July 21, 1984

A photo from my trail run tonight. I think I had an art teacher who told me there always needs to be something in the foreground of a landscape. I usually have something, and I love this time of year because it can be a flower!

I have been doing some reflecting on my last days of drinking since my anniversary is coming up. Last year I found my old journal from my last days of drinking and first days of sobriety. I had put it in a box for "safekeeping" away from all my other journals, so after I forgot where it was, I was sure it was gone forever. But it wasn't.

So, in those last days, I sat at my dining room table and wrote about my misery. Here are some snippets from those last moments of drunken desperation:

"Neil and Anne came over for dinner last night. It's getting bad with the booze and the cigarettes. I just have to stop. Depression has hit. This is damn lonely and boring. I bought a pack of cigarettes yesterday and smoked them.

I don't know. I'm sick of being dragged around the country like luggage. I guess I could probably like it here if I ever got out of the house and motivated myself to do something. So, here I am, stuck here in a house with three lunatic kids, a lunatic dog and 2 lunatic kittens. Talk about things that suck. I've had it.

I looked at my high school yearbooks today. I used to be someone. My life is totally f****d up. I'm on the lam in Denver where I said I'd never live. I'd rather live in Chicago than here. I've given up every one of my values.

I'm really angry. I feel uprooted, insecure, unloved. So, more bitching from Mary. I really don't know why I've ended up with a life that sucks so entirely."

That was 27 years ago today. To quote Bob Dylan, "Oh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Thank God. It is amazing that I was 32 years old, young and healthy, with a young healthy family, and was so miserable. Drinking around the clock will do that to a person. I used to worry that my bottom wasn't dramatic enough because that was what my bottom was like. Sitting at the dining room table, drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself.

Let me never forget what that felt like, please dear God. Because I never want to forget that I was absolutely DONE drinking when I got to the doors of AA. I had the willingness of the desperate. I wasn't nit-picking what you all were doing, I was grateful you'd have me. And I am grateful for that.