She’s Legal!

This week, on Tuesday, January 13th, I celebrated 21 years of sobriety.

Fucking unreal.

How fast the time goes.

I mean, what the heck?!

How do I have twenty one years of sobriety?

How did that happen?

Not without hitting one hell of a bottom 21 years ago, the holidays were killer.

And not in a fun kind of way.

Maybe, someone looking in from the inside might have thought, wow, she’s a party, or she’s having a party or she’s wild.

But by that time.

One painful intervention from a group of friends in Wisconsin right after my 32nd birthday, which ironically, we had celebrated by starting out with a three martini dinner (I might have been the only person at the table who had imbibed three martinis, but god the food was bad, they call this risotto?) followed by much carousing and beer drinking at my then, “old” stomping grounds, the Angelic Brewing Company.

I had moved to San Francisco right before turning 30 and here I was getting intervened on right after my 32nd birthday.

“You’re better than the cocaine,” one friend said at brunch the next day at Lazy Jane’s in Madison on Willy Street.

Another girlfriend shared a horrifying conversation with me about having called me with the news that she had just had an abortion and instead of lending her an empathetic ear, I rather, regaled her with tales of the guy I had had sex with the night before.

I do not remember this phone call.

Which, is actually, for me, unusual.

I rarely blacked out.

In fact, sometimes I wish I had been blacked out.

But hey, cocaine had me wide awake for all the chaos I was creating.

I don’t doubt I blithely chattered on about myself when my friend was sharing something tender and vulnerable with me.

Alcoholics, addicts, we are selfish, selfish, selfish people.

Self-centered, self-seeking, selfish.

My other friend sat there quietly, she’d not drank a single thing the night before, she was pregnant.

So.

Yeah, slightly hung over, very remiss, I promised my friends I was done.

Done.

Done.

Done.

I got on my plane at the airport in Madison very remorseful and ready to be back home in San Francisco.

Only to arrive at my apartment on 24th and Potrero to a surprise birthday party my room mate was throwing me.

I literally walked in the door and she was handing me a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

I put the bottle to my mouth without a thought, I was off and running again.

And, although at the time, my friends in Madison had not known it, I was trying in various ways since just before Halloween to stop.

I tried not drinking for 30 days.

Only to celebrate by drinking and doing blow in the bathroom of the hotel lobby at the W hotel on 3rd and Mission–it was right across the way from where I used to wait tables at the fine dining restaurant Hawthorne Lane.

After that exciting run, I found out my dealer was locked up in 850 Bryant (the jail house at 850 Bryant) through a message on his outgoing voicemail that I was ignorant about what “I’m at 850 Bryant, don’t leave me any messages on this phone” meant, so I left a message about wanting to score 3 grams of cocaine.

Oops.

And then I didn’t hear from him that night or for weeks, and the goose hung high. I thought, shit, I don’t know what’s going on with my guy, but this is good, I can’t get cocaine (like there weren’t plenty of other dealers in town, but you know, I was loyal) and meant I was done using for good.

Until Halloween night and I’m at dinner with friends at Bruno’s in the Mission, all dressed up, having mini cheeseburger sliders and fries in my flapper get up, I did look cute, fyi, fuck I was 31 and some change, sometimes I wish I could go back and tell that girl, you are amazing and fabulous and look hot as fuck, stop comparing and despairing.

Although, maybe not hot as fuck, drinking and doing lots of blow, even in your early 30s is going to catch up with you quick.

Anyway.

Two mini cheeseburger sliders in and 1/2 a pint of beer, my phone rings and it’s my dealer.

Holy shit.

I answer.

Of course I do.

“How much do you want and where are you?” He asks, no preamble, nothing. I am sure he had a lot of missed income to make up for.

I immediately said, “three” followed by, Bruno’s on Mission Street.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, be outside by the curb.”

Eight minutes later I excused myself to “smoke a cigarette,” and popped outside.

My dealer rolled up a minute and a half later, I swung into the car, gave him the money and he passed the three grams over to me in an Altoid’s tin in three small baggies.

