It’s been a while since my last post.

The exact measurement of a “while” – 11 days.

What has happened? A whole hell of a lot. Or should I say, a whole “helloween” of a lot.

Because Halloween happened. It was an amazing time and I didn’t think about drinking for more than a few seconds. There were two dance parties happening in my house, and I was a clown. I’ve been talking about what a great party it was to anyone who will listen.

Digression

Costumes are amazing things. When I think back to the first time I felt like I was my own person, with my own identity, it is tied up with what I wore (plaids and army boots). When I decided to go to my first college, I chose Bard College because I liked the way the people there dressed. (This may sound shallow, but at that point in my life, it was as good a reason as any. I didn’t know what I wanted or even who I was, so how was I to decide which college would fit me best? Besides, Bard is a great school, so it worked out fine.).

I’m not ready to fully digress, so here are some ideas about costumes:

• We grow into our costumes.
• Costumes are how we identify with a group.
• Costumes make us more aware of the image we present to the world.
• Costumes say something about us.
• Clowns aren’t always creepy.

The Rest of the Week

Monday I decided to take the advice of Timothy Ferris, author of The 4-hour Workweek, and set an impossible goal.

I was going to write my business plan in one day.

It actually took me about 20 hours, which I spread over 3 days.

The business plan is for my writing coach/tutor business.

On Tuesday, I began to design a new blog! It will be called Dreaming Right, and it will be all about my favorite person’s encounters with self-help books, programs, and blogs.

There will be more on The 4-hour Workweek, as well as 12-step programs, concepts learned from Zen Habits, and maybe even a GTD post.

I am a slow typist and a CSS/HTML noob, so I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do simple things, like create nice looking navigation tabs. I am still working out the bugs.

Also on Tuesday: Obama.

I’m sure you’ve heard enough about the whole political scene, so I’ll just say: It’s nice to see Americans hugging each other, and crying with joy. The last time I remember seeing that, it was in black and white.

Speaking of black and white, here’s what I think of red and blue:

On Friday, I went to our local film festival’s opening night and say a Buster Keaton film with live performers doing the musical score. The crowd was local and enthusiastic, and Buster Keaton was our hero.

And, I smoked my last two cigarettes.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday – I dealt with cigarette cravings.

It occurs to me why so many people have trouble quitting. They are faced with a choice: Smoke a cigarette or continue to feel CRAZY. The first two days, especially when I wasn’t busy, made me feel like I was possesed by a smoker. He was trapped in my body and calmly but persistently demanding satisfaction.

But I still haven’t smoked.

My 30 day experiment is quite over – What do I do now?

In this post I’ll answer one small part of that question: What do I do about my drinking now?

Here are my options:

• Lay down an ultimatum – I will never drink again.

Pros: Being the decider.
Cons: Being like “the decider” – a man who’s lack of doubt led him to be the worst president ever. (Here is a great article by Bob Woodard about Dubya’s decision to start a war)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFefI29TVi4&hl=en&fs=1]

• Do it one day at a time – In true 12 step fashion, I will declare, as often as necessary, that, just for today, I am not going to pick up a drink.

Pros: Making a bite-sized decision that is doable and not overwhelming.
Cons: Having to make that decision every day, perhaps many times a day.

• Do it one month at a time – Yea! The title of this blog will once again make sense!

Pros: Not having to make a decision for another month.
Cons: Having to go through this hand-wringing shit again in 30 days.

• Make an arbitrary compromise – I will drink only on holidays. I will drink only once a month. I will only have 2-3 drinks each time I drink.

Pros: The ability to drink while still feeling like I have made a healthy decision.
Cons: The nagging feeling that I’ve copped out.

• Drink tonight – Fuck restraint. Woohoo!

Pros: Sweet intoxication, a feeling of belonging
Cons: Guilt and the possibility of an unproductive life with a tendency to downward spiraling and wreckage.

• Don’t decide – If I don’t commit, I can’t fail!

Pros: It is really easy.
Cons: Beer might decide for me.

When a decision is not a decision.

As I lay out the possibilities, I am reminded of a flash of insight that I had one day about decisions. Making a decision isn’t like making an incision. Unless it is a present moment type decision, like, “I am going to jump off this diving board,” or “I will have pepperoni with that,” you don’t just decide and forget about it – you keep making that decision until it is done. Each decision that doesn’t result in an immediate action, requires other decisions. Your earlier self is the one who said, “I am going to stop drinking for 30 days,” but the you that lives right now must decide whether it is going to honor the decision of the earlier you. That is a decision in itself. So, for every big decision there is the follow-up decision: “Do I honor my previous decision or not?” If you make a decision about your lifestyle, you have to decide again and again to follow through and make it happen.

