Then I heard it again.

This time, looking down, I saw it.

This is that story.

_____

Bug: Ouch, fuck!

Me: Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to step on you Bug. I didn’t even see you there.

Bug: You broke my leg.

Me: I’m sorry, I didn’t even see you there.

Bug: I can’t walk.

Me: What about flying? Can you still fly? Are your win-

Bug: Let me try.

(Bug tries flying)

Bug: Can’t fly.

Me: Want me to call an ambulance?

Bug: No. I don’t have health insurance. I’ll call Mark.

Me: Who is Mark?

Bug: Another bug.

Me: Ok, I’ll wait here with you.

(Bug calls Mark)

Mark: Buzzidy buzz buzz it’s Mark, what can I do ya for?

Bug: Mark, it’s Bug, a human stepped on me and broke my leg, can you come help?

Mark: Yes. Where are you?

Bug: By the river. I can’t fly either, you may need to bring S.

Mark: We’ll be right there.

Me: Who’s S?

Bug: The Swarm. They’re coming.

Me: What does that mean? You know I didn’t mean to hurt you right? Why does the swarm need to co-

Bug: To carry me home. This isn’t about you.

(Bug and I wait in silence for 4 minutes)

Me: You know Bug, I really am sorry.

Bug: Yep.

Me: No really, I am, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to step on you.

Bug: Sorry doesn’t mean shit. And I love shit.

Me: What do you mean?

Bug: You say sorry to me today, but you’ll probably step on another bug tomorrow, or even later today. You’ll probably kill hundreds of bugs in your life.

Me: No I won’t.

Bug: Show me the bottom of your shoe.

(I turn over my shoe)

Bug: Oh my god, you’re a fucking mass murderer.

Me: Wait, wait, no what?

Bug: These are fresh kills too! You literally killed 4 bugs this morning. Look at the crevices in the outsole of your shoe.

Me: I’m so sorry

Bug: I told you, sorry doesn’t mean shit.

Me: But I am! I’m sorry!

Bug: What does sorry mean to you?

Me: It means I apologize for injuring you!

Bug: And?

Me: And what?

Bug: And what about the other bugs before me? And the ones that will come after me?

Sorry means nothing to me.

It may make you feel good. You may even think that by saying it everything is ok but sorry is just a comfort awarded to yourself that gives you permission to keep repeating the same actions without change or consequence.

Does your sorry mean that you are going to start walking cautiously? I doubt it. That you are going to set up traffic cones and post signs here asking your peers to walk cautiously? No, you won’t, because you’re a human. The only apology worth considering accepting is one that recognizes what is wrong, presents a genuinely authentic agreement not to repeat, asks what one can do to repair their wrongdoing, and then offers space for others to fully express themselves.

So, no I don’t accept your apology.

Me: I never thought of it that way.

Bug: Of course, you didn’t. You’re a HuMmAaNnN. You’re incapable of doing that. We’ve watched you for thousands of years.

(I look down and inhale through my nostrils)

Bug: And the toughest part is that I recognize that you don’t know better. That you’re actually doing the best you can with the information you have. The real tragedy here is not my leg, it’s your species’ general lack of curiosity.

Me: Well Bug, I still am sorry. I recognize that today, and all days before, I’ve been walking carelessly, and I mean it when I say I will commit to being more careful when I walk so I don’t hurt you or any more bugs. And, as we wait for Mark and the Swarm to come, I’m going to go sit on that bench to give you some space. Before I do, is there anything else I can do?

Bug: Nice try.

Me: Bug, c’mon, I’ve apologized like 6 times. I’ve even checked off all the requirements you just told me. I think you should be a little more reasonable.

Bug: First off, you don’t get to decide if and when I forgive you. Second, I won’t know if you’re for real for at least a few months, only then will I be able to see if you actually change your behavior. And third, do you kill mosquitoes?

Me: What?

Bug: Do you kill mosquitoes?

Me: I mean, I shoo them away?

Bug: So, you don’t kill them?

Me: No, not intentionally.

Bug: So you do kill mosquitoes?

Me: Okay, yes, I have. Sometimes. They can carry diseases!

Bug: YOU CARRY DISEASES! AHHHHHHHHHH FUCKKKKING CHRIST HUMAN!!!!!!

Me: What?!

Bug: Have you ever thought that this is about something more than me, or you, or me and you, or me you and the other bugs that look like me?

Your new apology, which I get you’re trying, is still so short of enough.

This is about all of us. It’s about mosquitoes, bees, fruit flies, cockroaches, deer, cows, quail, flowers, trees, and people. It’s about everything.

All your apology did was confirm your hierarchy above others and open a seat for me and the bugs that look like me. But only us. It was an apology that continued to protect and prioritize you and extended those same protections to me and the bugs, but no one else.

Allowing others the same luxuries, comforts, and privileges afforded to you, won’t threaten yours. Rather than extend invites to an elite club, try expanding your empathy.

Me: Okay, well I commit to protecting mosquitoes, bees, fruit flies, cockroaches, deer, cows, quail, flowers, trees, and people too.

(Bug puts head in wings and shakes it in disappointment)

Bug: You don’t get it.

Every week, we watch you. Week after week, a new shiny cause to care about and correct comes and captures your attention. You get loud, say you’ll change, but don’t actually introduce any individual change, and then forget about it after a week.

Why? Because truly changing may require each of you to eliminate some comforts you feel entitled to. It may mean that others begin to benefit before or at the same time as you. It may even mean that you are inconvenienced so a larger group can gain access to what you’ve had all along.

Imagine not being able to walk along the river so millions of bugs could live.

Have you ever thought about the destruction your convenience causes, or the benefit that could come from choosing slight inconveniences?

I don’t just want us bugs to be protected, everything and everyone deserves that same treatment. It’s not just about being better to your friends and shitty to those you’ve yet to meet.

(Mark arrives with Swarm)

Mark: This the fuckity fuck head who stepped on you?

