I was puttering around my living room the other day and I glanced up at the clock on the VCR. As soon as I saw the green numbers, I remembered something--a feeling. I recognized it at once: dread, anger, disbelief. That's how checking the time used to make me feel when I was drinking and doing drugs.

How often, over the years, have I looked askance at those same green numbers and felt that same anxiety and despair? Hundreds, thousands of times? 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday night, and I didn't sleep the night before. 4:00 a.m. on a Wednesday--how the fuck did this happen? 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday--my day wasted. Or the reverse: it's 11:00 a.m. at the office, I'm sick and dizzy, I feel like I'd rather kill myself than stay the rest of the day. Time was always against me. I felt like everything was always against me.

So much frustration! So much effort spent fighting myself! So much self-pity, it's shameful. I could kick my own ass just thinking about it.

I think it's fair to say that most heavy drinkers bear a grudge against time. The night slipping away, the alarm clock in the morning, drinking buddies getting older and dropping off the scene, one's own body losing its resilience. I was fighting the clock and the calendar with every drink. It's a losing battle, a waste of will, and a distraction from the real challenges. I used to think that staying up all night was valiant. If time is a river, I was jumping upstream like a salmon. Now I've let myself go under and find the current. It sounds like a surrender, but it's an acceptance. It's moving forward.

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