Released from treatment after 30 days, I headed home to California an AA newcomer. Squarely in the pink cloud phase of recovery, the once ceaseless obsession to drink and use had miraculously been lifted, and for the first time in a long time I allowed myself a little hope.
But I had my concerns. How did one live sober? My whole life was centered around partying. My friends, my humor, in bars, with drunks, getting drunk, every minute of every day plotting the next adventure. Now with so much time to fill, what could possibly replace it?
I arrived home feeling as disconnected from the real world as possible. Excited to be sober, but beyond puzzled about the direction of my life. I felt like a prisoner furloughed from a life sentence of addiction. But was it only temporary, and did I have the right stuff to make it permanent? I needed to change, that I knew. The same person was going to drink again. But could I get a recovery program in place quickly enough to protect me from the dangerous traps and triggers of my youth. For once again, I was returning home.
Back home in every imaginable way. To Southern California. To Torrance. To my parents house and the home I was raised, to the same bed I slept in all my youth. I came home to everything, I came home to nothing. Starting life over, sober style, with my past haunting me, my future uncertain, and my present a confluence of hope and remorse.
At my folks home. I sat at the dinner table awaiting my parents. The seat across from mine was my Fathers. It was empty. Again. He will fill it later, but in presence only. We will sit for dinner facing each other with more than a table between us.
Torn again. They saved my life. Rescued me from Atlantic City, found and paid for an inpatient treatment center so I could get better. But when The Center explained to them how important family week was to my recovery, they checked out. All the material support, none of the emotional. Once again, the mixed feelings from the mixed messages. Little was ever conventional with my Dad. Why would my recovery from alcoholism be any different?
Rushing through the small talk at dinner, I soon steered the conversation toward my time in Tucson. An addict/alcoholic for 14 years, half of my life, and I was finally talking to my parents about it. They listened impatiently, having nothing to add, obviously not having done the first bit of research about the illness that beset me. Once again, this was going to my problem to solve.
Same as it ever was...
But I continued talking undeterred. Fresh out of rehab, full of the spirit, spouting chapter and verse. If nothing else, I wanted them to know they got their money's worth, that I worked hard there and am better now. Of course they would know all that if they came to family week, something I was fighting valiantly not to bring up as my sense of betrayal began to mount.
I continued to probe, with my parents staring blankly back at me as if I was speaking Swahili. There was an ocean separating us, but I did everything I could to build a bridge to lessen the span. Our conversation soon veered toward the intricacies of recovery, about dealing with emotions and accountability, of being of service and the importance of faith and finding a higher power and maintaining a spiritual connection to that higher power. I began to see my father get increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation's direction, eventually getting up, excusing himself from the table.
It was all a bit much for them. But alcoholism was a family disease and I had questions. Was there alcoholism in our family? What about my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, was anybody else so afflicted? Had anybody else ever sought help? Questions upon questions, but answers were not forthcoming. They listened, trying to understand, a glass of wine in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other.
They obviously knew something about addiction. They lived it every moment of every day. But there would be no conversation about family and alcoholism and how it was all intertwined. Just like as a child, their pasts would remain a mystery. But not their present, for there they sat right before me. They drank every day. All of my earliest memories of my Father involved a beer in his hand. But they were from a different generation than I was and they drank differently than I did. They were maintenance drinkers, same amount very day, with only my Father crossing the line of getting drunk. Were their lives unmanageable? Certainly not professionally. Did they have a drinking problem? Depended how you defined what a problem was.
What I did know though is if you took away their nightly beer, wine, and cigarettes, they'd be mad as hornets.
With the night's conversation winding down, I finally addressed the elephant in the room, asking about Family Week and why they didn't come. They responded they couldn't make it, that they couldn't get out of work. I remained silent, watching closely to their reactions. Yet there was no crack in their front. It was their party line and they were sticking to it.
To have been a fly on the wall of that conversation...
With the evening winding down, Dad finally jumped in, saying Mom and him, on a scale of 0-100 on emotional development, were both zeroes, so all this talk about emotions and stuff, don't be looking to them for anything.
Gotta respect the honesty. The effort, not so much.
But Dad wasn't done. I knew he had ideas about things. Finally he got up, looked my way, and said if I just got a full time job and worked 9-5, I wouldn't have any time to think about drinking. Trying not to react, I chuckled when I needed to scream, for I knew better than to argue with him about such things.
