This is an excerpt from my full-life memoir, Un Fn Myself — my real story of addiction, recovery, fatherhood, and everything in between from 1984 to 2026, including the parts most people would cut out.
That fear finally pushed me to start reading AA literature like my life depended on it. I eventually made it through the first 164 pages of the Alcoholics Anonymous book, and I’ll be honest: as much as people in AA rave about how incredible the Big Book is, I did not think it was great the first time through. I thought whoever wrote it was trying way too hard to sound smart, like they were constantly flipping through a thesaurus to impress me. I remember thinking, this fucking idiot should just talk in plain language instead of using all these fancy words. The 1930s phrasing drove me nuts, with references to whoopee parties and other outdated nonsense. And when it got to things like resentment lists, my reaction was immediate: I’m not doing that shit. No thanks. As I worked through most of the book, it felt like nothing was really sinking in.
Then I got to the stories, and that’s when things started to shift. Little moments kept happening. One night, I was deep into the stories section, and I read about someone who realized they didn’t have to drink and didn’t want to drink. That stopped me cold. I thought, shit, I don’t have to drink. I already knew that logically—nobody had a gun to my head forcing alcohol down my throat—but seeing it framed that way made it click differently. Then I realized something else: I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to consciously destroy myself and my life. If I didn’t have to drink and I didn’t want to drink, then what the hell was left? For the first time in a long while, I felt a real moment of peace. I thought, you know what, I think I’m going to be okay. That insight came probably three hundred pages into the book. The stories worked for me in a way the first 164 pages never did. Those early chapters mostly just warmed me up and made me curious about my own story.
On another day, I was completely batshit crazy. I had accumulated a ridiculous amount of liquor and decided to get rid of it. I returned four unopened handles to the liquor store—two bottles of strawberry Smirnoff and two bottles of Admiral Nelson’s vanilla rum. I poured the two open bottles down the drain and recycled them. I made sure there was no alcohol in the house that belonged to me. The problem was that my ex-wife still had a 750 ml bottle of vanilla vodka, some vanilla-caramel holiday flavor she’d bought to make a specific drink for her family the previous Christmas. It was July, and she hadn’t touched that bottle since December, but I knew exactly where it was. One day while my ex-wife was at work, I took that bottle out. I told myself I was teasing myself, thinking that if I even smelled it, I’d have to drink it. At the same time, I was praying to stay sober and becoming painfully aware of how insane this behavior was. I took the cap off the bottle and smelled it, and somehow, even then, I didn’t drink. I stood there praying, holding a bottle of vodka in my hand, still sober.
That’s when three very distinct thoughts crossed my mind. At the time, it felt like they were messages from God or something divine. Looking back, I understand it differently. This was my subconscious doing exactly what it does. When I was praying to stay sober, I was effectively asking my subconscious to search through everything it knew and pull out whatever thoughts or ideas might help me not drink. That’s it. No mystery. Just my mind responding to the question I was finally asking with complete sincerity.
What’s difficult about early sobriety—and about changing any deeply ingrained habit—is that you’re working directly against your autopilot. It’s like flying a plane with the autopilot locked in one direction. To change course, you have to consciously disengage it, take manual control, and steer somewhere new, all while trying to reprogram the system so it doesn’t immediately snap back. That’s hard, especially when you’re exhausted and scared. That was exactly where I was, standing there with a bottle of vodka open in my hand, smelling it, suspended in this moment of manual control while my autopilot screamed for relief.
That’s when the first of those three thoughts hit me. The thought was simple and brutal: you are stupid if you drink this vodka right now. That landed hard because it went straight at my ego. My ego had receipts. I’d scored a 1410 on the SAT (back when the top score was 1600), somewhere in the top ninety-something percentile. I’d always done well on standardized tests. I had a master’s degree. My self-image was wrapped tightly around the idea that I was an intelligent person. But looking down at that open bottle, the counterargument was undeniable. Not if you drink this. You know by now that you should never, ever drink again. If you drink this vodka, you’re a fucking idiot. That’s the truth about you. If you don’t drink it, then maybe you get to try to prove you’re smart again. But if you drink it, you’re stupid. Period. That was deeply humbling. I remember thinking, damn, I don’t want to be stupid. If drinking makes me stupid, that’s a problem. That thought didn’t come out of nowhere. I’d been praying to stay sober, listening to people share in meetings, and my subconscious finally lined all that information up and delivered it bluntly: if you want sobriety, accept that drinking means you’re not smart. That’s the deal.
I was still holding the bottle, still smelling it, still debating, when the second thought surfaced. Part of it was clearly connected to something I’d heard in meetings. There was a guy who later became my sponsor who used to say, “Booze is caca.” I remember thinking, are you dumb enough to drink shit? Is that really how fucking stupid you are? And standing there in my kitchen, that framing suddenly worked. No, I’m not that stupid. I’m not dumb enough to knowingly consume something I understand is poison. That idea cut through the romantic bullshit I still had about alcohol and reduced it to something disgusting and absurd.
Then the third thought came, and it went even deeper. The realization was this: if I actually cared about my family, I wouldn’t drink. The truth was uncomfortable and hard to escape. If I drank, I didn’t really give a shit about my ex-wife, my mother, or my brother. I could say I loved them all I wanted, but my actions would prove otherwise. I told myself I loved my ex-wife so much. I said I loved my mom so much. But there I was, my ex-wife at work, my mother having just lost her husband of over thirty years, and her son standing alone with a bottle of vodka, trying to relapse. Did that look like a son who loved his mother? Did that look like a husband who loved his wife? Or did it look like someone insane, trying to poison himself?