So, even though I was prepared to choose none of the above, I am going to bite the bullet. My decision is…(Drumroll please)

I’m not going to drink today, and I am going to try and make that same decision every day.

Great.

I feel better.

What now? (rimshot)

There is a great scene from the 80′s movie, Broadcast News, where Holly Hunter’s character, Jane, has what I like to think of as a scheduled breakdown. She is in her hotel room and has just agreed to meet her co-worker in the lobby in half an hour.

She hangs up -- takes the phone off the
hook and lays it on the bed for a moment's
solitude.  She sits stiffly, palms on top of
her legs.  It looks like someone with unusually
good posture, waiting for something, and now
we BEGIN TO SEE the first signs redden and
she begins to cry.  Now she sobs -- then
miraculously shakes it off and exits quickly to
the bathroom.  This crying episode is clearly
part of her morning routine.

You can check out the full screenplay here.

Over the years, I’ve come to accept that every couple of months or so, I have a similar breakdown. It lasts longer than Jane’s, and isn’t really scheduled…so I guess it isn’t that similar, except that it feeds the same need…the need to wallow.

My Recent Wallowfest

I spent the last 3 days neglecting nearly every one of my responsibilities.

Here’s how you do it:  Let everything drop, isolate, watch TV and order delivery. Play spider solitaire for five hours. Click the “Stumble!” button on your web browser until your eyes lose focus. Watch TV. Feel depressed.

Shutting down for a couple of days is a childish, “mom, I’m sick” type of thing to do, but there is something to be said for wallowing every once in a while. I don’t want to rationalize it, but I would like to make peace with it.

Why Wallowing Ain’t All Bad

The practice of wallowing does have its benefits. Here are a few lessons I learn and relearn during my time on the pity-pot:

1. The world does not fall apart. Although some of my wallow fests have resulted in minor damage (missed assignments, appointments, or showers), most of the time nothing at all happens. Life goes on.
2. I feel better eventually.  This too passes. No matter how much I cling to the nothingness of depression, it eventually ends. This is my own experience, not meant to be universal advice, particularly for people who have chemical or neurological reasons for being depressed.
3. It is possible for me to enjoy something and hate myself at the same time. Wallowing has the same obsessive-compulsive quality that drug use has. Take the 15 episodes of Arrested Development that I watched during my most recent wallow. I enjoyed each episode, but I never quite silenced the inner voice that told me that I was wasting my life.
4. Great advice is annoying. “Buck-up”…”take baby steps”…”let go and let God”…”this too shall pass…” I’m wallowing right now, please leave a message at the tone. No matter how well intentioned, advice on how to “fix” my attitude and get out of my rut annoys me. I have learned to nod and thank the advice giver, then go back to watching crap TV.
5. Philosophy will not get me out of a rut. Big ideas tend to reveal big tragedies when I am wallowing. It’s all meaningless after all, what with us dying in the end and God being either dead or invisible. When I am wallowing, I am feeling, not thinking.
6. Simple things will - I like to work from the bottom up. No matter how stuck I feel at the beginning of a wallow, I will come out of it at the end because I’m ready and because I start doing something simple like:

• Waiting. See #2.
• Cleaning. A clean room may not give my life meaning, but it will put me in a better mood.
• Taking a shower. There is nothing more depressing than smelling your own butt.
• Taking a walk. Although I will reject this piece of advice if someone offers it, getting out of the house can often lead to miracles.
• Accomplishing a very small task. “The day wasn’t a total waste, I took the trash out!”  During this last wallow, I made an origami picture frame and caught some ladybugs to eat the aphids off my girlfriend’s houseplant. I was a whirlwind of activity!
• Making a plan. At some point, I decide that tomorrow I will reenter the land of the living. It helps to have a few tasks written down.

And oh yeah…I’m still not drinking and it is day 32!

Today is my 26th day without drinking. I haven’t felt inspired to write a great post, so I’ll serve up this essay I wrote several years ago. It is, perhaps, an answer to the question, “Why smoke cigarettes?”

