The half empty glass seems pretty full

It is everywhere I turn. As a bartender, with so many friends in the club scene, I constantly see substance use all around me. A Wednesday night out for wings that turns into a gong show. A Friday night out dancing that turns into a Saturday hungover. A Saturday night out dancing that turns into a Sunday flail that doesn't end til Monday.

Fourteen months ago, I would've said HELL YES, and joined the trainwreck.

I am very open with the fact that I had a serious problem with alcohol and cocaine over the past five years (perhaps too open if a recent Manhunt conversation is any indication). I also think it's safe to say I have slain both demons. This is an exploration of some of the thoughts and feelings I've had since, knowing that somewhere out there, someone else is feeling the same things, and it's an important dialogue to have.

It was the drinking, more than the drugs, that pushed me over the top and down to the bottom. Sure, it was drug use that got me barred from my favorite watering hole, but it was the black-out drinking that had me so sloppy with my drug use. They went hand in hand, gin-cran shots and a key full of coke, backed up by an ample supply of beer of course. My job was in jeopardy, my health was in danger, my personal life was a shambles, and, what's more, it just wasn't fun anymore.

I looked into myself, and didn't like what I saw, and it had to change. And as I debated that with myself, as “One more night, then tomorrow that's it” went on for a few months, the emptiness inside me grew so wide that I KNEW it was going to swallow me whole unless I stopped.

So I did.

I woke up one morning after a complete black-out night, and I was done. And it's been an interesting year since, especially given that I'm still in the industry. I'm around it all the time. While sometimes, I look at the careless, free-spirited, raucous fun that goes along with the lowered inhibitions, most of the time, I shake my head at the messiness and turn away from the ridiculousness. My job is to serve drinks, but the sympathy I may have felt before at the drunk slurring for “jus' one more” is now tempered.

In quitting my own partying, I have had to try to find things to do outside of the bar. The attempts to turn my bar friends into more-than-bar-friends have not always been successful, and the last year has seen a lot of relationships grow and strengthen with non-partiers, while some of those other ones I have been forced to move away from. It's hard, sometimes, not to judge, not to feel superior, not to project into other people that dark drunk despair that was in me. I also had to relearn how I react to things, no longer having the booze and blow to blame my melodrama on. At times, it was as if the entire time I drank didn't exist, and that I'd emotionally regressed to high school, and had to now rebuild everything from scratch. In a way, I guess, I did.

It's strange, I don't miss the drinking. The thought of it makes me nauseated. I do miss the taste of the coke still, the rush, the happy fire, but the after effects on my body, my mind, my moods, my bank account? Not so much. I sure don't miss the nights of being absolutely and utterly terrified that I would never be able to quit, that this would be how I died, that the addictions were stronger than me. I don't miss the feelings of shame and frustration of being a let-down to family and friends. I don't miss looking in a mirror and loathing the reflection.

Maybe I have been too distracted to miss it. Distracted by an earlier start to the day, a start that doesn't include a headache. By the ability to do something with my day, and having the energy to do it. By a sense of accomplishment when I knock something off the lists of resolutions that sat unmet for the last five years. By the feeling of pride that wells up when someone comes to congratulate me on turning my life around in such a noticeable way, or by someone who I used to party with, coming up to me and saying how happy they are that I'm there as an example of a life outside the baggie and the bottle.

It used to be that when asked if the glass was half-empty or half-full, I just wanted a fresh drink. Now, the glass is on a shelf somewhere and I'm outside enjoying life, with gratitude, pride, and absolute and utter happiness.

Comments? Feedback? All my articles are meant to provoke thoughts and discussion. Send me your opinions, ideas, arguments. We will revisit this topic as the need arises.