Last summer, I wrote a piece about being by myself in a house on Cape Cod. At one point in my life, that would also have meant consuming alcoholic beverages throughout the evening. I never considered myself to be an alcoholic, but I never passed up the chance to have a drink, either. Alcohol was a part of my life, and I thought that was never going to change.
And then, beginning in late 2010, it did change. I gave up drinking for good in the summer of 2011, and passed the one year point without any alcohol sometime last summer. I wish I had done it a decade or two earlier, but what’s done is done. May my liver not take it out on me at some point in the future.
Now that 2012 is over, I’ve just completed my first calendar year without booze (or CYW/OB, as I’m calling it), since either 1982 or 1983. That’s nearly 30 years which–I don’t think I have to tell anyone–is an awfully long time.
My goal at one point in life was to live somewhere–anywhere–longer than I had lived in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. I passed that goal a few years ago, and I haven’t had a similar one since, until now. Since I once drank for almost 30 years, and now I don’t do it any more, I’d like to go at least 30 years without having a drink. That’s something that could very well take me to the end of my life, and I’m willing to commit to that if that turns out to be the case.
Going through a calendar year without having a drink isn’t such a big deal, when viewed through this lens. But I’m going to mark it anyway, in the hope that there are more years just like it in my future. And there certainly were enough years that went the other way for me.
Blue Batting Helmet 