What the hell do they make those tiny plastic baggies for anyway.

And then, I was off, once again to the races.

I tried around Thanksgiving.

But got corralled to go to Dave’s Sports bar at third and Market Thanksgiving eve after finishing my shift at Hawthorne, I was only going to have one.

I don’t know how many beers later, but the bar was closing and I had scored three bags of cocaine to keep me company the rest of the night.

Unmindful that I was flying out early in the morning to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt, cousins, and grandmother, and other family.

I did not have a fun trip.

I was still high, very high, I had just barely finished the coke before calling a cab to SFO.

How the hell I packed is beyond me.

I smoked in the cab to the airport and freaked out, inside, when I saw drug dogs patrolling around, I was terrified they would smell the cocaine rolling off me .

Thanksgiving was miserable.

I spent a lot of it wandering around my aunt’s garden, standing as far away as I could, smoking cigarettes and staring out at the mountain range wondering what that fuck I was doing.

I don’t remember eating.

I am sure I did, but just enough to not draw notice.

I washed the dishes and when dessert was finished I remember sitting and watching Shrek in the family room and then, The Bachelorette.

Oof.

What a fucking nightmare.

The Bachelorette should have been my bottom.

But I was not done yet.

Back to San Francisco.

Then it was my birthday, see first story above, then it was Christmas and boy howdy that was a white Christmas for me.

So much snow.

I must have done twenty grams of cocaine that week.

I was miserable, wild with sleep deprivation, ate nothing at the Christmas brunch/lunch I went to, smoked cigarettes on the fire escape of my friend’s house in Nob Hill, and finally Christmas night, finally really slept.

Passed out hard.

And I was done.

Done, I tell you.

Except.

Shit.

New Years.

I had no plans.

Except the universe did, without telling me, I had only planned on picking up my mom at SFO to go on a trip January 2nd to London–I had bought round trip tickets and accommodations on a Yahoo ad flag one night in a brown out after having a conversation with my mom that she had cancer and was going to have to have surgery and somehow I got it in my head, I should take my mom on a trip out of the country and I booked a trip to London January 2nd-January 9th.

I did ecstasy after picking up my mom at the airport because a girlfriend from Hawthorne had gotten a limo and I was getting picked up and let’s go to 1015 Folsom.

So yeah, I ditched mom and went out and partied and then the day after got on a plane to London with my mom.

My sobriety date is January 13th.

So, in many ways I was wheeling right towards my bottom in London.

Although I did no drugs, we drank a good bit in the pubs and once out at a club, it is fucking surreal to go clubbing with ones mother in London.

I hit my bottom faster because of that trip.

I drained much of my last bit of money and maxed out my credit cards.

Thanks mom.

Anyway.

I knew the jig was up at the hotel lobby bar the night before we headed back to San Francisco, after which I would be putting my mom on a flight back to Wisconsin.

I was “sipping” a martini and smoking cigarettes and writing post cards to my friends in Wisconsin, who had run the intervention on me a few weeks back, promising that this was it, me done leaving, it all behind in London.

Except.

Well.

I took me and my alcoholism and addiction back to San Francisco.

I met up with a friend after tucking my mom into bed, for “just” two margaritas and “a break from my mom,” at Blondie’s in the Mission on Valencia street.

When my friend waved the bartender over to make us a third round, I said, “I can’t, if I have another I am going to want to do cocaine.”

My friend perked right up and said, “oh, I could def do some blow.”

She ordered the next round and I went across the street to the bodega at 16th and Valencia, used the ATM and called my dealer, who was literally just a half block away at Dalva’s.

And it was on.

I was out all night long.

Got back super later, or early, depending on your opinion.

I stayed up in my room doing lines waiting hyper vigilant for my mom to wake up.

And, of course she did early and I was not done with my stash, so when she was up and about, I told her I was too jet lagged to get up yet and could she walk over to Philz and get a couple of coffees?

I gave her some money and retreated back to my room.

I figured her walking to and from Philz would give me enough time to finish.

And it did.