Bug: Yeah.

Mark: Swarm, activate operation kneecap!

Bug: No no! Mark, stop! He didn’t know better. He wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt me. He’s just like every other human, oblivious to anything outside of themselves. I may be injured, but I’ll heal. I actually just really feel sorry for him. Let’s go.

Mark: Stand down swarm!

Bug: Go home Human.

______________________________________________________________________________________

A Ricki is a digital diary entry. They’re narrations that document the details and capture the admiration I hold for the world as I experience it. They’re my imagination. They’re meant to take minutes to read, but days to digest.

A group of women walks three wide on an already narrow sidewalk. Their locked arms link three generations, the eldest in the middle. They have the same conversations they’ve had for decades, yet each week a new detail is recalled. Or, created.

Ahead of them is a man, already short enough, bent over in pursuit of the fourth generation whose little legs power a balance bike. Behind them is a bearded man, arms crossed behind his back, whose eyes have not strayed from his family since they left home.

On the opposite side of the street, an older man is taking his plant for a walk. Out from what must be a flat with little sun, he pushes a black stroller with a split-leaf philodendron in its seat past a doorstep where two sets of lips hesitate to part after spending their first night together. The pair that stays drops to the stoop to smoke its second cigarette of the day and stares at the silhouette skipping off.

Above them is the pigeon lady. Not because she tears bread for the local flock, but because from the rail of her second-floor balcony her chin rests on folded arms and watches the street like a pigeon on a wire. Don’t bother waving, she’s stuck like that. Her neighbor though, shirtless in a Panama hat, would be happy to nod his head good morning to you.

There’s a square up ahead. At its entrance is a range of bottles next to a bin, because redemption values are worth more than a recycle. In its center is a young horn player who has already put the first coins in his cap. The soft timbre of the student’s brass joins a distant church bell and nearby bike bells to create Sunday’s first symphony.

As the street turns to stone, there is a disagreement between the soft soles of a Converse shoe and continuing. It’s time to pause. There’s a seat facing east, at a table on the edge of an alley, that will host a trio of consolations, three-wide.

______________________________________________________________________________________

A Ricki is a digital diary entry. They’re narrations that document the details and capture the admiration I hold for the world as I experience it. They’re my imagination. They’re meant to take minutes to read, but days to digest.

I first heard it in the Mojave Desert. It was during one of those after-dinner games. The type that empties the last bottle of wine and sprawls blankets and bodies across couches and carpets. Players had to pull a piece of paper from a bowl and act out the word on it for teammates to guess before the timer expired. How does one act out gloaming?

I didn’t hear it again until a decade later. It was slipped into the second verse of a Florence + The Machine song. Despite its presence, I’d forgotten about it.

Gloaming is that transitory time between day and night when the sky splits in two and the dark east chases the soft west. It’s when the clouds look painted and transport you back to the Sistine Chapel, but this time without having to sneak photos or dodge men on mopeds offering “Rome like a local” tours.

It takes the stage unannounced at the same time each day to reveal the stars, but no numbers on a wall could mark its arrival. Miss it, and you’ll have to wait a full rotation for your next opportunity. With or without audience, it performs. Perhaps for itself. Perhaps because it knows without it, night can’t come. I wonder what we can learn from that.

I feel guilty ignoring it so often. It wouldn’t be hard to give it witness, just look out the window. Maybe, I could assign a celebration to it. Use it to mark the end of output, as a reminder to start slicing sweet potatoes and move into the end of the day. I could use it to see friends. Host weekly viewings and together stare into the sky for a nickel of time before returning inside to snack on the weekly farmers market haul. Maybe instead we just all make a pact, because making plans is easier than keeping them. From wherever we are, let’s agree to take it in each day, dedicating a few breaths to admiring it. It’s like the moon that way. Spread yourself across the world and you’ll still see the same moon as any other. There’s a powerful connection in that. A temporary remedy to loneliness is just outside a window. I like the idea of this type of agreement.

I’m not sure why our minds select some moments to become memories and let others slip away. For years this wasn’t a known memory, but I suppose it was stored away, waiting for the right time to resurface, and there was something about that slab of cement, on that New York sidewalk, on that summer day that called it. I wonder what memory will reintroduce itself next.

______________________________________________________________________________________

A Ricki is a digital diary entry. They’re narrations that document the details and capture the admiration I hold for the world as I experience it. They’re my imagination. They’re meant to take minutes to read, but days to digest.

Near the Boston Garden, my fingertips begin to tingle. I remind myself to get better gloves and tuck into a cafe on Boylston Street for tea. It’s 11 am.

The table of 4 to my right is finishing brunch. They’re at the stage where the server has their card, and its owner is sending itemized Venmo requests. The omelets are gone, some hash browns remain, their coffee is cold, and the champagne bottles are empty. There’s still some orange juice left in their carafe.

The server returns with their card and wishes them a happy holiday. Scarves wrap necks, hats cover ears, and the group exits. I leave shortly after them.

I travel home passively listening to a podcast. Something about the future of work. I undress, shower, slip into an all-grey sweatsuit tucked into a pair of red socks, and sink into the cushions that form the L on my couch. I’m sipping Jasmine Green tea, a cold second cup from the pot I brewed this morning, scanning pages of Range, a book advocating for being a generalist.

A walking tour of Paris is playing on the TV. We have 5 pm dinner reservations tonight, the first full family dinner since before the pandemic. Then we’ll go to an Aunt’s for an immersive Italian celebration. The Ricotta cookies will test my discipline, the games of left-right-center will lose me money.

I’m passively listening, passively reading, and passively watching because the true focus of my mind is what it would be like to have a drink right now.

The sun is peeking in through a front bay window, highlighting the dust on my coffee table. Several candles burn, a cheap one crackles. I’ve fully embraced Hygge, the Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness. Today is a rare opportunity to do absolutely nothing.