It was the only world he knew...
I arrived home with a detailed aftercare packet. Sierra Tucson suggested I attend 90 meetings in my first 90 days. Seemed a bit much, but all I had was time. There was an Alano Club a short bike ride from my folks house, a dingy one room hall where AA meetings convened all day long. My first day there and its clear this wasn't Sierra Tucson. No super models, no Academy award winning actors, no former professional athletes. These were low bottom drunks. Street people, ex-cons, hardened biker types. They had a meeting called The Whips and Chains Group. I immediately saw why.
It was grim there. Not my tribe for sure. But blessed with the gift of desperation, I continued to attend avidly. But I was having a terrible time connecting. With the program. With the message. With the people. With myself. It was the classic AA stereotype. Plastic chairs, bad coffee, chain smoking, older hard cases just as apt to slice me as shake my hand. I stayed mostly to myself, trying not to judge. But I was out of place there. There had to be better meetings for me than these. If I had to sit in rooms like these forever to stay sober, I was a goner.
I was discovering recovery was far different in the real world. There was no front desk, no welcoming committee, nobody explaining all the intricacies of early sobriety. I could leave early, show up late, or not attend at all. There were no rules. Just empty rooms full of folding metal chairs. And I was desperate enough to grab one, plop my ass down and listen for the message. Just myself and dozens of anonymous drunks. I was immediately struck by recovery's spectrum. Old timers with 20 years sobriety sitting next to wet ones with 20 minutes. But all were welcome if they had the desire to stop drinking.
The old timers, they had a different glow about them. Their eyes, they shined. You could feel it. Survivors. Folks who'd seen a thing or two. Yet here they sat. Sharing their experience strength and hope with all fellow seekers. They'd passed over to another realm, a realm of the spirit. It was a holy glow. Deeply spiritual. God was the answer, no matter what your question.
The old timers seemed to hover above the room unaffected, as if gazing down upon a spectacle. They'd transformed themselves, as vehicles of an almighty higher power. I looked upon them as an exhibit in a museum, their transformation so beyond my ability to comprehend. I saw on them no portal for me to connect. They appeared so heavenly to me they were no longer of any Earthly good. But they were sober. The luckiest of few in a world of struggling alcoholics. After spending time in their presence, it was hard not to conclude the AA program worked far too well for far too few.
Trying to get my head around the philosophies of recovery. One day at a time, one moment at a time. And in spite of my inherent skepticism, I could see AA working. I was scared straight now, at least for the moment. But would it last? This shouldn't be that hard. To not do something. The accomplishment of the sober fellow, the celebration even, was in not doing something. As someone raised an achiever, it was a foreign energy to absorb. I didn't poison myself today. Yay!
Slow to assimilate, I continued to attend meetings. Alcoholics as a whole seemed uptight, neurotic, hopelessly self-obsessed. Because they were. Because I was too. It was the ism part of alcoholism. But I didn't like it in them and I certainly didn't like it in me. Yet it was the common experience we shared as alcoholics. Was my social circle now to be defined by the diseases we shared?
I began to venture out from the local Alano Club, trying all sorts of meetings. I soon found there was something for everybody. Book studies, Step work, Speaker meetings, prayer and meditation vigils. The noon time men's stag. Men with issues. Everyday from 12-1, in the scary back room of the Alano club one could here the unemployed construction worker rap.
As I continued to have a hard time connecting...
But I kept exploring. I finally started seeing people from my past. We were saving you a seat, they would say. It was oddly comforting seeing people I used to rage with sitting sober in meetings of AA. I was not the only one. I knew I couldn't have been.
But being back in the South Bay was triggerville, the scene of so many crimes. Slinking around my old home
town, seeing people from all chapters of my life. Yet I was still unsure of so much. How much did they know? Now that I was sober, do I just tell them? But how much? It was suggested we shared in a general way, but how general was general? How vague should I remain?
Living back in Torrance I was haunted. All the bars I drank at, all the corners I got high at. Everywhere I pass, memories flashed like lightning in a night sky. Quick flashes of time and place. Images I can't quite place nor shake, my recall of those late night details incomplete and blurry. And maybe not being able to remember all my debauchery was a gift of the program.
Deliver me from evil that I may better do thy will...
