One Is Too Many

My Experiences With Drug & Alcohol Abuse And Recovery

This is an abbreviated version of the story for brevity's sake.
Click here for the lengthy detailed story.

When It All Began

My first experience I had with drugs and alcohol was when I was a 13yo 8th grader when I started hanging out with a more bad-boy group of guys. They would roll joints, but when they passed it to me I just faked it and inhaled just air. One night we all slept out in a tent in my neighbor's back yard and one of them had some beer. I remember drinking some of it, but I don't remember having caught a buzz. The next day my father found the beer bottle caps in the tent. I was busted. I didn't like being in trouble. I stopped hanging out with that group and my experimentation with drugs and alcohol was over. At least for the time being.

Fast-forward to the Summer before my senior year in High School when I was 17 and started drinking for real. It started out slowly, just drinking small amounts to get a light buzz, but one night I drank way too much Southern Comfort and got very sick. That taught me a tough lesson, and I never drank SoCo again the rest of my life. From there I engaged in pretty typical high school binge drinking. The drinking age was 18 back then, and the law hadn't really started cracking down, so it wasn't hard to get alcohol.

It was the day after my 18th birthday when I first experienced negative consequences from my drinking. I had really tied one on the night before. I didn't get sick that night, but the next day when I was working my summer job as a lifeguard I started feeling woozy up in the guard chair in the direct sunlight for hours. I had to get down and go to the locker room to throw up, leaving my post unattended. No one drowned while I was absent, but it was irresponsible of me, and directly related to my drinking.

When I went off to college my drinking picked up a little because it was readily available and generally being given away for free. It was also when I picked up the marijuana habit. One night a guy on my floor had a pot party in his room. I had never gotten high before, so I didn't yet know how much was too much. I took hit after hit from bongs and joints until I got very, very stoned. It was a lot to take in, and more than a little unsettling, but I quickly developed an affinity for that drug and would eagerly get high whenever the opportunity presented itself.

It was also during these early college years that I started smoking cigarettes. I wasn't really one for the nicotine, but it made me feel hip and everyone else was doing it.

My junior year I transferred schools and pledged a fraternity. I say that this was when I went pro. Hard drinking was the culture. Excessive consumption and crazy antics were behaviors that were not only tolerated, but actually encouraged and celebrated. I quickly became a daily marijuana smoker. Despite the fact that it had me in a bit of a daze every day compared to the acute cognitive acumen I had previously enjoyed, I didn't curb my use. My cigarette smoking also increased to the point I was buying my own packs, although one pack would last me a few days.

I also started experimenting with psychedelics. I dropped acid a couple times, but didn't really enjoy it. It was really intense and it lasted too long. The only time it was really any fun was when I took it in the morning. I had an interesting day and was coming down when it was time to go to bed. I tried mushrooms too, which was a better fit because it was milder and didn't last as long. One Friday afternoon I came back from classes and ate some 'shrooms and then proceeded to smoke way too much marijuana way too fast which gave me a bit of an anxiety attack. When the 'shrooms started kicking in I was in no condition to go on a mushroom trip, but there was no stopping it, and the rest of the night was a pretty classic bad trip. I stopped taking psychedelics after that.

I wasn't much for stimulants. I didn't even drink coffee. But one of my fraternity brothers bought a shitload of gray-market caffeine pills and handed them out like candy. I wasn't big on them but I held onto a stash because it made me feel like a druggie. However when I was home on break my parents found them and confronted me. I lied my way out of it, which I'm sure they saw through, but they didn't make an issue out of it. Still, it put a wedge between us that would last for years. It was another negative consequence that could be traced directly back to my bad habits.

Another time I was at a party where the same guy was handing out the same pills. I kept taking them just for something to do, but they weren't having much of an effect so I kept taking more and more. I still didn't notice an effect until I tried to go to sleep that night. I just couldn't fall asleep. I lay awake all night, stewing in self-recrimination. I had concerns that I was drinking and drugging too much, and as I lay awake hour after hour I could do nothing but ruminate over it. I knew I was doing damage to myself, and yet I couldn't exercise any level of control. That night was one of the worst of my life as I lay locked in a hell of my own making that I didn't feel I could escape.

That was mostly it for me in terms of stimulants, but I did indulge in a little cocaine from time to time. It was rare because I was rarely invited to join in, and I didn't have the money or contacts to buy any of my own. It was also difficult to discern the effect it had considering I was always drunk and stoned whenever I did it. All it really seemed to do was to make you want to do more cocaine.

