My Life As A Dented Can

What was really behind that first glass of wine…

Sometimes the universe has a way of speaking to us in subtle, cautious tones. And then, of course, there are times when it screams in our face. With bad breath. 

Throughout the last eleven years prior to 2022, I lived a life of sobriety in every form—not a drop of alcohol nor a single substance that was not expressly prescribed by a legitimate doctor had passed my lips. I learned a lot in this period, but it certainly didn’t come without a price. 

The amount of times I was told by prospective partners that they didn’t want to get involved with someone in “recovery”—well, I don’t have an exact number, but it was many more times than anyone should have to experience. 

The pain I endured from this, year after year, was like one of those tragedies that fearful people try unsuccessfully to block out. I never really understood this covert function in my brain until one night, last year, when a friend of mine, realizing she was at the end of a very abusive partnership called me up crying.

“He just kept getting drunker and drunker and yelling at me…calling me “damaged goods” over and over.”

“Holy shit!” was the only reaction that was available to me at the moment.

“I am damaged goods,” she lamented through tears.

“Oh, come on. You know that’s bullshit,” I whispered as my own tears began to fall down the side of my face.

There was nothing but silence on the other end of the phone, but I knew I had to end that call. Something inside of me, something unexpectedly painful, was ignited. “Damaged goods.” That was exactly how I had been made to feel about myself, year after year, polite rejection after polite rejection.

Regardless of all the socially acceptable reasons (and I’ve heard them all) why ladies in the market for partners would cut me off immediately upon learning about my past, it still resulted in my being weighed down by a certain depression brought on by seeing myself as nothing more than exactly that: damaged goods. 

On top of that, there was the irony of trying to hide what once was my proudest accomplishment—that of writing a book and signing with a literary agent who, in turn, negotiated my first book deal with New World Library–the publisher who brought Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” into the US. 

This achievement, that I spent years of my life laser focused on and faithfully dedicated to, turned out to be the catalyst to every romantic disappointment I suffered.

Like an idiot, I toiled away—tears, sweat, stress, prayer, a life coach—to make this impossible dream become reality. Of course, it wasn’t for the sole purpose of picking up women, but I was naíve enough to labor under the misconception that it would be, at the very least, a point in my favor. I mean, to single-handedly accomplish a thing like that—without having the hint of a connection in the cut throat and unforgiving industry of publishing —says more about a person’s character than thousands and thousands of Sundays spent on a church pew. 

Or so I once thought. 

Never did I imagine that book would put the kibosh on dozens of potential relationships. 

It seemed like any time I had mentioned it to any woman I met on a dating site, it always turned into the precursor for, “I met someone who I think might be a better fit.”

So, I decided to abandon that identity that I possessed for the last 11 years. I got to a point where I began to think, “What good is an impossible accomplishment, if it keeps turning itself into the one curse that keeps me isolated, alienated and alone every time I mention it?”

It took years for me to truly understand and believe what is probably one of the most idiosyncratic features of the American societal hierarchy: a person with 6 months clean, a person who smokes crack every weekend and a person with 10 years sober all exist on the same rung of the ladder. 

For one to thrive in the dating world, it is important to give the impression that you’re not terribly interested in drinking–yet, you would never dream of turning down a “cocktail” on a festive occasion or a social event. 

Also, you have no place in your life for illicit substances–yet, (like everyone else) you did own a bong as an undergraduate. Extra credit if you could claim you hadn’t touched so much as an aspirin since before COVID. But be very careful. You can not float a claim like this into the atmosphere unless you immediately follow it up with, “...not purposefully, mind you. The need just never came up.”

“I’m not a weirdo. If someone hands me a xanax on a shitty flight with too much turbulence, I’m taking it!” guffaw, guffaw.

I suspect that each of these guidelines increase in flexibility with every inch over six foot one happens to be. But that’s something I’ll save for another article.

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On Thursday, an old friend of mine texted me, “Congratulations! Isn’t today 12 years sober for you?”

I’m practically positive that he knew it would’ve been, if that identity was what I still wore like a coat of armor. The seemingly “spur of the moment” decision I made to order a glass of Merlot on the flight to Heathrow last year had a lot more behind it than a craving for a dry red to go with my stale peanuts. It was my declaration to the world. I am starting a new chapter. I am climbing up a few rungs on the ladder. I am placing myself as far as I can from those weirdos who meet twice a week and laugh about how helpless they are.

In terms of companionship, most of those people were mediocre and tiresome at best. But even if I attended meetings in L.A. with Zac Efron, Dax Shepherd, Elton John and Robert Downey Jr, I was still more than ready to opt out. 

I just don't feel sustained on two hours of camaraderie a week. If it is, indeed, true that “the opposite of addiction is connection,” as the opportunistic Johann Hari posited in his widely disseminated TED Talk, then let’s just say I’m finally ready to leave addiction and all its attendant stigma somewhere far away in the past.