Drunk Dreaming ...

Cocktails
Originally uploaded by sidewalk flying

The speaker at tonight's meeting is someone I have always been drawn to -- perhaps it's the thick Irish accent, the long ponytail, the toothy grin, or just the fact that he is another drunk like me.

Of all the great things he had to share in his story, the part that stuck out the most for me had to do with the fantasizing and grandiosity that many of us experienced while perched on our barstools -- drunk dreaming. He spoke about the countless days and nights he looked into the mirrored wall behind his favorite dive bar, swept up in his own blurry reflection, conjuring up all the types of people he'd become and all the kinds of jobs he'd have and all the piles of money and material things he'd acquire. My favorite line as he relayed this part of his story was this one: "I was posing for photographs that nobody was taking."

Having my butt planted on the seat of a fake leather bar stool, several draft beers lined up in front of me, along with a shot or two, and I could dream and scheme up the finest of fantasies about all the grand things I would be doing with my life: a rock star; a bar owner; a Harley biker going up and down the coast of California; owner of several mansions with pools complete with poolside bars.
As my drinking progressed, my wobbly ass couldn't suspend me on that barstool for any great length of time and the dreams faded into the darkness of my blackouts. After awhile, I actually didn't imagine a future much past the age of 25; if I did let myself go there, my head spun with frightening images of jails or mental wards.

About a year or two before I put down the drink, what I know now to be my Future Self made her first appearances amid the fog of my fermented brain. I couldn't make out her voice right away, sometimes terrified that perhaps I was hallucinating and becoming psychotic. And then her voice got a little clearer and more audible -- which got my attention. She gently warned me, then threatened me in later months, that this drinking thing was gonna get me in trouble. That I needed to stop. She saw the life that was possible for me when I could not. She was quite real. And persistent. I don't know if I could say that she was a separate being from me or from God, but rather that she was OF me and God, sent directly to intervene.

Getting off the barstool and landing on my own two feet was the start of my journey in sobriety. No more smoke-filled, dingy dark caves to hibernate in. No more drunk dreaming into the bottom of a beer glass, where fantasies fizzle and drown.

The Future Self who pulled me out of the mess I called a life nearly 20 years ago is the same being occupying the one who is typing in this moment and smiling an all-knowing smile: "I knew you had it in you, kid." What an amazing revelation. The me who is fulfilling a particular set of dreams today was in the form of the Future Self who knew that the me way back when would eventually be able to manifest all of them.

Holy. Shit.