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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Oh, Wow.

Oh, Wow.

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On this day a year ago I was in either day 3 or 4 of rehab, so I guess that means I have been sober for a year.

It seems a lot, lot longer than that, to be honest. Not because it has been hard or anything, just time goes a lot slower when you aren’t on the bottle.

Can’t say I miss it one bit, either. I feel a lot better mentally and physically.

Plus, it’s clear I didn’t need the bottle to retain my irresistible charm.

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I am fascinated that you are ever-so-slightly vague about your exact moment of sobriety. Everyone I have ever known who got sober (or clean from drugs, or quit smoking) knows down to the hour and minute. I’m not in the least saying that to be critical. In fact, I think it’s pretty cool that you don’t go all OCD about the anniversary date.

    Big congratulations, John Cole +0.

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    @SiubhanDuinne: I had my last drink on August 16, 1989 at about 6:30 p.m.; what are you saying? If I was really OCD I would know the exact minute.

    Congratulations, John.

  10. 10.

    magurakurin

    Good for you John. I’ve been sober since 1988. Hands down the best thing I ever did in my life.

    I do remember the day I stopped drinking, it was April 12. It was after a particularly bad night and I just said, that’s it. And I never had a drink again, except for one day about a month later sometime in May. I told everyone at my work I was out, but they talked me into going to the bar at lunch. They said go ahead just have one small glass of beer. I took one sip, and then said to myself. No, this is stupid, I’m out. And I have never ever touched a drop since that final afternoon sip of beer. Not sure the exact day of that though.

    brothers in sobriety…we rock.

  11. 11.

    Jacks mom

    Could I please get out of moderation? I honestly try to never say anything offensive.

  18. 18.

    John Cole

    @SiubhanDuinne: I actually had to do a search in the archives to find out the date. I knew it was around now. I was released on the 3rd of August so I am assuming it was my third or fourth day sober today.

    I think maybe because it has been so easy it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal. I just you know, stopped. Made up my mind, needed to beat the physical dependency, and when that was done it was over for me, so to speak.

    I really wish it were that way for everyone, TBH. But I’m kind of stubborn and when I finally make up my mind about something, I do it.

  19. 19.

    Jane2

    Congrats, John. And congrats to all others in this thread who shared their sobriety dates….I’m sure it’s not easy in a drinking, self-medicating culture.

    Especially with 24/7 Donald Trump.

  21. 21.

    aimai

    We love you, John. You are an inspriation to many people. This year has gone by in a flash. I remember when you went into rehab–it seems like just a few months ago. I’m proud of you.

  22. 22.

    AndoChronic

    Good job John! I think you’re even still funny… and maybe even still charming… but I’m a dude and dudes don’t say that to other dudes. It’s all you bubba and not the booze!

  24. 24.

    Janelle

    Congrats… semi-related for me, it was 5 years ago tomorrow (July 31st) that I smoked my last cigarette (or used tobacco/nicotine in any form). Won’t lie, I did the Chantix routine, and it actually wound up working, when nothing else had for the 18 years prior that I had been a smoked.

  26. 26.

    SlothropRedux

    Congratulations. I showed your post to my wife, who has 30.5 years of sobriety under her belt, and she got a big smile and told me I had to post a congratulatory message. You are one of those rare folks who has actually listened, learned and evolved while also playing on the Internet. Your sobriety is a great part of that journey.

  31. 31.

    shortstop

    @John Cole: the thing about addiction is that very often the substance itself isn’t really missed when you get clean. Then people think: oh, this is easy. And it can be very easy not to drink or use, but there are still all the fucked-up emotional and mental processes that go along with addiction. Rationalization, minimization, blaming others, big anger are a few of the bad thinking habits that tend to (I didn’t say always) affect addicts in some combination. That’s the hard part, the part that never goes away (even though virtually everyone says it gets better and better all the time if they stay accountable to themselves).

    I am not downplaying the accomplishment of getting sober at all — just the opposite. You have done a wonderful, difficult thing and massively changed your life…very possibly saved it. And I couldn’t be happier for you.

  33. 33.

    kindness

    Congrats John.

    The time goes slower…I remember the first few times I smoked weed. Time seemed to take forever. That passed though.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jane2: I have an aunt who tried almost everything and nothing worked until she tried hypnosis. She walked out of the the session and tossed her cigs and never looked back. Weird what works for different people.

  37. 37.

    Jane2

    @Omnes Omnibus: I used Nicorette….you’re right, it’s weird what works. But I’m glad it did…haven’t had one since 1985. Now to deal with my other bad habits….

  39. 39.

    mai naem mobile

    Okay, so I guess no drinking games for next week’s debate based on ‘I am rich very rich.’
    I keed, I keed, congrats John.

