[
{
"name": "Related Stories / Support Us Combo",
"component": "12017627",
"insertPoint": "4",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "6"
},
{
"name": "Air - Billboard - Inline Content",
"component": "12017623",
"insertPoint": "2/3",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "7"
},
{
"name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2",
"component": "12017624",
"insertPoint": "12",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "12"
},{
"name": "Air - MediumRectangle - Inline Content - Mobile Display Size 2",
"component": "12017624",
"insertPoint": "4th",
"startingPoint": "16",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "12"
}
,{
"name": "RevContent - In Article",
"component": "13027957",
"insertPoint": "3/5",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "5"
}
]
It feels weird to commemorate quitting something that almost killed you. But on July 22 every year since 2006, I say thank you and congratulations to myself for being alive and healthy. As a drunk, I was somehow spared multiple DUIs; I drove drunk -- blackout drunk, at that -- many times over the course of half a decade. I never managed to get caught or kill anyone. I don't know if that's called luck.
Driving is just one of the many things I now do sober that I used to do drunk. Living a life without alcohol is pretty great most of the time (especially when it comes to not harming yourself or others with your own bad choices). But sometimes, it sucks. That's how sobriety works: If it was a super-easy thing to navigate and overcome, no one would be an addict. But the truth is, addicts are addicts forever and always. Addiction is not curable -- which is why, eight years after I stopped drinking, I still think and dream about it.
See also: Philip Seymour Hoffman, heroin and the secret club of addiction
