A life with many soon became a room filled with only one. The world vast of forthcoming experiences dwindled into an endless abyss of hopelessness.

King Alcohol drowned me in the elixir of false hope; robbed my desire to connect with any world outside of its own kingdom. The Dictator stood omnipresently still, lurking in my shadow, always one pace ahead as I crawled shackled behind. The end was near, yet the groundhog burrowed back each day only to reappear as my eyes opened, devoutly re-living pain religiously so that the next day always repeated the prior.

Whether waking in a daze, or on cold metal beds behind bars the world over, on a broken wooden bench circled by the homeless on a chilled night, or next to nameless warm bodies too many to recall, the state of oblivion became the new blackout and the comforting slurred norm of discomfort. It starts with one and ends with never enough. While one DWI quickly trifecta’d, a once gifted life swirled deeper down the gutters.

“Please help me!” whispered from a far corner of my mind. The echo of that singular thought blossomed into words from a voice once forgotten but unconditionally remembered. One step into a church where fellows roamed in free release, the chords became a symphony of people coming together in a flawed but ever-so harmoniously perfect chorus of we.

My journey through recovery, relapse-riddled, is my own, and it is with my hope that it doesn’t have to be yours. But the path towards sobriety is ours, as one once again becomes many sharing our experience, strength and hope. Down but not locked, the key connects during this tumultuous period of forced isolation but not solitude.

I get drunk. We stay sober!

G.