A month in Tucson and two at home and I could feel I'm changing. I was staying sober, but I didn't trust it. For I didn't trust myself. Not even close. There was a voice in my head telling me there was no way I was going to pull this off. Once a fuck up, always a fuck up. Because being a fuck up was all I knew, with these couple months of self care feeling so foreign. But I really was staying sober. Once thirty days. Now sixty days. Now ninety days. Collecting chips, collecting time, feeling better and better physically with each passing day.
But could I maintain this, for the discipline required to sustain something forever was not exactly my longsuit. And being only 28 years old, forever seemed like an eternity. Because it was.
Compounding the daunting task of staying sober forever was the sheer emotional madness of early sobriety. Its said emotional development in the alcoholic ceases at the time addiction sets in. Which meant I was 28 going on 15. And I felt like it. My emotions were all over the map. Moody, anxious, edgy by day. Restless, irritable and discontented by night, with obsessive thought patterns ruling my every moment. My ass-kicking machine was cranked up to full tilt. It was all so exhausting.
The oldtimers, they said keep coming back, it gets better, get out of yourself, be of service. Yet I began to feel overwhelmed. In over my head while stuck in my head, I was struggling to get my life back on track. I'd quit drinking before for brief stretches, but that was pure white knuckling it, with no program or long term commitment. But this round was different. With Atlantic City and the horrors of rehab etched on to my psyche, never drinking again was no longer a choice, it was the whole game and if I wanted to keep getting what I was getting, I needed to be working a program and that would only come with finding a sponsor.
Venturing out to LA's west side, I discovered a more sophisticated brand of recovery. At my first meeting in Pacific Palisades, I was impressed by how well spoken and smartly dressed everyone was, helping me feel a little less lost. Behind on getting a sponsor, I remembered what I was told at treatment. Find someone who has what you want. A gentleman then took the podium to speak. Smart, articulate, well versed in Book and program, he was able to tie his whole message together, in full sentences no less.
At meeting's end, I approached him somewhat awkwardly. Before even introducing myself, I asked him if he'd sponsor me. He responded his name was Gus and he'd be happy to. Walking to my car, we exchanged phone numbers, with him immediately putting me to work. I was to read the Doctor's Opinion and be prepared to discuss it with him over coffee that weekend. I agreed eagerly to his terms. With a sponsor and an assignment, I was now officially working the program. There was no turning back now.
A sponsor. Taking directions from another human being. Not always a strength of mine. Father, Coaches, Therapists, Bosses. Somehow I always thought I knew better. But this was alcoholism. Cunning baffling powerful. I knew nothing about sobriety. But Gus did. With no margin for error, I did everything he asked of me. And it worked. The unconditional love of one alcoholic for another. The patience, the teaching, the acceptance, the guidance. Gaining control by giving up control. I was still early in recovery, feeling crazy as a loon, but in small glimpses, I felt better, I felt the progress. I felt my healing beginning.
December 1992. Ninety meetings in ninety days completed, I decided to enter a couple local singles events. SoCal tennis again, with all the usual suspects from my youth still playing. Except it was different now. We were all older, on the backsides of our Bell Curves, with nobody playing the tour anymore. They were done with all that. They were all former players now, preparing for life's next challenges.
But I entered the fray differently. I was looking to exorcise some demons, maybe close out some regrets and achieve some healthy closure with this mercurial tennis, to be able to walk away from the game with my head held somewhere other than low.
I entered the events with an odd energy, fighting for my life while having given up on it mere months ago. The comings and goings of the addled mind. But a funny thing happened when I took the court. I didn't feel all the old angst or the crippling nervy pressure. Almost losing my life put tennis in a different perspective. What I though was pressure before, playing tight matches for cash and prizes wasn't really pressure. Real pressure was being in an Atlantic City hospital, not knowing if anyone would take your call. Real pressure was knowing if I picked up a drink, it would be the beginning of the end of me.
Around Christmas, the Jack Kramer Club held its annual Holiday classic, a powerful event of current and former pros from all across the Southern California. Playing well, I managed to win a couple rounds, before facing former junior rival and JDC teammate Jonathan Canter. Pumped up, I dug in for the match like my life depended on it. I got off to a great start, winning the first set with chances of closing out the match in straight sets, but I floundered. About to begin the deciding third set, Jonathan walked up to the net to shake hands to retire, for the player he was there coaching was about to start her match and he had to watch her.
