Happy Sober Birthday To Me

~I've made to seventeen years Sober today. It was also a Sunday back in 1994.

On the previous Friday, the 14th, I'd managed to accrue roughly five and a half years, but I wasn't really working any kind of Program. I was so spun I'd cracked one of my teeth from clenching and had to have it extracted. That's how I had all those Vicodins.

I was down to the last few pages of my first screenplay, “An Ordinary Guy”, and as usual with my Writing Process, I was out of my fucking mind. I was also dealing with the aftermath of two disastrous 'romantic interactions' [to call them 'lover affairs' is to overstate the case] that had gone south hard and fast that summer.

I planned Going Out. I'd cleared my sched for the weekend. And on Saturday evening [Oct 14th], I ate a piece of bread and then took three Vicodin with milk. I knew how they could mess up your stomach and so prepared it. I was always a 'competent dope fiend'.

My principal memory of all that was sitting in my Polka Dotson in the parking lot of the old Lucky's on Lincoln and Ocean Park watching the fog drift across the mercury vapor lamps and thinking, “Man, it's great to be stoned again.” I'm typing this part at half past one, which right around the same time.

Went to bed around three or so...and totally forgot the whole thing. I actually took AA cakes after that. The mind is amazing, ain't it?

It wasn't until two years later when I finally got around to really doing a Forth Step that it dawned upon me: “Dude, you went out!” Geeze...

This time around I worked the Program, had sponsors and sponsees, went to meetings and all that happy horseshit...and stayed Sober. Being Sober got me through being homeless in one piece and also helped me in The System. You bet you ass I always mention it.

And here I am, still as batshit as ever, but fairly comfortable in my own skin on most days, which is quite an amazing State of Being, one for which I am truly Grateful, no matter how much I may bitch about this or that.

It Works If You Work It....and it won't if ya don't.