May 24, 2006

• Three years clean and sober–and “hung over”
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  Twelve-step groups have lots of little rituals and stuff, supposed to help members get better. One of them is observing “birthdays”–time milestones–like in NA, you get a little keytag after 30 days, another one after 90 days, another at six months, nine months, one year. . . . (In AA, I once got a seven-year medallion, but I was smoking dope and popping Xanax–but I digress. . . . ) Anyway, yesterday marked three years exactly since I quit smoking tobacco and dope and quit drinking alcohol. My wife quit smoking dope the same time, too–her drug of choice had been injectable meth, but she quit that when she went to prison in the seventies. Anyway, another tradition is to bring a cake to celebrate, which is ironic, since cake contain two or three substances which are toxic and/or addictive. So I decided it would be appropriate to bring some mixed fruits and nuts–a couple of bags of trail mix–which is better than it sounds–everyone scarfed it right up. Before the meeting, we had done some shopping and I hit Blockbuster’s. Afterwards, my wife and I did a bunch more shopping, and she lost her shopping list which meant she had to look at EVERYTHING in this store roughly the size of Vermont–I did my shopping, bailed, went and browsed LCD TVs and stuff. (We maintain separate households–I rent a place in town to be close to business, but my legal residence–for voting and tax purposes–is her trailer way up the valley, halfway between Willow and Talkeetna.) We finally got everything transferred from my car to hers, got all the stuff of mine–mostly winter clothes–loaded into her car, and I put all my merchandise back into my car that had come out to make room for her month’s worth of groceries, yadda yadda yadda. I finally went down around two in the morning–was awake at three thirty and four thirty, ate a bunch of Maalox due to acid reflux from going down too soon after eating, got up this morning feeling like crap–tired, achy, gritty-feeling eyeballs–ironically, I used to feel much the same way EVERY morning after a night of using recreational drugs. I am SO glad I don’t do that shit any more, and so is my sweety. You think I’m an asshole now, you should see me when I’m loaded–and heavily armed.

  • 2:56 pm
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