I’m grateful for a really good day. I’m grateful for resting up and catching up. I’m grateful for an early morning and delicious coffee. I’m grateful for exactly where I am. I’m grateful for what I’m getting a chance to build. I’m grateful to be sober today.

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LAST WEEK ON TFLMS:

TFLMS Weekend: Where Sobriety Isn’t Just a Consequence…

(last weekend)

Many thanks to Brian K3ES who submits this awesome report. As I write this report, we are currently visiting with my parents at their home near San Francisco, CA.  Getting here from our Pennsylvania home and back again is a continuing great adventure for my wife Becky, POTA Pup Molly, and me. You see, this … Continue reading K3ES’ Unplanned activation of Yellowstone National Park →

I’m grateful for the way the colors change in the sunrise this time of year. I’m grateful for Fall. I’m grateful for walking home from the office. I’m grateful for confidence and ease. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

Song of the Week:

I realize I’m a touch late, calendar-wise, on this selection for song of the week. I have loved this song since it was released way back in 1978. I remember hearing it on the radio while cruising the streets of Iowa City in my friend Mark’s green Ford Pinto.1 I didn’t have a girlfriend, so it seemed kind of romantically aspirational.

First things first: Have you listened to the podcast?

Over the years, when I would hear “September,” I could find myself wishing for someone that I met on the 21st night of September, and then it would be December and the love that we had found in September would have bells ringing and souls singing. I would imagine how this would be our song and we’d share it and the heady memories of those early, falling in love days, whenever we’d hear it. Which would be good, because it is played everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.2 There would never be a cloudy day.

The problem is that I have really struggled wanting to listen to this song for a long time. See, I met someone a long time ago, 2013, I think, and our first date was at a really cute Thai restaurant on 14th Street in DC. If I recall correctly, it was the 21st night of September. She was quiet and funny, she had a very shy smile that had a way of slowly lighting up her face. She liked to laugh and she had a way of surprising me with ways of looking at things that I’d never considered. She had a really cute way of looking at me over the tops of her glasses.

We laughed through dinner, and I walked her home afterwards. It was a clear, crisp night and you could see the stars. We both lived in the same neighborhood and the restaurant was also in the neighborhood, yet, I managed to get horribly lost on the way to her house—which was only a 5-minute walk away. 15 or 20 minutes later, we reached her house and she didn’t seem to mind the circuitous route.3 She asked me in, and I was then ambushed by four of her kids, who were given the opportunity to give me the once-over.

I walked home smiling, it had occurred to me at some point in the evening that it was the 21st night of September, so I thought that was a very good thing. There was one slight problem: I had told her I was an alcoholic and didn’t drink, she had a good friend in the Program, so she knew quite a bit and she was okay with it. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I was still drinking.

In fact, prior to dinner with her at the cute Thai restaurant, I spent a bit of time at the Thai restaurant across the street guzzling back a glass of wine.4 Was I technically drunk when I told her I didn’t drink? Maybe.

Nevertheless, things with K. proceeded and we were pretty much living together a few months later. My dog Kayla was still with me and gamely shuttled back and forth with me. She loved all of the attention and she was drawing close to the end of her time, I think she was 14 at the time.

K. really loved me. We did lots of great things and she so wanted a future with me. I was drinking every day. Not just some days, or most days, every single day. I’d go to the office and drink at lunch. I’d stop at the Logan Tavern on “my way home,” in the afternoons. I’d leave the office around 4 and head to the bar. Around 6, I’d text that I was wrapping up. I’d have another glass or two and then head home for dinner.

Of course, I talked about the meetings I went to, all of the great sober thoughts I was thinking. I wondered how she didn’t know how much I was drinking. I wondered why I was lying to her every single day. I wondered why I couldn’t even contemplate not drinking. The problem was that I kept trying to find the answers in the bottom of wineglasses. Trust me, I was a very diligent hunter. I turned over a lot of glasses of wine looking for the truth.

Kayla the dog got cancer. Her long-time companion, Buddy, had died of the same kind of cancer a few years before, so I knew the deal. There wasn’t a cure and the best we could do was make Kayla as comfortable as we could for as long as we could. She was 15 by this time, and I was secretly hoping to be able to coax her to 16.