  41. 41.

    shortstop

    @Janelle: There are no prizes given for suffering more than you did. It’s hard enough to quit smoking even with the props and tools that are out there. Hardest thing I ever did for sure. Congrats!

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I tried hypnosis many times. It never took. I tried just going cold turkey. Never worked. What finally got me to quit smoking was a heart attack.

  44. 44.

    hitchhiker

    I smoked dope every day for 9 years, back in the 70s. What’s really weird is that I now iive in a state where I could just go buy the stuff like a can of tuna or something . . . but I just don’t dare. I know what happens if I decide to check out.

    I check the f#@k out, and it takes a minor earthquake to bring me to my senses.

    No thanks. And, congratulations.

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SiubhanDuinne: That would do it. My grandmother quit at age 89 after smoking for 75 years. She decided to stop right after Christmas that year. Since she was frugal, she finished all the cigs that she had in the house and just never bought more.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My dad wasn’t quite that old, but his quittitude was similar. He was, I think, 77 or 78 and had smoked regularly since he was 13. Bought his usual weekly carton of unfiltered Pall Malls, smoked them all, quit, never looked back. I was still smoking then, but that didn’t seem to bother him at all. Strange.

  47. 47.

    shortstop

    @SiubhanDuinne: d’you know, in all the years I smoked (about 10 total — I quit and relapsed a few times, once after years off the goddamned things), I never once bought a carton, only individual packs. Buying a carton would have been admitting to myself that I intended to keep smoking!

  49. 49.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus: I quit cigarettes 3 years ago and I swear electronic cigarettes were the only reason why. I “smoked” those for 6 months and then quit all nicotine and haven’t been tempted since.

  50. 50.

    Mark

    Congrats to you John. I haven’t been sober for much more than a few days since then.

    I live in Washington State where weed is legal, but I work for a company that requires testing for weed randomly, a Federal regulation, so I can’t smoke any weed. I make up for it by drinking heavily from time to time. The booze is going to kill me one of these days, probably sooner than later.

    What the hell, I’m 58 and have lived most of my life. I just wish I could play out the string by smoking weed. I really did love smoking weed until the Feds came along and shut that shit down!

  51. 51.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: Luckily for me, smoking was never one of my vices. Nicotine literally makes me sick to my stomach and my lungs are too sensitive to handle the smoke itself.

  53. 53.

    RaflW

    Well done, John.

    Day by day, it adds up. I haven’t regretted my decision 13 years ago to give up the sauce.

    @SiubhanDuinne: I don’t remember my sobriety date. It’s some time in early May. Usually around May 15 I go – wow, there it is, another year.

  54. 54.

    Karmus

    I raise a toast in your honor, John.

    I’m only being semi-snarky. I rarely drink, but I did buy a bottle of Scotch today to celebrate finding and buying a car. My truck, which had been my dad’s, was declared a total loss after being hit last month by a young person who had been (ironically?) drinking.

  56. 56.

    Royston Vasey

    Two weeks and no drinking.
    Seeing that I was drinking about 4 times a week that’s not too bad

    Been on the Coke Zero or the Diet Coke and raspberry in a pint glass.
    I’ll probably go back, but its good being off it for the time being.

    RV in NZ

  58. 58.

    Jane2

    @Mark: I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the less interested I am in giving in to whatever, mainly because every year it seems more people in my life are sick or dead. I want to make the last two decades or so count.

  60. 60.

    RaflW

    @Jane2:

    And congrats to all others in this thread who shared their sobriety dates….I’m sure it’s not easy in a drinking, self-medicating culture.

    I discovered fairly quickly that a lot of people don’t drink. Not in an AA way, or a christian women’s temperance union way, etc. They just don’t drink – or if they do it’s one every few months or on a (truly) special occasion. My BF is just a not-ever-interested guy.

    We have a great time, we’re fun at parties, some of our friends will have three Caipiriñas on the deck on a Friday evening and it’s all OK. But I thought when I stopped drinking that I’d be so obviously the teetotal boring dude. I just didn’t notice the don’t-care-for-it crowd also enjoying their lives…

    Now. Coffee? Don’t you get between me and my coffee. That’s an addiction I nurture. So far I don’t think it has made my life unmanageable, even if I seem to be powerless over it.

  61. 61.

    Mike J

    Took Dad down to the USS Boxer today. I needed to do some maintenance on the sailboats and he helped me with that, so I took him down to fleet week. Dad, being an old navy guy[1] had to tell a story about the 1960s era navy at every stop on the tour. Today, I heard a story I hadn’t heard.

    After I was born, my dad was deployed to make up for the deployment he missed for me. I got sick, and my mom took me into NS Norfolk to see a doctor. The guy on the gate told her that it would be disrespectful to the doctor for her to bring a sick child in to see the doc while (gasp) wearing slacks.

