I Can Just Smoke Pot.
I’d spent three years in the real world – going places, doing things, finding out what I enjoyed about life. During the same time frame, Ronnie hadn’t done anything different: same factory job, living with his parents, not dating, no new friends, no hobbies.
Ronnie’s unchanged behavior reminded me of something I’d learned in rehab. Emotional growth stops as long as drug/alcohol use continues. Emotionally, Ronnie was the same teenager he’d been when I’d known him in the 1980’s.
To be fair, I hadn’t matured much in three years, but maybe a little.
And as he got drunker, Ronnie started blabbing about Larry.
“You weren’t the only one who cheated,” Ronnie said. “Larry fucked some girl in her truck on New Year’s Eve.”
New Year’s Eve, I thought. When I was in Europe, calling Larry every 15 minutes, he’d had sex with someone else. Then Larry took the Camaro because I’d cheated on him.
I realized with sudden clarity that Larry had never been my destiny.
After the bar closed, I went back to the sheepdog. My buzz felt insufficient but I hadn’t done anything stupid. When I woke without a hangover, I thought: I don’t have to drink! I can just smoke pot!
I felt a tinge of guilt, but no regret.
I didn’t mention my brilliant idea to my family or my neighbor or anyone in AA. I didn’t mention it to anyone except the sheepdog.
And Ronnie.
When I met Ronnie at the bar the next night, he brought cocaine and pot and shared both with me quite regularly all night long. I never wanted to stop doing cocaine. For three nights, Ronnie was my best friend in the world. For three nights, we got high and played darts and arcade bowling and I slowly started to sink back into unreality again.
At one point, I made a bet with Ronnie that I could beat him on the bar’s bowling machine. “If I win,” I said, “you have to go to an AA meeting with me.”
And then I won. In fact, I got 10 straight strikes which is virtually impossible.
I had a blinding flash of the obvious: God is still with me. And: Ronnie needs AA, too.
So Ronnie went with me to an AA meeting. Afterward, as we all held hands and prayed and said “keep coming back,” Ronnie said, “never again” and ran for the hills.
I made it three glorious days without drinking, with only pot and cocaine to sustain me.
On Day Four, I realized I was going to have to tell people: my family, friends in AA. And I didn’t want to admit I’d relapsed until I had one of those wine coolers.
So I met Ronnie at the bar and ordered a beer. I drank until I couldn’t stand up, and I sure couldn’t drive home. Ronnie took me back to his parents’ house where we had sex on the floor and passed out wrapped in each other’s arms.
I was brutally hungover in the morning. I’d heard that mouthwash cured a hangover – so I drank half a bottle of Ronnie’s parents’ Listerine. It made my hangover feel fuzzy.
Driving home was hard.
Ronnie was blissful about our burgeoning relationship but I knew I was in trouble. I told him I had to get sober again. Ronnie said he’d never quit drinking, so our “relationship” faltered immediately.
That night, I went to an AA meeting. Suddenly I wanted to stop drinking more than anything in the world. But I could not quit.
I wanted to.
I simply couldn’t stop.