I began roasting a chicken every Sunday—it was mostly for Kayla. I had decided that it was no more dog food for her—she ate roasted chicken and green beans most of the time. The treatment I was giving Kayla actually started to incense K.—I think she felt under-appreciated, and at one point asked why I never roasted a chicken for her. My drinking was definitely escalating and I think she knew something was wrong. There was a lot of tension in the air, lots of minor arguments.

Kayla was coming to the end of her time and I was pretty drunk for most of mine. Finally, one night in early March, a silly fight boiled over on the street outside of K’s house and somehow, I don’t actually remember the details or the conversation, we broke up. I don’t remember anything else about that night, but I do know that the next day I felt pretty free to drink. And drink I did.

I’d been to the doggie-oncologist earlier that week and she had told me it was time to start thinking about the end. Kayla wasn’t in any pain, but that wasn’t going to be the case for much longer. I had let things with Buddy go a little too long, and he was in real distress at the end, and I didn’t want to see that again. I made an appointment at the vet.

I drank most of that week. In the evenings, Kayla and I would walk to one of the neighborhood joints and we’d sit outside, even thought it was still a little nippy, and I would order two cheeseburgers. I’d walk Kayla home, get her set up in bed and then I would head back out to one of my spots and drink and drink and drink. I would look at my phone and scroll through K’s Instagram, trying to figure out if she was already seeing someone.5 I watched stupid videos like this as I wallowed in self-pity; losing my dog and my girlfriend in the same month sounded like a country song and a good reason for a few more glasses of wine:

Kayla’s vet appointment was on a Tuesday afternoon. I left the office and drank for a while to steady my nerves for what was coming. I went home and even though Kayla was pretty slow and pretty drugged up, she was still excited when I pulled the leash off the hook by the door. We walked to the vet’s office, also on 14th Street, a few blocks above the cute little Thai restaurant.

Kayla was very calm, she got a healthy dose of something else to make her even more relaxed. I got down on the floor with her, she put her paw on my shoulder. I stroked her soft, soft fur and thanked her for being such a good dog, for being such a good friend, for staying with me for so long. I heard that soft, soft snore, the one that had kept me company at night for a long time, and then she was gone.

I really didn’t want to cry in front of anyone, so I rushed out of the vet and headed home as fast as I could go. I made it home and the tears didn’t really start until I took the empty leash out of my pocket and hung it up on the hook next to the door. The next few weeks were a pretty desolate time. I was truly alone—not even a dog—and I drank. A lot.

I spent a lot of time fixated on my own pity, that does help create the right ambience for a night or week of drinking. I made a few efforts to get K. back—laughable, horrible emails that I’m sure I was drunk when I wrote. I really wasn’t able to even consider what I had put her through, what I was putting her through. Like every still-drinking alcoholic, I couldn’t understand why my promise to “do better in the future,” wasn’t enough. The reason it wasn’t enough is that she had figured out that I had lied to her pretty much every single day. Every time we talked about the future had been a lie; Every time I had told her what she meant to me was a lie. Everything was a lie.

At one point, she gamely suggested that if I “went somewhere,” and got like six-months, maybe we could talk. I was incensed! All that rehab and AA stuff is nonsense—I can do a better job myself. There’s another lie. Finally, on September 21st of 2015, I sent a drunken email, full of remorse and regret and it was the anniversary of our first date and shouldn’t that mean something? It did. It meant I got an email from her daughter asking me not to write her mom any more emails.

We alcoholics have a hard time accepting what we did. I’m not advocating for more feelings of guilt and shame, I’m advocating for more feelings of empathy, for the people who loved us and tried to stick with us and did the best they could until the tide of alcoholic chaos inevitably swamped the boat. It always, always sinks the boat.

We get a few weeks of sobriety, maybe just a few days, and we are full of wisdom and self-awareness. Now I see what was going on—I’ll just make a few minor adjustments and we should be good. That’s why the wheels have to come off for so many of us. It takes real catastrophe to shake us out of our alcoholic torpor; It takes the extreme winnowing of options to persuade to choose the course that was always there in front of us.

