A couple nights ago, I had the opportunity to FaceTime with a old and dear friend. After we had the chance to spend some quality time catching up on life in general and her new business aspirations, she pulled out her phone. “Okay, I’m setting the timer for five minutes,” she announced, “Then we’re gonna talk about your blog!” Little did I know then, she had a rather thorny question for me: had I discovered alcohol’s middle way?
Zero+ ; Deuce ; M: 206 ; C: 166 ; P/U: 120 ; W: 5 mi
Discussing My Sobriety Journey
True to her word, no sooner had her phone chimed, did she change the topic to my blog.
It’s one thing to have anonymous readers and bots reviewing your blog, but it’s quite another to participate in a lively discussion about it. Especially when you’re having that discussion with someone who’s not only known you for over 35 years, but has been incredibly generous with their time. Generous enough, in fact, to have read more than 70 entries in under two weeks! And, volunteered as my de facto proof reader and editor.
Middle way does not mean half way. Nor does it mean some sort of watered-down, defeated compromise or shallow eclecticism.
– Kosho Uchiyama Roshi
She has been so diligent in her editorial efforts that in one of our text exchanges I wrote, “My God! You’re crushing it! Thanks for catching all those mistakes. Super helpful! Fixing them now.”
To this she replied, “It’s like a book I can’t put down!”
A Blog Twenty Years In The Making
I you might imagine, I was very excited to discuss my blog with someone who had taken such an avid interest in it. I was curious to learn what she found so engaging about my story. Particularly since I felt my story is a common one for many gray area drinkers emerging from the fog of covid lockdowns.
She opened the conversation by saying that she remembered me sharing my concerns about smoking pot twenty years ago.
“You told me that you were worried because you just got high all the time and played with your cat.”
I nodded solemnly. I remembered that visit. Fact is, my daily pot smoking concerned me for many years before alcohol stepped up its role as buzz chasing co-conspirator. Back then, I had no concept of a middle way, much less alcohol’s middle way. To use or not to use appeared a binary decision – on or off.
I never liked that I smoked pot so much. But before daily meditation entered my life and became routine, I was never able to give it up for very long. The only compelling reason I found to quit temporarily over all those years was the occasional work related drug test.
In those rare cases, I bought a pack of home marijuana testing kits on Amazon. I simultaneously quit using pot and subjected myself to a deep cleanse. I’d pee test myself everyday while living in constant fear that I’d be called to drug testing lab before I was peeing clean. Fortunately, that never happened. But the marijuana cleansing process is how I know that, no matter what, I can pee clean in exactly eleven days.
Of course, as soon as the specter of drug testing had passed, I smoked a big ol’ bong ripper the first chance I got.
Meditation Fills Marijuana’s Void
I was happy to share with my friend that whatever void pot filled in my life had been successfully supplanted by meditation. And as much as ReturnOnSobriety is about the ongoing successes, failures, and challenges of my sobriety journey, it’s even more so about the transformative power of contemplative meditation and daily routine.
I told her, “While I had heard and read much about meditation and tried it on and off over the years, it wasn’t until I experienced what it did to my pot addiction that I became a true believer.”
“Do you think you’ll ever smoke pot again?” she asked.
“Never say never,” I slyly smirked, “but honestly, I don’t think so. I have zero desire to and don’t think about it anymore. I don’t see any benefit in letting that genie out of the bottle again. Especially now that my endocannabinoid system has had almost six months to reset itself. If I smoked weed now, I’d get high as a kite, and I see that as particularly dangerous.”
“What about alcohol?” she continued, “Are you still drinking?”
“I hate to admit it, but yes. But I typically never drink more than four beers, usually 2-3, in a sitting and maybe twice a month at the most. Without pot as a accomplice, drinking just ain’t all that anymore.”
“You mean the buzz chasing you write about?”
“Exactly. Drinking alone just doesn’t do it for me. I’ve come to realize my drinking had grown in direct proportion to my inability to get high anymore. My endocannabinoid system was so shot after 20+ years of smoking pot that it required something a little extra to coax it along. Weed and beer became almost inextricably intertwined. That’s why it’s so important that I keep off the pot.”
So, Do You Think You’ve Found The Middle Way?
She paused before continuing, “So do you think you’ve found the middle way you write so much about?”
Well, dear reader, that was the $1,000,000 question! Had I found the middle way when it came to drinking alcohol?
There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
– Buddha
I didn’t answer immediately. To be frank, I wasn’t expecting such a direct question, so it took me a moment to gather my thoughts.
After a pregnant pause, I attempted an answer, “I don’t know… On Christmas Eve, when our flight was canceled and it became apparent we wouldn’t make it back east for Christmas, I made it a point to go out of my way to pick up a 4-pack of IPA. This despite dedicating myself to a sober December.”
I continued, “To that point, I hadn’t had a drink in 28 days, since my day after Thanksgiving debacle. I was having a perfect sober December to remember, but then suddenly, here I was, thoroughly disappointed about our canceled trip. Without a second thought, I tossed all my sober aspirations out the window. Christmas Eve would have been day 29.”
“So What Happened?”
“I see,” she said non-judgmentally, “So what happened?”
“Well, sadly, I drank all four pints and chased those with a generous glass of Pinot Noir. While this was nowhere near enough to get me drunk, it was enough to f*ck up my sleep pretty good and leave me exhausted on Christmas. But that’s not the worst of it. Not enough to get me drunk appears to be more than enough to jolt Drinkie from his slumber.”
“Yes,” she chuckled, “I’ve read about Drinkie and Smokie.”
“And so, to come a long way around to answering your question: Have a I found a middle way with my drinking… I don’t know. The thing is, if drinking, even occasionally, means I have to contend with Drinkie for the next several days afterward, I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
I went on, “I’ve lost so much by giving up pot and drastically reducing my alcohol intake, that I’ve gained back so much more than I ever could have imagined. So, I find myself at a crossroads in my journey.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is: what do I gain in finding some hypothetical alcoholic middle way? Wouldn’t I gain so much more by giving it up altogether?”
“I see what you mean. So what are you gonna do now?”
“Dry January for starters. Now that the holidays are nearly over, I can focus on that. And if Dry January becomes Dry February which turns into Dry March, that’s my new middle way.”
“It’s not easy. Giving up alcohol, I mean,” she consoled.
“Doesn’t seem to be,” I answered, “It’s a sticky problem. For me, at least.”
“For a lot of people.”
“Certainly appears that way.”
Will There Ever Be A Middle Way?
I looked at the clock in my office.
“I hate to do this, but I have to go. The kids and I have a Zoom with my mom. She’s gonna show us the crazy Nightmare Before Christmas experience she made for the kids.”
“Oh, that sounds amazing! She really goes crazy with that stuff. I love your mom. Tell her I said, ‘Hi’.”
“Of course! I know, right? I always tell her she missed her calling as a Disney Imagineer.”
And with that we ended our call. I raced upstairs to get the Zoom ready for my mom. The virtual Nightmare Before Christmas was amazing and certainly better than nothing, but it was a poor substitute for the real thing. Suddenly, I wanted a drink.
Then my friend’s question came rushing back to me and has been rattling around in my mind ever since: “So do you think you’ve found the middle way you write so much about?”
No, I don’t think I have. At least not yet, and there’s a long road yet ahead of me…
