The Truth About Tigers

The mask becomes your face—
a shell you never meant to keep,
carved to coax a voice
out of the natural quiet
that was always yours.

In small, obedient gestures
you built your own confinement,
grasping for the thing that kills,
just to vanish a while longer.

There’s a kind of magic in it—
to disappear in plain sight,
to fold yourself beneath
the weight of expectation—

while the machine cranks out
billion-dollar death campaigns
disguised as joy,
as rebellion,
as belonging.

To adapt to illness,
to bury the self in the haze,
all for the familiar delusion—

Look at us!
Soul-split specters, clinging—
pleading for the dose.

Normal is a fragile,
strangest fiction.

---

I wrote this poem a few years ago. I honestly can’t remember if it was while I was still drinking or in the foggy stretch right after I quit.

I don’t have an exciting story to tell you about high-speed police chases, or cars full of “hookers and blow,” or waking up in the hospital, or some other cinematic rock-bottom meltdown. I didn’t drink before work. I didn’t drink at work. I didn’t lose my job or my family or my driver’s license. The reality was simpler. Boring, even.

It goes something like this: For years I drank normally. With friends. At bars or parties. A couple beers at a barbecue. Then, slowly, I started drinking more. And more. Then every single night, often to the point of partial blackout. Alcohol stopped being a social thing and became the way I smothered emotions and turned down the volume on problems I didn’t want to face.

There were plenty of mornings where I’d stare at my bloodshot eyes and puffy face in the bathroom mirror at 5 a.m., getting ready for work after another random Tuesday night where I’d polished off an entire 750 ml bottle of bourbon or vodka while watching TV, and mutter out loud to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” You know, the kind of things “normal” people do.

Reality was puking into a toilet at midnight because I’d overdone it again and only had a few hours before my alarm went off. Reality was planning how to work booze into every event. Reality was going to the kitchen to “grab more ice” when really I needed to do a private shot because everyone else was drinking too slowly.

And while I wasn’t a mean drunk or a violent drunk, I definitely wasn’t as present with my family as I should have been. As I am now. There’s just no way—I spent too much time thinking about drinking, doing the drinking, or recovering from the drinking. Being a drunk is basically a full-time job made of guilt and logistics.

Then one morning, after what counted as a “light” night (splitting a six-pack with a friend and chasing it with a couple vodkas on the rocks, because let’s be honest, three beers might as well be water at that point), I went to bed and told myself, You know what, I think I’m done.

I didn’t believe it. Not really. It certainly wasn’t the first time.

I’d stopped plenty of times—or paused, technically. A week here. A month there. Once I even went five months without a drink before my brain convinced me that if I could stop for almost half a year, I didn’t actually have a problem and could definitely “moderate” going forward.

You already know how that story ends.

But for whatever reason, this time—March 2, 2023—something was different. I think a big part of it was the language I used with myself. Instead of I’m taking a break or I’m not drinking right now, I started saying, I quit drinking. Or, No thanks, I don’t drink.

Saying it out loud felt terrifying at first—like the words themselves were pushing me closer to some irreversible finish line I wasn’t fully convinced I wanted to cross—but it also started rewiring something.

The funny part is I didn’t get much encouragement. Mostly because I was “good” at drinking. Or maybe just good at hiding how much I drank. I’ve seen videos of myself on nights when I know for a fact I was absolutely shitfaced but not tripping or yelling or slurring my words. A “high tolerance” isn’t always a good thing. The most common response I got when I told someone I quit was some version of, “Why?” People I cared about genuinely had no idea what was going on in my head.

But I had one friend—one of my best friends of forty years, who quit a couple years before me—who understood immediately. He didn’t preach or brag or try to turn it into a competition. He just listened. Said he was proud of me. Told me he’d be there if I ever needed to talk. And for the first time—at least when it came to drinking—I felt, as the kids say, “seen.” (Do the kids still say that?)

I’m not going to go into detail about how I quit, because that part is different for everyone. There’s no single method. For me, it was a mix of books, podcasts, trail running, meditation, support from a few key friends, reinvesting in some meaningful relationships, walking away from a few unhealthy ones, and constantly reminding myself that I get to choose my own future.

That’s not the entire story, but it’s good enough for now.

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, marks 1,000 days sober. I know that’s not monumental in the grand scheme—not even three years—but something about hitting quadruple digits feels like a milestone worth acknowledging. Maybe even worth celebrating.

And that celebration is going to be simple: a long run, a nice dinner with family, and a Thanksgiving morning without a hangover. Which is something I can be genuinely grateful for.