For me, it wasn't my wife at the time, but it was my family because I was only 24. I'm 58 now. Thirty-three years and change go by and a lot of stuff happens, but I remember back then some of that stuff like being a blackout drinker where as soon as you know you take a couple of drinks, it's fun, fun, fun—

Next thing you know you're up the next morning and it's "Where did I park my car?" We have a joke—and it was, it got to be not funny anymore—but it was a joke at first where I would say, "Man, what happened last night?" My friends would be like, "Oh, we went here and we went there," and I would say, "Did I have fun?" I had no idea. And that's scary, because then go out and you look at your car and you want to walk around it and make sure you didn't run somebody over or something. I mean, it's serious.

We don't have whatever that thing is inside of us genetically or whatever—as soon as alcohol hits our system—like the normal human being uses it to lower their inhibitions. It's a social lubricant for meeting girls. For whatever reason, though, when an alcoholic drinks alcohol, it triggers something else. There's a phenomenon of cravings that I call the "Fuck Its." A normal human being is going to go, "Wow, oh, I'm a little bit tipsy right now. I better stop." An alcoholic is going to go, "Where's the after party? Where's the after after party? Let's get some cocaine and keep it going." Cocaine might date me because I don't even know if the kids do that shit anymore. I don't even know if it's cocaine anymore.

Normal people that aren't alcoholics or don't have a problem with alcohol, they don't think about alcohol that much. It consumed my thoughts before I got sober. Like, "What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to get it? How am I going to get more? Why did I drink so much? Why is my girlfriend mad at me? I can't remember what I did." All those things, you know. Normal people don't even have to worry about that shit.

Or they might be like, "Ooh, I have a little headache today. I drink one glass too many of wine." I don't relate.

It can kind of spiral.

It definitely feeds off of itself. That "functioning" thing can keep you from actually getting sober for years because you think, "Hey, I pull it off. I go to work. I do my duty. I do what I need to do." But then if you really look at it, you're not in a lot of areas.

When I finally got introduced to the twelve step thing… there was just this one day and this little old lady—she had knitting needles and she was in a meeting. I didn't relate to her on any level: 24 year old punk rock dude. There's this little old lady knitting, and she puts down the thing and she says, "I just couldn't stop." And I don't even know to this day why when she said that, it hit me right in the heart. And I knew that that lady was exactly like me. And then she went on to say,"Hey, when I started doing the steps and I started listening to these people all of a sudden now I can have a life."

And it's weird because somebody like yourself, being in your thirties and having success and doing things and stuff, it's easier to say like, "Well, that guy was a loser. He was worse than I was." You know what I mean? There's all these different levels. I don't say I lost everything in my life. I never had anything to lose at 24 yet. I was just some loser, 24 year old guy.

But weirdly enough, I was always trying to do bands. I was always trying to do music. I got sober and I met a bunch of guys that were all sober too, and we ended up forming this band and we got a cult following and we made albums and toured the United States and Canada a bunch of times and had all these great times and everyone on the road would just be like, "You guys are sober? You guys are crazy on stage. This is the craziest, fun band ever. I can't believe you guys are all sober."

When you're newly sober and you're going "Each new thing I do, it's another little tick." You can check them off on a box. I remember for me, I had never gone on a date with a woman sober. I had never had sex sober. I had never done all this stuff. It was like, "Holy shit, this is a brand new thing." You're discovering these new things. It's like sitting down: "I'm nervous, I'm nervous." And normally I would take a couple of drinks to loosen up, and then I would just talk and talk and talk.

But then you get through it sober and you're like, "I can do it. I am capable of having a personality and being sober." Going to a party and just thinking, "What do I do if someone hands me a beer? What do I say? What do I do?" You know, I just say, "No, thank you." So it's kind of amazing because you get to experience a bunch of things and you feel feelings—sometimes we don't want to feel them. The longer I stay sober, I realize all we have is right now, so that one day at a time principal is amazing. If you blow it with somebody—even if you mess up and drink—you have the next day. The next day you get up, you can start all over and not drink. That one-day-at-a-time principal has carried me through 33 years, and it's been a, it's been a good life.

The best part of it is that I don't usually have to wake up and apologize for anything, especially things I don't remember. If I'm apologizing for something, it's something I do remember, which is a blessing.