Jonathan was just playing for fun. I immediately felt ridiculous for taking the match so seriously. Then the reality hit me. The war was over. It was time to lay down my weapons and come out of the bush. There was nothing to fight about anymore.
The whole experience was bittersweet. Though it was great to play some good tennis again while seeing all the my junior tennis peers, it was like going to a class reunion where all your crew went on to do great things and you're selling vacuum cleaners.
I continued to play over the holidays. One of my old buddies from my first tennis club was in town, Woody Hunt. Kalamazoo finalist and 3 time All-American at Berkeley, I gave Woody his first beer when he was 14. I would take him to his first AA meeting many years later. A super player in his own right and one of my favorite people.
We played a couple days running and I was beating him pretty badly. We agreed to meet one more time the next day and at West End in front of a packed house on center court and I played the practice match of a lifetime, beating him 0,0, floating around the court in a zone for the ages.
After the match, gathering up our stuff, Woody started laughing. He said that was the best anyone's ever played against him and that I needed to get on the phone right now and find a tournament to enter. He said if I was going to play like that, I had to go play.
Unsure if he was serious or not, he soon escorted me to the pay phones, dialing up a number at the USTA. But it was Christmas and the offices were closed for the holidays. More importantly, I was scheduled to start back at UCLA in a couple of weeks to finish my education. And though it felt great to still be able to play tennis at such a high level, all this manic talk about somehow going out to play the tour needed to be put to rest for good. I had missed my moment (a few times) It was too late to ever become a professional tennis player. And though there was no shame in not making it, (every kid wants to be an astronaut but only a few ever walk on the moon) there was no worse feeling on Earth than being too late.
Winter 1993. Eleven years, three colleges, three college tennis programs, and I was right back where I started at UCLA, yet barely halfway done with my schooling. First day back to school, walking the campus, my head was spinning about all that'd transpired and what might have been. Anxious, chain smoking, pounding cups of coffee and diet coke, anything to help me pass the moment.
Strolling among the beautiful red brick buildings, I passed the massive libraries, wondering where I'd be if I spent more time in them. Continuing to walk, I passed the Psychology Building, the same stairs I walked up 8 years ago, the same hall I walked down not feeling right, the first time I ever told on myself that all was not right with my mind. Eight long years ago, though it felt like a lifetime If I'd only called that number.
Back at school, I feel like I was starting over, and in lieu of my prior grades, maybe that was good. I choose an entirely new major. Political Science, with an emphasis on Theory. Could a degree be more worthless in my workaday world? But I didn't care. I just wanted to finish school and not be a college drop out anymore.
At my first class. With my new sober-fueled anxiety, I was compulsively early for everything. Better than being late I guess. But I was uncomfortable in every way. Ten years these kids senior, I was once them. If I could only go back. A youth wasted on getting wasted.
The class was massive. Four hundred of us in a theater and people continued to spill in. The Professor finally arrived. Tall, rangy, jean jacket. As he walked past me, I saw a giant Grateful Dead patch on the back of his coat with an acoustic guitar slung over his arm. Reaching the front of the room, he greeted us, took out his guitar and proceeded to belt out Bob Dylan's Desolation Row without missing a word, (for I knew them all myself.) And a feeling of calm swept over me. I was in the hands of a kindred spirit. His name was Eugene Victor Wolffenstein. I would take a class with Victor every one of my five remaining quarters at UCLA. He became my intellectual guidepost to this crazy world we live. He also became the mentor I always wanted. Even more, he became a friend.
After class, I went by the tennis courts to check out practice. The once charming Sunset Canyon courts of my playing days had been replaced by the vacuous and ungodly sterile UCLA stadium where the 1984 Olympics were held. I took a seat on one of the metal bleachers as I watched the activities unfold before me. Off in a distant corner, I saw Coach Bassett cajoling the kids just like he did myself many years ago. The same encouragements, the same cadence. If it's not broken...
Coach, head down and focused, started working his way over toward myself. As he approached, he glanced up to where I was sitting. As our eyes met, I tentatively greeted him with a "Hey Coach" to which he shot back enthusiastically in his pat monotone response "Haaaaaaaaayy. Who is that guy? How you doing Barry?"
