One Is Too Many

My Experiences With Drug & Alcohol Abuse And Recovery

When It All Began

The first experience I had with drugs and alcohol was when I was in 8th grade. That would put me at 13 years old. Through my next-door neighbor I started hanging out with a more bad-boy group of guys. One of them, more or less the ring leader, was a year older. One day they had a bag of weed and were rolling joints. This was the mid-70's so it was mostly leaf. I watched them take tokes. It looked like they were inhaling more air than smoke. I figured they were just faking it. So when they handed me the joint, I totally faked it.

One night we all slept out in a tent in my neighbor's back yard and one of them had some beer. I remember having drunk 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. I was 17. The drinking age at the time was 18. My buddies and I started experimenting with alcohol. And I mean experimenting. As self-avowed science nerds we would take specific portions over specific periods of time and observe the effects. The very first time I experienced alcohol intoxication, even though it was at a low level, was an all-new experience, it changed me forever, and would open the door to a long and bumpy ride.

That level of experimentation worked a couple of times, but one night we had a bottle of Southern Comfort and I started drinking it like it was wine. I got more and more drunk until the room started spinning and I had to have someone escort me outside to get sick. I spent the rest of the night with my face in the bushes heaving my guts out over and over again. That experiment taught me how much is too much, and what the consequences would be. I could never touch a drop of Southern Comfort again for the rest of my drinking days.

Throughout the rest of my senior year I engaged in binge drinking pretty typical for high school students. The drinking age was 18 at the time, and the law hadn't started cracking down on liquor stores, so it was pretty easy to get alcohol. During this time we also experienced driving under the influence. We called upon our science nerd skills to mitigate the risk. We knew exactly what the effects of alcohol were, we were conscious of it while we were driving, and we made a deliberate effort to remain alert and under control. I know it was an irresponsible act, but we took as responsible approach as was possible.

My 18th birthday was probably the most intoxicated I had gotten since that first night I got sick. This time I didn't get sick until the next day. I was working as a lifeguard at the time. Sitting up in the elevated chair in the direct sunlight for hours finally got to me. I had to climb down and go into the change room to throw up. That left post unattended, and while there were no emergencies in my absence, I knew it was bad. It was the first time that my drinking led to a bad consequence. I was aware of it, but it wasn't enough to get me to change my behavior.

When I went off to college things changed. I was 18 now, and legal to buy alcohol and drink in bars, but college life was such that alcohol was everywhere, and often free. They even gave it away at official college functions, funded by our student social fees. That was a bit of culture shock for me, that I could attend a party and just drink as much free beer as I wanted. The frequency of my use increased somewhat over my high school days, but I wasn't out of control or anything.

Then came the day that marijuana entered the picture. A guy in my dorm bought a bag of weed and had a pot party in his room. I was hitting joints and bongs as they were passed to me. I started getting high. This was a first for me. Rather than take in the effects I just kept smoking because that was what everyone else was doing. I wanted to get up and leave, but I was experiencing marijuana paranoia, and I kept on smoking more and more.

Finally I knew I had to get out of there. I didn't care what it looked like. I just got up and bolted. I went into my room and lay down on my bed, but my mind was going a mile a minute, and after about 30 seconds of that I had to get back up again. I didn't know where to go or what to do, so I left the dormitory and went for a walk around campus. As I walked, the marijuana paranoia intensified. I assumed that everyone I passed was thinking to himself, "Look at that guy! Look at how stoned he is!"

I kept walking around and around and around until the buzz finally began to fade a little. Eventually I felt good enough to go back to the dorm. I walked into the TV lounge. "Apocalypse Now" had *just* started. So I sat there and watched the whole thing. I had seen it before, but still it was a striking thing to watch while high for the first time, and massively high at that. By the time it ended I had come down enough that I could go to bed.

What this night did was transition me from being a drinker to being a druggie. Despite this rather traumatic introduction to the world of marijuana, I had a desire to try it again. The problem was that I didn't know where to get any, and couldn't really afford it anyway. I would eagerly smoke whenever it was handed to me, and I grew to really enjoy the effects, but at that point it was far from a habit.

During these early college years I also started slowly picking up the cigarette habit. I'm not really sure why I started. I wasn't drawn to the effects of nicotine. Other people were doing it, and so I would occasionally just have a cigarette with them. It didn't become a habit, and I never bought my own packs of cigarettes. It was just something to do at parties or in the pub.

I advanced to the next level one night in my sophomore year when I ate mushrooms. I knew 'shrooms were a thing, but didn't appreciate that they were trippy psychedelics. That was probably for the best, because when I started tripping I just enjoyed the experience without really worrying what it would do to me. It was an interesting night. I bounced around from party to party with my head in the clouds the whole time. I found it enjoyable, but not something I was in a rush to repeat.

When It All Picked Up

The next year I transferred schools and joined a fraternity. I say that this was when I turned 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.

Then came the night that I took acid for the first time. I didn't even know what it was. One of my fraternity brothers gave me the tab. I knew it was a drug, but I didn't know what kind. I just took it anyway. It wasn't until after I had swallowed it that he told me it was LSD. My initial reaction was one of curiosity, not concern, which was good. Still, it wasn't a great experience. The effects were rather mild, and it wasn't a bad trip, but we stayed cooped up in that guy's room all night, and the conversation got a little weird. Hours later all I wanted to do was sleep, but the acid kept me awake with bizarre, repetitive words and images going through my head. It wasn't something I was anxious to repeat.

As the years progressed I continued drinking heavily, smoking cigarettes more consistently, and getting high pretty much on a daily basis. I dropped acid one or two more times, but it was a lot for me. The only time I really enjoyed it was the one time I dropped in the morning so I could enjoy it all day long and was coming down that night when it was time to go to bed. I also ate mushrooms a couple more times, but one night I had a bad trip. I came home from classes on a Friday, ate the 'shrooms, and then proceeded to smoke way too much pot way to quickly. That put me into an anxiety mode just as the 'shrooms were kicking in. The last thing I wanted in the moment was a mushroom trip, but it was coming on whether I wanted it or not. It was a bad experience. After that I decided that psychedelics weren't for me.

It wasn't until towards the end of my college career that I tried cocaine. It was a very different drug in that it was typically done secretly. Alcohol, weed, and even psychedelics were generally shared and done openly. But when guys were doing lines they would lock themselves into a room with only trusted people. I think partly it was because there was a greater legal liability if one got caught with it, but also since it was so expensive they didn't want freeloaders coming in to bum lines.

On a couple of occasions I was invited into the circle. I had to learn the rules. I thought it just came as a powder, but discovered that it was more like dense chalk. I would watch the leader use the razor blade to shave off portions of the coke, chop it up into a fine powder, and then arrange it into lines. When it was my turn I was instructed to exhale facing the other direction so I didn't blow any of the powder away. Then I would put the straw up to my nose, lean over, and snort. The convention back then was to do half a line in one nostril and finish up the other half in the other.

The effects of the cocaine were interesting. I could feel some kind of euphoria, but it was hard to put my finger on it. I was always already drunk and stoned, so I could not easily isolate what sensation was from the cocaine. By my reckoning the primary effect was to make people want to do more cocaine. I could see why it was so addictive. But I quickly learned it would not be a problem for me. It was a novelty, but it left me exhausted. The next day the last thing I wanted to do was more cocaine. I knew that stimulants would never be habit-forming for me.

Having said that, one time one of the guys bought a large quantity of gray-market caffeine pills. It should have been something I had no interest in, but he was handing them out like candy and somehow I got sucked into it. I had some in my pocket when I went home for break, and my mother found them when she went to do my laundry, and it made her and my father rather concerned. I gave them the cliché lie that I was just holding them for someone else. They didn't make a big deal out of it, but it put a wedge between us. They were aware of my drinking, but I hid any kind of drug use from them, even the cigarettes. After this exposure, every I became afraid what other thing they would find or what discovery they would make. It made me paranoid every time I was around them, and put a distance between us that would last for years.

Another time I was at a party where the guy was handing them out to anyone who wanted one. I kept taking them, but wasn't feeling any effect, so I just kept taking more. It wasn't until I went to bed that the effects became apparent. 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.

After that night I never touched those caffeine pills again, but the internalized concern about my drug use continued. My relationship with my parents had been strained, I was still in a marijuana fog much of the time, but I was doing okay in my classwork, and my grades weren't bad. Until that changed I wasn't motivated to change my behavior.

My college career was drawing to a close anyway. By this time I was pretty much just drinking, smoking cigarettes, and getting high. I would still occasionally do cocaine if the opportunity presented itself. There was only one time when I actually went out and bought some myself. At the conclusion of my final semester I scored a gram and shared it with one of the new members that I'd taken a shine to. We spent the whole night in my room doing lines. I got very emotional because I didn't want to leave the comfort and familiarity of the fraternity house, and go out into the real world where I had no job and no prospects. I unloaded on this poor kid all night long, but the champ put up with it and was as supporting as he could be.

There was a full week between the end of finals and the commencement ceremony. It was supposed to be party time, and should have been my last hurrah, but I wasn't in the mood. I was depressed at leaving school and worried about my future. I barely even drank or got high. The climax of the most intense period of drinking and drugging in my life was quite anticlimactic.

Life After College

After graduation I moved to Washington DC. I didn't make any effort to curb my binge drinking, but the truth was I didn't need to. I didn't really have anyone to drink with. The one friend I had down there wasn't much of a drinker, and I was way too chicken to go into the gay bars. Still, I missed the old days when I'd tie one on and act a fool. One day I went out looking for some Mad Dog 20/20 to get good and fucked up on, but I couldn't find a liquor store lowbrow enough to be selling it. So my drinking kind of took care of 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 my friend came home little bud of weed he'd manage to score down at Dupont Circle. We smoked it up, and got 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 the dealers, so I wasn't able to restart the habit.