How nice would a day buzz be right now, I allow myself to say out loud. Chilled Vinho Verde or maybe Mimosas. I can’t stop thinking about how well it would complement this scene, of the immediate release it would send throughout my body.

Then comes the idea of sharing a glass of Tuscan Red with my dad, sister, and new brother-in-law. How it would feel to pass through my Aunt’s threshold matching the energy of 30+ Italians. Saying yes to waiters, Uncles, and friends, is more appealing than the silent signal that turning over a glass sends.

The idea of getting drunk is intoxicating.

The chorus of a Nathaniel Ratcliffe song pulses through my mind, “Son of a B*tch, Give me a drink.”

I stand and walk to the kitchen.

I reach into the cabinet for a glass.

I open the fridge, grab, and unscrew a bottle.

I fix ice cubes into a glass.

I empty the bottle into the glass.

The ice cubes pop as the sparkling water lands on them.

The idea of getting drunk is intoxicating, but not worth it.

_____

I sometimes wonder if I deprive myself of pleasure. If self-imposed commitments or restrictions rob me of what Anthony Bourdain called an appetite for life.

I attempt to find comforting language to confirm my abstinent decision.

Instead, I find Karl Marx:

“The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt — your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.”

Now I question if I am not only depriving myself but also alienating myself.

Does not drinking rob me of pleasure, experiences, and friendships?

I do experience loneliness, though I have been crediting that to the pandemic and a recent reshuffling.

I’m open to the idea of being wrong. It excites me.

I extend the scope of my evaluation.

Does veganism rob me of satisfaction, invitations, and cultural experiences?

Does sleep cause me to miss out on the adventures of the moon, late nights with friends, strangers, and sweat, and career advancements?

Does monogamy rob me of excitement, thrill, and pleasure? Does it insult the fantasies of my mind?

My list runs longer.

Adam Grant has encouraged me to find joy in being wrong. Today, there is nothing in my life that I believe to be absolute. There is no opinion, no commitment, no conviction that I cling to. Every part of me is available for updates. For upgrades. That’s why I’m even able to ask if my sobriety is depriving me of pleasure.

The truth is that yes, all of the above do deprive me of pleasure.

At the same time, they provide access to pleasures, joy, and experiences otherwise inaccessible had I not made these decisions.

How then do I choose which pursuit of pleasure is better for me?

I evaluate the pleasures of each against one another.

Drinking and drunkenness made me very social. It brought me friendships, lowered my stress, and allowed me to treat life like a performance. In my drinking days, things just didn’t matter as much. I carried a more laissez-faire approach to life. I was fun, I was spontaneous. I cared more about the adventure and experience than the cost. If your night was looking for a best-supporting actor you called me.

This came with consequences, which at the time, I didn’t care to acknowledge. I hurt myself, I hurt others, I broke relationships, brought financial anxiety onto myself, damaged my mental health, my physical health, and my emotional health. Drinking prevented me from pursuing the full capacity of my intellectual curiosities and creative desires. Sobriety accelerates me towards them.

It’s clear that the benefits of sobriety outweigh those of drinking, for me. Being sober, I have less to atone for. But there is a delta here. There are parts of drunk me, missing from sober me, that I really wish transferred over.

That’s where the deep, silent work of sobriety comes in.

Each day, it’s my responsibility to patch the holes that alcohol-exposed, and work to become the parts of me I love. This includes the good parts unlocked by alcohol. I just need to find a way to step into them, sober.

If alcohol made me more social, friendly, carefree, and spontaneous, and if I miss those parts of me, then my job is to do the deep work that allows me to step into that version of myself without relying on alcohol. The source needs to be inside me, not in a glass.

But fuck, that work is hard.

It’s long, exhausting work and sometimes I wish I didn’t have to.

I wish I could just automatically unlock it. With a pill, or a sip.

That’s when the cravings to drink return. That’s why, after 1,460 days, alcohol is still attractive.

Alcohol presents me with the hack. It offers me the convenience of getting results without doing the work.

But a compromise here is not worth it.

Sobriety is a patient peregrination of self-mastery.

If I were to succumb to these desires, I’d be allowing alcohol to fulfill its role as a vehicle for escapism.

I’d be depriving myself of the deep, long, inconvenient work of understanding what prevents sober me from becoming the version of myself I aspire to be. Rather than expose every part of myself to the pain of growth, I’d skip the line. Because that is what’s easy.

I consider if maybe the difficulty of the work is actually what’s most important.

In The Sweet Spot, Paul Bloom writes that “Hedonists wouldn’t deny that life is full of voluntary suffering. But for the hedonists, these unpleasant acts are the costs that have to be paid to obtain greater benefits. Suffering is the price we pay for greater pleasure.”

Sobriety is voluntary suffering, and each day I grow stronger in it, I’m able to realize the greater pleasures it offers me.

One of the beauties of sobriety is awareness, feeling everything. In hard times this sucks, pain is amplified and there is no escape. But in joy, it’s arousing. Sobriety may deprive me of some pleasures, but it affords me access to even greater ones.

_____

When I started writing this piece, I didn’t want to become a drinker again, I just didn’t want to do the work that day. After 4 years I felt I could succeed at a cheat day.

During the pandemic, I tried my roommate's CBD gummies with melatonin.

The first time, I asked them for one. The second night, I asked them for another. On night 3, expecting my ask, they offered me one.

What they didn’t know is that earlier that day I went into their bathroom and took 2. Now I had 3. I really liked how fast I fell asleep after eating them. I really liked how deep of a sleep I had after eating them.

This is misuse. This is addictive behavior.

I really like things that feel good, and these CBD gummies with melatonin made me feel good. What they also did was rob me of the opportunity to do work. Rather than understand why I wasn’t sleeping great, I just took the pill. By taking the gummy, I bypassed the work.

Sobriety has taught me that this isn’t sustainable. Taking the pill doesn't solve anything. It just delays. It allows for the roots of poor habits and dependencies to grow.