And as he put his head back down to return to practice, he quickly pivoted back in my direction and before I even had a chance to respond to his greeting said "Hey, never should have lost that match to Grabb back then"..to which he turned away, returning to coach his team.
Ten years later, and that moment against Grabb and Stanford forever etched on his mind. I quit on Coach, and he never forgot it...
A short walk from the courts, I arrived at Ackerman Union. Supposedly there was an AA meeting on the top floor in the back corner. But there would be no sign. The Anonymous part. I arrived early again. It was my new thing. Anxious and compulsively 15 minutes early. I walked in to the empty room and took a seat. Ten minutes later, in walked Jim Hilman, the head of SoCal junior tennis for decades, the same gentleman who came on my court in Long Beach during my break down ten years ago. As our eyes met, we both started laughing. He approached, giving me a huge hug, before saying " I knew you were fucked up Buss, but I didn't know you were this fucked up."
Oh yeah Mr. Hilman, I'm this fucked up...
First day back at school winding down, I cruised in to Westwood. Back in the day, I used to love the Village, spent every free minute there. Baxters 2 for 1 night, Strattons Long Island Iced Teas, Yesterdays and the Chart House, Stan's Doughnuts, NY Pizza and Fatburger when they called closing time. So decadent. Yet the place I once loved now haunted me. I now feared the place. I immediately sensed this was no place for a sober person.
Yet I kept poking around. All my favorite joints were boarded up now, replaced by the latest trendy spots. All those memorable nights of years ago, they were gone now. As I continued to walk, every turned corner spawned a memory, with few of them good. Westwood village. Fraternity row. All the dark corners of campus. Westwood. It was so fresh and exciting back in the day, now it looked tired and worn down, not all that unlike myself.
I started getting the feeling I shouldn't be in Westwood, my haunting
past confronting me at every turn, following me around, nipping at my heels. Everywhere I looked my thoughts raced to a place in time, to what was and what could have been and how badly I fucked it up. I walked past the alleys where the drugs
were bought and sold. All the hooks ups and late nights. Maybe I
should have gone to another school, a place less haunting. But I was enrolled at UCLA again. No more running, no more evading. Just get it done
And I did. I hurried through the next couple years. Applying myself, I made Deans list several quarters running. Then Graduation Day arrived. What should have been a proud moment, getting a degree from a college the status of UCLA passed unceremoniously. I didn't attend my Graduation. My parents barely acknowledged. It was all so bittersweet. What started with so much promise at eighteen, finished with so little fanfare at twenty-nine.
But I finished. Upon graduation, I landed the sweet country club teaching job. Coaching full time now, I hooked in with some WTA players all the while developing a bull pen of solid juniors. Still young and playing well, I finally became a coach in demand. And with the job came the car and the house and the beautiful girlfriend, all the material things, the outside stuff, just like they promised in program. I was staying clean and sober. It was a good life.
And the inside stuff. I was doing the drill and working a program, attending meetings regularly, experiencing the promises as laid out in the Big Book. Working the 12 steps. I got to the 9th. I made direct amends whenever possible. I started paying people back. All of them. In every way. In the process I learned if I met you. I owed you, for I took something from everybody I ever crossed paths with, if not money, more important things, like trust and love.
My personal transformation was real. I started to see that people who avoided me in the past did so, not because they didn't care about me, but quite the opposite, that it was painful to care about me when I was bent of self-destruction, for there was nothing anybody could do to help me. So they withdrew, not completely, but to a safe distance for themselves. And the best gift from being sober was getting these people back in my life, for in sobriety, it became safe for people to care about me again.
People saw me change, not the least being my parents. They started to celebrate my sobriety birthdays with me. One year, two years, three and four. Sundays became family day. After a particular vibrant night of conversation and good will, my father got emotional at the dinner table. He looked across the table at me and said he couldn't believe what he was seeing. That I'd become a completely different person. And how proud they were of me.
You could have knocked me over with a feather...
But not all was well in my inner world. Those years of 1996 and 1997 would be the high water marks of my early recovery, for that glorious wave of early sobriety was soon to come crashing down.