The "Adult" Years

After graduation I moved to Washington DC. I still had the desire to binge drink, but I didn't have anyone to drink with, so it kind of curbed itself. I also had no access to weed, so for the first time in a few years I went without getting high for a prolonged period of time. The pervasive fog finally lifted and I started to feel my cognitive function sharpen back up. One night someone did smoke me up, though, and because my tolerance was so low I got very high off that small amount. It felt really good. It drove home how much I truly loved that drug. But I didn't have the balls to approach street dealers, so I wasn't able to restart the habit.

Alas, my time in DC wound up being short lived. When I got back home I had to move back in with my parents. I did a little drinking locally, but not a lot. I started smoking marijuana regularly, and the brain fog returned. To fight the boredom and to escape my parents' house I made frequent trips back up to my fraternity house where I picked up like I had never left.

I was up there for New Year's Even when I had my first blackout experience. There had been plenty of mornings over the years where I had trouble piecing back together the events of the previous night, but this one was different. I got crazy drunk in one of the college bars, which was nothing new, but the next day I heard stories of my antics the night before. My behavior was markedly out of character for me, and I had absolutely no recollection at all. It was alarming and disturbing. But not enough to get me to do anything about it.

It was later that winter back at my parents' house that I hit rock bottom for the first time. I went out and got really drunk on a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, and on my way into the house I dropped my car keys in the snow. Rather than just go to bed I decided to go back out joy riding, and when I couldn't find my keys I took my parents' car. Well they had a ski trip planned with my younger brother the next day, and my father had put their skis on the ski rack of his car but hadn't secured them in. They fell off somewhere while I was driving around, and I was too drunk to notice. The next morning they discovered the skis were gone and I had to confess to what I had done.

They were all very angry and disappointed in me, but to their credit once I owned up to everything they didn't make a bid deal out of it. There was nothing to be done, so they let it drop. But I couldn't let myself off the hook so easily. It was a rock bottom moment for me. In the bigger scheme of alcoholism this debacle was pretty mild compared to other people's rock bottoms. In my case no one was hurt or killed, nothing was burned to the ground, I wasn't made homeless because of it. All I did was ruin my family's ski trip, which was a little bougie to begin with. A couple days later someone turned in the skis, so there wasn't even any property loss. But it was the lowest bottom I had hit until that point in my life. But it still wasn't enough to get me to stop drinking. All I did was swear off of Maddog 20/20.

Within a couple months I finally landed a job in Syracuse and moved off on my own. I continued binge drinking behavior, but because I now had to hold down a day job it was mostly limited to weekends. And because the drinking usually took place in bars I started driving while intoxicated a lot more. I was very lucky that I never got pulled over, or worse had a wreck and hurt myself or others. Sometimes I drove back so blind drunk that the next morning I couldn't remember how I got home. But I was living in a culture where that kind of behavior was commonplace.

It was during this time that I learned the lengths I would go to to smoke pot and get high. I moved into a living situation where a housemate also got high. I would always smoke him up out of my stash. That was the culture I was accustomed to. If you have weed, you share weed. One time I scored a bag for him. I didn't get any for myself because I assumed he would return the favor, but he didn't. He never even once offered to get me high. I was so desperate to catch a buzz that I would sneak into his room when he wasn't around, pinch some of his weed, and put it back so he wouldn't notice. Never in any other situation would I ever do something like that, but my need to get high was so overpowering that I would actually invade his privacy and steal from him.

My pattern of use with marijuana was very different from alcohol. I was pretty much just a weekend binge drinker. I didn't drink much during the week, certainly not every day. But I was a daily marijuana smoker, and I couldn't go without it. If I didn't have any then I would climb the walls until I was able to get some, and apparently I would lie and steal for it. I had yet to learn the concept of "powerlessness," but that was clearly where I was with marijuana.

Problems And Solutions

A year later I landed a job with Cornell University and moved to Ithaca. A couple months after I started, our department had our Christmas party where they were serving alcohol. I was enjoying my new job, and delighted to be free of the nightmare job I had just left behind, so the merriment was flowing. I wound up getting conspicuously intoxicated in front of all my new coworkers. I was a happy drunk and didn't really bother anyone, so there was no harm done, but it could have wound up being a very bad start to my new life.

