Getting Sober

I’m proud to say I quit drinking. As of this writing today, I have will have been sober for now forty-five minutes. GOD, just reading that gives me chills. I admit, it has not been easy. All I thought about was taking that next drink. But so far so good. I could have run to the liquor store in all this time, but I said, NO, I don’t know where my keys are. It’s time to stop. So now I’m sober forty-five minutes. And I already got a chip. I got a whole bag of them.

My drinking finally came to a head last week when I was in Manhattan after work on a weeknight. I should have been home playing with my three little girls or in bed at least. But I was in a club on the Upper West Side and I was on my sixth or eight bourbon & Coke and found myself hitting on a woman half my age, talking her up and watching myself talk her up at the same time, like I was watching myself from the corner of the room. She was just so hot and now I remember in a blur we started making out. My phone rang and I knew who it was but I switched it off and we went back to her apartment. Oh my God that was a good time.

Wow, forty-eight minutes already!!!

Of course the emotions I was suppressing with booze are just now surfacing. Just off the top of my head the first emotion I feel is pusillanimity. I’m also feeling smug because I know what it words mean. I'm pretty horny too, actually. Does that count?

No, come to think of it, my drinking came to head last Sunday, not Wednesday in the city, like I thought. In my drinking days I was what you would call a secret alcoholic, hiding the empties everywhere. It was all working pretty well I thought, until my three little girls looking for Easter eggs started showing up with small bottles. First off, I totally forgot the eggs and then I had to pretend to be really impressed with baskets full of airplane Smirnoffs.

I realize that honesty is the most important trait in my new life and as I sit here and type I’m grateful to all the support and all that I’m happy for. I have three lovely girls after all who, like me, won’t remember much of this. And I’m especially grateful to my wife for giving me the Bob Newhart Show Season One DVD for Christmas.

As I approach sixty minutes, I want to warn others who may choose to follow in my footsteps of sobriety on their own that other vices are ready to fill the void that my sobriety created. You might find yourself eating more, or even drinking again. For me, drinking fills the void the best. This way I just keep it to one vice. God knows I don’t need to start making new ones.