To be fair, on the hierarchy of vices, non-psychoactive CBD gummies with melatonin, aren’t bad. This is where compassion comes in and I admire the growth I’ve made. I only share this to offer color as to why just one drink today isn’t for me.

As my sobriety extends into year 5, I’m proud of my ability to articulate this to myself in real-time. I think it's brave to ask myself if I’ve made the wrong decisions and make my whole self available for upgrades. As uncomfortable and vulnerable growth makes me, I fear stagnation.

Though the temptation to drink is strongest this time of year, it fades quickly. These days, most of my personal development work is focused outside of sobriety. It’s addressing inflexibility, expectations, self-confidence, social anxiety, becoming less judgemental and controlling, the list goes on. The list though would never have been written, had I not stopped drinking.

In the same way that first Bud Light at age 14 opened the door to a 12-year party career, sobriety has been a gateway too. Without sobriety, I would never have found the courage to acknowledge my shortcomings and invest in becoming a better me.

Growth compounds every day. I may not have every single celebrated part of drunk me in sober me yet, but I’m getting really close.

I’m becoming exactly who I want to be.

-

Every year, I reflect on the previous 365 days of my sobriety with a Soberversary piece. Each Soberversary piece is published as a collectable NFT with a quantity of 26 to celebrate the age at which I chose sobriety. The price of each NFT set in hundredths of 1 ETH, equal to the Soberversary number being reflected on.

It was a foamy room temperature Bud Light from a beer ball.

I had scored the winning goal for our varsity hockey team in the championship game of a New Year’s tournament. My parents let me (read as trusted me) go to a New Year’s Eve party with the upperclassmen on my team.

It was a sleepover.

I was the only Freshman there.

I slept in a bed with two Seniors. Females. One was a peer advisor.

The next morning we went to an iHop, drowned pancakes in syrup and used orange juice to take Tylenol. I learned what it meant to have a hangover. I also learned how to fix a mimosa. A teammate made them for us under the table with the 6oz bottles of cheap champagne he snuck in through the kangaroo pocket of his team issued sweatshirt.

The table toasted me, “Happy New Year!” I scored the winning goal, I was the only freshman at the party, I hooked-up with her.

With them.

This installed a series of narratives that would direct the next decade of my life.

That drinking alcohol, doing drugs, and partying was what popular, well-liked, and admired people do.

That drinking alcohol, doing drugs, and partying attracted women to me, or suppressed my insecurities enough that I could perform and attract women to me.

That drinking more alcohol, doing more drugs, and partying more than peers, would lead to wilder stories. At the time creating an identity synonymous with wild was my goal.

Attention was the reward. Rejection the punishment.

I feared rejection so much that I used alcohol to continue developing into the person that got attention, even if deep down it was out of alignment with who I was.

Today, I’m embarrassed that this was aspirational to me. Not only did I subscribe to it, but I promoted it. This what was I sought, what I encouraged, and demanded of our others.

If you were friend enough to challenge me on this lifestyle, I eliminated you from my life. All I wanted was people to bring down with me. If I was going to self-sabotage and lie myself into a dependency, while advertise it as advantageous, I needed people to believe it true.

Sobriety has corrected all the above, and then some. It saved me.

It’s because of sobriety that I am thriving.

Sobriety is my superpower.

The immediate effects of sobriety came in the middle of the night.

Sleep is the foundation of Health. As Matthew Walker wrote in Why We Sleep, “Sleep is more than a pillar of health; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit.”

For a decade, I had thought the cure to restlessness, bouts of insomnia, and red eye flights was a glass or two of of the good stuff. Sobriety corrected that.

It was Walker’s Why We Sleep that explained why:

“The most misunderstood of all “sleep aids” is alcohol. Many individuals believe alcohol helps them to fall asleep more easily, or even offers sounder sleep throughout the night. Both are resolutely untrue. Alcohol does not induce natural sleep. Alcohol fragments sleep, littering the night with brief awakenings. Unfortunately, most of these nighttime awakenings go unnoticed by the sleeper and individuals therefore fail to link alcohol consumption the night before with feelings of next-day exhaustion caused by the undetected sleep disruption sandwiched in between. Alcohol will also often suppress REM sleep, especially during the first half or two-thirds of the night. People consuming even moderate amounts of alcohol in the afternoon and/or evening can inadvertently deprive themselves of dream sleep. Alcohol-infused sleep is therefore not continuous and, as a result, not restorative.”

Walker wraps with a bit of convincing advice, “The annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer.”

As wonderful as sleep is, alcohol would always keep me in bed for much longer than the recommend 7–9. Not only would I snooze alarms into the afternoon, but hangovers would pin me to couches for full days. The effects of alcohol were robbing my days, just as much as my nights. We already spend so much of our life sleeping, I’m no longer interested in wasting more moments horizontal reaching for hydration and headache relievers.

The next upgrade came with a floater of vanity.

Beyond telling me to be confident, alcohol told me I was hungry.

Drunk me liked to eat, everything. I once went to a dollar beer bar in Boston and ran up a $137 tab with only 12 beers. 6 plates of Nachos and 20 buffalo wings will do that.

My drinking weight was around 195 pounds, and riddled with injuries and joint pain. Today, 3 years into sobriety, I weigh 168 pounds and am in what I call life shape. I can answer any invite. Bike 100 miles for charity? Sure. Hike a mountain? Yes. Run a 5k tomorrow morning? Sign me up. Go camping? Fuck no, but that’s just because I don’t much like camping. Because of sobriety, I can treat life like an adventure.

Then there is my skin. When you are hydrated, getting great sleep, and not putting damaging substances into your body, there’s a constant gloaming glow to your skin. I also get healthier doses of sun with natural outdoor movements.

Sobriety also allows me to avoid the alarming effects alcohol has on my immune system and make better decisions that would have put my body as risk before. I’m less likely to drive a car drunk, get in a fight, or impulse jump off something dangerous.

