Noun: a Person, Place or Thing

This upcoming September will be sixteen years that I haven’t had a drink of alcohol—not even one sip. I don’t say this because I’m looking for kudos or words of congratulations; I say it because I wanted to write about one of the things I had to do when I first quit drinking that helped stop me from falling off the wagon. It is something they talk about in recovery programs, but I didn’t learn it through a program. As with almost every challenge in life, I figured it out the hard way (which I’ve written about before).

I watched football regularly, and my favorite team was the Miami Dolphins. The problem with being a Dolphins fan was that, because of where I lived, those games were rarely aired on regular television, so if you wanted to see the game, you had to have a special cable package (or maybe it was satellite; I don’t remember), or you had to go to a bar to watch the game. I didn’t have the necessary television hookup, so I had to go to a bar to watch the game.

One Sunday, a few months after I quit drinking, a girlfriend of mine, who was also a Miami fan, suggested we go to a local bar that afternoon to watch the game. I hadn’t seen one in a while, so I was game (yes, that wordplay was on purpose). Keep in mind that at this time, I only had a few months of sobriety under my belt, and the bar we were going to had been my favorite watering hole. Add to that the fact that although I rarely drank during the day, football games and the beach were always exceptions. For some reason that I can’t recall, I didn’t consider that this might be a bad idea—that is, until I got there.

We sat at a table, and eventually, a friend came over and sat with us. This guy (who was also an alcoholic—but unlike me, he was still drinking) decided to buy a round of shots for the three of us. I had told him I didn’t drink anymore, but that didn’t faze him. When he slid the shot across the table towards me, my girlfriend intercepted it (more wordplay), threw it down, and then downed the one he’d bought for her. When he scolded her for drinking “my” shot, she said, “She quit drinking, remember?” Several minutes later, he bought another round. Once again, she intercepted. The third time he did it, she’d gone to the restroom. I remember looking at it and thinking, It won’t hurt to have one little shot. Right when I was perilously close to reaching for the glass, she reappeared, grabbed it, knocked it back, then turned to him and said, “She told you she doesn’t drink anymore. If you keep buying her shots, I’m gonna keep drinking them, and they’ll have to carry me out of here, so STOP.” I’ll never forget that day. It was the day my friend caught me as I was falling off the wagon, and if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this right now. As my dad used to say, I’d probably be “dead or in a ditch somewhere.” So, friend (if you happen to be reading this), thank you for saving me from the ditch.

That day, I learned a lesson. I couldn’t hang out with people I used to drink with, I had to avoid certain places, like bars, and I needed to stay away from things I used to do that made me want to drink.

It wasn’t much later (maybe a few months) that a friend invited me to Florida for a “girls’ trip.” Knowing that three women who would be going enjoyed their fair share of “adult beverages,” I politely declined. “But you don’t have to drink,” was her reply. I attempted to explain how difficult it would be for me to be in that atmosphere, as I was still green in the field of sobriety. After a bit of back and forth, almost to the point of arguing, I finally said, “Okay, if everyone else promises NOT to drink the whole vacation, I’ll go.” You could’ve heard a pin drop, so I added, “It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask them not to drink just because I can’t, and I don’t want to ruin their good time.” She then said she’d miss having me there, but she understood and told me to let her know if I changed my mind. I didn’t. I remembered how close I’d come to reaching out for that shot glass at the bar that day, and I didn’t want to ever be in a similar situation again. In fact, it was years before I felt secure enough to visit the Outer Banks, and even to this day, I can vividly recall everything about my trips there in my drinking days: I can smell the ocean and the sunscreen, I can feel the warm wind blowing over me, and I can hear the “phhsst” sound of an ice-cold beer being opened. It’s true that there are a few things I miss, and those days on the beach are one of them.

I can go to a bar or the beach now, and I’m not worried I’ll be tempted to drink. Is it as much fun? Not gonna lie…nope, it’s not. And although, as someone once so graciously explained to me, I can drink if I want to, I simply choose not to. And yes, that’s true; I choose not to do something that would inevitably destroy the rest of my life.

Here’s the thing with any type of addiction, and this is what they’ll tell you in recovery: To stay clean and sober, you must change the people, places, and things that were associated with your addiction. I had to avoid social situations where drinking was a big part of the setting. I had to stop hanging out with friends who drank all the time unless they were doing something that didn’t involve drinking, and I could no longer do a lot of the things I did before (I just thought of another one—poker games—can’t play poker without beer).

Until I felt strong enough, I had to change the people, places, and things that made me want to drink. In the process, I’m sure I hurt a few people’s feelings, and one or two local establishments probably lost a substantial amount of alcohol sales, but I had to put my well-being first, and that was the right choice.

So, if you know someone who is trying to work through something like beating addiction, and they aren’t hanging out with the same people, going to the same places, and doing the same things they did before, don’t take it personally—they’re just going through a temporary change of nouns.