Five years and counting

Five years ago today, I announced on my blog that I was giving up drinking for good. I had only started this blog a few weeks before, and had written just ten posts beforehand. Once I typed out my intention to give up alcohol I knew that this blog–or at least some part of it–would

Enough is enough

Opioids are taking a terrible toll on this country, and yet they’re perfectly legal. The Pharma companies that manufacture them are profiting from addiction and death. I’m grateful I don’t know anyone who has had an addiction to these things, but not everyone has been so fortunate. Can we now have an honest discussion of

Withstanding an urge

I wanted a drink, but knew I couldn’t have one. So I didn’t.

Pharma-hypocrital

Last night I stopped in a pharmacy to fill a prescription. I was told it would be a few minutes, so I went looking around the store to pass the time. And I found the proximity of the liquor section to the pharmacy counter interesting. If a place like this sells drugs to help us

…and odd months

Last year I went to see my older daughter onstage in Romeo and Juliet. I was taken in by the story, in a way that I never had been before. There are so many phrases and expressions that we use every day, and yet Shakespeare first put the words together, in a way that sounds

It’s now 12 to 1

I still remember the first time I got drunk, back in the summer of 1984. Between then, and the last time I drank in the Summer of 2011, I consumed more alcohol than I would ever be able to quantify. I never got arrested or got into a fight or lost a job over alcohol,

Illinois catches up, a little bit

Illinois is the only state that I’ve ever lived in, and I can trace my family’s history in the state back for not quite 200 years. Yesterday, the state that I call home became the 20th state to allow for the use of medical marijuana. I’m glad that help can now be legally obtained by

(Not) Wasted away again

Last night was the end of the school year, in the sense that the parents of my daughters’ classmates–at two different schools–each had a year-end party. It years gone by, I would have loaded up on alcohol at parties like these: Beer, mixed drinks, wine, it didn’t matter as long as it could help to

Drinking, from XXI to XLIV

It’s Super Bowl Sunday today, and once again I have no interest in the game or who wins it. The NFL hasn’t mattered to me in twenty years and yet, with the Super Bowl being the event that it is, I wouldn’t dare miss it, either. From the first Super Bowl of my college years,

CYW/OB Accomplished

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

What margarita?

Alcohol used to be one of my favorite things in life. I was, let’s say, a young guy when I started drinking, and it was a constant in my life for a very long time: A beer while watching TV, a glass of wine at dinner, and of course a healthy bar tab at restaurants

A change for the better

Friday night in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The local drive-in theater had switched its weekly double feature to two movies that I had no interest in seeing. That’s really not so hard to do, anymore. I begged off from the drive-in outing that my wife and other relations were planning, and, as a result, I had the

A big change over the past year

Last fall I went out of town for a few days on a business trip. And one of the things I typically do on the road is go to dinner with some colleagues. For the last night of the trip, I hit Yelp! and started looking for a brewpub. For me, the actual food type

Life, Death, Alcohol and New Jersey

I met up with a friend recently when I was visiting New York. It was the day after Clarence Clemons had died, and since my friend lives in New Jersey I offered him my condolences. He told me that if you don’t live in New Jersey, you can’t appreciate how much Springsteen and his band