It was at this time that I added a new drug to my repertoire when my friend turned me onto whippets. He would sometimes go to a local head shop to buy a box, and he had one of those devices that would discharge a cartridge into a big balloon that you could inhale from. We would do it together from time to time. I found it to be quite intriguing. The effects of nitrous oxide were unlike any other drug I had done. It was a little like marijuana in that it spiked my creativity, but rather than opening floodgates like marijuana did, it unlocked previously unexplored regions of my consciousness. But it was not the kind of thing that I made a habit out of.

Alas, my time in DC wound up being short lived. When I got back home I had to move back in with my parents which curbed my drinking and marijuana use, but I would make frequent trips up to the fraternity house and live it up like I had never left. Mostly it was innocent enough, but one morning I woke up and couldn't find my glasses. It was hard enough to search everywhere in that huge house that was filled with clutter everywhere, but without my glasses I couldn't see anything which effectively made it impossible. It wasn't until a couple days later that someone finally found them. Why I left them in that incongruous spot was a mystery to me.

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 was out in one of the college bars with one of my fraternity brothers, and I got really, really drunk. It wasn't until the next day that he told me I had been getting familiar with girls right in front of their boyfriends while he tried to keep them from beating me up. What was different about this experience was that this behavior was entirely out of character for me. It was alarming not only that I had behaved like that, but that I had no recollection of it at all. It was so disturbing that my hangover suddenly intensified and I went to the bathroom to throw up.

It was later that winter back at my parents' house that I hit rock bottom for the first time. I 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 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 found the skis 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.

Still, I felt horrible. Beyond my emotional distress, I was severely hung over, which just made everything worse. On top of that I was stuck in that house with no job, nowhere to go, and nothing to do, so I couldn't escape them and my shame. In the bigger scheme of alcoholism this debacle was pretty mild compared to other people's rock bottom. 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.

Within a couple months I finally landed a job in Syracuse and moved off on my own. A fellow fraternity graduate lived in the area, so we acted as each other's drinking buddies and travel companions on frequent trips back to the fraternity house. He was actually a heavier drinker even than I was. Compared to him I showed moderation. The only real difference was because we were both working day jobs our debauchery was mostly limited to weekends.

A year later I moved in with an old high school friend who was now living in the area. We had done a lot of drinking back in the day, and we picked up right where we left off. We would go out on the weekends and get positively fucked up. It was so bad that sometimes we'd wake up the next morning and neither of us could remember how we got home.

My friend didn't get high, but one of his housemates did. 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. During that gap when I didn't have any weed of my own, I learned something about myself. I learned how desperate I could be to get high.

I got home from work before he did, and I found that I couldn't just sit there not getting high knowing that he had a stash in his room. It had such control over me that I would actually sneak into his room, 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. And if I had to go a weekend without drinking for whatever reason, then it was no big deal. 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.

A lear later I moved out of that house anyway and rented a house with two other fraternity brothers who had since graduated. It was like we had our own little fraternity house. All of us drank regularly, all of us got high, and all of us smoked cigarettes. There was always beer in the fridge, and between us we could always keep weed in the house. My job was very stressful at that time, and I drank somewhat more to cope with it. This affected my sleep, which was already on edge due to the stress, and my job performance began to suffer. I was tired and spaced out all the time, and it was a challenge to be productive.

It was also during this time that my whippet use increased. An older fraternity alumnus also lived in the area, and he introduced us to the use of a restaurant-grade whip cream dispenser. It was just a hand-held device, and if you didn't put the cream in but charged it up with the whippet cartridge you could just huff the gas directly out of it, which was a lot more convenient and effective than those old balloon contractions. We got one for the house, and we would occasionally share a box of whippets, but it soon wore off with them. I was the only one who started making a habit out of it. I would squirrel off by myself and do the whole box alone, and it would put me into a different realm for a while.

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 developed friendships with a group of young people at work, and we spent a lot of time together outside of the office. They generally didn't binge drink to quite the extent that I did, but alcohol was a regular part of our socializations. We would typically go out to the bars on Friday nights after a long work week. This established somewhat of a pattern for me. I would hit the bars on Fridays as soon as I was out of work, and keep bar hopping until last call. 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.

Problems And Solutions

It was during this phase that I reached a turning point. 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.

My drinking and marijuana use were holding steady, but another drug habit was ramping up. I was still doing whippets, but I had discovered a way to enhance the effect. I found that nitrous oxide and marijuana made a powerful combination. More specifically, it was combining the nitrous experience with the first high of the day. The way it works when smoking marijuana is that the first time you get high that day, it's a very crisp, vivid, enjoyable high. Then the whole rest of the day is spent smoking more and more, trying to recapture that first initial high. Then after a full night's sleep, your system is reset, and you do the same thing all over again the next day. What I would do when I was going to do nitrous was to save that first high of the day until I sat down with a box of whippets. I would smoke a lot of weed, more than if I were just simply going to sit down and get high, and as the buzz started to settle in I would start huffing the gas.

It created a very intense, almost magical effect. I took to calling it a "whippet cocktail." The effect of the gas was very interesting. If I did one or two whippets, I just get spaced out, and then I came back to reality. But if I did a whole box in a row (which takes about an hour), it had a cumulative effect, and it could be transformative. The key was to not try to think about anything specific, but to just let my mind wander. It would inevitably wander into uncharted territory. Then, suddenly, all the secrets of the universe would be laid out before me. And it was all so simple. Life, the universe, and everything came down to one simple concept that had been right before my eyes all along. But as the nitrous buzz faded, so did the knowledge. All these secrets, these universally intertwined truths, would slip away like sand through my fingers as my mind returned to the here and now. But certain germs of truth would remain, as would the comforting knowledge that the answers are out there.

Nitrous also had an interesting effect on memory. I had my first video camera at this time. When I was whooping it up at the fraternity house I would record some of it. I would stop off and get a box of whippets on the way home at the store in Syracuse where I used to buy it, and then watch the video while doing the whippets. Reliving the events I had just experienced, but doing it under the effects of nitrous, gave me a new perspective on it. I would see things I hadn't seen before, and think about them in a different way. I would have insights that I would not otherwise have. I would come to understand things that would otherwise have remained hidden. I would sometimes say that I didn't really know what I thought about an experience until I relived it on nitrous. I began to value this drug more and more.

Beyond reliving recent events, nitrous had a way of collapsing great stretches of time down into a single morsel. I could see in one glimpse similar events or emotions from various points in time throughout my life all in one concise bit that I could comprehend entirely in a single moment. It highlighted certain connections between these points in my past, and interpersonal connections between individuals over time, and made clear how these connections influenced each other. However this would always fade as the nitrous buzz faded, and I would no longer be able to put my finger on what those connections were, but it would leave me with kind of an afterimage of the knowledge. I couldn't remember the specifics, but I had a lingering satisfaction that at one point I did understand it all.

During these days I was essentially in the deepest depths of addiction up to that point. I was drinking alcoholicly, I was smoking marijuana habitually, and huffing nitrous frequently. But the truth was it was one of the happiest, most carefree times of my life. Things were going well at work, I was paying my bills, my relationship with my family was fine, distant and detached as it was. I had great friends and a great social life. I wanted for nothing. But all of that would change on a dime. In one instant, one bong hit would put me over the edge. I would turn a corner, and those carefree days would be behind me forever.

When Memorial Day rolled around I decided to head up to the fraternity house for the long weekend. I picked up a recent graduate, Richie, and his girlfriend as I passed through Syracuse. I was driving a VW van at the time that had a bed in back that I used for my accommodations on these frequent trips. The long weekend wound up being the bender to end all benders. 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.

Then came the moment that would change things for me for ever. Monday morning I was awakened by Richie who came into the van and stuck a bong in my face. I wanted to sleep in and recover. I thought I had locked the van but apparently not. I should have told him to leave me alone and go back to sleep. But I he was persistent, and I decided maybe a little wake & bake might help with my hangover. I took a hit and sent Richie away.

As I lay in bed the buzz hit me really hard. I mean really, really hard. I got WAY more fucked up than I should have after just a single bong hit. I lay there for some time, waiting for the buzz to mellow, but it didn't. It was very intense, and it wasn't like a normal marijuana high. It was almost like an LSD flashback or something.

And what was worse, my heart started acting funny. It did that on rare occasions. I'd be just sitting there, and I'd experience this weird, sharp heart beat. But then it would go back to normal, and I wouldn't think about it again. Now it was doing it every few minutes. It had gone from being an oddity to being alarming.

I lay there longer, but I wasn't feeling any better. I was actually feeling worse. Hour after hour went by and I was just as fucked up as I had been right after I'd done the hit. I wasn't even capable of getting out of bed I was so fucked up. I didn't even think I could stand. I was stressed out over what I was experiencing, I was stressed out about what was happening with my heart, and ultimately I was stressed out that I still had a 3 hour drive ahead of me. I wasn't even capable of sitting up, let alone operating a vehicle. I was in a black hole of misery.

When it was time we really had to get on the road I had Richie do the driving. He and his girlfriend sat up front while I stayed in the bed. The whole while I was still as fucked up as I had been first thing in the morning. When we got to their house a couple hours later they got out, and I had to try to drive the rest of the way. I managed to climb behind the wheel, but as I drove off I quickly realized this wasn't going to be work. I found somewhere to pull over and got back in bed. I was able to fall asleep. When I woke up I was still off kilter, but good enough that I could drive. I managed to get myself home.

That experience scared me straight. I stopped drinking on the spot. I couldn't even think of getting drunk again. I didn't go out on Friday nights. I didn't drink at home. I didn't see much of my friends outside of the office. I just dried out and tried to recover. I didn't miss it that much. I was still too scared from that awful experience to tiptoe back down the rabbit hole. My heart was still having those funky beats, but it gradually tapered off, and I started feeling better. I had every intention of staying dry and leaving alcohol behind, but it wasn't meant to be.

A month later my older brother got married. 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. I continued the cycle 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.

