Mind Games
The Art of Staying Sober
People need more than support; they need solutions, alternatives, and creative thinking
A D.A.R.E. officer visited my high school and told us, “Young people think they’re invincible. This isn’t true!” I sat in the back of the room with my hands under my bum. A voice in the back of my head said, “But I am, though.”
After graduating high school, I spent the next 10 years unable to sleep, socialize, or exist past 5 p.m. without excessive amounts of alcohol or drugs. We called the drugs “cheat codes.” Want to sleep? Drink this or take that. Want to have fun? Drink that or take this. Want to socialize? Want to not be bored?
All of this drinking resulted in three years of on-and-off debilitating digestive issues, the pain of which I masked with (you guessed it) alcohol. It took months of blood and pain, ending in emergency surgery, before I finally thought, “Okay, maybe that D.A.R.E. guy was on to something.”
The aforementioned surgery (along with a heavy dose of guilt from my girlfriend) kept me sober after my surgery, but only for three months. Then I found myself in another doctor’s office, on a table with my head between my knees and a 10-inch tube up my rectum. The doctor said, “If you don’t stop, you will be back on this…
