It is 9:45 AM right now. Today is a Friday, which means I don’t have any classes. Instead, I go to work. I’m a line cook, for now. I don’t hate it, but sometimes I don’t like it either. It’s easy to understand how I’m doing something worthwhile when I’m cooking. When I’m working with computers, it takes a little more brain power. I enjoyed my time at the engineering firm in Calgary, even though it usually felt like my work didn’t make a difference, and of course, I was drunk most of the time. I remember when I sat and would write firmware to the circuit boards, essentially testing them to make sure they were functional before they were shipped to another company in America. If a board failed one of the tests, I would bring it to the software guy and tell him what it failed. Sometimes, I would learn how to fix them myself. Sometimes that involved soldering or removing a component, and sometimes that involved wiping the firmware and starting again.
When I look back to my work at that company, I feel a sense of shame. I did my work, and I should feel some pride from that, but mostly what I remember is smuggling bottles of rum and beer into my cubicle from the office, sneaking them into the bathroom, drinking, wrapping them in toilet paper, and disposing of them in the garbage. I was also smoking a lot of pot and smoking/vaping at this time.
There was a day I drove into work high, and I was met with the hardware guy. He was from El Salvador. A very funny guy, I remember, and very fun to work with. He told me that he needed to pick up one of our contractors from a bus stop, but had ridden his bike into work, so he asked that we drive to pick him up. I obliged.
Opening the passenger side door, there’s no way the hardware guy didn’t know that I was smoking pot. My eyes were red, and even I was aware of the smell. I felt pathetic during the whole drive. He even asked me if I was alright and told me that my eyes were red.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m just tired.”
I don’t think he bought it.
There was one particularly bad day when I drank way too much. It was just past 4:00PM and I knew that I’d overindulged. I was sitting at my desk writing a bit of not terribly important code. I felt tired. Next thing I remember, I opened my eyes at 5:00PM having slept for nearly an hour sitting at my desk. I had pissed my pants. You might think that would be shameful enough for me to understand my alcohol problem, but it wasn’t. I picked up a six-pack on the drive home.
This was less than four years ago. The first day I remember having alcohol free was November 14th, 2022 after drinking every day, minus two separate weeks, for five years. I slipped up and drank on January 22nd of this year, but otherwise have been sober. Falling off the wagon is something that might happen in the future. I understand that. The important part for me is that, if I fall off, I hop right back on. In sobriety, I have learned ugly things about myself. That’s something I plan to talk about soon.
Quitting nicotine was very different than quitting alcohol. I needed a different sort of motivation to quit but once I had that, it was easier for me. Eventually I’ll tell the story of my quitting nicotine, but it requires a lot more background information, I think, to properly tell it. Now, I have to go to work.
MyShelf 