My mind kept going. I pictured what it would be like if I were my ex-wife. I imagined her coming home from work around 5:30 p.m. I knew that if I relapsed, I’d turn “Fack” on and blast it loud. She wouldn’t even need to walk into the house to know what was happening. She’d hear the music first—the bass thumping, the noise of zombies getting slaughtered, the chaos bleeding out into the garage. She might not even step inside. But if she did, she’d smell the liquor immediately. I pictured her standing there, taking it all in, and I imagined exactly how she would feel: miserable, hopeless, crushed. This woman I claimed to love would be emotionally destroyed by something I had complete control over.
That’s when the responsibility became unavoidable. Nobody else controlled this moment. She couldn’t stop the relapse. My mom couldn’t stop it. No one else had any power here but me. I could stop it, or I could choose not to. Seeing it that clearly was devastating. It made the whole thing look crazy and sad instead of tempting. Yes, if I drank, I was stupid. And the truth was, if I drank, I didn’t actually love anyone I said I loved. My actions would prove that I didn’t love my ex-wife, I didn’t love my mother, and I didn’t even love myself. And that realization landed like a punch to the chest.
The third thought came right after that, and it might have hit me the hardest of all: if you drink, you are a liar. That realization was tied to a promise I had made to an old-timer in my meeting, who has since passed away. He was one of those people who positioned himself right by the exit to catch newcomers like me before we could bolt. That was my routine back then. I’d show up right before the meeting started, sit down, listen, share, and then leave the second it ended. I didn’t get phone numbers. I didn’t hang around to talk. I did all the typical newcomer avoidance shit. He didn’t let that slide. One day, as I was trying to make my usual escape, he literally blocked my path, introduced himself, shook my hand, and asked for my phone number. I gave it to him just to get rid of him, not thinking about the future at all. He held onto my hand longer than was comfortable and said, “Do you promise you’ll call me before you drink?” I said yes and walked out, already annoyed. At the time, I was thinking, I’ll fucking say anything to get away from this guy right now. Why is he doing this?
A few weeks later, there I was at home again, holding a bottle of liquor, fully planning to drink. Then the thought popped up: you should call that old-timer. You said you’d call him before you drink. My immediate reaction was, fuck that guy. But right on the heels of that came something I couldn’t shake. Really? Fuck him? You told him you would call him before you drank. If you drink without calling him, you’re a liar. You told someone you would do something, you are completely capable of doing it, and you’re choosing not to. That means you’re lying. Standing there, the whole picture snapped into focus all at once. If I drank, I wasn’t just stupid. If I drank, I wasn’t just someone who didn’t love his family. If I drank, I was also a liar. That hit hard. I had always thought of myself as an honest person, someone who loved his family, someone who was smart and just happened to enjoy drinking. But the truth was brutal. If I stayed sober, then maybe I loved my family, maybe I was honest, and maybe I really was smart. But if I drank, I was definitely an idiot who didn’t love his family and who lied to people. There was no way around that. So I put the cap back on the liquor bottle.
That’s when things got even more uncomfortable, because I still wanted to drink. Now I was trapped with the truth. I knew that if I drank, I would be consciously destroying everything—my life, my relationships, everything I cared about. I wasn’t confused anymore. I wasn’t ignorant. I would be consenting, fully aware, to blowing it all up. I remember thinking, well, fuck, I don’t know what to do now. After a few breakthroughs like that, I went to an AA meeting one Thursday in the middle of this obsession. This wasn’t a bad afternoon or a rough morning. This had been going on for weeks. All day, every day, all I wanted to do was drink, and all day, every day, I was praying to stay sober.
At that meeting, I finally got honest. Up until then, my shares were mostly performances. I talked about how grateful I was to be sober, how my business was starting to pick up, how my ex-wife wasn’t as mad at me, how my body felt better, how I’d lost five pounds and was doing great. Inside, though, I would have given anything to take a drink. That day, I raised my hand and told the truth. I said, “I wanted to drink really bad all day. I barely made it to this meeting without drinking. And I just want you all to know that I’m going to drink tomorrow. You all say don’t drink today, so fine—it’s Thursday, I won’t drink today. But tomorrow’s Friday, and I’m going to fucking drink tomorrow. I just thought you should know.” That was my share. I don’t remember exactly what anyone said afterward. What I remember is going home thinking, at least I made it through today, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Another day, I had personal training scheduled, and the moment I woke up, I wanted to drink. As usual, my ex-wife was at work. On weekends I was mostly safe because she was around and, in effect, babysitting me, but when she was gone, all bets were off. That day my personal training session was at around 2:00 p.m., and from the moment I woke up until then, my entire inner world was one long argument with myself. Fuck personal training, just drink right now. Your wife’s at work. You’ve got plenty of time. There’s no reason to wait. You can’t afford to put this off. It’s 10:00 in the morning—let’s go, just start drinking now. Then another voice would cut in: no, you should at least go to personal training. You might as well take care of yourself a little before you die. Let’s do personal training first, then we’ll see about drinking. Over and over, that’s what I did—constantly negotiating with myself, constantly trying to delay drinking until later.
That was the game all morning. Just put it off a little longer. Just get to the next thing. Somehow, I managed to make it through the morning that way. Eventually, I reached the point where all parts of me could agree on one thing: I had to leave the house. After all, you have to leave the house to go to the liquor store, and you also have to leave the house to go to personal training. So fine, let’s leave the house. I got in the car, drove past the liquor store, and thought, all right, just go to personal training. The part of me that wanted to drink immediately started scheming. Fine, dumbass, go lift some weights. You’ll be worn down afterward. You’ll be mentally tired and weaker on the way home, and then you can stop by the liquor store. Go ahead, do your personal training. The part of me that wanted to stay sober countered with its own bargain: okay, go to personal training, and then you’ll know for sure whether you’re going to drink after that.
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