Twenty Years Sober - Day One

Twenty years ago, I walked into my first twelve step meeting.  It was July 15, 1991.  I had just turned 30 and my life was a tremendous disaster.  Some people get sober because they are either faced with or have lost everything and others, like me, never actually had anything to lose.  Except my life.  Which I jeopardized on a regular basis.  Not to mention the deleterious health issues that were rearing their ugly heads; I am fairly certain that drinking vodka in the shower before work was not a good thing and certainly not a magical elixir - nothing in my life was turning into gold.  It was shit, all of it. I couldn't stop drinking and I couldn't bear to drink anymore. I was living dead.  And it was all coming to an end one way or another.

Alcohol was always in my life.  I come from a long line of alcoholics, most dead now, a few sober ones still living.  When I was little, I would take the first sip from a can of Schlitz when I got my dad a beer from the fridge; I still remember grabbing the pull tab and pulling it off - that little hiss and pop that came from the can - the coldness of that first foamy sip as it slid down my throat.  At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was given my very own small glass of wine filled with a few sips at the table.  There were always both alcohol and drunks around me growing up and the inherent violence and ugliness that came with them.  But as a child, it seemed like an elixir - magical - beautiful grownups laughing and chatting; loud music, smiles, intimacy.  I used to peer over the balcony into the living room through the blue haze of cigarette smoke and watch transfixed.  All those happy people made me long to be grown up and sitting amongst them, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other.  I'd describe it as elegant but it was the late 60s/early 70s, the era of loud polyester, gold chains and bell bottom jeans...be that as it may, I was still hooked.  The allure was too great for my child's mind.

And so, when at the end of ninth grade, I was presented with an opportunity to skip school with my one of my best friends and go hang out with some older boys that had a car, I took it.  It was the first time I made the decision to drink for myself and I promptly got so drunk that I remember lying on the ground, throwing up and everything spinning - and that is how I drank for the next 16 years.  I drank only to get drunk.  It didn't matter what it was, if it got me drunk, I drank it.  Not from that first drink on did I ever have any semblance of control over my drinking and as would follow, my life.  But it took away all the pain and confusion and all the separation I felt from everyone in my life.  Alcohol made me believe that I fit in and it made me not care that my family was so fucked up that I spent most of my days desperately pretending that everything was "ok" here - and that is how I lived for the next 16 years.

 The day it all ended, I stumbled home from an all nighter - which is a misnomer as every night seemed to be an all nighter at that point.  I had already called in sick to work, and I was sick - just not with the flu but a horrible hangover that would require me getting into bed with a glass of the hair of the dog that bit me.  It was hot in LA and my apartment had no air conditioning.  Walking into the bathroom I caught my reflection in the mirror and I was stopped dead in my tracks. There I stood looking into my own eyes and for the first time in such a long, long time, I really saw myself.  The physical effects of my alcoholism were written all over my body - I was bloated, sick.  My eyes were swollen and the whites were not really white anymore; they were flecked with yellow.  My kidneys ached.  My gums bled.  But mostly, it was the eyes -  my eyes were dead.  They were devoid of feeling - no joy, no spark, no life - not even a flash of sadness or sorrow.  It was an incredibly powerful moment of clarity and it destroyed me and frightened me more than anything else ever had.  I suddenly understood one thing, that I was going to die.  And if that was what I wanted, I could keep on my path of destruction - drinking each day and night and not knowing where it would take me.  It was evident that in short order, I was probably going to end up in a very bad and dangerous place and this time there would be no reprieve.

It seems like I stood in front of that mirror forever; it was a magic mirror and my future was revealed - this path or that path - make a choice: life or death, no turning back. Suddenly with absolutely no hesitation, I found myself running to my neighbor's house - a lesbian with 17 days sober and she took me to a meeting that night - it was a closed gay men's meeting, which means that only gay, sober men could attend, but they took a vote and let the shaky, sick newcomer and the lesbian stay.  There we sat - the straight girl, the lesbian and about 15 gay men practicing the 12th step and it's actually funny and sweet in retrospect.  They talked about needles and AIDS and death and I did not relate but I didn't drink that night and for an hour I felt safe; those amazing men also gave me a meeting directory and circled meetings they thought I might like and sent me home with phone numbers and hugs. Those gay men gave me love and I felt it, I believed it and it was fucking amazing. I belonged...with them - I wasn't alone any more.  It didn't matter that they were men or gay or that many of them were drug addicts, when they talked I heard their loneliness and fear and not knowing how to get through life before they got sober and they were me; we had absolutely nothing in common except our feelings but, here's the kicker, that was everything and it was day one.

It was the first full day I had gone without a drink as far back as I could remember.  It seemed impossible that I had achieved an entire day but I had and so you understand the miracle of that one day, it is in many ways more important than the milestone of the 20 year anniversary I recently celebrated; that one day led to next the 7,304 days that followed.  Without that day, nothing else that I have achieved or been given in my life would have been possible.  And the girl who could not go a day, a morning, an hour without a drink has, by the grace of God, not had one since.