I continued weekend binge drinking. I would hit the bars on Fridays as soon as I was out of work, go bar hopping until last call, and drive drunk to get home. By this time I was getting a little older and couldn't rebound the way I used to, so Saturdays were spent nursing a hangover. Then Sunday was off limits because I had to work the next day. I wouldn't drink during the week, but the next Friday I'd repeat the cycle all over again.

It was during this phase that I first identified the problem. I started getting really tired of the crippling Saturday hangovers, so one Friday night I decided to limit myself to only 2 or 3 pints and then draw the line. Well I found that I was unable to do that. When I hit my limit I told myself it was time to stop, but the allure of drinking more and getting more drunk was too much for me to deny. I blew past my limit and just kept on drinking until last call like I always did.

The next day I reflected on that. I thought about my failure to adhere to the limit that I had set. I acknowledged that I had no control over the amount of alcohol I consumed. When the time came, when I got to the point where I told myself I would stop, I was unable to influence myself. The inner dialog was quick. The angel on one shoulder said that this was when I said I would stop, but the devil on the other shoulder said that I was just starting to have fun, and the more I drank the more fun I would have. There was no denying the devil. I didn't even try beyond that. I wasn't capable of trying any further.

I was still not yet familiar with the concept of "powerlessness," and didn't recognize that this was what I was experiencing. But it was clear that once I started drinking I was unable to stop, and I was self-aware enough to acknowledge that this was a pretty clear indication that I had a problem with alcohol. Most alcoholics spent years in denial that they had a problem until things got so bad they couldn't deny it anymore. I admitted it to myself right then and there. But things would get much worse over the course of years before I finally did anything about it.

Things came to a head when I went up to the fraternity house for Memorial Day weekend. I drank heavily that Friday night, then all day Saturday, and again all day Sunday, smoking weed consistently throughout. I barely ate any solid food the whole time. It had been a long time since I'd partied that hard on that many days in a row, and this time with no nutrition to sustain me.

Monday morning I did a wake-and-bake, and it basically broke me. I expected to just catch a buzz to counteract my hangover, but it fucked me up like I'd never been fucked up before. It was almost like an LSD flashback. I was incapacitated the whole day. I lay there hour after hour waiting for the buzz to go away and feel normal again, but it didn't happen. All day long I felt fucked up, and not in a good way. To make matters worse, my heart started freaking out, doing this weird funky heartbeat every few beats. It was something that I had previously experienced on rare occasions, but it was always one-and-done. This time it was doing it over and over again, and it had me very concerned.

This was finally enough to scare me straight. I swore off alcohol on the spot. It didn't take any effort. I was basically too afraid to get drunk again. My heart stopped doing those funky beats all the time, and I started feeling better, but it only lasted a little over a month. My older brother got married, and I got swept up in the festivities and started drinking along with everyone else. Fortunately it didn't get out of hand. I didn't get intoxicated and make a fool of myself in front of my family or anything. At least not too bad. But it did knock me off the wagon and back into the drinking world again.

I wound up falling back into my old habits of being a Friday night binge drinker. On those hungover Saturdays my heart would often do that funky beat with disturbing regularity. It had me pretty scared. I didn't know what was going on. For all I knew it could require open heart surgery. The thought of going through something like that before my 30th birthday was disconcerting indeed. But it was not enough to get me to stop drinking. Even in the face of serious negative consequences, I was powerless but to do it all over again the next Friday night.

After about 18 months of this I finally came to the realization that I would have to address the situation. Knowing I was unable to moderate my drinking to any degree, I knew it meant I would need to quit altogether. And I knew it would be no easy feat. It wasn't going to be just removing part of my weekly routine. It would mean reengineering my whole life. The risk of failure would be very high. I actually used the considerable anxiety I was experiencing to my advantage. What I was doing was basically manufacturing a rock bottom kind of experience, so that I would eventually welcome sobriety by contrast. I was a mess. I was tired all the time, I was experiencing cardiac issues, I was stressed out, and I was miserable.

The final step in this process was to see a cardiologist. I knew that he would advise me to stop drinking, and "doctor's orders" would be the keystone of my sobriety strategy. When the appointment started and I described my situation, that was the first thing he said. But he still went on to hook me up to the EKG and give me a stress test on the treadmill. As it was going on he said that things looked very good. Then afterwards when I was resting and still hooked up to the machine I felt my heart do the funky beat. I pointed it out, but when he looked at it the monitor he casually said, "Oh, that's just an extra heart beat." The technical term was a premature ventricle contraction, or PVC. It was to the heart muscle what a hiccup is to the diaphragm muscle, and no more threatening to the cardiac rhythm than a hiccup is to the respiratory rhythm. After more than a year of stressing out over this I learned that he said I could just ignore it. But he reiterated that I would do well to stop drinking.

