Flipping through the photos on my phone it’s upsetting to see all these pictures of me drinking. Why I felt the need to photograph myself doing that, and how stupid I look. It’s kind of funny to see myself like that. Maybe it’s a reminder of why I can’t drink, and maybe I should delete them.

Each time it’s like the selfie has caught me in some moment of new discovery. Look at this IPA! Can you believe this Negroni? I am posing and trying to look that way so I can entertain my friends. But man I look stupid. And my hair is so short my head looks like a potato.

Monday we went on a boat ride for the first time in 20 years. We docked near a tavern for dinner, ordered our meals, then came back to the boat to wait for it. Another boat pulled up beside ours, a much larger one, a brown-skinned guy about my age with his two teenaged kids.

They got themselves docked and did the same: one ran inside to place the order while the others hung around the boat. He cracked a can of beer and enjoyed it in the warmth of the setting sun, smiling with his sunglasses and his beard. And I guess I envied him in that moment, I wondered what it would be like to be him, to drink. That doesn’t happen much to me but when it does, there’s a loss to it. And that’s where I’ve seen some alcoholics falter, they fool themselves into thinking maybe it will be different this time. For me I know it won’t be.

I was flipping through the photos looking for the last time Lily and I were at Ingalls Lake. We’re going back and I wanted to see how long it had been since the last time. I had to wade through a lot of pictures of me drinking. I look doughy and older, worse than I do now. There was a kind of liqueur I really liked that was brown colored: that was the one that really hooked me. And even though I drank it for a year or so I can’t remember what it’s called and I don’t want to. There’s a picture of me with a German sweater and a snifter smiling with that. I look nuts.

It reminds me of the last days I drank, how I kept that brown stuff in the garage and went out for a snort each night after dinner. I’d decided I’d quit once all of it was gone, it would take me about two weeks. And then I’d use cannabis until it was time to quit that, which took about a year. I’m glad I had the sense to stop because it changed my life and my relationship with my family. I guess it changed who I am too, because I’d allowed drugs and alcohol to take on so much of my identity—you can see that in these pictures, how important it was to me.

If I imagine what was happening outside of the frame in these photos I get really sad. Because the truth is, drinking and using drugs kept me inside that box while life was going on around me, without me, with my wife and kids. Every time I went backpacking I had something to drink or smoke, as if that would enhance things. The last time Lily and I went to Ingalls Lake, too. She was just 13.

We’re going back because it may be the last time we can get out before she leaves for college and I start work again. She just got back from college orientation, 250 freshmen, most of them wanting to get drunk or high, she said. Maybe it’s a part of growing up, always has been, always will. My growth has come from giving it up.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, recovery