    She was a legal secretary, and called the managing partner at her firm. He said don’t worry, my son is a pediatrician, you go see him and everything will be taken care of. Doc told her to take me to the ER, told her the magic words to make the navy pay, and I survived my minor bout of whatever the fuck it was I had as an infant.

    When the carrier was pulling back into port, my dad was pulled out of line for liberty. The squadron commander says, “tell your wife she can wear whatever she wants to see the doctor.” Which was a surprise to him since he had been in the Med and didn’t know any of this shit was going on.

    Anyway, we’re going sailing[2] tomorrow up the west channel of Mercer island to watch the Blue Angels. It’s annoying to look at your dad and see him as he was when he was when you were a kid but know that he’s 73 and he probably won’t be here another 40 years.

    [1] Not to be confused with an Old Navy guy who sells overpriced t-shirts.
    [2] Probably motoring most of the way in the sailboat, but we may sail back.

  64. 64.

    Mike J

    @redshirt: I belong to a club that owns 6 dinghys and 4 keelboats (20-25ft) that I can use any time. Really cheap if you’re near the south end of lake Washington.

  70. 70.

    Mike J

    @redshirt: The club is in Coulon park in Renton. I’ll take anyone out almost any time. Tuesday night is dinghy race night and you must be out for blood in a meaningless club race. It’s like academic politics. It means more because it’s worth nothing.[1] But any other time is just for enjoyment. Until the fall when we switchover to big boat racing every other Saturday.

    But really, $225/yr/family is a steal. We’ll even teach you.

    [1] We debrief[2] at the bar the Seahawks cheerleaders and upper management hang out at.

    [2] drink

  72. 72.

    Royston Vasey

    @Jane2: Staying off for as long as I can. Which will be hard as it has played a huge part of my life. It was very much part of the culture when I was growing up, and is just as engrained now where I live in NZ.

    Thanks for replying!

    RV in NZ

  73. 73.

    Karmus

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s a Chevy Cavalier. I was hoping for a 21st century car this time around, and this is a 2000, so I missed it by a whisker. But I got it for a good price and it seems to have been well cared for, so hopefully it’ll do me for a while.

  77. 77.

    Cain

    @John Cole:

    I think maybe because it has been so easy it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal. I just you know, stopped. Made up my mind, needed to beat the physical dependency, and when that was done it was over for me, so to speak.

    I think I can relate. I stopped drinking coffee and it was ridiculously easy. I stopped cold turkey and I can’t remember even when I did that honestly. Sometime around October about 3 years ago or so.

  80. 80.

    Emessbe

    Delurking to say, congratulations, John! Keep up the good work, one day at a time.

  82. 82.

    bluehill

    Way to go, John!!!

    In other news, found it interesting (and depressingly predictable) to read the comments in reaction to a police shooting of white teenager vs comments about the police-related deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and unfortunately many others.

    huffingtonpost.com/entry/zachary-hammond-shot-police-south-carolina_55ba6d51e4b0af35367aaa16?

    Also, another disparity that is completely unsurprising.

    dailykos.com/story/2015/07/30/1407259/-Two-men-One-armed-and-violent-the-other-unarmed-and-non-viole…

  84. 84.

    Pie Happens (opiejeanne)

    Congratulations, John. Keep it up; we want you to stick around for a long time.

  88. 88.

    Morzer

    Good job, John. Although, I can’t help noticing that as you get more sober the Republicans get more crazy. Coincidence? I think not!

  90. 90.

    Skippy-san

    Well I’ll drink for the both of us then. The “program” damn near killed me-and I will have nothing to do with it ever again.

  91. 91.

    trnc

    @John Cole:
    “What do you do now instead of drink, Cole?”
    “Lot of iced tea and iced coffee, soda water, sugar free koolaid, etc. Milk in the morning.”

    I could have sworn the answer was going to be “blog.” :-D

  94. 94.

    rustypickup

    Congratulations and keep up the good work. Easy does it, but do it. My last was November 1989. I was warned not to get overconfident the second year, so I will pass that on. Congratulations again.

  95. 95.

    grascarp

    John , Thanks for all you have done for us and thanks for all you have done for yourself …

  96. 96.

    Gustopher

    Congratulations! I’m going on 6 hours now without a drink, and I expect to last at least until 3pm tomorrow.

  97. 97.

    Keith G

    There was a time when I couldn’t imagine not using specific combinations of specific illegal substances to get me through every week. Luckily, alcohol was not an issue, since I never had much use for the sedative-hypnotic effects that drinking has on me – except for the occasional celebratory libation. So that was one less fight.

    Now I can’t imagine going back to that dark era. Get shivers at the mere thought – and the unfortunate memories.

    And yes, cigarettes, though only smoked for a decade as an accompaniment to the other toxins, were the hardest to stop.

  104. 104.

    Glaukopis

    Congratulations from another lurker. I’ve seen the damage not quitting can do – we’d like you to be around for a long time.