Cigarette

The first fifteen minutes of my drive to campus wind past a field which is topped, for a second, by a glimpse of Budd Inlet and Cooper Point beyond. There is a horse lying down, a sign in front of a Lutheran church that says “Anger’s best solution is delay.” There are some goats that I noticed for the first time a couple days ago, there are two parks, a lonely Shell station with a convenience store that is stocked more like a general store, with bacon, nails, coffee beans, cans of soup, video rentals, copies of a locally authored book about geoducks…

I often have my first cigarette of the day on this drive—the nicotine creeps into the back of my neck, my stomach, my nervous system, my brain. Nicotine initially causes a rapid release of adrenaline, the “fight-or-flight” hormone. It also causes increased release of acetylcholine from my neurons, leading to heightened activity in cholinergic pathways throughout my brain. This in turn promotes the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in my brain’s reward pathways. The nicotine also causes the release of glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory. My first cigarette stimulates receptors in my hypothalamus, hippocampus, thalamus, midbrain, and brain stem, as well as my cerebral cortex. Besides acetylcholine and dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin,vasopressin, growth hormone, and ACTH neurotransmitters are released by the nicotine’s actions.

Many smokers enjoy their initial cigarette more than any other, but I consistently feel sick after the second puff. My nausea is always accompanied immediately by an emotion like depression, but it comes on with more urgency, with the sharp edges of terror.

McCain's Hero.

Whatever tide of neurotransmitters and hormones washes through my system, it pushes me up against a familiar, yet mysterious shore. It is a low-lying place where I’ve lost shoes in the sucking mud. I stuck my kindergarten teddy bear under a bush there. I had accidentally carried it halfway to my first grade classroom, suddenly seized by the fact that I was way too old to have a teddy bear at school. When I returned, the stuffed animal was gone. When I visit this foggy place, I am still the shortest in my class. In the murky air, I pass an anguished earlier self and know I can’t help. I can’t stop him from asking that girl to marry him, from throwing dozens of pages of horrible poetry at her feet and crying on no sleep. “You don’t really love her,” I might yell at my earlier self, “You are on amphetamines, or in withdrawal from all that Codeine and Vicodin. You are just desperate for some meaning.” I can’t make him hear, no matter how urgently I whisper, “You are embarrassing yourself!”

When this sharp edge of self-pity, this familiar amorphous violence, hits me after the second drag of my first cigarette, when I am suddenly balanced precariously on this side of tears, it takes me a moment to realize that this happens every time. Every morning I smoke a cigarette. Every morning I am momentarily washed away, spun around, sucked up. Every morning this bad tide quickly recedes and I forget that I was drowning a second ago. The day comes crowding in, happily, and the moment is forgotten.

Today I know the terror passes, but I didn’t always. I haven’t always been able to visit the darkest spot on that gloomy shore. At one time, those desperate memories were inaccessible, even though they were fresh. From the flat uncomfortable place that the people in the recovery business call “post acute withdrawal syndrome,” I couldn’t quite believe that my paranoia had been so imaginative, that terror was a thing I had actually felt, sharply and recently.

There are thoughts I had in the days before I went into rehab that I still don’t want to write down, thoughts that I would imagine a schizophrenic might have: parasites, poisoned water, someone hiding in my house…everyone knows, they all know…One night I collapsed face down on my couch, every light in my house burning, my mind was still racing but I hadn’t eaten or slept in days, so my body collapsed. As clear
as if it was in the other room, a voice called my name, a voice I was sure belonged to someone playing a trick on me, maybe the neighbor across the street was hiding in the basement. I am sure, now, that I hallucinated this voice, but I was as sure, then, that the voice was real when I answered it: “What? Leave me alone.” All this was insane, but what strikes me as more insane, more pitiful, is the fact that I did not get up, I just remained face down on the couch, allowing the conspiracy of killers in my basement free reign.

In the rooms of NA and AA—that is what they are called, “the rooms”—you hear a lot of things over and over; the experience of the addict is universal and clichés proliferate: One day at a time. You’re right where you’re supposed to be. My best thinking got me here. Let go and let God. Most recovering addicts insist that they
never want to forget what brought them to the rooms, their “bottom,” their last high. This is the redemption that my first cigarette of the day brings me: the reminder of how bad it got. Addicts don’t know much about what feelings are. They have suppressed them for a long time, pressed them into the feeling of being high and the feeling of not being high. So, when Bernard, the drug counselor at my outpatient facility, a big black man who had a weird kind of non-greasy jerry curl haircut and fingernails that had some type of fungus on them, demanded of me how I felt about an experience, I was often at a loss. He helped me out by saying, “There ain’t but five,” pointing at piece of oak tag on which someone had written:
F ear
L oneliness
A nger
P ain
P leasure
S adness