Even though the heart thing was nothing to worry about, I stuck to my guns and stopped drinking. It was an adjustment. I expected the struggle would be to deny the temptation to go out drinking, especially on trigger nights like Fridays. That was a bit of a challenge, but whenever I felt a craving I just reminded myself that I would not be hungover the next day, and it made it much easier to say no. It turned out that the real challenge was in learning how to socialize without the crutch of alcohol. I didn't really realize how inhibited of a person I was until I removed the drug that lowered my inhibitions. I was back to being the shy and socially awkward kid I was in junior high. Being in social situations became very uncomfortable for me.

The more time went on the more accustomed I got to living life without alcohol. Eventually I got the knack of it. Marijuana continued to be my crutch. It made an acceptable substitute for alcohol in that it gave me something to do and quelled my urge to attain an altered state, but it was ineffective in that it did not promote socialization. In fact I withdrew. I would sit home getting high by myself while everyone else was out partying.

Things went well until I had my first "accident." My father was getting remarried after my mother had died young a few years before. At the rehearsal dinner for dessert they brought out little dishes of vanilla ice cream with a green sauce on it. My 6th sense warned me it might be some kind of liqueur, but I looked around and saw that they were serving it to little kids, so I figured it would be safe. I just dug in and ate the dessert. When the ice cream was gone I used my spoon to slurp up the last of the green sauce. When I swallowed it I knew I'd just done a shot. The sensation was unmistakable.

I confirmed with a waiter that it was creme de menthe. I was absolutely furious. If I hadn't been around my polite, well-mannered WASP family, I would have made a big scene over it. On the surface it would seem like it was no big deal. It was a tiny amount, and it had been served to me without my informed consent. Without intent it was not a real relapse. But in my mind I was in crisis over the fact that my perfect streak had been broken, which was a major part of my motivation strategy. Previous to that moment, having a drink was not an option, but now suddenly I had to contend with temptation. I looked over to the open bar, thinking that since I had already consumed alcohol anyway, I might as well go get a drink and get right back into it. Fortunately good sense prevailed. I used spite to motivate me. I was good and goddamned if I would allow this negligent act on the part of the restaurant derail everything that I had accomplished. I dodged the bullet.

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

As my first anniversary approached I planned to quit smoking cigarettes. It had actually been my plan all along. I wasn't addicted to nicotine, but smoking was still a hard habit to break, and I had failed many times in the past. This time I had the benefit of planning ahead. I had a full year to prepare. As the time approached I took a walk down memory lane, smoking various brands that I had smoked over the years. It was all very nostalgic, and it helped put me in the mindset that this was something I would leave in my past. On my quit date I invited some friends over for a little ceremony. One thing my fraternity taught me was the value of ritual in making events more significant and austere. It would also serve to cause me embarrassment if I ever relapsed, having to face those same friends and admit it had all been for naught. It was very effective. On that day I quit for good, and the embarrassment factor was no small part of maintaining my motivation.

From that point on I started feeling a lot better. As the nicotine left my body I just felt more healthy. My apartment lost that nasty, stale tobacco stench. Food started to taste better and my sense of smell returned. My lungs started to clear up, I got back into the gym, and I was more healthy than I'd been probably since high school.

The next year when the anniversary date rolled around my goal was to quit marijuana. I had established a 3-year plan to get to complete sobriety: first alcohol, then tobacco, and finally marijuana. However when the date approached I felt that I wasn't ready yet, so I decided to give myself another year. When the anniversary date approached again the following year, I reluctantly tried to quit.

My reluctance was telling. I quit alcohol because I'd had enough of it. I quit cigarettes because I never should have started in the first place. But I was quitting marijuana because I told myself that I should. It wasn't because I wanted to. That made all the difference. I did quit on my anniversary date, but it wound up being a half-hearted attempt. I had temptation stronger than anything I experienced for alcohol or cigarettes, and I didn't have a mitigation strategy in place. It was just a couple weeks into it that I relapsed. And it was wonderful. That first high was amazing, and I was filled with creativity the rest of the night. I fell back into daily use and was happy to have it back in my life.