Eventually things went from bad to worse. My heart started doing that funky beat all the time, not just on those hungover Saturdays. After about 18 months of this I finally came to the realization that I would have to do something about my situation. Knowing I was unable to control my drinking, 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.

I started the process by making an appointment with a cardiologist. I would see him on a Friday. I went out drinking the week before, but I knew it would be my last time. I didn't go overboard. At least not more than usual. But I did have it on my mind that it could be my final hurrah. I just enjoyed a night of drinking and went home.

The following Friday I showed up at the cardiologist's office. I was scared as Hell, but by the same token I was ready for a change. He asked me what brought me in, and I did my best to describe the funky heartbeat I was experiencing, and confess that it was probably due to my binge drinking. Before he even examined me he said the best advice he could give me was to stop drinking. I told him that I basically had.

He hooked me up to the EKG and had me run on the treadmill. As he looked at the monitors he said that it looked good. In fact he said that it looked very good. But my heart wasn't doing that thing. After he had me stop I sat down while we talked. He was actually very personable, and we had a nice chat. But then finally my heart did the thing. I was still hooked up to all the wires, so I pointed to the monitor and said, "There! Right there! That's what I've been talking about!"

The doctor looked at the monitor. "Oh," he said casually. "That's just an extra heart beat."

"What?!?!?" I asked. "JUST an extra heart beat?" This had been inspiring mortal fear in me for a year and a half, and the doctor had just said it was nothing.

The "thing" was technically called 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. He said I could just ignore it.

I left the doctor's office feeling greatly relieved, but I was still resolved to stop drinking. The first Friday night was the first challenge. I went to a gathering of coworkers at a local restaurant. It was effective in distracting me from going straight to the bars, but as I looked out over the room full of people I felt uneasy. I barely knew most of them outside of the work environment, and yet I was faced with having to socialize with them without the benefit of the social lubricant. I was not ready to tackle that just yet. I turned around and left. I felt cranky. A big part of me wanted to just go out and get drunk, but I wouldn't allow it. I spent the evening home alone.

This experience revealed what my true challenge would be. 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 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 other challenge was in finding things to do other than going out drinking. It's easy to overlook how much time is invested in that activity until it's removed from the equation. I turned to marijuana use. 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.

I did see an addiction counselor for a time. It helped to talk through the issues I was facing, particularly struggling with socialization and withdrawing into marijuana use. He acknowledged that my primary focus should be on avoiding alcohol, and he could see that I was resolved to do that. He didn't need to convince me that I had to quit clean. I already knew that I was unable to moderate my use. I asked about referring to myself as "sober" considering I still smoked pot, but he wasn't concerned about labels. He did, however, recommend that I attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He said that he was in A.A. himself, and that he found the program to be valuable. I wasn't ready for that, though. I saw a stigma associated with it, and since things were already going so well I decided not to go down that road.

Interestingly I still continued my trips up to my fraternity house. It was my one remaining social outlet. I knew them all very well, I was comfortable around them, and I felt safe being myself and playing the fool, so I didn't need alcohol to lower my inhibitions. My counselor would have said that was the last place that I should be, that sooner or later being in that environment would lead to a relapse, but it actually worked out. The guys all respected my choice to stop drinking, and no one attempted to employ peer pressure. I never felt any great temptation to pick up a drink. It became interesting to observe their behavior. I was in a totally different mindset from everyone else. To be among them, but to not be intoxicated, was like being an outsider looking in. It was like seeing what that lifestyle was like with clear eyes for the first time.

Another thing that helped me manage temptation was the knowledge that I had a 100% clean streak. I knew that if I cheated even once, the bubble would be burst, and the magic would be gone. I knew that if I had even one slip, that the next time I was facing temptation I would say, "Well since the prefect steak is broken, I might as well have a little drink whenever I feel like it," and I'd quickly be back where I was. In order for this to work, it had to be absolutely pure.

This was put to the test just a few months into my sobriety. My father was getting remarried after my mother had died young a few years before. His second wife was a very nice woman whom I liked and respected. I was happy for them both. I would be participating in the ceremony, so I was there for the rehearsal dinner. I think my family noticed that I wasn't having any cocktails, but being WASPs no one said anything bout it.

For dessert they brought out little dishes of vanilla ice cream with a green sauce on it. It looked a little suspect to me. 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 grabbed a waiter.

"What's this green sauce?" I asked.

"That's creme de menthe," he said.

"You mean there's alcohol in it," I asked.

"Mmm hmm," he said casually and walked away.

I was furious. I was absolutely furious. My perfect streak had been broken, and it hadn't been from my own weakness. This goddam restaurant had ruined it for me without my knowledge or consent. If they wanted to serve this dessert then that was fine, but I felt that they had an obligation to notify people that it contained alcohol and give them the opportunity to opt out. I felt as violated as if someone had intentionally slipped me a drug without telling me.

If I hadn't been around my polite, well-mannered WASP family, I would have freaked out like nobody's business. I would have stormed into the manager's office and torn him a new asshole. I would have made a total scene, ranting and raving like a lunatic that they would DARE to serve people alcohol without informing them. But I didn't. I couldn't. I couldn't ruin this night for my father and my soon-to-be step-mother. So I just quietly dealt with my emotions.

But I now had to contend with the fact that this HAD broken my streak. On the surface it would seem like it was no big deal. It was just a tiny bit of liquor as part of a dessert. I should have been able to just brush it off. But what had been giving me power was the fact that my non-alcohol streak had been 100% pure. What had stopped me in moments of temptation was wanting to keep the streak perfect. Now that it had been violated, it wasn't pure anymore. I looked over to the open bar. Whereas before it would not have even been an option, now I had to manage the temptation in a whole new way. My mind immediately went to, "Well you just did a shot. You might as well just give up and start drinking again."

What stopped me was essentially spite. I was pissed the fuck off. I decided I was good and goddamned if I was going to let this restaurant's negligence ruin the good thing I had going. If anything it strengthened my resolve. I was able to dodge the bullet. But it taught me that sobriety was riddled with land mines. Despite my best efforts, there was always the chance that I might consume some alcohol without my knowledge. The important thing is that I catch it, abate it, acknowledge that it wasn't my fault, put it into perspective, and get on with my sobriety.

As the months passed by I became more and more comfortable in my life without alcohol. My long term goal was to quit cigarettes and marijuana, and being truly sober. I took an incremental approach. My plan was to quit cigarettes exactly one year later on my first anniversary, and then quit marijuana the year after.

As the first anniversary approached I was actually looking forward to quitting smoking. It was a nasty habit that I was happy to be rid of. But I still knew it would not be easy. I had tried many times in the past, and I'd never lasted more than a couple days. Despite the fact that I didn't really care for nicotine, smoking was quite a habit to break. There are times when you really just want a cigarette. And heaven forbid someone else lights up in your presence. It's damn near impossible to watch someone else enjoy a cigarette without you joining in.

As the date started to draw nearer I gave myself the liberty to enjoy smoking while I still could. A couple months before the quit date, I began the final preparations. It started with taking a walk down memory lane. For a week or so at a time, I would smoke various brands that I had smoked in the past. I even smoked a pack or two of menthol. It was all very nostalgic.

I was also very conscious about the experience of smoking. Every time I opened a fresh new pack, every time I whipped out the lighter and lit a cigarette, every time I took a drag and filled my lungs with the tangy smoke, I was very aware of what I was doing, and gave it due appreciation knowing that soon it would all be something I would leave in my past. This process did help me prepare for the finality of quitting for good.

When I had just a week or two to go, I had to start getting serious about things. Logic would have dictated that the proper process would be to taper off, smoking less and less each day until I was hardly smoking at all by my quit date. But I took the exact opposite approach. Of all the cigarettes I ever smoked, Camel "wide-gauge" were the most nasty. They were rough on the lungs, they gave me a headache, and they just made me feel awful. For the last ten days or so, I smoked nothing those horrid things. And the closer I got to the quit date, the more of them I smoked. In the final days, I made myself practically chain smoke, lighting up again and again. Even when I really didn't want to, I still forced myself to light up another one, and smoke it all the way down.

It worked like a charm. When the quit date came around I was just begging to stop. I frankly couldn't wait until it was over. But while I knew it would be enough to make me quit, it wouldn't be enough to make me stay quit. After a few days the nicotine would be out of my system, and I'd start craving cigarettes again. I knew I needed something more to keep me motivated.

One thing I had learned from the fraternity culture was the significance of ritual. Or, more accurately, how a ritual can place a high degree of significance on an occasion. So I concocted a ceremony that I would go through to commemorate the event. And to further enhance its effectiveness, I would employ the considerable power of embarrassment. I invited some of my friends over to observe. These people didn't smoke, and they were the ones who would shame me if I ever relapsed. They also were GDI's, and had no exposure to the kind of ceremonies I was using as a model. To include them in the event would first of all make my quitting public and official. They would all be fully aware that I was officially not smoking from that moment on. But to go through this formal ceremony in front of them, knowing full well that they didn't get it, would make me too embarrassed to ever relapse. If I were to ever start smoking again, not only would they give me the typical shame that any non-smoker give someone who fails in his attempt to quit, but they'd be like, "You mean you made me sit through that silly ceremony for NOTHING???" I knew that this very thought would be enough to stop me in those delicate moments when I was facing temptation to reach for a cigarette.

The day arrived, and my friends showed up right on time. The ceremony itself was not terribly elaborate. I lit my last cigarette, and while I was smoking it I spoke certain recitations. With each drag I would make another statement. I forget exactly what I was saying, but it was some general commentary on the rejection of addiction and chemical dependence, and the affirmation of life and good health, all scripted out ahead of time in very particular ceremony-speak. When the cigarette came down to the butt, I used the embers to burn a hole in the front of my favorite baseball cap. The permanence of that hole was to symbolize the permanence of my abstinence from nicotine. I then dipped the burning tip in a cup of water to extinguished it, symbolizing the process of extinguishing my desire to keep smoking. I then encased the butt between two strips of packaging tape faced sticky-side in, to preserve it forever, making it a relic of my past use, and a talisman from which I could draw power in my never-ending efforts to keep clean. I still have that baseball cap, and I still have that embossed cigarette butt to this day.

