#holding the hand of the ebay seller. you can help me make it More insane by giving me that jashin

[fearandhungies]

sorry im rambling nonstop tonight but i am excited to actually be able to figure collect because im doing it in a very reasonable way (theres many figures i Want but have no desire to like... buy and display, so its not like impulsivity is grabbing me constantly just cuz i like a figure which is like, yaaaay go me healthy relationship to my collecting of things, thats genuinely new) because theres a very specific Look in my mind i want for my shelf and many figures i like and want dont fit the vibe. not sure What the vibe is but its shaping up to be insane.

[sumukhcomedy]

Two Years Without a Drink: How “Rapid Rewards” Almost Became “Rapid Decline”

I recently “celebrated” two years since I stopped drinking alcohol. I took a 30 beers per week habit and shut it down to 0 immediately in late April of 2015. I didn't go to AA. I just poured as much self-control as I could into it. I just did it for my well-being, didn't talk about it all that much, and spoke to the small number of meaningful people in my life that I could turn to when I needed to about it. I suppose I should be proud.

Many times when people reach these types of goals and want to write about them they share how much of an amazing achievement it is and how much better they feel. They deserve to. It is an accomplishment and their addiction and their issues were likely far worse than mine ever were. If you Google it, there are a plethora of different essays written by people about “what they learned” as a result of stopping drinking or getting sober for various periods of time. Again, this is great if that's how they feel and what they want to share.

In my case, I do feel like I should share something to mark this anniversary but my relationship with this is also very odd and unlike what a person expects when they think of someone stopping drinking. I still have the occasional non-alcoholic beer. I still am around alcohol constantly because of comedy and because of the friends that I have and because of, well, society and its relationship with alcohol.

While I am proud, I'm also disappointed. And it's because now 2 years in I can tell you that the desire for alcohol hasn't fully gone away and I've accepted it may never will. I wanted to believe that I wasn't that deep into it but with upwards of 30 beers per week for more than 9 years, I really was. And it sucks. It sucks that I haven't lost that desire at times. It sucks that I force myself to not have a drink again knowing the direction it could take me. While 95% of the time, it feels like one of the greatest decisions of my life and I know that it is what is best for me, there is that 5% of me that absolutely hates that I can't have a drink and that I can't fall into that coping mechanism again and that I can't seek that beautiful rollercoaster of joy and self-destruction.

So, I'll share a story. It's a story of how an envelope with pieces of paper in it had the potential to destroy me again and that there was a part of me that really wanted that.

I travel a lot because of comedy and my job and my personal life. I fly a lot with Southwest Airlines and, as a result, they are kind enough to send free drink coupons in the mail to their Rapid Rewards members. It's a nice gesture if you love drinking but a nightmare if you're me. I have 8 free drink coupons and I've allowed myself to be obsessed by them at times.

A part of my problem with drinking also came with my own personal value. Some of that value comes in drinking. Similar to what I had written before about junk food, if it's provided for free, it's hard to not enjoy it and not feel like I'm wasting an offer. Then, especially within comedy, when two little red drink tickets are the reward I receive for doing a show in L.A. it's hard to not feel like I'm tossing away the value of my work. Combine this with an already long history with drinking and it's yet more pieces of paper quantifying my existence. 

In these two years that I haven't consumed alcohol, I've fantasized about drinking a lot. Some days I try to believe that I could return to drinking and pour the self-control that I have into moderation. But very little about my interaction with alcohol and its appeal grew to be about moderation for me. It was about getting messed up and escaping and now the escape is more about the thought of drinking than actually drinking. I'll have dreams where I'll be at a bar and order a beer. Then in the dream I just stare at the beer. I don't actually drink it. So even in the dream I have enough awareness to have self-control but not enough to not blow my money for just a look at what I can't have.

Such a dream passed into reality with the Southwest Airlines drink coupons. I kept thinking about how easy it could be. Who would know? I don't know anyone on a flight. I could simply hand the coupon to the flight attendant, say, “Dos Equis, please” and be drinking again. I could get away with it without my family or friends ever knowing. I could just be a person again who has a drink on a flight. I could finally feel like I was normal again. I could finally get that release. On any of my Southwest flights, I'd keep the drink coupons in my laptop bag. I allowed myself to be obsessed by them. I allowed myself to be comforted by them. For some reason, just knowing they were there and that at any moment I could just do it felt great. It felt just like me in a dream staring at a tall beautiful draft of beer at a bar.