There ain’t but five. In one way, the reduction of my emotional range to an acronym has been a good thing. It is a comfort to be able to grasp my feelings, write them down, safely label them and place them back on the shelf, certain that they will all make an appearance at one time or another, that no matter how they mess up my apartment and demand my attention, they are only here to visit. Nevertheless, my emotions are calling the shots, even when they linger in the background. I’m not sure, but I think that all my choices are dictated, in the end, by my desire to comfortably balance my emotions. I try to live so that sadness doesn’t dig too deep, so that loneliness doesn’t penetrate as sharply, so that pleasure doesn’t leave me washed up, writhing.

But there is more to a thing than its name. I cannot describe all the things that happen when I am on that morning drive by looking at an oak tag poster or researching the psychopharmacological effects of nicotine. That sudden drop, that shaky dark vision that the cigarette brings on is something more. It serves several functions. Its transience assures me of its transience. Its darkness shows me light. It is contrast.

I have a warm apartment, fifteen minutes from anywhere. I am looking out window at the water and the hazy silhouette of the Olympics. I have my neighbor’s beagle curled up on the couch. Spring is coming quickly. I will never run out of good books to read. I have a good stereo and my favorite radio station comes in clear. I am my parent’s prodigal son. I have goals. I am in college. I am incredibly happy and light. I will float away.

This is why I thank gravity. This is why I do not want to give up my daily moment of darkness, of heaviness. My moment of nostalgic terror is a glimpse at what my life is not, what it was, what it could be: contrast. When I smoke my morning cigarette, it is the beginning of my prayer of thanks, my ablution. My moment of terror is not just payment for my blessings, but reassurance that all things pass, and all things return.

I started this blog with a question. It is about time I take a shot at answering it. Excuse the facetiousness.

So.

Why do I drink?

I drink to…

1. Have a fire to gather around. – Booze is a social drink, a pool that all fellow drinkers swim in, a fire to gather around. Of course, a fire is also a fire to gather around.
2. Be someone else. – My high school English teacher described getting drunk this way, and it has stuck with me. I often drink to be different.
3. Be dumb/surprised. – Things are funnier, things are more fun, when ur dumb, when ur dumb.
4. Be numb. – Be still brain, be quiet pain.
5. Be brave. – see #2 and #3
6. Hang out with people I don’t like! – They ain’t so bad, especially when their buyin’.
7. Be Like Bukowski! – Or Kerouac, Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker…
8. Waste money! – Tip a bartender for a drink that already costs 10 times more than homemade version or buy a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, you’re still wasting some green.
9. Lose at poker! Lose some teeth! – Two things drinking has allowed me to do. You may want to add, lose your license, self-respect, or if you hop behind the wheel, your life.
10. Lose my lunch! – I haven’t done this for 11 or so years, but I have felt the room spin a couple times.
11. Go to rehab! – Amy Winehouse did it. So did I.

Bonus reason to drink: Beer goggles!

I’m not sure why all the worst reasons deserve exclamation points, but they do!

Update:

Day 17 – I’ve been doing work on my business plan and the blog for about 7 hours. I’m going to push it for another half an hour, and then do some biking before the sun sets.

Day 16 - I hung out with my girlfriend today. She is on day 9 or so. How cool is it that she decided to quit for 30 days too? Very cool. We walked up and down the Black Hills, near Olympia, WA, until our legs were sore. Even the constant hum of motor bikes and ATVs couldn’t bring us down. Thank you, girlfriend.

Note: this post, and any other post in the “30 day nephalist” category, has been moved from from an earlier blog that documented an important experiment – not drinking for 30 days.

Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. Goddamn it Otto, you are an alcoholic! Goddamn it Otto, you have Lupus! One of those two doesn’t sound right.

more Hedburg quotes

Dead before 40, funny forever.

Mitch Hedburg, who died early because of his drug use, illustrates an idea central to the 12-step philosophy: Addiction is a “continuing and progressive illness…a disease from which there is no known cure.”

Am I an addict?

I spent five years introducing myself several times a week like so, “Hello, my name is TinyNow and I am an addict.”

Was I being truthful? I was certainly being honest. I abstained from all drugs because I thought, “One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.”  From the NA literature that is read at the beginning of every meeting:

Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

Grim, isn’t it? But, like I wrote in an earlier post, I have begun to think that I am not powerless, that I am not an addict in the absolute sense.