For the time being I gave myself license to smoke marijuana without guilt. Alcohol had devastating effects. Cigarettes just took from me without giving anything back. By contrast, marijuana was easily tolerated, and it embellished my life in many ways. I went along happily getting high on a daily basis, and there were no adverse affects. But I did continue to have a gnawing guilt about it. I knew that I would be better off if I were completely sober.

It was about a year and a half later that I decided to give it another go. I chose my 34th birthday as my quit date, thinking that my birthday might be a special enough day that it might help my effort. It was like I was giving myself the gift of sobriety. I tried to do a little preparation, but basically when the date rolled around all I did was just toss away any leftover weed I had along with all my paraphernalia.

As the next weeks played out I was proud of myself for keeping clean, but things were not going well. I often found myself in a vile mood, thinking of nothing but the fact that one hit of weed would make all the anger go away, and being resentful that it couldn't happen. It was around this time that I also started entertaining the thought that maybe I should try drinking again. It had been almost 5 years since I'd had a drink, and in all that time there had never been any temptation, but suddenly there was. At the time I didn't put 2 and 2 together to see that complete sobriety without the proper support mechanisms was heading me towards a complete relapse, but that was what was happening.

It was 6 weeks into my "sobriety" that it all came to an end. I didn't have a spontaneous relapse and have a drink in a moment of weakness. I made a deliberate decision, and even planned ahead so that my first drink would be somewhat ceremonial. It had been so long that I had forgotten what the alcohol buzz even felt like. When I experienced it again it wasn't some glorious revelation. It just was what it was.

The intent was that I allow alcohol back in but continue to stay off of marijuana. That didn't even last the first night. And it was only a week later that I started smoking cigarettes too. I learned how alcohol and cigarettes really went together. It just wasn't possible to get drunk without smoking cigarettes right along with it. So the relapse was complete.

My return to alcohol wasn't tragic. It wasn't like my life suddenly fell apart. In fact it kind of became a golden era of drinking. I became a regular at the gay bar, and I started making new friends. This website went online, which led to introductions to some interesting people. My video work was screening at film festivals, and I was traveling and having new experiences. This wasn't all due to the alcohol, but it largely facilitated my social expansion.

However that's not to say that things were all roses. There were situations where my drinking would get out of control. Particularly when I was traveling, I would go on legendary benders and make a mess of things. My health started to suffer, particularly my sleep. I was tired and spaced out all the time, and my job performance was not what it should be. To mitigate the risk of driving drunk I would routinely pimp myself out to some lonely old man at the gay bar who would take me to his place and have his way with me in exchange for giving me a ride back to my car the next morning.

This went on for years. I got to the point that I knew it was time to get sober again, but I couldn't push myself over the edge. I made countless attempts to quit, but they all ended in failure. I just couldn't muster up the motivation like I did the first time. I eventually gave AA a try. A friend at work was also struggling, and he had been going to meetings, so one day he took me. It was an interesting experience, finally seeing what AA meetings were all about. I came to understand what the program was and how it worked, but it wasn't enough to get me sober. It helped from time to time. I was able to put together some periods of sobriety and attended meetings during those times, but it just wasn't effective in preventing relapses. I knew that the desire had to come from within.

The Beginning Of The End

After a few more years of this I finally hit my limit one fateful day. At my day job I was up to my eyeballs in a huge project, and I was under a lot of pressure. One day there was a daylong retreat, followed by happy hour at a local bar. This was on a Tuesday. I shouldn't have even started drinking, considering it was the middle of the week, but it was an opportunity to blow off some steam. I told myself I would have limit myself to a maximum of 2 pints and then go home.

This would be the time to bring up the Einstein quote where insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting different results. I had never been able to limit myself in the past. I don't know why I thought it would work this time. I blew past that 2 pint limit and just kept on drinking. When I finally left the bar I caught up with some coworkers who had gone off for dinner, and I had more drinks with them while they had dessert. When they all left to go home and be ready for work the next day, I conceded to myself that my powerlessness had kicked in. I was too drunk to get off the roller coaster now, so there wasn't even a point in trying to listen to reason. I hit the ATM, went up to the gay bar, sidled up to the first lonely old man I could find, and drank myself stupid until he took me home after last call.

