29

Today I have been - to the best of my knowledge - sober for 29 years.

I can hear an old friend say: "Now, Seaweed, that's 29 continuous years, right?"

Oh.  I thought you just added up all the clean and sober time you have and whatever sum you get is your clean and sober time.  If you drink or drug for one day then we call that a BooBoo.  BooBoos don't affect sobriety time.

Actually, I'm not exactly positive what my sober date is.  I know it's pretty close to August 16th but it was getting a little foggy there at the end.  It may be a day or two one way or the other.  I had to come up with a day so the 16th it is.  To further complicate matters I quit drinking sometime earlier in the year; Easter Sunday, as I recall.  I didn't grasp the idea that The Marijuana Maintenance Plan wasn't a valid choice for The Fellowship.

A while back I congratulated a friend on his 33 years of sobriety.  He got a serious, somewhat perplexed look on his face, and said: "You know - I thought I'd be further along than I am."  I laughed pretty hard.  I know what he's talking about.

Old Kenner would have sent me a coin and a card with the inscription: "30 is the hardest."  Mostly a joke but also a reminder that this is not an End Sum game.  We're in this for the duration.  We get better and better, with some ups and downs, but we don't arrive anywhere.  There is no Long Timers Club.  There are no keys to the executive washroom.

I'm proud of my 29 years and I take a ton of credit for it.  I'm a proponent of the Gotta Do The Work school of thought, preferring that to the What A Miracle Sobriety Is movement.  Sit at home on the couch and see how many miracles come true in your life.  I plug away at this shit, doing the best I can each and every day.  I frequently fall short but I'm swinging the bat.  I never strike out looking.  I get my hacks in.

I have taken alcohol into my mouth two times in the last 29 years.  Once I got a big swig of a glass of vodka that my dad was trying to pass off as ice water.  I managed to spit that out into the sink.  The second time was in Brazil where I had a swallow or two of an alcohol-free juice concoction that just tasted off.  I interrogated our waiter until he said: "Totally alcohol free."  Holding up his finger and thumb, a sliver of light peeking through, he added: "Just a little champagne."  Little Westside Jonny was there to see that mishap.

I'm grateful for all of the people who have meant so much to me in my recovery.  I do believe that sobriety is an inside job - the responsibility is on me to do the trudging and do the work.  And I believe in the power of the first word of the First Step.  I'm in trouble when I go it alone.