I thanked my guests for coming. They gave me their best wishes, and they were on their way. They clearly thought that the whole thing was pretty silly, but I have to say that it was totally effective. It gave me a great deal of resolve. I embraced the permanence of the change. And indeed in those moments of weakness when I was overcome with temptation to light up a cigarette, the thought of embarrassment for having gone through this ceremony was all it took to keep me on the straight and narrow.

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, but the fact that I continued smoking weed prevented a full pulmonary recovery.

I was able to successfully stave off the inevitable cravings for tobacco, but one day I got a notion in my head to try the smokeless tobacco. I immediately rejected it, but it continued gnawing at me. It wouldn't be "smoking," so I wouldn't be cheating. Finally I couldn't resist the temptation any longer, so I ran to the store and bought the little green container of Skoal. I had never done this before, but I just followed the "pinch between the cheek and gum" slogan. I had seen my fraternity brothers doing this in the past. They called it "dipping." Rather than spitting, like the guys in the Western movies, they'd just have a cup they'd kind of drool into.

I stuck the tobacco in and sat and watched TV for a while, making sure not to swallow any of my saliva. I can't say I found it to be particularly satisfying. After about 20 minutes I pulled the little wad of tobacco out of my mouth and rinsed out. It seemed to be much ado about nothing.

Then it hit me. A wave of nicotine intoxication bowled me over. It was a million times more intense than anything I'd ever experienced with the strongest, non-filtered cigarettes. And I was wholly unprepared for it. I became incapacitated. I lay back in my recliner, curled up in the fetal position, shaking like a leaf. It was awful. My guts felt like there were ground hogs inside me burrowing around. I almost couldn't take it. It was worse than the bad mushroom trip I'd had all those years before. I just didn't know how to manage it. But all I could do was to do what I always did, which was lie there and wait for it to go away.

Fortunately it only went on for 15 minutes or so. And when I came down, I was never so happy to return to a state of normalcy. It was one of the worst chemical experiences of my life, right up there with the bad mushroom trip and the sleepless night on caffeine pills. I certainly didn't have to worry about this becoming a habit. I threw that shit out and was never tempted to try it again. And fortunately my resolve to stay away from cigarettes remained intact.

That year went quite well. I was becoming more and more comfortable in a life without alcohol. I had gotten to the point that it would have taken more effort to pick up a drink than it was to stay clean. I was just as happy to be rid of the cigarette habit, so there was no temptation there at all. I was content to just smoke weed and occasionally huff a box of whippets. The whole time it was on my mind that my plan was to quit smoking weed on the anniversary date. As it approached I quickly came to the conclusion that I wasn't ready yet. I really liked getting high. I was motivated to quit drinking and smoking cigarettes because each had a demonstrably deleterious effect on my health. I knew I would be more healthy if I didn't get high, which was why I wanted to be completely sober, but the truth was I was getting along just fine. When the date arrived I decided to let another year go by and revisit it on the following anniversary.

The following year continued to go quite well. I had adopted a fitness routine, mostly lap swimming, my heart palpitations were getting less frequent, and I was feeling better and better. Work was going well, my finances were in order, my social life wasn't bad, and basically my life was on track. But I still had the nagging thought that marijuana use wasn't good for me. It was still my goal to be completely sober.

As my anniversary date approached I still didn't feel like I was ready to quit marijuana, but I decided to push myself. I did a little bit of preparation. Not a lot. All I really did was time it so I would run out of weed on the day before. The anniversary came, and I had no weed left anyway, so I just went without smoking.

Things didn't really go all that well at first. I was ill at ease. Quitting alcohol and cigarettes both involved an adjustment, but I was motivated because I honestly wanted to be rid of both of those drugs. But I didn't really want to quit marijuana. I was doing it because I felt that I should. Resisting temptation had a different feel to it. My heart wasn't in it. Rather than reinforcing my resolve, I was constantly talking myself out of giving in. I wasn't happy about it.

I was able to hold on for two weeks. Then one Friday night I was sitting at home watching TV when a rerun of Roseanne came on. It was the one where she finds a bag of weed in the basement and blames Becky for it, but when Dan comes home he reminds her that she stashed it down there herself years before when she was pregnant for the first time. So they wind up smoking it and sitting around the house remembering what it used to be like to get high.

This was more temptation than I could bear. I figured it was a sign. I pulled my old paraphernalia out and scraped the resin that was inside. Smoking resin isn't pleasant, but it does get you high. I smoked what I could scrape up, and it did give me a buzz. And it was good. It was very good. Having not been high for two weeks, I got a very vivid, enjoyable high. It made me very creative. Weed always had that effect on me. I grabbed my sketch pad, and I designed an entire cathedral just for fun. I did a floor plan, elevations, a cross-section, the works.

When I was done I felt I had accomplished something. All I ever accomplished on alcohol was getting drunk and silly. I didn't accomplish a damn thing on tobacco. But marijuana was different. It always had been. And I decided again that I wasn't ready to quit it. I didn't even try to get back on the wagon. The very next day I set out to buy another bag and pick up where I left off.

I continued on like that for another year and a half. I was getting along just fine. Work was going well. My health was good. Overall I was happy, but my drug use was still quietly gnawing away at me in the background. I knew that life would be better still if I could live it completely sober, and I was disappointed in myself that I wasn't able to do it.

I decided to try again on my 34th birthday. There wasn't anything significant about that date, but I thought 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 did a little more preparation this time. I tried to psych myself up a little more for a life without drugs. This time I was careful to throw away my paraphernalia so there would be nothing in the house to tempt me.

I had my last high, I enjoyed it as much as I could, and that was that. I stopped getting high, and did my best to live my life clean. Like before, it wasn't going well. I was constantly struggling with cravings. I had to push myself hard to deny temptation. This time I tried to push through it. But the truth was I was pretty miserable. I was cranky and ill-tempered much of the time. I couldn't shake the notion that just one hit of weed would make it all go away, and I would once again know peace.

I was proud of myself for keeping clean, but things were still not going well. I remember stomping around in a vile mood, thinking of nothing but the fact that one hit of weed would make all the anger go away. And I was having other thoughts. I was starting to think about maybe having a drink again. It had been almost 5 years since I had quit, and in all that time I had been steadfast. Except for rare occasions when I was faced with anxiety and wanted to use alcohol medicinally, I never once wanted to return. But now that I had no crutch of any kind, now that I was running around without a net, I was really facing temptation for the first time. It was only a whisper, but that voice was there.

About six weeks after I had stopped smoking weed, I found myself back up at the fraternity house again. I was hanging out with one of them, a guy nicknamed Linus who was one of my favorites, and I made the mistake of telling him that I was thinking about going back to drink. His response was, "I would LOVE to have beer with you, Toaph."

I had become somewhat of an icon by this time. I had been around for so long, and I had become known by so many of the guys, that I had become almost part of the institution. And I had been dry for so long that some of the guys had never known me when I was drinking. Linus was one of them. He'd never seen me drunk, and he'd never been able to share a drink with me. Drinking was also part of the institution itself. It as more than consuming a drug and feeling the effects. It was part of the social culture. To share a drink with someone was to reinforce a social bond.

In the previous 5 years, no one had ever tried to coerce me into taking a drink. Everyone respected my choice and was always supportive. But the moment I mentioned the possibility, as soon as I cracked that door open, they had no compunction over swinging it open wide.

Linus's misplaced encouragement pushed me over the edge. It didn't take much. Frankly I was teetering as it was. I rationalized it that since I wasn't smoking pot that it would be okay to go back to drinking alcohol. Basically I was substance bargaining. But it wasn't an impulsive relapse. I made a conscious decision, however misguided. If I was going to return to drinking, I would do it on my terms.

I planned out my first drink very methodically. I was driving one of those crazy Citroën cars again, like the one I had back when I was tripping on LSD all those years before. This one was almost exactly identical to the other one, except that it had brown leather seats rather than black. I had driven it on my visit to the fraternity this time, and it was just about to turn 100,000 miles. I had already planned to commemorate the occasion, and I decided to combine it with my return to drink.

I got a bottle of champagne and put it on ice. I grabbed Linus and a couple others, and away we went. We drove around until the odometer turned over and read 000000. I pulled the car over and we popped the cork. I made a little toast, and I took a sip. In that one moment, 1785 days without alcohol came to an end. My first thought was that champagne tastes kind of yucky.

My return to alcoholism started with a whimper, not a bang. It was a Friday afternoon, and there was a TGIF party ramping up back at the chapter house. I had a beer. I had forgotten what keg beer tasted like. It really wasn't all that pleasant. But I wasn't drinking it for the flavor. After a couple more, the alcohol buzz started to set in. It had been so long, I had actually forgotten what the sensation felt like. But this wasn't like the first time when my world changed forever. It was like an old friend saying hello again. I got a little drunk that night but kept it under control. It was fun.

But a little later in the evening, in my intoxicated state, mild as it was, I was ill-equipped to resist the temptation to smoke a little weed. The first time I walked into a room where they were doing bongs, I joined right in with them without giving it much of a thought. The bargaining was out the window. I didn't even try to resist.

I got a nice buzz. It was the fist time in almost 6 weeks that I'd been high, and it felt good. It felt really good. My whole body was enveloped in a warm, tingly, vibrant sensation of euphoria. I walked out back behind the house, sat on the bank of the river that flowed behind, and looked up at the stars and enjoyed the autumn evening breeze. The experience was markedly enhanced by the marijuana buzz. I decided quite conclusively that I liked getting high. I liked it a lot. I admitted to myself that I really didn't want to give it up. I briefly considered more bargaining, that I would go back to alcohol sobriety but forget about marijuana sobriety. But I pretty quickly gave up on the whole deal. I was drinking and getting high again, and that was that.