Sobriety has done much more than apply new siding.

I was in the lobby of the MIT library, rehearsing for an investor meeting. I was weak on the financials, getting there but stumbling.

“Why should I invest in you?” We were still roll playing. “Well,” I started, “I’m an Ivy League graduate with a double major in Economics and Political Science. I’m the former captain of the US National Team Under 18 Men’s Hockey team with 2 golds and 3 silvers. I’m a former professional athlete and member of the Italian Men’s National team. I was previously employee number #6 in a company that grew to 50+, I’m curious, I’m without distraction, and I’m sober.”

“Stop. Don’t say that. It opens a convo we don’t need to have and I don’t want to communicate instability,” my cofounder said.

She was wrong. Sobriety was exactly why they should invest, sobriety is my superpower.

The professional benefits of sobriety compound.

Through constant clarity, restful sleep, and intentional scheduling, I find myself not only with a time surplus, but more creativity, more energy, able to incubate ideas deeper, and that I’m more efficient when I work. What used to take days may now take a focused few hours. When your mind has no alterations, it’s constantly making progress. Every thought is working for me now, advancing me towards my goals.

Sobriety also launched my writing career. It gave me more time to engage in deeper research, to pursue curiosities, and has provided me perspective I lacked before.

The final frontier of sobriety is the mind.

There’s a difference between not drinking and sobriety. Simply not drinking is abstinence. Sobriety requires a daily commitment to doing “the work.” The work differs person to person. It has no required pace, but it does demand your attention. Progress has no speed, just a direction. My work has been through weekly therapy, meditation, active reading listening, and sometimes just sitting quietly in a room alone.

I needed to not only unsew how I thought the world worked, but I needed to deeply heal my insecurities and understand why I used alcohol to quiet them in the previous chapter of my life.

I needed to confront my ego, to understand it, and to find the courage to begin pursuing my true curiosities.

I needed to find the language to introduce myself new self to old friends.

I needed to learn to love myself.

I needed to start healing.

I also needed to learn compassion. For myself.

Kobe Campbell said, “Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself, healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved.” Every day, I continue doing this work. That’s what sobriety is and why it’s my superpower.

Over 3 years, I’ve learned how to speak about sobriety and retrace my steps in society.

At an outdoor bar, the bartender asked if I wanted a beer or well drink. I told him “No thanks, I have a drug and alcohol problem. I’ll just grab a water.”

This response startles most people. They laugh and the ice is broken across the group I’m with.

But still, the bartenders think I’m joking, so do strangers. That’s because I don’t look like what they’d been told alcoholics look like.

Unfortunately, dramatized characters in film and television have allowed many to exclude themselves from questioning their relationship to alcohol, and a cultural glorification of alcohol consumption has only created more distance.

My job isn’t to inform you what counts as alcohol misuse, you can find those humbling definitions here and here, but to at least highlight that alcoholism doesn’t exist. Alcohol use disorder does. And it’s quite common.

Chances are if you’ve ever drank alcohol before, you’ve misused it. My hands are empty, only you can hold a mirror to yourself, your behavior, and your patterns.

What I do encourage those who ask is to remain curious and to challenge your beliefs. Maybe, like me, you’ll find that alcohol in fact is the single biggest parachute in your life and that sobriety could be your superpower too.

-

Every year, I reflect on the previous 365 days of my sobriety with a Soberversary piece. Each Soberversary piece is published as a collectable NFT with a quantity of 26 to celebrate the age at which I chose sobriety. The price of each NFT set in hundredths of 1 ETH, equal to the Soberversary number being reflected on.

That’s weird, I thought I finished the glass of water before I went to bed.

I thought to myself as I woke to damp bedsheets.

I must have fallen asleep before I finished it and knocked it over during the night.

Let me check.

I was wrong.

I peed the bed.

•

I wish that this was a cute story from the archives of my childhood but it’s not.

This was me at 26, waking up in a bed in my childhood room at my parent's house.

Here I was, on a Sunday morning carrying bedsheets past my parents, who were waiting to have family breakfast with me, downstairs to wash.

I was 26, hungover, and living with my parents.

They didn’t say anything, but looking back I can’t begin to imagine the humiliation or concern they had for me.

This wasn’t an exclusive event either. This was also me at 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25.

This was me.

Was.

This isn’t me today. It’s been 794 days since going sober, and in the 2 years of this sober journey, a fog has lifted from over my hindsight allowing me to remember and reflect on moments like this.

In those two years, I’ve often thought to myself “How do you advocate for an adjustment of attitudes and values with integrity if you have previously abused and been complicit in advancing them?”

The commitment that I’ve sentenced myself to is to be radically truthful in sharing my past so that others with parallel experiences find solidarity or become made aware of their options, and so that younger generations now entering the phase of life that has visibly scarred me are presented with alternate role models to those who are being broadcasted across televisions, airwaves, and social media accounts.

I’ve found that with writing, writers either write to relate or to educate. Here, I aim to intersect the two, first offering tales one might relate to, and then ones that will educate against the incorrect assignment I gave to alcohol for a decade of my life.

On the first anniversary of my sobriety, I published Last Year I Drank Tequila, which dug into the reasons why I drank. I confronted the harm I was doing to myself (physically, mentally, and emotionally) and being done to my dreams. In that year, cliche as it is, I began to really understand the idea that in order to love others, we need to love ourselves first, and that to change the world we need to change ourselves first. It was hard work, private work, and I am grateful for those who supported my decision.

In year two, more secure in my relationship with alcohol, I’ve confronted the harm I’ve done to others. Harm, manifesting in others as emotional pain, worry, stress, anxiety, anger, and taking the steps to repent for and correct it.

All relationships don’t need to return to their former state, but for those who brought them pain, they must at some point have the courage to own their past conduct and begin a process of correction.