This topic is particularly difficult to write about because:

1. I want to be truthful as well as honest. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
2. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. What, you were an addict then and now suddenly you are not?
3. The truth is hidden in my genes. I believe the growing body of evidence that addiction is an inherited trait, and I am not sure that I’ve inherited it.
4. I don’t want to help you rationalize. If any of you are asking yourselves whether you are addicts, or groping around for excuses to keep using, I don’t want to be the one to supply them.

So…I’m not going answer the question. I might be an addict. I might not.

I can say this.

• I have been more productive these past ten days.
• The cravings I have do seem to come unbidden (as if I was in the grip of some kind of…shall we say…illness.)
• When I am drinking, I drink enough to increase my tolerance.
• I fucked up my life in the past by using too many drugs*.

*When I say drugs, I refer to alcohol as well.

Maybe I’ll commit to defining myself tomorrow. In the meantime…

Day 8

I indulged in a bad habit. Television. What the hell, it was a Saturday. My girlfriend told me that her and her housemate had both decided to abstain from booze for one month! Am I going viral?

Day 9

I rode my bike up a very steep hill and helped build a little porch off my girlfriend’s back door. We ate dinner with friends and I only eyeballed the wine glasses a few times. My girlfriend is on day 7, but her housemate is starting tomorrow

Day 10

That’s today!

So far, so good.

Pep Boys are part of the Matrix

I am a fairly scientific guy – agnostic. Nevertheless, I tend to believe in synchronicity, that coincidences aren’t always mere coincidences. Or maybe I just believe that, in the right frame of mind, happenings fall together, meaningfully.  Writer Amy Tan explains this phenomena in a great lecture at my favorite website, ted.com.

I’ll give you two of my own examples of synchronicity:

I was preparing to take my 1989 Chevy S-10 pickup cross-country from Long Island to the great Northwest. I needed tires and a few other fixes before I left. It was the last day of my job, which was in a strip mall, next to Pep Boys (an auto repair chain). I was over one year clean and doing all the right things.

When I came out of work, my car was in a different parking spot, with four brand new tires. I immediately called my mother.

“Did you get me tires!?”
“What?”
“Did you buy me new tires?”
“No….What?”
“I came out of work and there were four new tires on the truck! Who do you think got them for me?”
“I have no idea, but that is great!”

I called my dad, my grandparents, and several friends, they all had no clue. I started to feel weird about it when I still had no idea who the secret philanthropist was. I felt like Pip in Great Expectations. I called Pep Boys.

“We’re glad you called…a gentleman with a 1994 Chevy Blazer came in for tires.  The mechanic saw ‘black Chevy’ on the ticket and thought it was your truck.”
“But it was locked”
“The key fit.”

I was prepared to negotiate with them to see if they could take care of a few other things wrong with the truck and maybe get the tires at cost, but, for some reason, I opened like a lawyer.

“I’m getting ready to drive to the west coast. I’m not under an obligation to pay for these tires. After all, you guys basically broke into my car…”
“Okay. It’s our mistake. Enjoy your trip.”

Recognizing a good deal when I heard one, I thanked him and hung up.

It could have been a coincidence. Many old Chevy keys fit other Chevys. Pep Boys changed tires every day. It could have been a coincidence that my ignition key was so worn that I had taken to leaving it in the column and locking up with the door key. So what if it was the last day I would ever park in front of that particular Pep Boys?  And so what of the coincidence that I needed tires?…And that my Chevy was black and of a similar model to the one that should have gotten the tires? Coincidences all.

The problem is, if you add all those things together, the probability is about one in a trillion. I choose to believe that there was a reason all these factors came together – I was doing the things that the universe knows are right. This is still a leap of faith but it seems more logical than saying, “One in a trillion events happen all the time.” They don’t. They happen almost never. One in a trillion is as close to impossible as you get. And what is a miracle but an act of the impossible. It just makes more sense to explain these coincidences as a benevolent alignment of events that become apparent to people who benevolently align themselves with the universe.
The concept of a “higher power” appears in six of the 12-steps. My working definition of a higher power is “the thing that makes doing good things good for you” – grace, synchronicity, or just that warm feeling that you get for acting with compassion (even when there is no one there to witness it).