The next day felt fine. I drove back home without it being a nasty, hungover nightmare.

My intentions from that point on were to drink when there was a party, and otherwise not to drink just for the sake of drinking. That lasted for the work week. On Friday as I was driving home, I went past the local mini-mart. "Hmmm. They have beer in there," I thought to myself. "I could get a 6-pack to drink sitting around the house tonight."

This had become a foreign concept. It had been so damn long since I could just "have a beer," that I had basically forgotten the whole notion. Alcohol had become an all-or-nothing, disease-oriented, life-ruining, "you're with us or against us" push and pull. But I was starting a new life now, and a new relationship with alcohol. So I decided to go ahead and sip some beers on a Friday evening.

It went okay. I had the beers and got a buzz. It didn't feel all that great, but I didn't lose control and feel compelled to go out and drink the whole town dry. But as I lay down to bed I did experience another compulsion that I wasn't expecting, and I wasn't prepared for. I remembered that I had a cigarette sitting in my car. It was the one I used to fiddle around with while I drove. I hadn't planned to return to smoking. That wasn't part of the bargain. I was still glad to be rid of that nasty habit. But as I lay in bed a little drunk, I could not shake the notion. I could not manage the temptation. And I knew I was not going to get to sleep until I had gotten it out of my system.

I got back up, went out to the car, grabbed the cigarette, and brought it back inside. I lit it up and smoked the whole thing. It was not what I would describe as a satisfying experience. First of all, it was a stale old cigarette that had probably been sitting out in the open in my car for a year or more. And the nicotine buzz was really yucky. But I had quelled the desire, and at least now I could get to sleep.

At that point in my life I lacked the perspective to understand what had happened, but with hindsight it was clear. I had attempted to be 100% sober. Quitting weed got me there. But I was unprepared for it. I did not have the proper foundation and support structure. The result was that I had a 100% relapse. I had been doing just fine on the marijuana maintenance program, but now I was right back where I was before this all began. I was drinking, smoking, getting high, and huffing nitrous. I had back-slid all the way to the beginning. But there was no going back now. My mind was nowhere near the place it would have to be to make any subsequent attempts to get sober again. I was deep back in it.

Having said that, it was reasonably manageable. I had been a daily marijuana smoker all along, so that was like it had always been. My drinking was not out of control. I was back to drinking on Friday nights, and I was not able to moderate it, but I never really drank to the extreme like in my younger days. The only fly in the ointment was the cigarette smoking.

I was in a really weird place. I really didn't want to smoke, but I still couldn't resist the temptation. It was a form of powerlessness that I hadn't really experienced before. I wanted the habit back, but I really couldn't tolerate the drug. Nicotine was awful. It made me dizzy and nauseous. I wished that they had denicotinated cigarettes just like they have decaffeinated coffee. I tried some herbal cigarettes, but they were totally unsatisfying. Hits of real tobacco had a kind of a bite that I felt down to the depths of my lungs, and these fake cigarettes just didn't have that. At the time I attributed it to the harshness of the tobacco smoke, but many years later someone pointed out to me that the bite was the nicotine itself. Just like the way a shot of alcohol burns the tissues of the throat, a hit of nicotine jolts the tissues of the lungs. The guy who pointed that out made me feel like a dunce for not knowing it, but it was something I had never considered. All I knew back at the time was that the only smoke I found satisfying was tobacco smoke, and I was just going to have to retrain my body to tolerate it.

In terms of marijuana, I still had few contacts, and it continued to be very difficult to procure. I was as dependent on it as I had always been. I did not want to go without. If I didn't have any I could always pick up a drink, but that was not satisfying in the same way. When I first quit drinking my conclusion was that marijuana was not a suitable substitute for alcohol, but now my conclusion ironically was that alcohol was not a suitable substitute for marijuana. I would go to any lengths to acquire it, even if it meant driving all the way up to my fraternity house just to score a bag.

In terms of alcohol, many things had changed over the 5 years that I abstained. All my old drinking buddies had either moved away, or gotten married and started families. All my old haunts were effectively filled with strangers. I had been hanging out at the gay bar that whole time, but without the benefit of alcohol I mostly skulked around the edges like a wallflower. Now that I was drinking along with everyone else, the dynamic totally changed. I was no longer afraid to walk up to strangers and start a conversation. It became like my neighborhood bar. I looked forward to going out on Friday nights and seeing all my friends. In the big picture I was better off without alcohol, but the truth was my social life was infinitely more robust when I was drinking.

One big problem that my new situation created was that I was driving drunk again. There was only one gay bar in the whole area, was a rather long drive from my house. After a night of drinking I had to drive that whole way back again. I wasn't really concerned for my safety or the safety of others. Even when I was under the influence I was still a very attentive and controlled driver. But the possibility of getting a DWI was very risky. All it would take was one sobriety checkpoint and I'd be thrown in jail and suffer consequences for many years to come. That was a risk I was not at all comfortable taking. But my behavior didn't change.

In the early days this wasn't much of a problem. My drinking, while perhaps excessive by general standards, was pretty moderate by alcoholic standards. But alcoholism is a progressive disease. As time went on I found that I was getting more intoxicated by the end of the night. I was also experiencing blackouts. It was nothing major, but I would have lapses in memory over the course of the evening. I would remember the first few drinks, and I would remember when last call approached, but the time in between was just missing.

I eventually adopted a practice to help avoid the risk of DWI. On those nights when I'd had a little bit too much to drink, when last call approached I would sidle up to some lonely old man drinking alone at the bar and strike up a conversation. When they turned the lights on and everyone had to leave I would ask if he would take me back to his place and give me a ride back in the morning to pick up my car. They were usually all too happy to accept that offer. Once we got to their place and we climbed into bed I would typically let them feel me up and suck my dick to compensate them for all their trouble. I saw it as a win-win situation. None of them ever complained, and I never had any regrets. It worked perfectly well, but those drives back to the gay bar parking lot on Saturday mornings weren't a lot of fun, and my hangover the rest of the day would be pretty bad.

This habit was reasonably sustainable, but my alcoholism was progressing in other ways. Sometimes after work on a Thursday if I didn't have any significant commitments the next day I would get the notion to pick up a 6-pack on my way home. This indicated a progression of my disease in a couple of ways. First of all it was another form of powerlessness. If the notion entered my head, I would be powerless to deny it. I would always give in and buy the 6-pack. But it was also a form of denial. I would always tell myself that I would just drink it down and go to bed, but by the time I got good and drunk I would want to keep the party going. I would wind up driving out to the gay bar and getting more trashed. The next time I got the notion on a Thursday I would promise myself that it would be different this time, but the same thing would happen. It was an example of that Einstein quote where insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. But I would still be unable to stop myself.

As time wore on the consequences of my drinking started piling up. My work productivity was not good. Beyond missing the occasional Friday, I was just tired and unfocused all the time. In addition to just the alcohol taking its toll, it was making me sleep-deprived. Those late nights of binge drinking were very disruptive to my normal sleep cycles. When I was younger I could get away with it, but the older I got the more important it was for me to get good sleep, and it just wasn't happening. I would get fatigued very easily at work, and I couldn't produce the output I should have.

All this should have been enough to motivate me to stop drinking. I had done it once before, I should be able to do it again. I make an attempt to quit, but it would only be a matter of time before I would relapse again. Then I would make another attempt, but that would fail as well. This went on and on, over and over again. I called it "Swiss cheese sobriety."

The cycle became very tiresome. I finally decided that I needed some help. Maybe it was time to give A.A. a try. But I was afraid to go alone. I needed someone who was already in the program to escort me. There was a guy at work who attended meetings. His marriage had fallen apart, and he coped with it by turning to alcohol. Unlike me, he couldn't hold it together in the office, and his career was starting to fall apart too. His supervisor did an intervention of sorts, and got him to start attending A.A. meetings. He wasn't the best role model for me. It wasn't being terribly effective for him. But he was willing to take me to a meeting with him.

He went to a group that met right on campus over the lunch hour that was within walking distance of our office. I procrastinated for a while, but finally picked a day I would go with him. I was a little nervous. I still felt a stigma associated with A.A. But what I was doing wasn't working. I was ready to give it a try.

As we entered the room and sat down, I felt like all eyes were upon me, like obviously I was the new person in the room that no one recognized. But I just sat quietly and took it all in. I wasn't sure what to expect. The first thing that I learned was that they had a standard agenda they followed. The moderator literally read from a script. He would toss it to other individuals who would also read from scripts, one of them being the 12 steps. Then it got to the point where he asked if anyone was here for the first time. I could have just sat there and faked it, but I spoke up.

"Uhhh," I said somewhat hesitantly. "This is the first time I've ever gone to an A.A."

I forget if they applauded, but I was greeted very warmly and openly as people smiled and welcomed me.

The rest of the meeting became all about me. The moderator said, "Whenever we have someone new we always make it a 1st step meeting." They went around the room, and everyone talked generally about what their lives were like before A.A., how they got to A.A., and how their lives had changed as a result. Everyone began with, "I'm Sue and I'm an alcoholic," or "I'm Steve and I'm an alcoholic." One guy even went so far as to say, "I'm Jim. I'm an alcoholic, an I'm always going to BE an alcoholic."

Their stories were pretty dire. By and large these people drank uncontrollably each and every day, day in and day out. For them every day was like those hungover Fridays I had when I couldn't control myself on Thursday nights. The guy who said he was always going to be an alcoholic said that he came into A.A. one morning when he had a gun in his mouth because he knew he either had to stop drinking or kill himself.

Frankly it was difficult for me to relate to these people, because my story just wasn't anywhere near as extreme as any of theirs. Most everyone said that they had great difficulty accepting the fact that they were alcoholics, and I couldn't even relate to THAT. I recognized that I had a drinking problem that first night when I was unable to control my intake many years before.

