September 1st, day 69 of 90/90

Okay, I have been totally lame about this blog.  I meant to do a lot more updating and speculating but I haven’t.  I have decided at the very least that I will try to report what happened each day.  When I am inspired or have time I will write more.

It is Labor Day weekend.  Today is Sunday, September 1st 2013.  This morning I woke at 5:00 am to the beeping of my In-Home breathalyzer unit, 15 minutes before the alarm I had set.  I blew into the unit and passed.

After waiting for the unit to report that I had indeed not been drinking while I was asleep, I grabbed my cell and dialed in to the sobriety court hotline.  Yay, my color (Yellow) was called today!  How awesome, instead of sleeping for another hour before dragging my ass out of bed to go to an AA meeting, I got to hold in my piss and get ready to go to JAMS for another breathalyzer and a urinalysis.  I’ll rant another time about the whole drug testing for alcohol related offense abuse of my civil rights.  

5:55 AM, it’s off to JAMS.  What a joke.  What a miserable bunch of assholes manning that piss pot.  Yeah, it is a piss pot – that’s what it is there for, to collect people’s urine.  Fifteen minutes and $9.00 later, I had completed another obligation in my sobriety court program.

Time to head to an AA meeting!

Okay, I have to admit I didn’t have to do this right away.  Finding an AA meeting on any given day isn’t too tough, especially if you are willing to travel a little.  I have settled in to attending one of two meetings most of the time.  The one I like most is at 7:00 AM about 15 minutes from my house.  The other one I go to most is at 12:00 noon near my work.  

I prefer the early meeting because of the people there.  They are younger and more importantly, they have lives and jobs.  They have shit to do with their day and they want to get their day started so they kick it off with an AA meeting.  Some of us are just there because the courts have ordered us to go, but a lot of people are there because they genuinely want and need to be there.  

I was home by 8:15 am.  Cleaned the bathroom and decided that I would actually go back to bed.  After a couple hours I awoke to an uneventful day of chores & housework.  Later I was planing to meet with some family for a visit and dinner.

Around 4:00 pm I headed to my parents’ house.  We visited for a while and headed out for dinner.  I had to use my In-Home unit in my car at 6:00 PM.  Again, passed without any problem, because I had not been drinking.

I will say it again here.  I have never had a problem with being able to drink or not drink as I chose.  This whole routine is abuse.

I am an irresponsible idiot

Tags

Alcohol, Alcoholics, Alcoholics Anonymous, Beer, Bourbon, Courts, Craft Beer, Drug Testing, Drunk Driving, Idiocy, Idiot, JAMS, Law, Legal, Liquor

Late in January 2012 I did something spectacularly irresponsible and stupid.  After spending an evening sampling micro-brews and bourbons with some friends, I decided to drive home.

I was not okay to drive.  I knew I was not okay to drive, but I thought I was okay enough to drive.  In case you happen to be similarly lacking in judgement let me pass along a lesson that I already knew but refused to apply:  There is no such thing as okay enough to drive.

Feel free to argue.  Feel free to talk about body weight, alcohol consumed, time spent waiting, blah, blah, blah…while you are at it you can suck on my big toe.  Yes, all of those things matter but when you get right down to it if there is even the SLIGHTEST QUESTION over whether or not you are sober enough to drive then don’t do it.  

Getting back to my story…so we had a good old time drinking craft beers and sampling a small variety of bourbons.  The beers were great.  A number of us each brought two or three or four normal sized bottles of beer that we had deemed interesting enough to want to try and share.  This was not a wild drink fest.  This group of friends and I had done this many times before.  We rate, we discuss, we take snapshots and post them online with our opinions.  The bourbon…well it wasn’t unheard of to share any particular libation and this night it just happened to be bourbon.

I had the forethought to stop drinking anything alcoholic and switch to water at one point; what I didn’t have was the sense to just curl up on my buddy’s couch and sleep off the effects of the booze.  Alcohol affects users in a number of ways, but the first thing affected and perhaps the most significantly is judgement.  It certainly affected mine that night.

I am going to relate my experiences to you here, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Mostly it is ugly because I am an idiot who makes poor choices and is too trusting of authority.  

Please feel free to comment, flame, condemn, curse, whatever.  Despite everything the legal system is doing to me, I deserve your derision and contempt over this colossal screw up.  

-RR