Run Sheet
00/01/02
Well, here I am in the "New Millennium"
I'm afraid the whole New Year thing is pretty much a non-event for me. Normally a new year holds no real significance in my life, other than there being a new number to prefix correspondence and cheques etc.
This year is a bit different, but I only realized it this morning, past all the revelry and commotion, all the partying and noisemaking (Which I never partook of). I realized it during the silence before sunrise as I sprawled on the couch reading a book and doing precisely nothing, bugger all, zip, nada, null, zero.
I woke up very early (0500) as I sometimes do, and came out to the living room, to enjoy the solitude, and read my book. From nowhere it struck me...
It's been twenty years.
01 January 1980 was my last drink.
After finally having enough of lost days, lost weekends, lost fistfights, remembered stupidity, near-fatal hangovers, waking in puddles of vomit, waking in alley, in bushes, on lawns, in strange houses, with strange people, I finally decided that it was time to quit.
So I did.
Simple as that
Bullshit
It wasn't as simple as that.
Yes, I quit drinking, but the addiction continued, it manifested itself in other ways, I no longer drank, it's true, but I never addressed WHY I was drinking, I never addressed the pain I was trying to dull with the booze, I never looked at why this place was so awful that I needed to get drunk and go somewhere else for awhile... and why I was trying to STAY in that place.
I stayed a very angry man for a number of years, angry and scared. Eventually a friend invited me to AA, I went to humor him, I didn't want what they offered because I distrusted organized religion and the whole "Higher Power" thing turned me off. Well, I was fortunate to sit down the first night with someone who understood a bit about where I came from, and he explained that in words I could understand and accept. It wasn't religion and didn't purport to be, the "Higher Power" was a personal thing, whatever I percieved my "Higher Power" to be. It could be my refrigerator if that was what I wanted to see.
So began the journey, and so began the work.
Today I don't drink, I'm an alcoholic, I'll never stop being one. I'm not an angry man anymore, but I'm still scared sometimes.
Could I drink today? maybe. Do I want to? no. Not right now anyway.
Sometimes I want to, sometimes really badly, but I get through it one day at a time, so far. I have no idea what will happen tomorrow.
So far however, I've managed not to drink, one day at a time, for twenty years.
Tomorrow hasn't come yet.