New Years Eve on the Champs-Elysees was a drunken blur
 

It was 1993. Or maybe '94.

There were hundreds of thousands of people. Fireworks. Police discreetly lining the shadow in riot gear.

We'd gone there from K-town, Germany. Had been drinking champagne all night.

I remember flashes of it. Somewhere there even exist a photo or two. I probably drank three bottles of champagne myself.

Sometime after midnight we'd piled in the car. I only remember coming a flash-series of memories... me driving... no idea where I was headed. Everyone else in the car passed out. Finally found some hotel. Checked us all in.

Woke up the next morning to horrific hangovers, all of us. We'd been driving the opposite direction from Paris - away from Germany.

Just one of many, many blind-drunk half memories I'm grateful to have survived without killing anyone.

Tonight my family and I will go see Rogue One. After that we'll celebrate the New Year's arrival with a big family hug and some gratitude and wishes for a great year ahead and we'll head to bed sober and happy with our memories intact.

Maybe someday I'll take my kids to see New Year's Eve on the Champs-Elysees sober. Share an experience with them that I'll remember and cherish.

The memory of that NYE is there, and I admit at the time it seemed fun. But what might it have been if I could recall it. What might that life had brought me had those years in Europe not been spent in weekly drunken blurs?

I'm sure glad for where I am in life now. And for the three years of sobriety I've enjoyed increasingly and for embarking upon year 4 of sobriety with all the more to be grateful and happy for.

Happy New Year, everyone.

:grouphug:

Free, I hope you do get to bring your family back to the Champs-Élysées! My first New Years blur set the stage for all the ones to follow. Kissing a random guy outside of a hotel at age 16, laughing for years afterward with my friends.....not knowing till now almost 40 years later how unfunny that was. Settling in tonight with the wood stove and hot cider. Happy New Year

:c011:

Happy NYE from California!

Happy New Year Free Owl!! :)

:nyk

Love waking up New Years Day sober and headache free. Not far enough away from my last drink to remember how grateful I am for this. Here to hoping WE never forget.


Thanks for sharing the reminder FO

Happy New Years :c011:

I too have spent an evening in a drunken blur on the Champs Elyseee or adjacent 8th Arrondissment.

A beautiful location and good company ruined by alcohol

Glad you are sober now FreeOwl Happy New Year