Yesterday was a beautiful Fall day and the evening was really lovely, too. I was walking home, tired from another long, but satisfying day at the office. I was looking forward to leftover Thai food, and doing my usual fast-walking, tourist and slow-moving pedestrian dodging, and Spotify decided to throw “September” at me as a recommendation.6 I listened to it for the first time in a long time.

I think that’s true. Happy Friday.

Good Morning, Friends, If you haven’t read my previous posts, here’s the situation in a nutshell: we live in a rural mountain community in Swannanoa, NC, where the bridge connecting us to the outside world was swept away during the 1 in 1,000-year flood event caused by Tropical Storm Helene. We’ve also confirmed that a tornado swept through … Continue reading Helene Aftermath Update: Arborists, Community, and Gratitude (Friday, October 11, 2024) →

Thanks to those that have submitted stories of late. If you have an article in your head and want to have it posted here, let’s keep this community going while our friend continues to help his neighbours. Draft up your story in an email with reference points to the pictures you want embedded and their … Continue reading Do you name your radios? →

My goal for this summer is to do more backpacked day-trip POTA activations while I’m still physically able to. This is my 4th backpacked-in activation this past week or so. And a thank you to Thomas K4SWL for letting me share my adventures from the Canadian out-back. Today’s goal is to activate Trout Creek Ecological … Continue reading Uncharted Trek into Trout Creek Ecological Reserve, CA-4221 →

I’m grateful for elevation gains during my run returning to their normal levels after some foot issues. I’m grateful for my health. I’m grateful for knowing earlier when I’m stepping out of bounds so that my subsequent clean ups are less messy. I’m grateful for the beautiful, calm, cooler weather we’ve been having in Denver, especially given how crazy it is in certain parts of the country. I’m grateful for the mantra “take the next right action” being a formative part of my decision-making these days. I’m grateful for thinking about how I can be of service in ways I’d previously never have entertained because I was so absorbed in self. I’m grateful for the quip around not needing to get back to basics if I’m simply practicing the basics on the regular. I’m grateful when pearls of wisdom I heard at meetings from weeks earlier come back to impact my life in the present.

My latest (and hopefully last) relapse was on November 17, 2021 in San Francisco. I drove down to the Safeway in Pacifica, which is notably right next to the “world’s most beautiful” Taco Bell. I went inside with the understanding that I’d get food for some upcoming hikes in Big Sur and Santa Cruz later that week. When I entered the Safeway the well-packed alcohol aisle was right in front. As I procured the goods I needed from other parts of the store, I kept circling back to it with intrigue. That aisle tugged at me like a silent siren song. Before checking out I finally decided I would grab a Tito’s vodka bottle to prove to myself that AA was working. I stuck with the 750ml rather than the usual 1.75L because why go for my usual size and pay more when I won’t be drinking it anyways, right? At that stage I was nine months sober – the longest I’d been without a drink since my mid-20s – so I wrongly figured this would be a fine test of resolve. I ended up drinking most of that bottle in the Safeway parking lot sitting in the backseat of my rental car. Thus began a bender that lasted until my return on December 7th.

I’m remembering this because I was watching a home tour on YouTube last night, a favorite activity of mine as it helps me wind down and inspires ideas for my own space. Yesterday’s video featured a beautifully restored Victorian in Noe Vally, which was one of my favorite neighborhoods when I lived in SF. After a few minutes into the tour I had to stop. Seeing some of my old stomping grounds and hearing the owner talk about her life there made me a little sad.

While I haven’t returned since my relapse, I maintain a fond place in my heart for the Bay Area. In my 20s and early 30s SF was where my career truly took off. It was where I was able to live more openly as a gay man than ever before. It was where for the first time I created a chosen family that loved me despite my shortcomings. It was where I felt the desire to be more adventurous than I ever had growing up. However it was also where my alcoholism matured. Drinking was not a crucial part of my life before moving there, but it became one quickly as my anxieties grew from the double-life I was leading. To family back in NYC I was the strait-laced, quiet, humble kid who did as he was told. To friends in SF I was mostly that, but I’d obfuscated core details about my past because I was ashamed, conflicted, and confused. I didn’t want my two worlds to meet since it meant I’d have to honestly confront family about my sexuality and that was too scary, too untenable a situation. I rationalized everything by telling myself I’m young so I can punt on the issue for future me. The problem is the lies became too big as time passed. As my alcoholism entered into unmanageable territory the truth started messily spilling out. Friends who were like family absconded while family (sorta) remained, but in some pretty toxic ways. Towards the end of my time in SF I was totally hollowed out. Unfortunately there were several more years of deeply painful experiences before I finally found these rooms.

