I recently celebrated five years of sobriety and I’m gonna be dead honest, I was expecting more. Things are good! I’m in love, I’m in debt, I’m on anti-psychotics and statins, to treat the things those things treat. But I figured by now I’d have some next level wisdom to bestow amongst ye, and I’m coming up short. I will say that, if you’re reading this, you are part of my sobriety. You’re also a subscriber! If you’re confused about how you got here, this is a free newsletter and I already had your email. Welcome! 

Anyway! I picked two of my favorite episodes of TNG, and wrote about hangovers and do-overs. The first is free verse inspired by Tapestry (“To Get Stabbed in the Heart by a Nausicaan, Or Not To Get Stabbed in the Heart by a Nausicaan”) and the second is a tanka prose poem based on Relics (“The One With Scotty”). Enjoy!

Tapestry

Jean-Luc was dead, to begin with. And when Q gives him a second chance, Picard is able to pinpoint with dagger-like precision the exact moment which defined his future, and ended his present with a broken artificial heart.

As an alcoholic I’ll never have the chance Picard has to erase the consequences of his one worst choice, because my worst choice didn’t only happen one time. So instead of looking back all I can do is look forward, and try to help the next guy from stabbing himself in the back.

I Saw You And Did Nothing

“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

So I had this, like
awakening
or whatever.
And now I’m principled.

And I want you to know, I saw you.
I saw you and did nothing.

It was around 2 p.m. on a Saturday in June.
Not an outrageous time for a drink, not in times like these,
plus the sun was out and the breeze was nice.
You were on a sidewalk — not brunching on Limestone
traffic blowing by — you were hunched in the dark doorway of a shuttered business.
You were staring. 

I saw you and did nothing.
You were staring at two bottles, a 20 ounce of Mountain Dew and
a fifth of vodka. Peggy Olson says vodka and Mountain Dew isn’t a cocktail, it’s an emergency. I saw the look in your eyes and recognized it, remembered it, felt it.

I saw what would happen next. 

I saw what you saw, and the emergency is everywhere.
And from this particular vantage–
chasing Dark Eyes Vodka with Mountain Dew in the June breeze makes as much sense as anything else.

I saw you and did nothing. Next time,
if you’re still around for a next time,
I’ll see you and

Relics

Scotty says “Never get drunk unless you’re willing to pay for it the next day.” I’d been paying for it every day of thirteen years, and it was time to admit my plan wasn’t working; I’d spent more than a decade trying and failing to kill myself with bottom shelf bourbon. In many ways I was already an echo, a spirit. My existence extended only as far as the liquor store, my future only as bright as the neon OPEN sign that didn’t switch on until after 1:00 on Sundays. It was time to think outside the box. Time for a new engine startup routine, an attempt to change the laws of physics, if just for a moment. It was Thanksgiving break, and I had hull integrity for just one more hangover before school started again on Monday, so I sat down to my last drink, my last binge, my last attempt at completely losing myself in the cosmic transporter buffer. I resolved that by morning I’d either be sober or dead. 

I set the bottle of bourbon on the marble countertop, a rocks glass next to it. I poured a shot and quickly downed it. I poured another, and held this one in my mouth before swallowing, so that it could burn each and every one of my taste buds, searing the memory into my mouth. After swallowing hard, my eyes opened to a still mostly full bottle. 

When I woke up, it was all gone. The handle of bourbon on the counter, the case of beer in the fridge, I’d even smoked my emergency pack of cigarettes. Warp core breach hangovers hardly phased me anymore, but that morning, hunched over my toilet, I smiled and laughed, bile dripping down my chin, knowing I would never, ever, feel this way again.

Song of Synthehol

Beer Goggles torn off, 
pattern reassembled. Thanks 
to sobriety, 
the past is too clearly seen. 
It is not gold, it is green.