California Sober
Celebrating Over Four Years Since My Last Drink!
How Did I do it?
To review. I began drinking as a child. By 16, I was a college freshman and a full-blown alcoholic and drug addict. That was 1981.
For years, I had no desire to quit partying. I partied hard and worked hard as a lawyer. My wife and I had no kids. Screw you if you were going to moralize about my life.
I made no attempts to quit drinking alcohol from 1981 to 2009.
I got worse. In 2003, the police beat me, arrested me, and charged me with felony, terroristic threats. Four times, various States charged me with driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs from 2001 to 2007. In 2009, I descended into the abyss during the New Orleans Voodoo Fest. I nearly died with a blood-alcohol level of .386. Last year, after 31 years, I resigned as a lawyer with severe alcohol use disorder.
Two weeks ago, on January 4, 2022, I had the honor and pleasure of celebrating the forth anniversary of my last drink of alcohol. This time my anniversary came when I was fighting off for the worst urges to drink in those four years.
Time sober gives you no defense against the desire to drink. I only keep track of it because I am fucking proud I have made it four years without a drink. I only care because I have tried for a week and failed, more times than I can count. I tried for a month and failed dozens of times. I made six months sober four times and only once had more than a year straight before this time.
During my decline, I scratched a lot of absolute boundaries off my list, finally ending up in my crack and sex worker parade. When those ladies expressed concern about my drinking, my drinking career ended.
I spent near a decade relapsing again and again. I relapsed numerous times over a decade, mostly on alcohol. On November 9, 2009, I went to my first AA meeting with serious intentions. I seriously did not want to drink. I did not give up anything else. Later in 2009, I joined Narcotics Anonymous and quit crack, powdered cocaine, psychedelics, and marijuana. I was six months clean and sober when I had a few drinks in July 2010. So it goes. My sobriety date was in January 2018.
At some of the AA meetings I used to go to, when someone announced a milestone sobriety date, in my case four years, the audience asks, “how did you do it?”
Here’s my honest answer. I owe it to the Grace of my Higher Power, the Divine Wind, a great sponsor, and friend who took me through the First Edition of the Big Book and made me work the Twelve Steps. And I could not be sober without copious amounts of medical marijuana.
My sobriety is a stool with several legs. The first pillar is my willpower, aided by my wife and many supportive friends. The second foundation of my sobriety is working on a recovery program of some sort. I have tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, pharmaceutical prescriptions for acamprosate, and many science-based approaches. Still, I find the spiritual, not religious, system of the original Twelve Steps to be another leg of the recovery stool I stand on. And the next leg of the chair is weed.
I would not have survived my recent hospital stay without edibles. I have moved long past the simple youthful days of smoking it. I bought a great 100 mg of THC-infused jar of robust and straightforward red chile sauce (like you might get in a Chinese restaurant). I ordered my hospital cottage cheese, a fruit salad, and generously spiced things up. I picked up several pouches of Betty’s Eddies Bedtime Beddy’s, a taffy made with lemon, agave, melatonin, and THC.
I have some concentrates to load into my Puffco Peak Pro, which has been helping me deal with post-operative pain. I am not taking Oxycodone. And I am not drinking alcohol. All I am taking is Tylenol and other over-the-counter pain relievers, and gradually, I am writing again.
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: On January 12, I had heart surgery and could not type while recovering. I am glad to be back in the saddle again.]
Back to my secret formula for how I got to four years without a drink, I go to a lot of meetings. If things are good, maybe two or three meetings in a week. Lately, I have been going to multiple sessions in a day. People who go to AA and NA meetings are generally hostile to people who smoke pot to stay sober. They sneeringly call it the “marijuana maintenance program,” and they judge you “not sober” and will say that to your face. I don’t know how this is supposed to keep people coming back, but if you want to be looked down on by many pill heads, you can go to AA meetings. After thousands of AA and NA meetings I am no longer going back.
GRASS (Green Recovery and Sobriety Support) and MARA International (Medically-Assisted Recovery Anonymous) have daily online recovery meetings that are non-judgmental. I very much enjoy them, and nobody will tell me in a forum that they don’t think I am sober or should not share or volunteer, just because I smoke weed to stay sober.
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