About a month ago, I was going through a particularly rough personal period. I've become used to these happening on occasion in my life. It only lasts a day or two and no one else is ever particularly aware of it. These were the times that triggered me in the past to drink the hardest. I coped with the worst by escaping it with the drink. At the same time, I was going to be boarding a flight. So, here it was. It was the perfect time to cash in those drink coupons and throw it all away. I had to text my close friend to give me some words of encouragement to not do that and she did.

But, still, I'm alone and on a flight and loneliness and my mental battles are a lot of what made me want to drink. I spent the first portion of the flight just staring straight ahead and mulling if I was going to do it. I picked up the in-flight magazine and just stared at the drink selections even though I'd been obsessing about a Dos Equis again in my Southwest Airlines fantasies. The girl sitting next to me on the flight would have thought I was insane had she not been asleep listening to music. Finally, the flight attendant came by and asked my drink order and I said, “ginger ale.” I got through it but there's still a certain different type of misery to not being able to have that beer, that freedom, and that potential destruction. Within a day, everything was fine and was back to my normal process in life and without a real interest to drink. But this is the element to the two years that I never expected: that life would bring so many different little challenges to not drink and how difficult and irritating it would actually be to face those challenges and defeat them.

               I used to be “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” 

Being around drinking is, at times, frustrating. I have to deal with it because I do comedy and drinking surrounds comedy. Drinking is a part of the business model of comedy and our society from the happy hours of my job to general interaction when meeting someone new. I can remember so many of these brief frustrating moments. There was the comedy show where I had to pose with the other comedians around a Tito's vodka bottle. There are the tons of drunk people I've had to interact with at parties or at bars after shows while I sat there sober and wondering why I had to deal with them. There are the crowd members who jokingly or disturbingly say they'll buy me a shot even after I've told them I stopped drinking. There are also the tons of jokes that I have to hear by people about drinking whether it be hilarious drinking stories or jokes along the lines of “My kids make me want to drink.” My mental reaction to this drinking humor can range from laughing at the jokes to thinking “Fuck you. You decided to have kids. Just be a good parent” depending upon the mood I'm in. That's what happens when there's a certain glorification of alcohol within society but you've removed yourself from that glorification. I can laugh when I can relate and be lighthearted about the memories associated with alcoholic stupidity but it's hard for me to laugh when it makes me remember that there were many nights that alcohol was killing me and I wanted it to kill me.

I try my best to look at the bigger picture and I chose to stop drinking because it had gotten out of hand to me personally and didn't reflect who I was anymore. I wanted to be me and lead by example and to do that I determined that alcohol could no longer be a part of my life. I genuinely feel happier and bring more joy into comedy and into life than I ever have before. But the habits of the past and the desire to oppose that joy are things that simply won't go away. So, constantly, I have to remind myself of the bigger picture even if so many times the smaller, quicker, selfish, in-the-moment picture of a drink seems so appealing.

I could write another “what I learned” essay like so many that exist on the Internet but there’s nothing to me about it that there was to “learn.” It’s pretty logical that not drinking alcohol is better for you than abusing it. It’s more so that my focus in life just changed. When I drank, I accepted that life was miserable and depressing. It still is to some extent but each day I wake up and try to be happy and try to bring joy to myself and to others. My mind just could not handle alcohol anymore. There are a lot of my colleagues in comedy or friends or even just strangers I’ve encountered who are depressed and perhaps they should remove alcohol from their lives as well. A depressant can’t possibly help one’s depression. But that’s their choice and I’m not about to push my beliefs on them. But, all I’ll say is every day I try to be happy and every day has felt more rewarding as a result. It’s also felt great to not have a hangover for two years. 

That gets me back to the real reward: Southwest free drink coupons! Realizing their hold over me, I tried to sell them on eBay but eBay doesn’t allow the selling of gift cards or coupons unless a person is a frequent seller. It was almost as if eBay wanted me to keep torturing myself as well. But, in some weird way now, I feel comfortable in embracing the drink coupons. They are now there more as a reminder to not use them than they are for me to actually use them and slip back into my old habits. I could give them to people that I sit next to on flights or just let them expire in a different act of selfishness than drinking.

The desire to drink may never go away. It can even come from something as simple as a little piece of paper that was given to me with the best of intentions. But I take even those smallest and insignificant triggers as a challenge. I could have taken a “Rapid Reward” and easily turned it into a rapid decline. Instead, I use it as a reminder that the true reward is not rapid. The true reward is the much longer and more patient journey to happiness and peace.