On The Importance of Swagger

Sobriety, Independence Day and General Badassery

I’m grateful for another library visit. I’m grateful for what happens, when I let it. I’m grateful the basketball court isn’t too wet. I’m grateful for seeing that sometimes things are meant for others. I’m grateful for understanding where I am. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Happy 4th of July. I think the Fourth is a little misunderappreciated as far as holidays go and I will admit that this year’s placement has me very confused about questions like, “what day of the week is it?” Tomorrow is Wednesday, but it’s kind of like a Monday, except we already had Monday. When the hamster wheel gets to this level, that squeak turns into more of a really annoying whine.

I’ve had a lot of topics swirling around in my head, you know how I like to make some weird observations and then throw in some Partridge Family references, a Big Book quote or two and call it “Macaroni.”¹ Actually, given my roots, and given the fact that it is the Fourth of July, there is something missing, and that would be the mayonnaise. Why is mayonnaise involved? Is mayonnaise the secret ingredient? If you want Macaroni Salad, yes.

Okay, I’m going to let this one go here. Mayonnaise was going to be like the thing that added spice, it just wasn’t going to work. So, I’m just going to say it instead:

Getting Sober Takes Swagger

and, the famous corollary,

Staying Sober Takes Even More Swagger

And, we very quickly get to the “what?” portion of today’s whatever this is. My early passes at sobriety might have been too surrender-based. What I mean is that I came in on those occasions out of real desperation, things had gotten really bad, someone was going to leave, things were dark and chaotic and I had to do something. So, I’d take another pass at another IOP or another rehab, or get a new therapist, or declare some self-defined victory over alcoholism that mercifully let me keep drinking, or whatever and I’d rack up 30 or 60 days. My journals were filled with really humble insights, I so saw the error of my ways and how many people I’d hurt, how badly I’d hurt myself. And none of that was enough to keep me sober.

I remember a couple of really remarkable moments in rehab. One was a “Consequences” session where amidst an REM-based, sonic background of regret and loss a friend of mine told a story for the first time. It was a relatively benign story about two sixteen-year olds fooling around with drinking and driving and then Red accidentally drove over his best friend and killed him. That literally sucked every molecule of air out of the room. I had a session with my “spirituality counselor” later that day, related the story and how moved I was by it, how moved everyone was. He looked at me and said:

You know what? That’s not enough to keep you sober.

Fast forward to my second visit to this same esteemed institution.² I hadn’t really told anyone I had gone back to rehab. Not that many people knew I had even relapsed, until a friend finally tracked me down, literally scooped me off a barstool and drove me back. FYI, this same set of events forms the backdrop for “My Funny Rehab Valentine” — which is really a story about my friend Red.

My Funny Rehab Valentine

Anyway, after a couple of days of getting my bearings and trying to figure out what to say, I started making phone calls. Really awful phone calls.

“Hey, I’m back in rehab… Yeah, that was just in October.”

The worst were to my kids. The thing that was most shattering was hearing the fear in their voices. Those are moments that I still can’t sit with for very long. After those two bodyblows of phone calls I was talking to a counselor who said:

You know what? That’s not enough to keep you sober.

This goes back to the Big Book notion, Bill W’s realization, that self-knowledge was not enough to produce sobriety. Self-knowledge meaning an understanding of the nature of the disease, its effects, how it distorts thinking, the way it destroys relationships, how it ultimately destroys one’s self. Knowing that is never enough. Why? Because “knowing” all of that only takes you further down the shame and regret elevator shaft—usually at very high speed.

Sobriety is not about regret and surrender. Regret and surrender can be tools to help achieve sobriety, but they are not the objective. I personally aspire to live a happy life, filled with meaningful and loving relationships, a sense of purpose and a chance to help others. You can pick your own goals. Sobriety is supposed to be what helps me find that life. To be clear, that landscape does not resemble the Candy Land board in any way

I’ve written this before, but I think the reason it took me so long to get sober was a failure of my imagination: I couldn’t conceive of a life without alcohol. If sobriety was going to be trudging along, doing the self-flagellating Monty Python thing, with chances for regular, edge-of-your-folding-seat public acknowledgements of my wicked deeds—I’m not sure I can do that. Actually, it’s been proven a number of times, I definitely couldn’t.

I think sobriety is much less about the nature of the bottom you have come to inhabit and much more about that moment when you finally realize things could be different and you decide to do the improbable thing and get back up. I used to see this a lot (41 times a year, more or less), I get goose-pimples every single time. I think this might actually be a better way to look at sobriety:

This was the version that would get played if the home team was down a goal or two with about 5 minutes left in the Third Period. The point of this exercise is not to do the video breakdown of all of the defensive lapses in the first two periods. Let’s win the game first. We all know the frustration of people not “getting” the Program until they’re “ready.” The problem being that a lot of folks never make it to the “ready” part. That was my problem, too, until I figured out that it really did boil down to the Rocky cliche—”its about getting up one more time than you get knocked down.” Or something like that.

Yes, it’s heroic. Yes, it takes believing that you can do something that you’ve failed at 97 times before. Yes, it means taking a huge leap into the unknown. For me it meant taking a leap into a world I hadn’t even been able to imagine. That takes swagger. Swagger being that weird concoction of unjustified confidence, the ability to temporarily ignore some pain and dislocation and cling to an idea that doesn’t really make complete sense and seems, frankly, unobtainable. Oh, and you have to smile and just be as cool as you can possibly can.

This is swagger:

This is more swagger:

Maybe a similar pose, but not the real thing:

Independence Day should be regarded as a celebration of swagger. I mean, writing a treasonous letter and signing it, that takes swagger. Taking on the world’s greatest military, a global power with a Navy unmatched by the combined efforts of France, Spain and Portugal, with little more than idea and some crazy trash-talking. That takes swagger. Rejecting a system that had been in place for a long time, but was proving to be unlivable, standing in the way of what would become the American Dream. Swagger, swagger, swagger.

1776 was a pretty rough year for the American Revolution and that flickering light could easily have been extinguished. There was a fair amount of doubt in Washington’s abilities and he had rivals eager to point out the deficiencies in his disastrous defense of New York. But there’s Washington, crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve, on his way to rout the very fierce mercenaries the British had brought to extinguish this uprising.³ That IS swagger.

Isn’t that the same as the hubris that drove the drinking? No. It’s the recognition that there’s only one thing left and that’s what you have to do. It's also not driven by selfish need, true swagger serves a noble ideal, just in a really badass way. I’ve got those thirteen one-day chips there to laugh at me if I fail again, but I’ve got a feeling that this time is different. Partly, because it has to be. Swagger.

Swagger meant coming to believe that I could do it. Washington isn’t on his way to surrender and neither was I. I can’t control my drinking, that’s a battle I will never win, no matter how much swagger I can muster. So you know what?

I think I’ll go win the war instead. Happy Independence Day.

1. An obscure reference to the holiday de jour.

2. It was only a few months later, so don’t stay on the “Fast Forward” button too long.

3. It is worth noting that the end of the first engagement at Lexington concluded with the British regulars bayonetting many of the minute-men who had gathered at the Tavern after the Paul Revere Crew warning. The British were not messing around.