Good morning/afternoon/evening/night Class.
Coming up on 5 a.m. Sunday in New England. Cobwebs just starting to clear so I have to think, what day of the month is this? Ok it's January 26, so then I say, Today is my Day 25. A quarter century!
And once again, no hangover! Praise be!
Funny, not 10 minutes ago something brought to mind a different quarter century, my parents' 25th wedding anniversary party, at which I, at age 17, somehow had come to be designated as the child (out of 5) who would give the toast, when the time came around, to the house full of of all the significant adults in my parents' (and therefore my) social lives at the time. My parents were very social, so it was maybe 50 people or so in my aunt's house that was bigger than ours. We five kids (oldest 23 and recently married, youngest 12 years old and in 8th grade or so) were the only members present from the younger generation, so that was odd.
We five with our aunt's assistance had put together this surprise party over the past few months, and here was the big day, and my parents did a convincing job of expressing real surprise when they entered the house, for which I tacitly thanked them then, and do so again now. It's entirely possible they had no inkling, though even then I wondered how they could fail to notice any of the familiar cars of my various aunts and uncles, neighbors from our street, fellow school teachers of my mother's, Grandma's flashy new Olds 98, lining my aunt's sleepy suburban residential street.
So my two older sisters, seconded by my two younger brothers, decided that jr should give the toast at some appropriate time during the soiree, a time when the party would quiet down for just a little while so everyone's attention would be paid to the raisons d' party, and a few words would be delivered to the assembly.
I was 17, so had not quite yet attained the then legal drinking age of 18, but this was a private house party, and the older folks were socializing away, not particularly attentive or interested in whether jr had spiked his soda with a shot of something or other here or there. I was just getting my booze-legs at the time, having been what one might call plastered only one time before, on the occasion of that married sister's wedding a few months earlier.
Cut to the chase: No, I did not get plastered on this occasion. This is not one of those stories.
The point of recounting this little vignette is subtler than what I might say about the falling-down drunk episodes in which I would be the faller-downer, or one of them. Those as-yet unscripted scenes would take place in due time over the course of jr's ensuing half a century (the party was in the fall of 1969). Some of those episodes may lend themselves to future tellings, some arguably amusing, some indisputably less so.
But the memory from my dear, (now) departed parents' 25th anniversary party that seems appropriate to tell here, in this Newly Recovered corner of SobeRlandia, in this Class of The Current Month, as we newly minted Sober Ones explore what that means, and how long it is going to last in each individual case, and will it really stick this time, is the following, because, jr is learning, it might in retrospect explain, for jr, a thought pattern and action response that became all to engrained, the habits-of-mind of jr's lifetime (through 2 Jan 2020; the next chapter is just 24 days old).
So, the party's moving along, I think we 5 kids were the self-designated servers, trying to allow the grown-ups to relax and intermingle, and feeling at least a little more grown up that day ourselves. As the designated toasting hour approached, and I knew that all eyes were soon to be directed to me, that I would be the center of attention, that, in my mind, the success or failure of the entire event, and probably the future of my parents' marriage, depended on jr saying just the right thing, loud enough, his voice not cracking, his very soul exposed.
I think we (my two older sisters) postponed the toasting a few times in 5 or 10 minute increments for reasons having to do with practicalities such as whether the champagne glasses were ready, or somebody was playing something on the piano, and they'd surely stop soon.
But as the moments ticked by toward the inevitable, I remember, baby-level drinker that I was at the time, that somehow I had learned that my moment in the spotlight would shine just a little brighter if I managed to gulp down just a little bit more of whatever was in the nearest bottle before I had to face the crowd.
Fast forward fifty years, to January 2020.
Since 2 Jan 2020, jr has spent, is spending, untold hours focusing on what brought him to this commitment to a Dry and Pot-Free January (news flash: jr hereby announces his upcoming Dry and Pot-Free February, after that, who knows, jr hopes you will stay tuned, if that means that you, too, are sticking to your commitment to sobriety).
One thing I've learned in this quarter century of dry days, is to recognize that the function of the drinking, way back then when I was in my senior year of high school, up to and including way back on 1 Jan 2020, the reason (one of the reasons) I tended towards over-drinking, to substance-abuse-level drinking was the way the ethanol muffled, just for a while, the cracking voice of the scared little boy acting all like he could command the attention of this houseful of well-wishers.
Imagine if it was a hostile crowd! Oh, I did, many a time, so imagine, over the ensuing half century. Most often, I am happy to report, that in my (hidden) nervous anticipation I had wildly overblown, I had overblown by orders of magnitude, by Category 5 tornadoes of overblowth if only that were a word, any measure of actual hostility that I actually encountered as I sallied forth in the actual world.
Bookending the wedding-anniversary toast with my Day Zero, my last day of drinking, brings us to 1 January 2020:
Why, exactly was I pouring myself yet another glass of the smoky single-malt scotch, my brother-in-law's Christmas gift, in the evening, after the New Year's Day dinner dishes had been washed, the wine bottles rinsed and placed in their proper spot for recycling, the gin bottle, one of the Christmas presents from one of my sisters, having been not-quite emptied (as of course I was keenly aware). The gin bottle still contained a detectable measure of the distillate of juniper berry because if I hadn't drunk the entire bottle in the week (along with my standard daily dose of beer or wine), then I don't really have a drinking problem. See, I can control it, I didn't suck the last dying drop out of the bottle.
Why, indeed.
Happy Sober Sunday.
<><><><><><><>
Quoting DaisyBelle from Yesterday (Saturday) evening (it was in the 10 p.m. hour in on the U.S. east coast, if I recall correctly):
Soooooo... I can hear my neighbors in their hot tub right now. It sounds like there’s a party going on over there, and everyone is pretty much on their way to being drunk (if not already). I just want to say I’m really glad I’m not going to wake up with a hangover tomorrow, but I’m also wondering why they didn’t invite me. They don’t know that I’m sober now. There could be a million reasons, but the self-centered alcoholic in me is thinking it’s because I get blackout drunk and make an a$$ of myself (or used to). I guess I’m glad, but sad at the same time... but mostly glad.
END QUOTE
G'day DaisyBelle. I'm totally glad.