I have alcoholics on both sides of my family. Except for my old man, no one has ever talked about, or even acknowledged, their condition.

Because my relationship with my father was so acrimonious, my contempt for his many failed efforts to stop drinking so complete, that I resolved to do what he could not, namely hold my liquor like a real damn man.

I drank too much through high school and, though a bright and sensitive boy, barely managed to graduate. I had a reputation as a heavy drinker and renowned for my expertise.

As my high school friends shipped out for college, I grew more serious about life. I married at 21 and had new responsibilities. I drank less frequently and not to drunkenness.

But over the ensuing twenty years, I used alcohol to take the edge off, to dull the pain, to present myself as sophisticated on some occasions and as Good Time Charlie on others.

I attempted to drink as much as possible without crossing the line into drunkenness, and while largely successful, mistakes were made. More frequently, I wasn’t my best self when drinking. I said many regrettable things. I didn’t treat my wife with the respect she deserved.

In the early 80’s, my old man had returned to Alcoholics Anonymous and managed to make it stick. Though my anger toward him was constant over the decades, he’s been sober since, I think, 1983. We get along reasonably well now since I have the perspective of being a boozy horse’s ass and I’m old enough myself to not have the energy to be mad all the time.

Over the years, I would go a month without drinking—no problem. I’d do that every few years. Once I went three months. Big deal.

The thing is, if I’m ‘taking the edge off a bad day,’ who am I kidding? They’re all bad days! Especially if I’m thirsty!

Winston Churchill said ‘I’ve taken more out of alcohol than it’s taken out of me.’ This is debated by historians but not by recovering alcoholics who say that Churchill, never without liquor in his system, was most certainly a functioning alcoholic. But I lost the thread—Churchill said that he’d taken more out of liquor that it had taken out of him; in my own case, it was too close to call.

The other thing was that I could, for whatever reason, see a future In which I had to quit. I could quit on my own terms or on someone else’s.

I remember my last drink (unfinished, incredibly), who I was with, where I was. I remember the next day, sitting in a parking lot, looking at the sky, swearing to God that I was through. It was November 11, 2006. No Betty Ford, no AA, no jail, no shakes.

Kurt Vonnegut called November 11 “Armistice Day,” having no truck with Veteran’s Day. November 11, 1918 was when the guns stopped in World War I and that ensuing silence, according to Vonnegut, was the last time God spoke.

In my case it was coincidence, but it makes it easy to remember.

And now a word about God. I have from childhood believed in something huge and good out there. I mean, the wonder of it all. I believed that even in my angry youth when among those I was angry at was God. I can’t persuade an atheist and I can’t recommend the god-is-door-nob, god-is-a-lightbulb idolatry substituted by AA, an organization formed in the 1920s by white Protestant males. But as a Woody Allen character says in Hannah and Her Sisters, “Of course there’s a God, you idiot!”

And a promise, a vow, isn’t something to be taken lightly. It’s largely how I define myself, even as the world strips and tears less essential material away.

Anyway, I’ve held to that up until today. But it’s obviously on my mind: last night I dreamed of falling off the wagon by mixing fine bourbon with Dr. Pepper, an abhorrent conjuring on every level.

The stress of the pandemic, the lockdown, physical pain, a corrosive nihilism have all made me want a drink pretty damn bad. But, you know, life was one way, and then I stopped drinking, and life was still pretty much that way, only better.

Better.

I don’t think my story is so remarkable. I don’t think it’s remarkable at all. But it is my story and that’ll teach you to bring it up.

Jews don’t say Mazel Tov when a woman gets pregnant; they say it when the baby is born. You can’t celebrate too much at the top of the mountain because you still have to get down the mountain. When I say I’ve stopped drinking, I mean down to this minute. I still have to get through the afternoon.

I’ve said nothing about the alcoholism-is-a-disease aspect because I have friends with cancer. If I’m going to have evil genetics, a weakness for tequila shots seems pretty light by comparison. Why don’t I set this bottle down and you tell me about your chemo?

I won’t presume that helps. But I hope it gives you something to think about until help arrives.