SIX MONTHS ON THE WAGON

Per almanac.com, the term “on the wagon” first came into use at the turn of the 20th century, when someone who gave up drinking alcohol was said to be “on the water cart”, meaning that he was using the services of horse-drawn water vendors instead of imbibing at the local saloon. By 1904, it had become “on the water wagon”, then shortened to “on the wagon” with the same intended meaning.

Yesterday marked six months since I had my last drink of alcohol!

The numerous benefits of sobriety have been listed elsewhere ad nauseam: improved sleep, clearer thinking, a better attitude, etc., but what I never saw mentioned was the cumulative effect of these improvements and let me tell you, brothers and sisters, THAT is the greatest improvement of all.

Getting a good night’s sleep and waking up refreshed and rested can only be truly appreciated by those of us who have awakened with a skull crushing, stomach churning, absolutely BRUTAL hangover, most likely on multiple mornings and probably on multiple mornings in a row. 

For a long time, my first thought on waking was, “Well shit, I lived.” Not a great attitude with which to start the day! Then crawl out of bed like a corpse out of a coffin and shuffle to the bathroom to piss brown and check for cuts and bruises. Make coffee while I tried to piece together the scattered and tattered memories of the previous evening. I don’t necessarily bounce out of bed every morning these days, raring to go, but I can at least think about the day ahead instead of the night before.

Hating everyone and everything, but mostly hating myself, and gutting out the next forever until I was finally able to get that first, lovely, glorious drink and start the crazy shit all over again. Now I can love others since I’m not spending so much energy hating myself.

Each of these things is a blessing in itself, but, in total, add up to so much more than the sum of the parts that the difference is like night and day.

I’m a different man than I was six months ago, a better man. I have more patience and less anger. More love and less hate. More understanding and less judgment.

It’s a long road, this life, and not always smooth, but it’s a pretty nice ride up here on the water wagon.