My next example of a higher power acting in my life is…

Day 4

Yesterday was so incredibly full of good things that I cannot help but think of it as a reward from the universe.  The only thing that marred the day was a slight headache and about three brief but strong cravings for beer.
Here is a partial list of the great things that happened:

• I went on an informational interview and it turned into a regular interview. It seems likely that I will have a job as an SAT coach in the near future.
• I spoke to my Dad about his girlfriend’s mean emails to me. He agreed she was being irrational and unjust and the small knot in my gut untied. (I feel it in my stomach when people are mad at me, even if they are totally whacked.)
• I spoke to my Mom about my job hunt and my sobriety and got the encouragement that only a mom can give.
• I sent an email apology to a girl that I had cut it off with rather abruptly and rudely a few months back. (This isn’t really something that happened to me, but the further untying of my gut was certainly palpable.)
• I spoke to a friend who I hadn’t spoke to in a while.
• I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a fantastic book of essays by Stephen Jay Gould on the library shelf. (An evolutionary biologist, master craftsman, and bringer together of amazing details to illustrate fundamental truths, Gould just plain rocks.)
• I received a call from an amazing woman who is a life coach by profession, but also works for an organization called Enterprise for Equity. We talked some my small business ideas and she said that she would fast-track me in the organization’s business training program. The non-profit will supply me with all the skills and guidance needed to create a viable business plan…(I just need to pick one. Easier said…)
• I completed about a dozen things on my to-do list. (P.S. I am one of those GTD junkies)
• At our regular Tuesday poker night, I walked away the big winner. (20 big ones)
• All this and beautiful weather.

So far so good!

Nephalism

Neph”a*lism\, n. [Gr. ? soberness, fr. ? sober, ? to drink no wine: cf. F. n['e]phalisme.] Total abstinence from spirituous liquor.

The 30-day Nephalist

n. A 32-year old aspiring writer and slacker, living in the Northwest area of the United States of America, quenching his thirst for self-knowledge but not for microbrews.

I was completely clean for nearly 7 years, beginning when I was 24.  During that time, I embraced the idea espoused by most successful recovering addicts and all 12-step programs: I am powerless.

When you can truly admit that you are powerless over drugs or alcohol, it is impossible to justify using them. You want power over your life, and as soon as you pick up a drink, or take a hit, you give up that power. By admitting you are powerless to control consumption, you realize that you cannot have just one.

I was all about powerlessness when I first got clean.  I got into countless conversations with people who would say, “You have such great will-power!” No, I would tell them, not at all.  In fact, the awareness that my will-power fails in the face of drugs and alcohol is what keeps me from picking them up in the first place.

But then something changed.

Life got better and better after I got clean. I moved to the Northwest from my home on Long Island. I went back to school. I kept jobs and paid my tuition and bills (although I got a lot of support from my family and a little from the government). I became a writing tutor at college and was considered to be a great student by professors and friends. I had a sailboat and hobbies, friends and free time. And, I thought, some power. I started drinking. That was last summer.

What a dream – drinking in the Northwest, home of microbrews galore! And who doesn’t like a good party?

But a few times in the beginning, when I drank too much the night before, and a few times more recently, a great fear descended on me – Was I powerless after all? Why drink? Why?

Since then, I have shaken off that giant fear a few times and partied in relative peace, conscience unruffled, until this week.

When you spend forty bucks on booze for a two-day camping trip, and you are unemployed, you probably should ask yourself a few questions. And, I tell myself, you should probably be sober while you ponder them.

I have been drinking almost every day, usually not more than two or three, but sometimes.  I don’t get drunk easily anymore.  More and more I wonder, “Why drink?”

Why blog?

• to document my experience staying sober for thirty days
• to share with people who are struggling to find balance in their drug use
• to help me maintain my resolve
• to develop my blogging, writing, and ability to attract readers (read: web marketing, social networking)
• to answer the questions, “Why drink?” and “Why not drink?”

I plan to post to the blog regularly, four or five times a week, and to continue after the 30-days are up, whatever decision I make about my drinking. I plan to remain anonymous, although I will share my blog with friends and family members as long as I can feel safe about being completely honest.

Day 2:

I have a fridge full of beer from our camping trip, and a housemate who is happy to drink it.  I have told him and a few other friends about my 30-day plan, so it will be a lot easier to avoid temptation.

The impulse to drink has cropped up a couple of times. No big deal.

My mind is racing with all the angles I can approach this experience. So much to write about – the nature of addiction, the philosophy of 12-step programs, the varieties of microbrews, the creation of habits (good and bad), and of course the Big Questions: Why drink? Why am I here? What is my purpose?

So far so good!