I’m grateful for a visit with my mom. I’m grateful for the way understanding and compassion build love. I’m grateful for an adorable baby boy in Boston. I’m grateful for drinking coffee in the dark. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I was going through the archive and found this from a long-ago Halloween. Number One: I’ve been doing this for a while! Number Two: Remember the podcast? Number Three: Look how much has changed. There is a danger in looking backwards. Another personal hero, Satchel Paige, famously warned against looking back because you never know who’s gaining on you. Maybe that doesn’t make too much sense, but I always liked the sound of it and adopted it in my personal life to maybe not great effect.
Looking back at old journals is even more fraught. One of my favorite writers, Joan Didion, said that reading old journals (and keeping them in the first place) was a way of re-connecting with the version of oneself in the past; the version of oneself that wrote those cringey journal entries when they were real and not cringey. It’s an awkward form of time travel, maybe. There were times in the last four years when I wished, really wished, for time travel. I had a very specific plan.
But something I’ve learned over the last several years is that my “plans” are often extensions and expressions of that pesky alcoholic ego. I’ve learned that waiting for the next right thing to happen is actually the way things work and it does seem like doing the next right thing, even when it seems kind of pointless, is maybe the trigger for the next right thing to happen?
I know that’s kind of a woodchuck chucking wood sentence, but that approach, do the next right thing and wait for the next right thing to happen, seems like the way things actually work in the Universe, in the view of this alcoholic. That’s how I try to live my life now and it seems to be working. Certainly better than the ways of the olden days.
I found this in the archive, written on the day before Halloween all the way back in 2022. That’s a long time ago and things were very different. I had just observed three years of sobriety and now I have double that amount. If you want to ask me what has changed over those three years, well the answer is kind of easy:
Me.
Ultimately, recovery is not really about the drinking or the using, or the whatever. It’s recovering what was lost. It’s accepting what happened, what I did and most importantly, who I am. I drank to fill a hole, to live the life I thought I should. I came to realize, as I was accusing everyone who loved me of not doing enough to fill that hole, that I was holding a shovel. Shovels are cool—they mostly do two things: They dig holes and they fill holes. What do they say is the first thing you should do when you realize you’re stuck in a hole?
Stop Digging.
That’s the equivalent of stopping drinking. I finally learned (and accepted) that the drinking didn’t make the shitty stuff less shitty and it certainly didn’t make the good stuff better. It just made everything steadily worse. So, I stopped digging. But that is not enough to get you out of the hole.
You have to climb out and then fill that mf’er up.
The thing is that you have to do that without digging another hole. That means the fill can only come from one place and I think you know roughly where that is. If you don’t, put your hand on the left side of your chest; you’ll feel it there.
Happy Halloween
Happy Friday.
Amid all of the hoopla surrounding modern-era Halloween, it’s possible that you might have overlooked the release of Episode XXV of Breakfast with an Alcoholic. I understand and I’m here to help:1
Of course, there is more coming on this later, but the thing that really stood out to me about Episode XXV was the conversation Jane and I had about keeping the plates spinning while were drinking. I referred to my life then as involving the projection of a sober-ish hologram, which was necessary because I was drinking on a daily basis. I make a comment about how, when I was drinking, it was like leading at least two lives. It’s not the first time I’ve thought of my life while drinking as the life of a spy. And, like a good spy, I also effectively resisted Jane’s efforts to interrogate me on the topic of my nickname:
I think you would enjoy listening to the entire episode, but that’s me.2 Also, if you were busy applying very complex make-up or hair products yesterday, or were wearing a vision-limiting mask and missed the Weekly Gratitude Round-Up, well, I’ve got you covered there too, partner:3
I’m headed out to purchase my body-weight in candy, as I think that’s my obligation as a grown-up on Halloween. Jane is at the helm for tomorrow morning’s Gratitude List—talk soon.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
The title today has really nothing to do with what I wrote, I really just liked the way “In Between Halloween” sounded.
I’m sorry, there are no more clues or hints forthcoming.
No, I’m not sure where the western affect came from.