, I started waking up to a brutal question from my wife: “Do you remember what happened last night?”
Sometimes the answer was no, and that was terrifying. Sometimes the answer was yes, but I didn’t know how I was going to weasel out of whatever I could remember about the drunken buffoonery from the night before.
I wasn’t a big blackout drinker or drug addict. But I had some, so I would guess that I was asked that question about 20 times total in my decade of overindulgence. Each of the 20 was a disaster, and I never had a single good answer to that question. My wife never said, “You did all of the dishes and made a beautiful flower arrangement. Thank you!” It was always something I was glad I didn’t remember.
So this past weekend, I woke up on Sunday morning and my wife said, “Do you remember what happened in the middle of the night?”
My stomach plummeted because that question is so associated with alcoholism for me. I didn’t say anything for a second, then just said, “Uh, no. What happened?”
Then she said something equally terrifying.
“You don’t remember yelling somebody’s name four times?”
Oh my god. I was ready to drive to the airport and a one-way ticket to fly into the sun. I had no idea where this was going.
Then she said, “Who is Bill? You kept yelling, ‘Bill!’”
Whew. OK, I can work with that, I thought.
The truth is, I don’t know who Bill would be. Bill Belichick? I have a family friend named Bill, but I’m not sure why I would have been dreaming of him. Buffalo Bill, the killer in Silence of the Lambs?
I had no answer for what she was asking, and she ultimately just shrugged and laughed and we moved on.
I kept thinking about the whole thing for awhile because it’s a pretty funny story. A few days later, I am still laughing about it, and I ended up feeling two big things:
One is, I am grateful that I don’t blackout and do crazy s**t that requires an explanation the next day.
And two, I’m going to tell myself that the person named Bill that I yell about in the middle of the night is Bill Wilson, one of the godfathers of recovery. I’m going to assume that I love sobriety so much that I just scream about it all night!
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:
Asked by her third-grade teacher to spell the word “straight,” Susie, the daughter of an alcoholic, stood up proudly and said, “S-t-r-a-i-g-h-t.”
“Very good, Susie,” said her teacher. “Now, can you tell us what it means?”
“No ice,” Susie answered.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2001, Kevin O. from Hastings, Nebraska)
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