Despite life taking an unfortunate turn in SF, I do miss it. I miss those friends. I miss the epic nature at my doorstep. I miss promising career opportunities. I miss the Middle Eastern coffee shop on Leavenworth. I miss the rollercoaster-shaped hills. I miss noticing the fog disappear to reveal the Golden Gate. After watching a few minutes of that YouTube tour and now writing this, I realize I needed to wallow a little bit. Getting these thoughts onto “paper” and not having them rattle around in my head with reckless abandon is therapeutic.

What I’ve managed to rebuild over the past few years is pretty remarkable. It’s such a blessing that I’m writing about these solemn memories without a drink by my side. I’m no longer desperately mixing vodka with orange juice or milk to black out from the sadness. Because of honest investment in AA since that Safeway relapse, I’m able to feel down, but simultaneously balance that thinking with healthy perspective. The darkness in fact is already passing as I type away on my iPad. Thanks to tools like writing a Gratitude List every evening I’m able to build a muscle that allows me to see silver linings readily, which is especially helpful during rough patches. Thanks to engaging in long-form writing here on Substack, I have an outlet to constructively process matters and not let them sit in my head without analysis. Thanks to regularly attending Meetings, I have fresh reminders that I don’t have a monopoly on pain and I can borrow strength from other people’s stories to teach me how to find strength inside myself. Thanks to engaging in esteem-able acts more regularly, I’ve developed greater self-esteem. Thanks to believing in a Higher Power, I can put my present into the context of what I’ve gone through and genuinely appreciate today’s miracles.

I don’t know whether the nostalgic complexity around my relationship with SF will ever fully subside. “Time takes time” as they say in the rooms and I have benefited from that fact. However, I think because of the conscience I’ve developed in AA the residual pain will never fade. Engaging with that past is an important reminder of who I was, how far I’ve come, and how dangerous it would be to entertain retreading that ground (metaphorically speaking). Back then I was a lost kid with no framework on how to lead a sustainable life. My reliance was solely on faulty instincts that only got me short-term results. But SF was ultimately just the exterior setting. Fixing myself from within was what I needed to figure out regardless of geography.

Someone at a Zoom meeting I used to attend would regularly say recovery is an “inside job“. For a while I never truly resonated with that statement, until now when I’ve come a little further in sobriety. As a man who is turning 40 next year, I am in a phase of perpetual learning thanks to engaging daily with the 12 Steps. That’s quite exciting, even if the process of engaging isn’t always easy. I’m like an investigate reporter who is able to get out of my head during tough moments and ask myself, “Why am I reacting this way?” or “How can I choose the easier, softer, gentler path?”. Thanks to wisdom accumulated from the Steps, fellows, the Big Book, and other resources that permeate my alcohol-free mind, I am usually able to arrive at reasonable conclusions. I believe this thought process is what is meant by recovery being an “inside job”.

As far as SF goes, I hope to visit again one day. It’ll be interesting to reflect on the passage of time by finding out what has changed in that city and what has stayed the same. There’s no rush though. It’s not like anybody is waiting for me. There is also a real possibility I’ll never return. Whatever happens I know the action I take will be motivated by sober, thoughtful reasons that are meant to protect my serenity and deepen how I understand my journey.

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Good Morning, Friends, If you haven’t read my previous posts, here’s the situation in a nutshell: we live in a rural mountain community in Swannanoa, NC, where the bridge connecting us to the outside world was swept away during the 1 in 1,000-year flood event caused by Tropical Storm Helene. We’ve also confirmed that a tornado swept through … Continue reading Helene Aftermath Update: Solar Power (Wednesday, October 9, 2024) →

It is good to be back, standing here on the precipice of Season Three of Breakfast with an Alcoholic 1(BWAA—because it gets to be a lot of keystrokes to type that out). I (we) hope you’ll excuse the long-ish hiatus; quite a bit has transpired in the interim, and now, here we are again.