  105. 105.

    Nancy

    I’ve noticed a change in your posts, the aspects of yourself that you chose to share with your readers. I admire the way you’ve allowed your readers to know who you are and I’m glad that the you we read now seems more content. Best wishes.

  108. 108.

    Denali

    So glad for you, John. And proud to know you through your blog. Thanks for keeping us together.

  109. 109.

    Allan

    Congratulations! I hope your journey forward will be as exciting as mine was. So many doors will open that were closed before. Enjoy!

  111. 111.

    boatboy_srq

    @SiubhanDuinne: It depends on how formative the addiction is/was to one’s earlier identity and how traumatic the act of quitting was. I can’t recall the exact day I stopped smoking, for example, except that it was two years and two months ago – but I know my food tastes better, I sleep better and I’m managing my stress better than I did. I have friends who mark their calendars with date/hour/minute/second-level specifics but they were hooked way longer and identified far more strongly as smokers than I did. I suspect Cole is the same way.

    @John Cole @Top: Congratulations sir! Well done. Keep it up.

  117. 117.

    WereBear

    Your ability to change your mind bodes well for you, John Cole!

    We never thought you were a Republican at heart.

  120. 120.

    Ben

    @SiubhanDuinne: Actually, it is good that Cole isn’t focused on an exact sobriety date. I got sober originally in 1992 (April 8th), and kept track of that date and got my chips. In 1999, during a bad breakup, spent two weeks on a bender and then got sober again (and still am). In AA, the first 3 steps are about drinking and the other 9 are about life. In keeping track of an exact date and placing too much importance on it, it is easy to let your guard down. I’ve been sober for x number of years, I can put myself in bad situations and it will be OK. It is much better to just take it one day at a time, acknowledge your sobriety date quietly but don’t get too caught up in it. One’s sobriety date is less important than working the steps, and IMHO, putting AA on the back burner so you can actually go live your life. I’ve seen too many people that were as addicted to AA as they were booze. Drunk-a-logues, 13th stepping newbies, etc. The longer you remain sober, the more fucked up AA can seem. I’m grateful to AA (and especially my sponsor), but there comes a time when you just have to go live your life with the tools you learned in the first couple of years of sobriety.

  122. 122.

    Ann Marie

    Congratulations! I hope you live a long time and continue to blog for many years. Your remaining sober makes that more likely.

  123. 123.

    centerfielddj

    Congratulations on reaching your birthday, John. One day at a time. I’m glad you’re experiencing sobriety well. And yes, you remain our favorite grumpy blog leader, even though you’re generous with your willingness to share vulnerabilities with us.

    We’re all just doing the best we can. Admittedly, the best some can do (cough GOP base and leaders cough) is not very good at all. But even they’re suffering.

  125. 125.

    shortstop

    @Ben: Lots of wisdom here. The program is an interlocking set of very useful tools, not an end or bible in itself. I wouldn’t say it’s fucked up in and of itself, but people can and do treat it as an alternate addiction.

    @WereBear: This. John’s ability to change his mind, change course and freely talk about that is serving him as well here as it’s done in other areas, like politics. It is such a rare talent and he has it down.

  126. 126.

    grumpy realist

    @shortstop: Isn’t that what they call a “dry drunk”?

    My father went from a four-pack-a-day smoker to nothing when I was born. I never remember him smoking. I still can’t help but think it was all those years of smoking that was the genesis of the cancer that finally carried him off, however.

    I may swap alcohol out for iced coffee at some point soon, but in my case it’s because I’m a cheap bastard and don’t need the calories.

  128. 128.

    shortstop

    @grumpy realist: A dry drunk is someone who stops drinking but doesn’t address the emotional issues and destructive patterns of behavior (outside of consuming alcohol) that come with addiction.

  131. 131.

    WaterGirl

    Late to the thread, but I want to say how proud I am of you. Those days when you wanted help and couldn’t get any were terribly frustrating. Love you cole, so glad you make this space for all of us.

  132. 132.

    ursine

    Long time reader/lurker – Congratulations. I really admire how you have consistently made tough choices to change your life and improve your world. Enjoy your day.

  133. 133.

    Rachel B.

    Add one more hearty “Congratulations, John!” to the accumulation above. And a Happy Sober Birthday, for good measure.

    Hard work, man. Well done.

  134. 134.

    Blue Stater

    Congratulations, John. This October 5 I’ll have 36 years of sobriety, but for me, like every alcoholic, it’s still one day at a time. Over time it does get easier, but the need for vigilance never goes away.

  135. 135.

    Paul Woodford

    Congratulations! I used to know the exact date I quit drinking; now I have to check my blog archives just to get the month and year right. So glad I did, though I no longer celebrate anniversaries, and glad for you, too.

  136. 136.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    I’m late to the party, but congrats and good on you, Cole!

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