My Last Drunk

On February 3rd of this year I had my last drink. In true Jade fashion I don't remember what it was or which bar I was at. That has been something that's weighed on my mind for the past 113 days. I don't know why it matters. I think it's because I truly have had carried on in this love affair with alcohol for most of my teenaged life and the entirety of my adult life, and to not remember my last drink has been like a break-up without the break-up sex.

I do remember the results of that last drink. But let me back up a little.
The first time I blacked out I was drinking with my dad. My father and I had a very strained relationship and this was the first we had seen eachother in 4 years, when I was 17. One minute I was smoking in the backyard and the next thing I know I'm laying on a futon and my dad is mopping up vomit.

It was the most disconcerting sensation I'd ever felt. I'd had the times that I called "fuzzy moments" where I didn't really recall what had happened, but as soon as someone or something reminded me it got clearer. This night with my father was completely different. There was nothing. Thanks to modern technology there were pictures and video, of course, and watching them scared the living shit out of me. I'm watching myself talk and walk and throw up and laugh and it's like I'm watching someone else do these things.

Thankfully, I really couldn't have been in a safer environment to black out but it still scared me. It shook me enough to make my first pledge to drink less. But after about a day I switched that pledge to lay off Jack and just drink beer. Then I decided that if I only drink Jack when I have the next day off. Then I said fuck it. It took about five days.
The blackouts were sporadic at first. I had one or two the first few months. Then it was once every couple of weeks. Then once a week. It only took about 6 months for the daily  blackouts to start.

It's astounding to me how quickly I went from being terrified of blackouts to accepting them as easily as I accept that my ears will pop when I fly. I don't know if it was  conscience decision but I knew that I couldn't stop them from happening, and I sure as hell wasn't going to stop drinking so my attitude was, as with everything else, fuck it.

February 3, 2012 was like every other day. It was Friday which didn't make any difference to me because I drank everyday like it was a party. I was a server at a little restaurant in Downtown Orlando and there were at least five bars within twenty paces, I left work everyday with a pocket full of cash and bee lined it to the nearest bar. I didn't have to say anything, as soon as I walked into a number of bars the bartender instinctively poured my Jack and opened my Yuengling. My restaurant closed at 2:30 pm so my party stared soon after that and that Friday was no different.

Two co-workers joined me to drink at the  day, which was our near daily ritual. That days atrocity was that we had to start wearing ties the following day. We would look for anything to light that fire and then drink to put it out. I remember starting at Pine Street Bar & Grill. Then we saw our favorite bartender at the bar across the way so we migrated instinctively. That is the last thing I remember from February 3rd.

Early in the morning on February 4th, sometime between 3-4am, I wake up. I'm sleeping sitting down with my head on my knees and my hands behind my back. Waking up in strange places in strange positions was commonplace so I wasn't at all concerned. Chaos and confusion were a part of my drinking. I was accustomed to it. I was comfortable with it. I picked up my head but the fluorescent light has blurred my vision so I close my . I try to move my arms and the tug I feel on my wrist snaps me back to reality. Holy shit, I'm in jail.

I don't have a car, I drive a scooter, and the muffler broke the day before I got arrested, so that ruled out a dui. Unless I stole a car. Shit, did I steal a car? Did I steal something? Was it a fight? Did I hit someone? Shit, are they okay? For the next hour I couldn't get anyone to tell me what I'd done. When I heard myself ask a corrections officer, while wearing handcuffs, hammered out of my gourd, whether or not I'd killed someone something snapped in me. I realized that I had hit my bottom. I was okay with blacking outs. I was okay with waking up in strange places. I was okay with losing a shoe. I was okay with the fights and the bruises. I was okay with the missing money. But waking up in jail not knowing if I had ened someone's life and crushed countless others existence was too much. And for the first time I admitted it, alcohol had control of me. That I had taken this too far. Enough was enough. When the police officers who arrested me took me into a room to perform the breathalyzer and saw that my BAC was .24 one officer said "you should have been passed out a long time ago," I said the phrase that has become the catalyst to my road to recovery for the first time. I lifted my head, tried to focus on his eyes and said, "I think I have a problem".