You may correctly ask, why should I invest any percentage of my free time to listening to all of this talk about the Planet of the Apes and what-not? That’s a very fair question, especially given the content of the newsletter, the best answer I can give you, which also has the benefit of being true, is that we are going to try to share “precisely how we have recovered.” These are are also some of the opening words in the Big Book.

Who is the “we?” The “we” is me and two faithful and pretty sober Sponsees, Daniel and . They’ve been on the podcast before, and writes the Wednesday newsletter, and lo and behold, they both have more than two years of sobriety. As we were batting around ideas for “Season Three: Love Among the Willows,”2 we hit upon the idea of walking through exactly how we got sober again. We thought going through the Steps and some of the more important parts of the Big Book, maybe even re-doing some of the work we did along the way, might set a good example, and it might also have the accidental effect of deepening and widening our spiritual lives.

Now, it’s not going to be exactly like it was last time. Daniel is newly-married, Sean is happily living in Denver and I’m living La Vida Lawfirm—so there is significantly less of that desperate, lost, “how am I getting to tomorrow” feel to it. But, for sure, going over the work I did to get sober, looking at the things I wrote and thought back then, and seeing where I am now, demonstrates the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Our plan is to march through the Steps, we’ll share some of our work and we would love it if you’d like to share some of yours. It’s also completely cool to follow along at home, or with some alcoholic friends and loved ones (I’ll include outlines to make that easier and also copies of some of the the templates for 4th Step Inventories, etc). For this first episode, here was the outline we followed. I think these make for pretty good writing/discussion prompts:

How did you come in?

Brief history of use

Brief history of terrible stuff we did

What happened? How did you come in the first time?

Did it work?

Why not?

How Were You Introduced to the Big Book?

Did you read the book on your own?

What were your initial thoughts?

Did you work the steps?

What happened?

And now?

Have things changed?

Has your view of the Book changed?

How has the Book changed you?

How did this happen?

That’s the ground we attempted to cover in Episode 1. Speaking of “Coming In,” you may not even know about the Field Sobriety Guide:

Episode 2, which we’re aiming to release in about two weeks, is going to focus on the first chapter of the Big Book, “Bill’s Story.” I know I write a lot about “Bill’s Story,” but there is a reason it’s the first thing in the Big Book. For me, really understanding Bill’s Story, and then setting his story against the outline of mine; Well, let’s just say the stories followed a pretty eerily-similar narrative arc.

I had read Chapter One aloud with my Sponsor, and was working on my homework: Outlining and then writing my story in the style and manner that Bill wrote his. That’s going to be where we start next episode. We’ll delve into Bill’s Story, talk about what we took from it and how it connected to our own sobriety. Ultimately, we’ll write our stories the way Bill wrote his (this refers to the style, not the pencil brand or typewriter or whatever) and then share them. This reading of the story aloud is very, very impactful. mentions this in the podcast, how emotionally cathartic it was to share his story with other alcoholics.

The assignment for Episode Two of “BWAA Season Three: The Great Dread,” is to read Chapter One of the Big Book (it’s available online), it’s only sixteen pages, but don’t speed-read it. The nuances of the story, the insane, implied details are what make this such a vivid, insight-producing bit of prose.

Understanding Bill’s Story is what helped me understand my own.

So there’s Episode One of Season Three. It’s great to be back, and we’re here to stay this time. We’d love your thoughts, comments, suggestions:

TFLMS Suggestion Box

Many thanks to Tom (VA2NW) for this report on Chillycon, aka Chilicon – Vince. Canada’s capital, Ottawa, is the home of the Ottawa Valley QRP Society. The group holds an annual weekend camp-out at the Rideau River Provincial Park (POTA CA-0365) in early fall and it’s affectionately called Chillycon (also known as Chillicon). This year’s … Continue reading VA2NW at Chillycon →