In spite of my commitment to sobriety and the AA way, I began to struggle with the program. Not all that unlike addiction, recovery began to take over my life. I began to see the world through the prism of the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous. Every behavior analyzed, every action micro-managed. What was a character defect, what was in need of inventory. The work I was doing on myself, the oppressive and constant cleaning of house. Obsessing over my every word and action. The work. Do the work. Do the work or die. To idle was to fall behind. Alcoholism was waiting for you. Doing push-ups. Getting stronger. Waiting for me to let up. It all began to feel so neurotic. Like somehow I wasn't doing it right, that I should have been feeling different or better. Seemed everyone around me had a deeper spiritual connection to a Higher Power and program than myself. How much more work could I do?
So I took some steps away. I saw too many people living their lives in recovery, living frightened within the confines of AA meetings. And that wasn't me. I was going to AA so I could live life fully on the outside, with confidence and assurance and sober. And with my new lease on life, I started hitting the town. Seeing live music. Chasing Phish and all the other jambands. Hitting every club on the Sunset Strip, the mid 90's, the dawn of alternative indie music. Every night there were three shows to choose from. The Troubadour, the Whiskey, The Roxy, The Knitting Factory, Spaceland, The House of Blues. Several nights a week, the Sunset Strip became my new spiritual getaway. Yet I would always explore alone. An urban mystic, I was the most unhip hipster you'd ever seen.
For a while I was pulling it off. Against all program advice, I was living this double life. And with each successful adventure, I began to feel more bulletproof. Summer of 97. Two of my closest friends have back to back bachelor parties in Lake Tahoe. I cavort around Tahoe two weeks straight with ten of my best friends from college. It was an insane amount of fun. But as I drove away, I recalled feeling different. That maybe I wasn't as bullet proof as I thought.
For as much fun as I had, they were having more fun. And it didn't devolve in to late night drug binges and self-destructive behavior. Just a bunch of hilarious guys drinking beer becoming even more hilarious. And though it didn't make me want to drink, it didn't make me want to run back to AA and its neurotic over-processing of every micro-detail of life. All to keep my already tidy side of the street somehow tidier.
My connection to program began to suffer. I wasn't feeling it anymore and I missed having fun. I missed the levity of party people. My struggles with program begin to manifest. My sponsor and I started fighting. My willingness to accept direction became near non-existent. I stopped making time for my sponsees. I started missing my commitments and leaving meetings early. All of a sudden I started feeling alienated in the rooms of Alcoholic Anonymous.
I began to question everything. Possessed with an unforgiving intellectual conscience, the religiosity of AA became a point of contention for me. Too much Sunday in my AA. Before, I was able to shelf my concerns, for the positives of sobriety so outweighed the negative. But I could no longer hide my discomfort with program and its dependence on the irrational and incomprehensible.
My alienation mounting, I sought out other programs. I attended Secular Sobriety, Rational Recovery, AA for Atheists. I started reading voraciously again, becoming obsessed with the naturalistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. I started intensive therapy, trading in my AA chair for the counselor's couch. I went so far as enrolling in graduate school for Political Theory, hoping to find the meaning of life in the pages of a book. Losing my grasp, I tried everything and anything to find a higher connection to the world I lived.
Feeling so out of place at AA, I stopped going to meetings altogether, not remembering the most important lesson ever taught in AA., that the worst thing about not going to meetings is you don't get to hear what happens to people who stop going to meetings.
Then one night. Long couple days on the courts. Wiped out. Hadn't eaten. Friends asked me to stop by a bar to watch the Lakers game. I popped in. It was packed, it was loud. Looking for a seat, there was nothing. Looking for my friends, I couldn't locate them. Mashed in the crowd, I heard my name yelled from across the room. It was a table of old party friends I hadn't seen in ages. They called me over. They had a chair. Wrong kind of chair. High fives, fist bumps, and all sorts of jiving greeted me. And as I sat, there would be no opening prayer. And in all the excitement I was handed a glass. And it was full of beer. And the bar was loud, and the energy was crazy and in the flash of a second I raised the glass to my mouth and without a single thought in the world, beer was flowing down my throat and my 4 years of sobriety with it, all for a cheap glass of shitty beer in a dive bar with people I hadn't seen in years.
And for what?
And one led to two and then a couple more, but I made it through the night without any further escalation. But when I awoke the next morning, I realized I'd made a terrible, terrible mistake. A month away from 5 years of sobriety and I'd thrown it all away.
Now what was I going to do..
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