That’s what the past 365 days have been for me.

This process has returned me to friendships, revisited adventures, resurfaced memories and stories that I’ll cherish forever but also reached back to confront past pain, traumas, and humiliations of myself and those around me.

What’s become clear now that the fog has lifted is that no matter how great a chapter of my life was, knowing that it caused pain to others, even if a small fraction, is painful, and I’m not willing to dismiss what I did to others because of how embarrassing and humbling confronting it would be.

Welcome to year 2.

I have 19 cousins, 16 of whom are younger than me. Growing up, all my cousins on the Italian side of my family shared a summer house, and as my hockey career developed, the Irish side of my family and I bonded over sport. My grandma came to every game, and most of my cousins began playing themselves.

They’d wear my number. They’d look up to me. It was a responsibility I welcomed.

In reflection, I think about what I communicated to them. Not in post-game interactions, or over summer ice cream, but in my actions, my lifestyle. On one hand, my athletic and academic success set a great example, but this exercise isn’t about praise, it’s about truth, and ignoring the dust-covered embarrassments would be irresponsible.

In summers, I’d rush to Harwich Port, a town on Cape Cod where the family house was, every Friday night for a weekend drinking affair. After early release from internships or training, I’d race down to arrive in time for a quick meal, shower, and round of shots before going to a local bar with friends. Saturday morning started with a quick sweat, then mimosas, beach Coronas, beach naps, beach sunburns, and a beach buzz all leading into a carbon copy of the night before.

On the surface, it was just a bunch of fun, but the truth was that I was engaging in the excess consumption of alcohol on a regular basis. That’s abuse.

But, with these decisions, I was communicating something else.

I wasn’t the only one at the house on those weekends. Beside me were 8 younger cousins, who, as cousins do, looked up to me, and what they saw was a person giving alcohol value. The same way I looked up to my former high-school teammates that offered me my first beer, and my role models in professional sports that used alcohol to celebrate victory, I had assigned an inappropriate value on the act of consuming alcohol.

Today, I’d much rather place that value on a bike ride, a panel, on education, or meditation than what I did then.

I can’t rewind and erase the tapes of my young adulthood and that’s what’s so painful. All I can do today is to write new pages so that when my biography is finished, those years are merely a chapter, not an entire book.

And you can expect me to dedicate that book to my family.

It would read short and just say I am grateful.

I am grateful for their love and support, and I am grateful for their compassion and forgiveness.

During this year of reflection, I think of the pain, manifested as worry, embarrassment, or concern, I brought to them.

I think back to a time with my sister in Prague, Czech Republic. It was February 2014. I was living in Briançon, France and we had a week off during the season. I told my cousin and sister about this and we decided to plan a trip. We chose Prague.

Prague in the winter is pretty and inexpensive. We stayed at a hostel in the old town, went on pub crawls, saw the sights, it was a fucking blast. Until our final night.

We sipped screwdrivers outside the famous Astronomical Clock all day and at sunset, my sister and cousin wanted to grab a few souvenirs before the markets closed. I decided to stay. I decided to keep drinking. I asked the waiter, or waitress, I can’t remember, for a pen and began to doodle on a napkin. After some time I drew a lock, then an open lock, and then an open lock that melted into the word fiction. I sent a picture of it to a friend back home and told him I was going to get it tattooed on my body. He told me I was a fucking idiot, that I was drunk, and it would be a shitty tattoo. I decided against the lock, but a few minutes later I paid our bill and went to find a tattoo parlor.

Now, keep in mind my sister, cousin, and I all had American phone plans and I was supposed to stay at the restaurant. I found a tattoo parlor, had a few more drinks and decided to get a 5 x 6-inch pirate tattoo on my leg. Aside from the fact that it’s just a terribly done tattoo, I had not told my sister where I was, so when I got on wifi and responded to her expired “Where are you” and “???” texts with the word “Alley”, you can imagine the acute anxiety I gave her. I eventually shared the address with the help of the receptionist and when my sister walked in, I realized I had broken our trust. Not only did I go rogue in a foreign country, but I sent her down an alley to find me pantless with a blue pirate on my thigh.

“Is this safe? Are those needles clean? What the fuck Richie?” were all extremely valid questions that I didn’t know the answer to. Nor did I care. I thought what I was doing was the definition of being wild.

It’s moments like this, where I expressed no concern for anyone but myself, that in reflection humiliate me and confirm that I owe people apologies.

I think back to my parents, and an Easter brunch where I stood on the chairs of a table seating all my relatives, grandparents included, and took swigs from a Grey Goose bottle in front of cousins who were as young as four. Granted, it was during a game of Cards Against Humanity, but there’s a difference between mature, possibly offside jokes, and just being an asshole.

I was being an asshole, and it was at the expense of my parents’ embarrassment. The car ride home was silent and all I could think was “How did they not have a fun time today?”

Claiming oblivion would be inaccurate and admitting my ignorance doesn’t absolve me. Neither does taking responsibility without intentional actions to correct these misbehaviors.

With family, my motivation to repent for myself is not for forgiveness, but with the hope that my errors can be used as an example for my cousins as they enter into the years of their lives where I chose harmful influences.

And I choose to share this publicly because this exists outside the privacy of my family unit as well.

Today, there are many young men maturing in environments saturated with the glorification of substance abuse and machismo and womanizing tendencies, that will claim these impressionable young men as victims should they subscribe to this narrative. A narrative that ultimately will create more victims as a result of the behaviors of these men. So, I want to offer an alternate example.

To these young men, I understand the desire to be liked by your peers, especially during a time rampant with bullying, but as someone who was actually Captain Fucking America, I want you to know that this — the above lifestyle — is for such a temporary applause in a popularity contest, that inviting harm to yourself and those around you is not worth it.

To add, it’s important to identify how one arrives here. White men are born into privilege. It’s with this privilege I was able to become an Ivy-league athlete, where I then had an opportunity to invest in equity or abuse. During the years of my life where I consumed alcohol, I abused this privilege and the sooner we identify this, the sooner we can invest in correcting it.