Still, I stayed through the meeting and listened to all their stories. While they were talking they had been passing around a card on which they were writing their names and phone numbers in case I wanted to give them a call. I didn't expect that I would ever call any of them, but it made me feel good that I had so much unconditional support if I needed it. I left the meeting with a glimmer of hope. It was surrounded by an ocean of doubt, but it was better than having no hope at all.

Going to the A.A. meeting was better than nothing, but the truth was it wasn't very effective in getting me to stop drinking. I continued the pattern where I would make a half-hearted attempt to quit, but it was only a matter of time before I would relapse. It was also around this time I started traveling more, and alcohol played a pretty big role in the mischief I'd get into when I was on the road. If anything I was moving farther away from sobriety. A.A. was not helping to bring me back.

The problem was that I wasn't working the program. I was going to meetings now and then, but not really doing what they prescribed. I didn't have a sponsor, I wasn't reading the Big Book, and I wasn't working the steps. I got past the first 2 steps okay. To paraphrase, Step 1 is admitting you have a problem, and step 2 is conceding you need help to get over it. I was okay with both of those. Step 3 was the barrier. It literally says, "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God." To generalize this in atheistic terms, it means you fully commit to your sobriety. This was what I had been able to do when I first quit all those years before, and it was exactly what I was unable to do now. As much as I knew I had to quit, I was not able to commit myself to it. And without that, A.A. would be ineffective, and I would continue on as I was.

This went on for a few years. I pretty well got over my Thursday binges, but I was still going out on Friday nights, sometimes driving home drunk, sometimes pimping myself out for a bunk. When I would fly off to places like San Francisco, New Orleans, Palm Springs, or Las Vegas, I would drink myself blind. In Las Vegas I actually got cut off. The bar tender thought I was a hustler working the crowd. How fucked up to you have to be to get cut off in Las Vegas???

All the while I was still making failed attempts at sobriety. I would tell myself I was quitting, attend an A.A. meeting or two, and then relapse weeks or even days later. But it all came to a head one fateful night in 2003. There had been a daylong retreat in the office, capped off by happy hour at a local bar. We were all in the midst of a huge project, and things had been a little tense. It was a valuable opportunity to forget the struggles we'd been having, let our hair down, and engage socially.

It was a Tuesday. I decided I would have two pints. Just two, and then that would be the end of it. After the second pint I was feeling good, so I decided to have just one more. Three pints, and then I'd put a cap on it. Well over the course of that third pint, most of the reasonable people filtered out, leaving just us hard boozers. If I had left after two, I may have been able to batten it down, but I hadn't. I was feeling good, I was hanging out with other people who were going to keep on drinking, so I went along for the ride.

Some of the people who had already left the bar went off to a local restaurant. After I had a couple more pints I decided to take off and catch up with them. They were actually finishing up their meal when I got there, but they invited me to sit down and have a couple more drinks with them. I was actually quite entertaining. I was able to let loose and joke around like I could never do in the office. They liked that side of me. It was a personality they wished they could see more of.

By the time everyone left the restaurant, I knew I was over the edge. I knew there was no controlling the situation, so I didn't even try. I was too drunk to let the thought of negative consequences deter me. It was like the thought of getting wet deterring the rain. I wasn't so much experiencing a desire to get more drunk as much as I was admitting the reality that there was no way to stop it from happening.

I hit the ATM for some cash, put a little gas in my car, and headed out to the gay bar. The place was empty on a Tuesday night. There was one lonely old man at the bar, so I sidled right up beside him, and we talked the night away as I got drunker and drunker. When last call came he agreed to put me up for the night and take me back to my car in the morning. When we got back to his place he sucked my dick into the wee hours of the morning when we both passed out.

The next morning I woke up at the break of dawn, exhausted, hungover, and in a stranger's bed. It was a work day, but I knew there was no way I was going into the office. This was not good. Not only were we embroiled in a huge, high-profile project that needed all hands on deck all the time, but the Vice President of Information Technology at Cornell was joining us for lunch to see how things were going. I would be conspicuously absent. And because there had been a party the night before, everyone would know exactly why.

When I couldn't lie in bed any longer, I got up and stumbled around the old man's apartment in my underwear looking for my clothes. When I put on my pants I discovered that my wallet was missing. My debit card was there, but no wallet. I collapsed emotionally. This was too much. This was the final straw. This was one step beyond. This had to stop. I couldn't go on like this. I had had enough.

I was able to rouse the old man and coerce him into taking me back to my car. On the drive home I retraced my steps, looking to see if I could find my wallet. I went to the gas station. It wasn't there, and no one had turned it in. I went to the ATM, and again there was no sigh of it. With no other options, I just went home.

The first thing I did was to email in sick. I knew everyone would know why I wasn't there. I didn't acknowledge it directly, but I did say I was having a "personal crisis." It was true. This was it. It was as close to a moment of clarity as I was going to get. It was a turning point.

Once I had sent the email, I smoked some pot, lay down in front of the TV, and settled in for a long, miserable, unproductive day nursing what I intended to be my final hangover. I napped as best I could. Later that afternoon the phone rang. It was some lady who had found my wallet. She said it was sitting right next to the ATM. I must have pulled out my ATM card, set the wallet down on the shelf, and when I got my cash just grabbed the card and took off with the wallet still sitting there. She got my name from my driver's license and looked up my number. We made arrangements for me to get it back from her the following day. I could relax a little now. It was like years before when they found my parents' skis. But I was still determined to make a change in my life.

I wish I could say that was it. The truth of the matter is that the following Friday evening one of my good friends and drinking buddies was being honored for receiving a full professorship at Cornell. He had invited me to the celebration, and I had already accepted. While I was at the event I again succumbed to my powerlessness, and I had some drinks. Just a few. But I went back to my friend's place, and we continued drinking. I didn't get loaded, but he didn't want me driving home, so I fell asleep on his couch.

The next morning I woke up, tired and hung over and not in my own bed, and I said to myself, "What're you doing, Toaph? How much longer are you going to let this go on?" The previous morning I had been full of self-pity. This morning I was pissed off. I was pissed at myself. I didn't have resolve as much as I had determination. Stubborn, obstinate determination. I was determined that I was not going to let alcohol get the better of me any longer, goddammit.

That did it. I stopped drinking cold turkey. I had finally had enough. It was my moment of clarity. I had what I didn't have since the first time I quit drinking: resolve. I was resolved to put alcohol behind me once and for all. I didn't look back. I decided to stop smoking weed and cigarettes at the same time just for good measure. I was motivated to clean up my ac.

Those early days of sobriety were a little strange. The flip side of being a chronic relapser is that you're a chronic recoverer. I had detoxed many, many times, and I had started to notice patterns. Everything seems to go awry when you're detoxing. And the funny thing is that most of it has absolutely nothing to do with detoxing or recovery. You just enter into this strange period of discordant energies as your chi tries to regain some manner of equilibrium.

This occasion was marked by a couple of odd events. I was contacted by someone I met when I was attending a gay/lesbian A.A. group. His drug of choice was crack. He lured me into a 3-way with a 19yo if I would pay for the drugs. I knew this was a bad idea, but my good sense hadn't quite returned to me yet. I got some money and we connected with his dealer, who was highly suspicious of me. It got a little scary, but finally he sold my friend the drugs and we went back to his place. He started smoking the crack, and it didn't take long before I realized there was no 19yo. It had been bait for me to finance the drug deal. He tried to get me to smoke some, but there was no way I would.

I also had a trip to Amsterdam and Paris already on the books. I had non-refundable plane tickets and everything. I was supposed to meet up with someone I knew from Ithaca, but the closer the trip got the more he hedged and pulled back. I also thought that Amsterdam was the worst place in the world a recently sober person should be going. Then George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq, which put French and U.S. people at odds with each other. This trip was not looking like a good idea. The day before I was supposed to leave this snotty little upstart at work pissed me off during a meeting, and I couldn't stop ruminating over it. On the way home I got a haircut for the trip which wound up being one of the worst haircuts I'd ever gotten, and I've gotten A LOT of bad haircuts. I tossed and turned all night and barely slept a wink. The next day there was no way I was getting on a plane and dealing with European jet lag. I ate the cost of the plane tix and went into work like nothing had happened.

That was such a relief that for the first time in weeks, I felt a sense of calm fall over me. I was relaxed. In the following weeks and months I settled into a reasonably comfortable groove. I attended a few A.A. meetings just to help me get my head back on straight, but it didn't last. I had a lot of ground to make up, but I had finally achieved some resolve. I knew that this time I wasn't going to be going back to drinking again.

However it wasn't long before I started smoking cigarettes and weed again, but I was okay with that. As long as I didn't drink anything else was okay. I was satisfied with the marijuana maintenance program. At least for the time being. One thing at a time.

But it was again an adjustment to learn how to live without alcohol. Phase 1 of my drinking had been youth, college, and post-college binge drinking. Phase 2 of my drinking had been more exotic. It had included travel, and was marked with wanton debauchery with colorful people in far-off lands. The first spring I was sober I went to see a friend in Chicago and attend the International Mr. Leather event. I was expecting a wild adventure, but without alcohol to unlock my inner jester, it was really all pretty banal. When it was all over, I figured that I might as well have stayed home.

Time wore on, and my abstinence from alcohol got more ingrained. Having gone through it once before, it was a little easier to adjust to life without it, and to re-learn how to have fun without getting drunk. It was true that my social life evaporated and my adventures were considerably less noteworthy, but by the same token my life was a lot more livable. When I would travel on alcohol, I would experience extreme highs followed by extreme lows. Without alcohol everything was on a much more even keel. I came to the conclusion that life without alcohol wasn't as much fun, but it was easier.

