I found out the other day that a friend of mine is four months sober. That's not something you wake up one morning and realize. Like "hey, I haven't been to the bar in a hundred and twenty days, oops." Four months sober is something you keep track of, it's a key chain. It's something that you talk about in rooms full of people, about whom you only know first names, over cups of watery coffee.
Four months sober is a phrase that carries a lot of weight. Implication. It says that I'm now old enough to have friends who have to go to rehab. Friends who have to work steps and have sponsors on call. I'm not really ready to be old enough for all this.
Don't get me wrong, I've had friends who have had to go through court-mandated programs. We are a group that enjoys a good time after all. But a court mandated program is like getting grounded by your parents. Yeah, you did it. Yeah, you got caught and so yeah, you've got to do the time. But getting grounded, even if it's by the state, is just a temporary thing. Eventually you get your TV privileges back and we'll see you at happy hour again.
My own relationship with alcohol is, in facebook parlance, complicated. I know I drink more than I should, probably because alcohol is the only thing that really helps me with my insomnia, which I've suffered from for as long as I can remember. And alcoholism sits so squarely at the center of my dad's side of the family that we set a place at the table for it at family reunions. It's always been one of those things that I know has the potential to be a problem, has been a problem in the past, and yet as long as I'm managing now, I try not to look too closely at.
And knowing this, knowing that I might be living in a beautifully constructed glass house, it gets a little uncomfortable when your friends start tossing around rocks with names like substance abuse and problem drinker and need help. It doesn't matter that they're inadvertent rocks or that they're not really aimed at you, glass houses are rarely built to code.
Posted by Ben Corman at 5:59 PM