If my example can be used as an opportunity to erect change and educate on the misdirection of abuses, I’m all in.

In college, I met someone that I had an interest in and they told me I had a warning label. At the time, I wore this with honor. It must mean I was a bad-boy, the younger brother to the wild I evolved into.

At least that’s how I interpreted it. I was selectively oblivious to the truth behind this suggestion that I had caused pain to someone or someones.

I binge drank during college and subscribed to a culture that assigned incorrect value to men who exhibited pseudo-alpha type tendencies of womanizing and substance consumption.

My habits and glorification of this lifestyle ruined relationships. Out of respect for those involved, there is no need to share details, all you need to know is that I was wrong.

This has been the silent pain of year 2. I allowed myself to hurt people that I cared about so much, and what’s worse is why I did it. I thought I would gain popularity and increase my social status for engaging in these behaviors.

Human lives and emotions are too valuable to fuck with. And I did.

Today, sobriety has granted me the ability to live and love with such intention that I am able to infuse my relationships with authenticity, integrity, and pure love.

Year 2 has been about taking responsibility, and writing this is a step in that direction, even if at a reduced speed. Of these relationships, there are still some I have yet to apologize to. I’ve convinced myself that reaching out after 5 years would just be picking at the scars their scabs healed into. Or, that it would be selfish of me to ask them to revisit the emotional pain I caused them in order to repent for my transgressions, only for me to feel better about myself. Am I even being narcissistic to think that I was important enough to have caused long-lasting pain? I’m active on social media, it’s easy to privately check-in on someone, and I’ve made the judgment that they’re happy now. Why would I want to disturb them?

I know what I need to do, and relying only on publishing admissions would be a repeat of cowardly behavior and too impersonal.

Apologies are coming.

This warning label wasn’t just reserved for romantic relationships either, this infected my friendships too. During my sophomore year, I learned I wasn’t invited to a friend’s birthday party out of fear of how I would behave. At the time, I was upset at the lack of invitation, but also flattered that I was viewed as this wild guy. It’s as if I was the equivalent of a bad-boy Clark Kent. I embraced this “warning” label persona so much that I even printed one out and taped it to my shirt one night before going out. A night out that, on occasion, ended up with me convincing friends I was fine to drive putting us all at risk.

It even infected relationships with my coach who I’d seek out at college tailgates to say hi to, knowing he was with his family. Is that really the type of player a coach wants representing their team or school?

That’s fucking embarrassing to type out. And no, not embarrassing in the way that owning a white Ed Hardy belt during your freshman year is, but embarrassing that I wholeheartedly believed this to be a good thing.

Unzipping myself from this identity has been a years long process with the hardest being this last since there was nothing but the truth derived from reflections staring directly at my skin in the mirror.

I don’t wish scraped knees and elbows from crawling through rock bottom on anyone, rather I hope others will be inspired to have the courage to confront who they are, who they have been, and who they want to become.

For me, that exercise exposed a poor relationship with alcohol.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write on this soberversary, I just knew I wanted to write about it. Mostly for myself. What came out during writing sessions was a painful vomit of embarrassments that, when disinfected, found shape. This needed to be more than an admission, this needed to be an apology. Too often, we prematurely congratulate those who accept responsibility for repeated offenses prior to a complete process. What this protects is the failure to correct behavior. Apologies are incomplete without a corrected course. Cry wolf.

I’ve only ever attended one AA meeting but this essay would be a combination of step 5, admitting to ourselves and others the very nature of our wrongs, and then lead into steps 8 and 9, where we identify who we have wronged, become willing to make amends, and then make amends.

The word “wrongs” is heavy and can have exclusionary implications. Last year I shied away from the word “sober”, aware of the stigma that it carried with it. I still held this elitist attitude that I wasn’t like them. This was reinforced by a former mentor who advised me never to tell anyone in business I was sober, because it would communicate instability. That was wrong, my sobriety is a strength.

Today, I embrace the word. Sober means not affected by alcohol; not drunk. You don’t have to arrive at sobriety from tragedy, or even have had to consume alcohol to be sober. Most don’t understand alcoholism as a spectrum populated with sobriety, casual consumption, misuse, problem drinkers, and abuse. In an effort to update stigmas and attitudes, you’ll hear the word alcohol-use-disorder. It’s a little softer, and it’s quite common.

Consider the conversation on the front lines. A person is considered to have an alcohol-use-disorder when drinking interferes with their work or home life, damages important relationships or their health, and continues despite legal troubles and other serious consequences. It also has to do with problems controlling your consumption. With that, how could I dismiss myself from the conversation?

If an argument ever happened when drinking, alcohol was interfering with that relationship. If one has ever blacked-out, peed the bed, fallen when drunk, or vomited, then alcohol was interfering with their health. And, if a person ever returned to drinking after that, let’s call it what it is. The barrier to entry for classifications of alcohol-use-disorder is quite low, and for a long time, I refused to accept this. I wasn’t them.

What I was, was wrong.

I don’t write that to shame anyone, only to bring equity to the conversation, and inform a curious mind that their self-disqualification from the conversation after checking the boxes above is incorrect. I did that for years, and I regret it.

But 794 days ago the regret became too painful to dismiss, and that’s when this all started.

I miss Moscow mules.

I miss being wine drunk at 2 pm on a spring Saturday.

I miss bottomless brunches, 10 person dinners, and ordering 20 shots at a time when I only have 4 friends with me in an attempt to attract and engage a crowd.

I was good at drinking.

But, I don’t miss wasting days of my life, I don’t miss knowing I had a negative effect on another person’s life, and I don’t miss the pain I brought onto myself.

Hi, my name is Richie. I am 28, wild and sober, and I am here to normalize sobriety.

