... the culture that surrounded me.

Smoke cigarettes and play pinball across the street from my high school- that's what I did. I was never cool, no matter how many signs of coolness propped me up. Crutches of coolness in my terrible teens.... My groundwork had been laid by the culture that surrounded me. It was all I knew. Smoking and drinking for me were inevitable.

Today, I do not belong to yesterday.

Things can change.

 

Some people get sober and stay sober for the rest of their lives. Not so for me and the vast majority of alcoholics and addicts. My progress from drunk to sober has been accompanied by setbacks. For me, progressively longer periods of sobriety have been followed by progressively shorter periods of relapse. My next relapse could be my first death. "One is too many and a thousand never enough."

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapater 46)