Barely.

And boy was that a strange rest of the day with my mom.

We walked to Tartine so I could get her pastries for the plane and then over to Chow on 16th. I ate nothing.

And then sent her home with fancy pastry and leftovers from Chow that pushed me almost to end of those very maxed out cards.

Honestly, I am not sure how I got through the next days, but it was a sharp downhill decline and a drop into the canyon of doom shortly thereafter.

One phone call at the end of the day at the mortgage brokerage firm I was working at, you read that correctly.

That’s another blog entirely.

End time shenanigans at a brokerage firm.

One phone call from a girlfriend at Hawthorne Lane, where I had been fired in November, right before Thanksgiving, I think, for “being the Pied Piper” of Hawthorne Lane.

The owner was irate when I had gone out clubbing and every single sous chef and the head chef had gone out with me and were destroyed for service the next day.

Except the dessert chef, she was great, didn’t go out.

Anyway, come by, congratulate C__________, P________ finally proposed!

So I headed over.

No thought or desire to drink, I’m just going to say congrats to my friend and bounce home.

But when I walked in my friend bartending saw me coming and put my “usual” on the bar as I was standing and waiting for C__________ to come by and show me her Tiffany engagement ring.

My usual was a double Grey Goose dirty martini on the rocks with extra olives and a pint of Sierra Nevada pale Ale.

I “liked” the way they tasted together, a salty martini with a beer back.

What I really liked was having a drink in each mitt.

I don’t want to drink, I thought, as I reached for the martini and chased it with a slug of the bitter ale.

I then flipped open my phone, yeah, it was that long ago.

I called my dealer.

I walked out of the restaurant, told the bartender I would be right back, ducked down the alley behind the Thirsty Bear and hit the ATM next to Chevy’s.

I withdrew the last bit of money I had in my account.

My dealer was calling me before I had time to finish the beer and oh and ah over my friend’s ring.

I ran out as he pulled up to the valet, scooped the last three grams of cocaine I would ever buy and bounded right back to the bar.

Finished my drink and told my friends I would wait for them at the W Hotel bar until they finished their shifts.

I ran into an old friend from Madison, who had moved to SF before me, who had introduced me to my dealer at an after hours party in a three story loft in Potrero Hill not even a year before, at the bar, he had just scored too.

Did we wait for my friends?

I think so.

It’s blurry.

We definitely drank, did blow in the bathroom, and when the bar closed ended up playing strip poker at a girlfriend’s apartment on the edge of the Tenderloin with my dealer, who had a crush on my girl friend.

My guy friend and I headed back to my place on Potrero and 24th to do more coke until the sun came up and his girlfriend angrily was calling him, they had a flight to catch to Mexico!

Would I hold onto the last of his cocaine, two grams, for him?

He obviously couldn’t take it to Mexico with him.

Of course I would.

“You’re not going to do it, are you?” He asked skeptically handing me the two little baggies.

“Of course not,” I said, I fished out a couple of bags from my bra, “I have my own.”

“YOU HOLD OUT!” My friend laughed, gave me his drugs and dashed out the door to his girlfriend fuming in her car outside my apartment.

Of course I did.

And, I don’t know how I knew, but I knew I would and I also knew it was the last straw.

Literally.

Figuratively.

There was something about doing my friend’s drugs, stealing from a friend, that was the last horrible thing–I was stealing from a friend.

I did all the drugs.

And at the nadir, the height of it all, I said “please God help me.”

I saw a white light.

I was probably dying but you know, it makes a good story.

I knew I was done.

I don’t know how, but I knew I was.

And, as it turns out, I was.

Through nothing short of divine intervention I emailed my job, quit, said I was going to go to rehab for cocaine addition, called my best friend in Wisconsin, and found a way out.

It wasn’t what I was expecting and I could never script what happened next, but I never picked up again.

And twenty one year later, she’s legal!

And.

I am still very happy, joyous, and free.

Sobriety star #21 from @Rosalumina @Hiddenplace Tattoo in Potrero Hill, San Francisco