-

Every year, I reflect on the previous 365 days of my sobriety with a Soberversary piece. Each Soberversary piece is published as a collectable NFT with a quantity of 26 to celebrate the age at which I chose sobriety. The price of each NFT set in hundredths of 1 ETH, equal to the Soberversary number being reflected on.

Last year I drank tequila. This year I don’t.

November 2017. The bars in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood close at 2 am on weekends. It is now 3:30 am and I am aimlessly wandering the streets in a T-shirt. Cold and drunk. I lost my jacket, my friends, and my phone is dead.

A month before that night, I came to on a stoop in South Boston. Food at my feet, arms covered in sharpie ink, unaware of how a Saturday bike ride turned into a 2-day binge drink through the neighborhoods of Boston. But the unread text messages told me I had a good time. Good time, huh?

Oh, I almost forgot. Squeezed in between these two nights was the time I drove the 45 minutes home at 2:30 am — drunk and videoing every time I passed 100mph. “Which time?” is right, as this happened more than once.

I don’t include these stories in an attempt to glorify my nights out, nor to legitimize my party life. The party life I had. If anything, typing these words out are both painful and embarrassing. These were the moments that sparked my sobriety. For so long, I had policed myself by saying “no drinking for one week” or “Dry January” only to return to alcohol and to experience similar chapter endings. Insanity. These were temporary band-aid resolutions to a larger problem. These were the moments that led to the decision to be firm and go sober.

Sober at 26.

I hesitate to use the words lucky, as it implies that this story is almost heroic, as if I was chosen. I prefer to use the word foolish. I believed alcohol was cool. Or maybe not cool, but necessary. I didn’t know that I could be a star without it and I invested so much of my identity in the culture of drinking.

In the year and 10 days since going sober, I’ve answered “why did you stop drinking?” many times, but haven’t spent much energy into looking at why I drank. So here goes.

In high school, it was for the feeling of rebellion, of tasting the dessert before dinner. In college, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the feeling of losing control and getting attention: the attention of being the wildest man at the party, of being the last man standing. And from there it continued. Living and traveling in Europe, it was both to engage in the culture and as an act of pure enjoyment.

But it was difficult to have just one beer, just one glass of wine. “Bring another bottle!” Life was too much fun when drinking, and I thought the thrill of a night out was more favorable than the hangover, the financial anxiety, the lack of motivation, and the impact on my mental health that followed.

If I was going out, I was going all the way out.

Going sober is not a popular decision. For the first few months, I wasn’t able to articulate my reasons even well enough for my family or my close circle. For me, there was too much shame. I left out some parts. The parts that might have hurt my mother, my friends. I hid. Four months passed before I was able to talk about it publicly. Now, my response is stronger.

I am sober because the hangovers became too much. They crept from my body to my mind. They ruined my ambition and my mental health. I am sober because I lost my confidence without alcohol. I am sober because I couldn’t control my spending and a night out left me financially unwell and anxious. I am sober because drinking became dangerous to myself and others around me.

I knew all of this during my days of glass clutching, but one drink would allow me to forget.

The pages of my 12-year affair with alcohol are filled with empty romances, dishonest conversations, broken promises, danger and blood. And again, this is not me bragging, but me attempting to acknowledge that I thought I was invincible. I could always have one more drink, one more line, one more pill. I was proud of this and would boast that “I can handle drinks and drugs, they don’t change me.” This was a lie. And I am fortunate that life never truly called my bluff.

I still have a level of discomfort when it comes to my sobriety. I am comfortable owning who I am, who I was and any actions that I took when drinking, but it is the identity and associations that come with being sober, that I have yet to navigate.

Was I an alcoholic? Am I an alcoholic?

When discussing my sobriety, I don’t use the word “alcoholic” as if my story isn’t as tragic enough. Problem drinker, alcohol misuse, yes, but alcoholic, no. And maybe my distance from this word is rooted in shame. I am proudly part of the sober community, but do I belong to the recovery community? The answer is yes, and one I am still navigating.

Alcohol consumption is a spectrum. Shaped like a U. At one end, there are those who have never enjoyed alcohol. They don’t drink. The other end is also a group that doesn’t drink, those that are now sober. That’s where I am. In the middle, we have the casual-glass-of-wine crew, social drinkers, problem drinkers, misusers, abusers, and alcoholics. But where do you draw the line? Is a problem drinker just an alcoholic that hasn’t had a tragedy snap them out of it yet? It’s blurry, to say the least. And what exactly constitutes a tragedy? Is a broken promise not enough? Is putting myself in danger, even though “nothing happened”, not enough?

My struggle now is in identifying my past. My present is as a person who is sober, but I crave an association for my past. I was a person who misused alcohol, and that is why I am sober. But am I being unfair to myself, or to those who are also sober by rejecting my association with alcoholism? I don’t have an answer for this. I was fortunate to never have tragedy mark the narrative of my alcohol consumption, just missteps, just close calls. Maybe that is why I lack the ability to identify with alcoholism.

December 28th, 2018 at 10 am marked one year sober. I’m often asked, will you drink again? My answer used to be, “yeah I will figure out how to introduce a glass of wine, or a beer back into my routine”, but now I am resolute: there is no need for me to do that. That would be a compromise and insult to the work that I’ve put in.

Since going sober, I have become who I want to be. My mind is in the best place it has been in years. I am generating ideas, processing conversations, and creating a sanctuary for myself within myself.

My health is at its peak as well. My diet, my relationships, my ambitions. I am in a place that I am proud of and I don’t want to sacrifice any of that for some carbonation or a sweet grape.

“Thank you for the offer, but I’ll pass. May I still sit here?”

_

Every year, I reflect on the previous 365 days of my sobriety with a Soberversary piece. Each Soberversary piece is published as a collectable NFT with a quantity of 26 to celebrate the age at which I chose sobriety. The price of each NFT set in hundredths of 1 ETH, equal to the Soberversary number being reflected on.