sponsor's assignment: step one.

remembering the unmanageability

here are some of the memories of my history with alcohol

1.  my first drink made me feel like i had awakened from myth.  like the life i had lived previously was façade.  here, i thought, at last: this felt safe.  this felt like the absence of struggle.

2.  i became we.  alcohol helped me see our collective angst, our shared broken parts, our bonds, our, our, our.  i finally discovered social liberation.  i could chat with stranger after stranger for hours, mesmerized by how beautiful and absolutely interesting every person was.  and i became someone i didn’t know for, you see, i was all of them and none of them.  i was cells full of alcohol and empty of air.  those same strangers shared with me their beer-soaked napkins smeared with lipstick stains, tears, and blood.  

3.  dry places began looking like wasteland to me.  alcohol became the oasis, where before, it used to be my partner or my friends or my family or my perception (however distrustful) of god.  i both admired and resented my sober friends—admired them for possessing the sobriety i didn’t have but wanted and resented them for possessing the sobriety i couldn’t get.

4.  six years ago, with eyes glued to the floor, i promised my friend i would stop drinking (*gasp!) for a.  whole.  two.  weeks.  i felt this was such sacrificial love on my part.  i made it nine days, maybe.  i did not see this was a clear symptom of a disease.  i was growing weaker mentally, physically, and spiritually and i thought the prison was the hospital.

5.  my heart rate soared according to the proof of the alcohol.  there was a storm brewing the evening i walked into a gas station and spotted the black liquid—captain morgan: 100 proof.  my innate, instinctual reaction?  the storm quelled.  i thought, i can’t wait to see how fucked up i can get.

6.  heroin, cocaine, anything that ended with “highly addictive” became a lighthouse when i drank and i never even touched the stuff.  why is it that dark things always dispelled light to me?  if someone told me there was light at the end of the tunnel, fuck it, i’d go find another tunnel then.
7.  we all gravitated to matt kearny's words: liquor runs thicker than blood.  it did.  it began as a trickle and that's what we held on to.  we weren't always this way.  we used to drink normally.  the memory of that "manageable" trickle kept us disillusioned when alcohol began to flow more like paint: heavy with the weight of our sins.  now, we saw, it ran thick; thicker than family, marriage, and eventually socialization.  but the revelation was a painful one because we couldn't stop.