About a year after I had given up alcohol, I was faced with a decision. I had reconnected with a guy I had met during a booze-fueled trip to Palm Springs and we got a romantic thing going and I flew out to spend some time with him. He wasn't a big drinker, but he loved to smoke pot, so we were pretty compatible there. But one night he wanted to binge on crystal meth. I had to decide if I was into that or not. I concluded that alcohol was my problem drug. I had played around with cocaine in the past and it had never threatened to become a habit, so I decided I would give meth a try.

We went to a head shop to pick up the needed paraphernalia. We would be smoking it so he got the proper glass pipe. Then he connected with his dealer and we went back to his place and started smoking. My first impression was that the smoke wasn't as hot and burning as I expected. It was almost cool. I found the high to be a little like cocaine but different. I came to understand the sexual component to it. It just made you want to get down and dirty. And I could see how people became so addicted to it. The combination of euphoria and sexual desire had an irresistible allure.

I had my fun, but in the wee hours of the morning I'd had enough. I tried to get a little sleep. I didn't get much. The next day I was tired and wiped out. The last thing I wanted to do was more meth. I'd had the experience and that was enough for me. But my counterpart wanted to keep going. We still had some left, so he started doing it on his own. I could see the craven desire in his eyes. He couldn't stop. It made me a little uncomfortable. What he did was his business, but I was bored not having him to keep me company, and I didn't want to sit around and watch his unrestrained obsession with the drug. When it ran out he was more or less back to his normal self. He didn't need to go get more and keep it going. But that glimpse into the manic fixation that drug induces was a little disturbing.

Later that year I took a leave of absence from my day job to shack up with this same guy out in Palm Springs. Meth never reentered the picture, and it was not a problem for me to not drink in that environment. He wasn't a big drinker. But he put some pressure on me to go out to the bars with him because that was where social and professional networking took place. I was not into that. I was very uncomfortable being in bars. It wasn't that it triggered me and tempted me to have a drink. For the most part I was just bored. There was nothing for me to do. I was not good at the superficial chit-chat when I wasn't drinking. As soon as I stepped into a bar I just wanted to turn around and walk right back out again. It was a point of contention for us.

Not long after I arrived, he and I and his business partner all decided we were going to quit smoking cigarettes. I was happy to give it up. Like before, it was more of a habit than an addiction. My counterpart didn't make it to lunch the first day before he broke down and had a cigarette. His business partner may have made it a day or two, but then he succumbed as well. I decided I was going to stick with it. Even though they smoked around me all the time, I made it a point not to join them, if for no other reason that to just prove to them that I could. They both marveled that I could just drop it like that, with no irritability or weight gain or other side effects. It honestly wasn't hard for me because I was happy to be rid of the nicotine.

Alas, the relationship didn't last, and when my leave of absence was winding down I flew back home with my tail between my legs. It was an emotional time. My counterpart embarked on an intense campaign of verbal abuse. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but they got nothin' on a pissed off drama queen. This guy did his best to rake me over the coals, and he was pretty damn good at it. It wasn't enough to get me to start drinking again, but I did start smoking cigarettes pretty much as soon as I got back home.

The pattern continued where I stayed away from alcohol but kept smoking cigarettes and weed. I kept wanting to quit, but what continually undermined my efforts was that I had smoking buddies who lived nearby. It was the same guys on whose couch I woke up when I quit drinking for good. They both smoked cigarettes, and there was no way I was not going to be able to join in whenever I visited them, which was pretty frequently.

After a couple years of this they decided they were going to quit as a New Years Resolution. My reaction was, "Finally!" I dropped it like a bad habit. I was so glad to be rid of it. I didn't have any cravings, I didn't have any withdrawals, I had no issues of any kind. I just stopped dead and I was happy about it. My friends relapsed after a short time, but I didn't. I was over it. I could visit them while they smoked and not even be tempted to have one with them. I never had another cigarette after that.

I still smoked marijuana on a daily basis. Overall it didn't really had a negative impact on my life, but there was something that started bothering me. I was beginning to feel it in my lungs. I was a fitness buff, and I did a lot of cardio exercises, and my pulmonary function wasn't bad, but there was a persistent rawness in my throat, and a bit of an ache in my left lung.

I tried to moderate my use and cut down on the amount I was smoking. It was a quixotic effort. My patterns of use with alcohol and marijuana were very different, but they had one thing in common: it was all-or-nothing. With alcohol it wasn't how often I drink, it was that once I started there was no controlling it. With marijuana there was no controlling the frequency. I had to smoke every day.

I had moderate success rationing it out and smoking less every day, but there was no way I could just keep it to weekends or something like that. If I tried not to smoke for a day, the allure would keep calling out to me. I couldn't get it off my mind. The temptation would keep gnawing away at me hour after hour, minute after minute, until I finally gave in and lit up. I made some bogus efforts to place impediments between me and the weed, like having friends hold my stash for me and only give it out at certain intervals, but it was a waste of time. There was no controlling my cravings. I finally just gave in and started smoking normally. I had to deal with the effect it was having on my lungs and do my best to ignore it.

The other thing that was becoming a bit troublesome during this time was my nitrous use. That was only an occasional treat, but the cumulative effects were beginning to add up. It got to the point that I was doing it about once a week or so. I wouldn't let myself do it any more frequently than that. I would be groggy and spaced out the day afterwards. It wasn't incapacitating, but it wasn't good. I was okay at not doing it more frequently than that, but it was still too much.

The nitrous temptation was another interesting case study in powerlessness. If it didn't occur to me then I was fine. It's not like it was a constant compulsion I had to control. But the minute the thought entered my mind there was no denying it. I couldn't talk myself out of it. Even if I wasn't even really in the mood, or if I had a big day the next day where I needed to function well, I couldn't resist the temptation to buy a box of whippets and huff the whole thing.

There were times when it really became a monkey on my back. I would get to the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I was still unable to control my cravings, so what I would do is toss my whip cream bottle in a dumpster somewhere, or any other place where I could never retrieve it again. That would at the very least remove my ability to consume the drug. Granted I could just go and buy another one, but they weren't cheap. The expense was enough to deter me, at least for a while. It would be enough of an impediment that I could obviate the temptation. It would work for a while, but eventually I would get an uncontrollable urge, and I would pay to buy another bottle. I would go back to huffing a box every week or so, until I had enough again and would again toss the bottle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This was becoming more bothersome. My nitrous hangovers were getting worse, and my cognitive ability was suffering across the board. I was spaced out and unable to focus at work more and more. I knew that if I quit smoking weed, then the nitrous use would stop along with it. I was experiencing increased discomfort in my left lung, and my cardio conditioning was suffering. I finally got to the point where I figured I had to give it up.

I knew this would mean full sobriety, and I knew what I was facing because I had been there before. But I had a new weapon this time. I had been toying with a concept for my higher power. It was something I had struggled with all along. For people who believe in God it's easy, but for atheists like me it can be a struggle to embrace something that you believe has control over your destiny. But I had an idea that I thought had merit.

I lost my mother to cancer when I was 27 years old. I got the idea of using her spirit as my higher power. I didn't really believe in a life after death, but I was able to come at it from another angle. I could feel her presence. Even if it was just in my own mind, I knew that it could still have an influence over me. Whether or not her spirit was actually present, I knew what she would think if she were there watching me. I knew what her reaction would be to my continuing to use despite demonstrable negative consequences. At the very least my higher power could be my memory of her, and honoring that memory. That was something absolute and concrete that I could solidly grab onto.

The trick was actually putting this into practice. I did a little preparation this time. I planned ahead for a quit date. I wasn't a huge long preparation, but I did choose a quit date in advance, and when that date arrived I did a little ritual. I took whatever little weed I had left, and I went out behind the cemetery that is right on my property. I tossed the weed out into the brush, and I said three times, "I turn my will and my life over to the care of the spirit of my ancestors."

I knew that the very next day I would be faced with temptation. My rationalization always was that I did need to quit, but I didn't need to quit today. I could always put it off a little longer. I knew that was where my head would be the following day, and I would need to manage that. What I did was just took a little scrap of paper and wrote on it, "Do the right thing." I placed the paper conspicuously in my car so that I would see it the next morning on my drive into work.

I knew that quitting was the right thing to do. My mother, when she was alive, was known for always doing the right thing in absolutely every circumstance. I knew that she would want me to do the right thing. Seeing that paper first thing in the morning, or more significantly when I came out of work at the end of the day, would help to motivate me. That was all I had to do. I just had to do the right thing. It was that simple.

That first day I went to an A.A. meeting after work. It was enough to distract me from the desire to go score some weed, and it served as a little refresher course in the positivity of sobriety. I went to another meeting now and then, but I didn't really need it. Every time I had a craving I just said, "do the right thing," and I thought about what my mother would think if I gave in and relapsed. It was enough to keep me going.

That period of sobriety lasted for almost three years. The problem was they were three of the most dreary, banal, boring, unproductive years of my life. I was being a "dry drunk" again. I was staying away from marijuana, but I wasn't embracing sobriety. That may seem like an inconsequential distinction, but there's a lot to it. Truly sober people are grateful to be sober. More than just being happy that they're no longer encumbered by their addiction(s), they fully adopt a way of living where they work on improving themselves, their relationships with others, and their place in their community. That's what the 12-step program is all about. But I still wasn't working the program. I wasn't working on myself. I was just killing time. It wasn't productive.

It was almost three years later when I started smoking weed again. Like the time I started drinking alcohol again after my first period of abstinence, this was not an impulsive relapse. I thought about it long and hard. It was a conscious decision I made, and I chose the right place and time to rejoin the world of pot smokers. I thought that my first high would be very intense, but it was actually underwhelming. It may have been because it was so long since I smoked that I needed to build up my THC levels again. But suffice it to say, I was back.

Things were a little different this time. My financial situation was such that I could afford to purchase weed in bulk, and always replenished my supply well before I ran out, so I was never in fear of having to go without or scrambling to score a stash. My consumption rate remained surprisingly consistent over the course of all those years. I smoked about an eighth of an ounce a week. It never progressed beyond that. My nitrous addiction returned along with my marijuana use, but it wasn't nearly as intense as before. I was able to keep it to once a month or so.

