by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

As drinking origin stories go, mine is pretty dumb.

In the 1970s, Glendora was still dotted with orange groves, including one right next to my Live Oak Avenue house. The old growth groves were just another playground for us. We rode our dirt bikes through the rows, made forts under the blossoms, and cut through them to get to other neighborhoods.

On a weekday afternoon in 1977 my friend Dave and I, both eighth graders at nearby Goddard Jr. High, were running around the grove and came across a breathtaking load of contraband: four unopened tall cans of Schlitz Malt Liquor. Apparently some older kids had been drinking in the grove and left them behind. We reacted as if we’d stumbled onto a plane crash site littered with stolen money. In our 13-year-old wisdom we decided it would be best to bury the loot and come back Friday evening to dig it up and quaff the bounty before riding our bikes to the Plaza Theater. We’d show up there drunk, like proper grown-ups, so that our peers would sense how inherently cool we really were, despite appearances.

Friday came and we dug up the hot, now filthy malt liquor cans. We both pretended to savor the taste as we polished them off. Stupidly, we pedaled down to the theater, both feeling a little dizzy. I don’t remember the movie, but we did indeed revel in our act of nascent teen rebellion, even if absolutely nobody noticed, or thought we were cool.

I should say now that I wished I had quit then, but that would be a lie. In fact, since that idiotic starting point, drinking has been my near constant companion.

In time, I learned to turn to alcohol to celebrate, ruminate, or mourn. And as the years piled up, I turned to it for no reason at all. Aside from a few gloomy patches in my life, where I knew I was overdoing it, I never thought much about it; it was part of me. I enjoyed it.

I have friends that get dark when they drink. Me? I’m a happy drunk.

When I was young, I drank beer. Whatever beer. Hard alcohol was too much for me. But, as I got into my 30s, I started supplementing the suds with wine. In my later 40s, whiskey became a thing, and I joined that club, eventually developing a taste for that dangerous brown liquor.

I’ve always enjoyed alcohol’s tingly euphoria, and the (usually) slow ramp up to inebriation. Sometimes I’d get it right and my buzz would plateau somewhere near optimum. On those occasions I was fun, affable, high functioning. Other times I’d blow it, go too far, and wake up unable to recall periods of time from the night prior. That was rare, but it certainly happened, and I’m not proud.

Thankfully, I was seldom a day drinker. I found the combination of alcohol and sun put me to sleep. I also never felt the compulsion to wake up and drink. These are the details I held onto that reinforced my belief that I was not an alcoholic. I couldn’t be, because I didn’t drink all the time. Right?

I had occasional hangovers. At first, they were mild, with the periodic doozy that would sideline me for half a day. As I got into my 50s, and now my 60s, those sporadic sick days began to accumulate with increasing frequency. I joked how “I couldn’t bounce back like I used to,” chalked it up to age, and made jokes about it.

Drinking for me has always consisted of finding a reason (by far the easiest task), a partner, a location, the imbibing, building up the buzz, then the payoff — a few hours of euphoria. The night would end when the clock said so or the event concluded. The mechanics were always roughly the same, but that sweet spot — those few hours of euphoria — was always the reward.

Over the past six months or so I began to notice that euphoria dwindling. It was gradual, but when I started to pay attention, obvious. The enjoyment was dissipating, and the toll increasing. My body was telling me something.

On May 31 I played a show with my band and, as was typical, had a few drinks after work. I felt awful. The alcohol wasn’t working. I talked myself into believing it was fatigue from playing a three-hour gig and all the grunt work that went with it. By morning I felt worse. This was more than a hangover. My body felt inflamed, my head was pounding, my mood dark, and my go-to Advil/Tylenol fix did nothing.

My body was trying to tell me something, and for the first time, I listened.

I decided that morning that I would take a break from alcohol. I strung together a week of sobriety. Then two. At the three week mark, to my amazement, I felt as though I’d emerged from a long sleep. Colors were more vivid. My mood was elevated. My anxiety had subsided. I could concentrate on my work. What was this?

I was for the first time in nearly 50 years, clear.

I’m working on three months now. I say “working,” but in all honesty, I have been very lucky not to have to struggle with sobriety. I’ve been in bars for work and to meet friends, been to parties and events where I’d normally be drinking, and met friends for dinner. Thus far the desire to drink has been nonexistent.

Now, the last thing I want to become is some sort of evangelist for sobriety. I repeat: I really liked drinking. It worked for me. Until it didn’t.

Now not drinking has become a sort of addiction in itself. I am exploring the space of sobriety, and really enjoying feeling good and sharp physically and mentally.

I’ve been cautioned against writing about this. I recognize the danger of appearing foolish should I one day fall back into my old habits. But after some thought, I decided if anyone like me — old, set in their ways, but feeling ambivalent about alcohol — reads this and feels a small amount of encouragement, then it’s worth that risk.

For me, drinking just wasn’t fun anymore and I think my body had finally just had enough. Walking away from it is the best gift I’ve ever given myself.