2 min read

Confessions 🅰️🅰️

Drinking in the closet
Confessions 🅰️🅰️
GDMNT | G.W. Schulz

"I don't trust anyone who hasn't been to jail at least once in their life." 

Filmmaker John Waters

> how to hug a man | coffee and cigarettes

After I got out of jail from my second DUI, a friend in California helped start me on a new path. 

He'd been sober for years and gone on to help other addicts after earning a Master’s degree. 

You should do 90 sobriety meetings in 90 days, he said. I balked. 

By the end, however, I'd attended over 120 meetings through Alcoholic Anonymous during that three months. 

I felt safe from myself at meetings and preferred the ones held in churches.

In my hometown of Tulsa, finding meetings in churches is no problem. There's seemingly a church for every liquor store.

We probably have more churches than abandoned fast-food restaurants converted into strip clubs and cannabis dispensaries.

With each AA meeting, my confidence grew. 

But for months, I was still so ashamed and depressed that I listened to no music at all. My love of music has been a close second to my love of books since I was a teenager.

During those first 90 days of gloomy, quiet reflection, I drank irresponsible quantities of AA’s infamously bad coffee.

  • I needed the caffeine to confess. 
  • I knew others in the room had done the things I’d done.

So I confessed to drinking whiskey and vodka and beer in the morning, drinking at work, drinking before conference talks, and drinking before, during, and after pretty much any and all social engagements for years. 

And every date. Ever.

🔳
Erickson, Mandy. "Alcoholics Anonymous Most Effective Path to Alcohol Abstinence." Stanford Medicine News Center, March 11, 2020. ln.run/eA5jN

I had to confess to my love of drinking in the closet so late at night that even the trees outside went to sleep before I did.

Reaching 90 days without a drink felt like a new reality. I had desperately wanted just one month for so long. But it was never long before I was back in the parking lot of the liquor store. 

My new challenge: make it to 91 days without a drink.

  • next time "AA is the best podcast most people will never hear."
  • listening Have Heart "Pave Paradise"

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