This pattern continued for the next decade. I smoked marijuana on a daily basis at a consistent level. I dealt with the effect it was having on my lungs, and otherwise lived life contently and without guilt. I was a marijuana smoker, and I was always going to be a marijuana smoker, and there wasn't much point in trying to convince myself otherwise. I was actually honest about it with my doctor, and it always came up at my annual physical. I would have a chest x-ray from time to time, but it was always clear, so I kept a clean conscience.

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. I would smoke up as soon as I was done working for the day. On weekends I would try not to wake-and-bake, but I wasn't always successful. At best I might make it to noon. 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 time I just 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.

That's not to say it would be easy. It was still a habit that was entrenched after decades of use. Once again I planned ahead. I picked Labor Day as my quit date. I would enjoy the long weekend, and when it was over I would be done. That evening I took whatever marijuana I had left and threw it off in the bushes. 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. I didn't even need my higher power, such as it was, because I was motivated all on my own. 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 one night that changed. It was the night before Thanksgiving. I was staying home for once, and while I was fine with being alone for the holiday, I knew that I would need to fight some boredom. It was that evening when I remembered that I had some edibles stashed away somewhere. I had experimented with edibles in the past, but it was never a good fit for me. I was too accustomed to the immediacy of smoke inhalation, and had very inconsistent results with the level of high I would get from edibles.

Remembering that I had edibles right in the house was the first time I had to deal with temptation this time. I should have just tossed them, but I decided to eat them down. I was afraid I would have to wait a long time for a disappointing high, so I ate up everything that was there. I sat back, and about 45 minutes later I did get a nice buzz going. I had to admit that it was nice being high again.

I decided that I would give edibles a try in earnest. If I could be content with just a mellow buzz without having to burn my throat and lungs, then it might be sustainable. By this time cannabis had become legal in New York State, but no dispensaries had opened yet. The exception was Indian reservations. They could circumvent the byzantine regulatory process that was holding everything up, but still not be breaking the law. There was one not too far away that sold a variety of edibles.

The next Friday I decided I would drive up there and buy a stash. I calculated the dose I would need for a good high based on what I had eaten the week before. My plan was to drive up after work, buy a nice batch of gummies, take the calculated amount, drive a little further to a favorite sub shop up there, and by the time I was getting home the buzz should be settling in.

When I got to the dispensary I picked out some blueberry gummies of the highest milligram they had. Back out in my car I ate a bunch of them to get up to the dosage I had calculated. It was a little unpleasant. I was never into gummies as candies. I didn't like having to gnaw away at them just for the purposes of ingesting THC. But at least I wasn't burning my throat and lungs.

I drove off knowing that the sub shop was still a ways away. It wasn't long before I started feeling the buzz. This was way ahead of schedule. It was alarming. I knew right away that I had miscalculated the dose, and that I had taken way too much. I didn't panic. I knew that based on my extensive years of drug experiences that I would be able to weather the storm, but I also knew that there was a storm on its way.

I should have turned around right then and there, but I decided to continue on to the sub shop. I did need dinner after all. By the time I got there and was standing at the counter I was already pretty fucked up. As I sat there eating my sub I just got more and more high. Things were already getting out of control.

I got back in the car and headed home. I was in no condition to drive, but I had no choice. I kept my wits about me as best I could. The one thing going for me was I had driven this route countless times in the past and I pretty well knew every inch by heart. It was also all country roads except for one small community, so traffic should be light.

As I drove along I just kept getting more and more fucked up. I had virtually no experience with the edible high. When you smoke it, it's kind of self-regulating. No matter how much you smoke you're never really going to get past a certain level of marijuana intoxication. But in this was a different kind of high, and it was achieving a level I had never experienced before. I just did my best to keep it together as the road and the world started melting away in front of me.

It was touch and go the whole rest of the way home, but I got there without incident. When I got out of the car I could barely walk to the door. I stumbled in the house and collapsed on the floor. The high was already out of control, but it was still climbing. I knew things would get worse before they got better. I wanted to just plant myself in front of the TV like I had done watching Apocalypse Now way back the first time I ever got high. I made my way up the stairs and settled into my recliner.

I found something to watch on the DVR that was not too stimulating. I wasn't able to pay attention very well. I felt awful, and it was getting worse. Then I felt like I was going to be sick to my stomach. I put the DVR on pause and made my way to the bathroom downstairs. I didn't wind up getting sick, but I could barely move anymore. I just lay on my back on the bathroom floor.

After a certain time the DVR came off pause. Rather than continue with whatever I had been watching, it went back to live TV. It was CNN. I had audio from the TV pumped all around my house, including into the bathroom. I was trying to keep calm, but the harsh realities of network news was too much for me. I absolutely didn't want to listen to this. But I was also unable to get up off my back. I was literally incapacitated.

I tried to just lie there and deal with the audio, but it was making a bad situation worse. I tried to get up off the floor but it was near impossible. I was finally able to roll over onto my hands and knees. I was able to get to my feet, but I was back to crawling on my hands and knees to get up the stairs. I made my way to the remote control and shut it off. The silence was a relief by contrast, but I was still experiencing considerable discomfort.

I remained motionless for an undetermined period of time until I had come down enough that I could make my way to bed. It was not easy to fall asleep, but eventually I did. The next day I was still out of sorts. I didn't feel high, exactly, but I was clearly not in my right mind. I just lay around the house useless all day. The following day I felt better. Or it might be more accurate to say I felt less bad. I still didn't feel normal again. The day after that I had to be back to work. I was more or less over it by then. But the lingering memory of that absolutely awful experience would stick with me.

I still had it in my mind that I would try edibles as a standard practice of getting high. It was a while before I even wanted to try again. That terrible experience didn't really leave me wanting to try again for a while. But eventually temptation overcame any reluctance. I tried to eat another one of those blueberry gummies, but I couldn't bear the taste of it, let alone the objectionable texture. It was like when I got sick on Southern Comfort back at the beginning and could never drink Southern Comfort ever again.

I went back to the dispensary and got a different kind of edible. I decided to go with chocolate. I also recalibrated the dosage I planned to take. I still found it impossible to gauge it with any accuracy. I would eat a certain amount of chocolate, and I would have to wait an inordinate amount of time before I could determine how much of a high I was feeling. Sometimes it took so long that I would have difficulty detecting if the high was coming on or not. The amount of time it took was wildly inconsistent, even with the same product at the same dose. Sometimes no high would come on at all and I would just waste my time.

I eventually got so tired of waiting for the edible high to come on, and it always wound up being disappointing anyway, so eventually I just started buying bud. The edibles had just been a slippery slope to being a pot smoker again. I should have seen it coming a mile away. It's why 12-steppers recommend complete, 100% abstinence. Their saying goes, "Half-measures availed us nothing." This was exactly what I had just experienced. I had been quit. I should have stayed quit.

This left me in an interesting place. I was back to smoking weed again, but my attitude was still the same. I was over it. I didn't want to be high all the time again. My foundation of sobriety was still there. But I knew it would still be a while before I could make the break again. For the time being I was back in it. I just bided my time.

The next time I felt ready to give it up was the next 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. My plan was to 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 morning came, and 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. I convinced myself that by the time I arrived the buzz would have faded anyway, to it wouldn't really compromise my plan to experience this whole adventure sober.

I was back in that old rut of telling myself that there was no way I could resist temptation so there was really no point in trying. 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 said, "You don't have to." I wasn't sure where it 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. I felt empowered like I never had 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 took it downstairs and 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, and I never turned back.

Having said that, detox was a real bitch. I was having to relearn who to manage the emerging emotions that were no longer being tamped down and blanketed with the drug. That was nothing new. I'd had to do that every time I had made a failed attempt to quit in the past. But this time it was much more intense. Perhaps it was just the environment I was in. The process of relaunching the fraternity was more arduous than I ever could have predicted. I was constantly at odds with my counterpart, I was stressed out that the process would fail, and at one point I got an emotional gut punch that pulled the rug out from under me. I would have been feeling highly emotional the whole time under the best of circumstances, but it was made all the more strenuous in the fragile state I was in not having my long-standing crutch to fall back on.

There was another reason I think my experience was so intense during this time. It was because at my core I knew that this time it was for real. This would be the final time I would go through this process, so the fates made it as demanding and formidable as it could possibly be. I'm not usually metaphysical like that, but in this case it fits. There was a finality in my resolve that this be the last time, and the fates intensified that resolve by making it as difficult as possible to get through, which only strengthened my resolve.

I once again called upon my late mother as my higher power. It was very comforting to have her there above me, looking down on me with a mother's love, giving me strength when I needed it. I was never really tempted to smoke weed, but I was a mess and I needed someone in my corner. It was amazing how close she felt to me. At any moment when I needed a little support I could immediately feel her presence just above me and over one shoulder. I called upon her again and again during this difficult time.

I attended one A.A. meeting during this time. It was difficult to get away, and opportunities kept passing by, but one day I was determined to get there. I was feeling emotionally frail while I was there. When it was my turn to speak I didn't have a lot to say, which was good because I was choking back the tears the whole time. I could barely utter a word. Being in this safe space melted away anything I had been using to hold back those emotions, so they all came flooding out.

I was able to make it through that time okay and get back to my normal life. When I returned I felt very different. Unlike before when I was a "dry drunk," this time I was fully embracing my sobriety. I still wasn't working the program, but neither was I fighting the addiction. I was over it. I didn't want to be addicted anymore. I didn't quit because it was what I should do, it was now what I wanted to do. For the first time, I felt sober, and it made all the difference.

I still have to deal with temptation. I didn't miss alcohol. I didn't miss cigarettes. But I did still 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. And I knew it would only be a matter of time before I would want to quit again, and how difficult detox would be. I would think back to the torture I went through during during that last detox period, and think to myself that I never wanted to go through something like that again.

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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