420 Summit

A Good Man

A little while back I was at the corner store buying something or other — I was drinking hard at the time so it could have been damn near anything — and noticed a homeless dude lurking near the entrance. This guy wasn’t one of the borderline; maybe homeless, maybe mentally ill or maybe just really dirty. He could have been in a movie. Mismatched gloves, three coats and the hem of a second pair of jeans sticking out from beneath the first over a pair of worn boots held together with duct tape.

I am not without empathy but there are just too many people in need and I dread the inevitable, “Got any change, a cigarette, an extra pair of socks, scrap metal?”

But he didn’t ask for anything. He just nodded a good morning and smiled. I bought whatever it was I was buying and got a couple of dollar scratch-off tickets. I ended up giving him one on my way out — just because he didn’t ask.

|Read the rest · 558 words|

Ten Years After

Raymond Carver was sober for the last ten years of his life.

Gravy
No other word will do. For that’s what is was. Gravy
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

Blech

For a brief period of time, say about twenty minutes, I decided that I would use this site to chronicle my recovery. I could help others, while helping myself. Maybe even save a life or, at the very least, impress the hell out of my primary counselor. I could sit here behind my keyboard, buried, like any good doper in overflowing ashtrays, half drunk cups of coffee and Leonard Cohen cd’s — it’s not unheard of for there to be a cigarette floating in a Dunkin Donuts cup on a Leonard Cohen cd — and dispense pearls of wisdom overheard between naps in any of the dozen or so meetings I attend every week.

That’s not gonna happen.

|Read the rest · 366 words|

Big Girl Hair

With a summer of, as she puts it, elite camps ahead of her, Amanda decided it was time for a haircut. This was her first. Sure, she has had a few trims and a couple of gum removal surgeries, but never a haircut. In a real salon. By someone both sober and trained.

This way she will be prepared for both Vassar and Concordia. Yep, thanks to some kind folks and a bit of creative financing, Ms. Amanda should have an interesting summer.

We admitted...

They — I’m not sure who exactly “they” are, but there sure are a lot of them — say that we should write about what we know.

It has dawned on me that I don’t know half as much as I thought I did. What I do know is how to drink and drug. One of the many things I don’t know is how to live a substance free life — but I’m learning and you get to watch.

They say that we should practice rigorous honesty in all our affairs.

Addict that I am, I figure if telling a small group is a good thing, then telling the entire Internet is a better thing.

Just not today. But soon.