The next morning I woke up at the break of dawn, exhausted, hungover, and in a stranger's bed. As I stumbled around and got my clothes back on I realized I had my ATM card but my wallet was missing. As he took me back to my car I knew there was no way I could go into the office in that condition. My absence would be conspicuous considering the Vice President of Information Technology at Cornell would be joining my project team for lunch to see how things were going. That should have been enough to stop me from drinking the night before, but it wasn't. What was worse was that everyone would know exactly why I wouldn't be there. There was no excuse I could make that would cover up for the fact that I'd gotten drunk as a skunk the night before. When I emailed in sick, the reason I provided was "personal crisis." That was actually the God'd honest truth.

As I lay around that day smoking pot, napping, and watching insipid daytime TV, I said to myself that this had to stop. It was my moment of clarity. I had finally pushed myself over the edge. I finally had enough. I was finally ready to quit for good. I had something I hadn't had since I quite that first time years before. I had resolve. From that day forward I didn't even consider taking a drink. I didn't need to resist temptation. I extinguished it. It was no longer an option. Forever.

It took me a little while to get my head back on straight. I was a real mess at the time. I did attend AA meetings for a while to help me get my bearings, but I pretty quickly realized I didn't need it. I had come to the conclusion that if I wasn't motivated to be sober then AA wasn't enough to get me there, but if I was motivated then I didn't really need AA. At this point I was motivated. When I got to the point I felt grounded again I stopped going.

I continued smoking marijuana with no plans to quit. I also continued smoking cigarettes, but was getting really sick of it. Quitting was difficult because I frequently visited a couple who lived close to me, and they also smoked. There was no way I could be around them and not join in. But a couple years later they quit as a New Year's resolution. I quit right along with them, glad to finally be rid of it. I stopped smoking on the spot with no withdrawal, no irritability, and no other side effects. They relapsed a short time later, but I didn't. I never had a cigarette again, and I never really even wanted one.

I continued on for many years not drinking or smoking but still getting high. By then I had come to learn the concept of the "marijuana maintenance program." I would later hear it also referred to as "California sober." It worked for me. Marijuana was a low-impact drug. It did not have a demonstrably deleterious effect on my day to day functioning. It was not something I wanted to live without.

As the years piled up, however, the effects of marijuana did start becoming more evident. One was the impact it had on my pulmonary function. My lungs felt raw, and I was hacking up phlegm a lot of the time. It was becoming a challenge to maintain a level of cardiovascular conditioning. It also wasn't doing my sleep any good. I continued to struggle to get quality sleep, and I knew that going to bed stoned every night wasn't helping. Finally there was the fact that it was impairing my memory. I was finding myself being more and more absent-minded, and it was sometimes becoming evident in my work. All in all it was becoming bothersome.

I started making attempts to quit. Mostly they were doomed to failure. Sometimes I would actually be able to shake it for extended periods of time, but I always wound up relapsing. I was unable to quit even in the face of negative consequences. I was coming to realize the degree to which I really was addicted to it.

This went on for more years, but it was around the time I turned 60 that things finally changed. I got to the point that I was starting to get tired of being stoned all the time. During the week I would smoke up as soon as I was done working for the day. On weekends I would routinely wake-and-bake. That meant that almost every waking moment I wasn't working my day job I was high. For a long time it was what I wanted. I enjoyed being high. But after all those years it was getting old. I was finally growing out of it.

This was a quantum-level change in attitude. All those years before my thinking was that I "should" quit. I had to fight the urge to smoke and learn how to do without it. This was the first time I felt like I didn't want to keep getting high anymore. That difference was absolutely key. It was everything. It meant that for once I had a chance.

I was now ready to quit for real, but I knew that it wouldn't be easy. It was still a habit that was entrenched after decades of use. I knew that the best strategy was to plan ahead. I picked Labor Day as my quit date. I would enjoy getting high all summer, then I would have one last long weekend, and when it was over I would be done. When Labor Day rolled around I concluded the day by taking whatever marijuana I had left and throwing it off in the bushes along with the pipe I smoked it in. The next day I was perfectly fine. I didn't really have the temptation to smoke anymore because it wasn't what I wanted anymore. For the first time I felt like I was embracing sobriety.

That worked quite well for a couple months. I was living quite contentedly without marijuana, but the night before Thanksgiving I realized I had some gummies off in a drawer that were left over from a failed attempt to switch to edibles some time before. I knew I should have just thrown them away, but because it was the night before a holiday weekend I felt a little festive. I ate them up and got a good buzz. It was refreshing to be stoned again.

I thought maybe I would try edibles. It wouldn't affect my lungs, and hopefully it would cut down on the frequency I was getting high. By this time New York State had legalized marijuana, ironically now that I had finally gotten over it. That meant that I could get commercially produced edibles which should have predictable potency. Unfortunately the first time I tried I grossly miscalculated the dosage and ate way, way, WAY too much. With all the marijuana I had smoked over decades, this was the first time that I overdosed on it. That night was extremely unpleasant, and the next couple days weren't a lot of fun either.

I tried to recalibrate the quantity that would get me good and high, but it was always a crap shoot. The thing was I needed to wait for so long for the effects to kick in that it was difficult to really dial in an effective dose. Sometimes I would wait and wait and wait and nothing would wind up happening at all. I missed the old days when I would take a hit of bud and be stoned literally seconds later. The whole edible experience just wound up being a slippery slope back to smoking daily again.

The thing was that my aversion to being stoned all the time persisted. Even though I was a habitual smoker again, the motivation to leave it behind remained intact. But for the time being I was back in it. I knew it would still be a while before I could make the break again. I just bided my time.

The next time I felt ready to give it up was the following Labor Day. The timing was good beyond it just being the anniversary of the previously most successful cessation I had experienced. I was leaving to spend a couple months back up at my alma mater relaunching my old fraternity. I could use the change in setting and routine as a distraction.

The plan was to smoke right up to the night before I was to leave, and then to toss whatever was left the next morning and get in the car to depart. The plan was flawed. I should have tossed the leftover weed before I went to bed that last night. When the morning came, as I gathered together the leftover scraps of weed, I was overcome with one last temptation. I'd had every intention of making the long drive sober, but in that moment I reminded myself of how good it felt to be high, and how much more tolerable the drive would be if I had a little buzz on. The angel on one shoulder was being overruled by the devil on the other shoulder. It was a debate that had always been doomed to failure. I rationalized that by the time I arrived at my destination the buzz would have faded anyway, to it wouldn't really compromise my plan to experience this whole adventure sober.

I packed some weed into the pipe, put it up to my lips, and went to strike the lighter. But before I flicked the flame into being, there was a voice in my head. It simply said, "You don't have to." I wasn't sure where the voice came from. It wasn't me telling myself. It was like some external entity was speaking to me.

In that moment I came to the realization that I didn't have to. It was that simple. I just didn't have to do this. It marked perhaps the first time in my life that I was able to conquer temptation. That was really what it was. I didn't resist temptation. I conquered it. Just like that my powerlessness was replaced with empowerment. It was something I had never experienced before. For the first time I was in control of my addiction rather than it being in control of me. And it felt good.

I didn't light that pipe. I didn't smoke that dope. I tossed all of it into the woods where I would never see it again. I got in the car and drove off proud of myself. It was a turning point. My time at my alma mater wound up being infinitely more challenging than I ever thought it would be, and I had to struggle through it without the crutch of marijuana to fall back on. But the more difficult it became, the more resolved I was to soldier on.

By the time it was over and I came back home, I felt renewed. I was relieved that the struggles at my alma mater were over, and for the first time in my adult life I was sleeping like a baby. More importantly, however, was the fact that I felt sober. AA has the concept of a "dry drunk." The point is that just because you're not drinking doesn't mean you're sober. True sobriety is when you fully embrace a life free of your addiction. It was something that had been missing for me all along. When I wasn't smoking marijuana, I hadn't fully overcome the addiction, I had just forced myself to stop using. But now I felt different. I felt like I was free of it. I was happier without it. I felt sober.

I want to say I never looked back, but the truth was I still had to deal with temptation. I didn't miss alcohol, I didn't miss cigarettes, but I did miss getting high. I didn't want to be high all the time anymore, but that's not to say that I didn't miss it. But in those moments when I would have a craving, I would think about what it would be like if I gave in. I knew that I would be right back to the same place where it ruled me and my life every day, I would have that monkey on by back again, my sleep would go to shit, I would quickly regret it, but I'd be stuck back in it facing another monumental struggle to get back out. I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to. For the first time the angel was speaking louder than the devil.

So far it has worked. As of this writing I am still clean and sober. I feel good, I feel strong, I feel grateful, and I plan on staying that way.

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