The Secret Society of Sober People

Life After Alcohol

Some life changes happen that you will be completely unprepared for. Once the hidden benefits kicked in, and I was inducted into the Secret Society of Sober People, I knew that I was probably done with alcohol forever.

The last time I had an alcoholic drink was Canada Day 1981.

I had bought a quart of Black Horse Beer (a famous Newfoundland Beer) from some guys and was walking with it along the Terrasse Dufferin in Quebec City.

For some reason, not well understood by any of us, my father had given us a bunch of money to take the train up from Halifax for a holiday. My friends had gone ahead to a bar and I was going to join them. I was alone. I opened the big bottle, but I can't remember if I actually took more than one drink. I just kept looking at the bottle, and the pretty dark horse on the label, and thinking about where it would take the day. Across the water, I imagined all the sleepyheads just waking up in Levis. Leaning against the rusty rail, I threw the bottle over the side and as I did it sprayed and foamed over everything, including me. (I sometimes wonder if it’s still down there in the bushes). I had just gotten through some miserable times which I won't bother to talk about except to say that it had something to do with running away from home, running away from school really, and feeling that just about everything people did excluded me. Drinking, as everyone knows, is a way to feel included. For me, it was doubly important because it was medicine for a sickness of paralyzing shyness that wracked me so bad it was deforming my body like a kind of emotional polio.

I was a maudlin fool. I always was, and, I suppose, I still am. But I just decided then and there... maybe it's important to say this was about 11 am on a Tuesday... that I wasn't going to drink anymore. I was just going to go, and join the others, and be the life of the party, be the leader of the fun and adventure and crazy silly ideas, and dance on the table, and take my shirt off, and talk to whoever I wanted whenever I wanted. I was just going to let all the ideas and imagining of fun I had always had in my head come out. I was gonna sing too. Like right out loud in front of everyone.

As I walked to the bar I got kind of grinning to myself at the craziness of this idea and I was feeling... giddy. It sounds a silly word to use but this idea was a big deal and it's the right word for my feelings. I was, and I am, an effeminate man, and normally, in public, I would hyper-consciously try to walk... cool (whatever that was other than a recipe for the ridiculous), I would try to not smile or laugh, and most of all I would try to speak - if I spoke at all - with a lower than natural voice.

There had been rain the night before and a bright orange sun was heating up the still summer morning; steaming the water off the cobblestones and pavement. You know the smell. Then, like a movie musical, the world transformed around me. People were kind of... well, I just felt I was there with them you know... not separate. We were all acting together. A flash mob of everyone. I got thinking about how they must feel and all the troubles they must have; how afraid they must be. As I walked under the city wall tunnel I started singing the highest song I knew. A song that had genuinely been in my heart for about a year.

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armor comin'

Sayin' something about a queen

There were peasants singin' and drummers drummin'

And the archer split the tree

There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun

That was floating on the breeze...

It reverberated loud in the tunnel and everyone could hear... and it sounded good... to me. It was my voice. My real true shaky voice that I had been hiding, even from me.

I got to the bar by lunch time. Cigarette smoke came out when I opened the door. The guys were there at a long table. But they were all sitting on one side like it was the Last Supper. They had all been drinking for a while and they were laughing and having fun watching a big TV that was mounted up on the wall. I assumed it was sports, which meant nothing to me, but I was gonna join in anyway. I took my place, the one I really wanted, not at the end of the table or off to the side, but right in the middle like Jesus. I just pushed my way right in there laughing and smiling as I did it. I had to push the guys and the chairs and it became a bit of a wrestle. But it was funny and fun and I enjoyed the physical roughness of it, because I had never really touched anyone and up till that point no one had touched me.

Once I got settled I looked up at the big TV and the guys all looked at me. Somehow, on this Tuesday morning, it was a video of a line of men, naked, all straddling a big fallen trunk of a tree, and they were all humping each other in the butt. I don't know how long I just looked at it because it took a surprisingly long time to figure out what I was seeing. McCabe, the most worldly of our little group, sitting beside me, held up his beer and pointed it to the big screen, "I think this is a homosexual bar... but it's the only one that's open." And that was good enough, and not much more was said about it. We watched the movie, had lunch, and laughed at the 'story' and 'acting', and on top of everything else I had been thinking about, I kind of confirmed to myself that I wasn't gay, which more than a few, including my father, had suggested. And we had fun, and nobody noticed that I wasn't drinking. In truth, they might have thought I was the most drunk of all.

Later, we wandered up with the crowd to a big Canada Day concert out on the green in front of the Chateau Frontenac, where there were hippie girls spinning happy circles such that their long skirts swirled up showing tanned legs and white cotton underwear, and the band played Signs, and The Boxer, and Heart of Gold, and I danced in the grass with my shoes off and talked to everyone, and sang along, and thought about how harmony worked, and then the day was gone. Running in the dark across the Plains of Abraham to get back to the hostel at the very last minute (there was a curfew) felt like flying until we got to the lights at the Joan Of Arc Garden. And that was where it all landed. I went to sleep grinning and ginning. The next day, I just started life over with a brand new plan and a new clear-headed idea of all the things I liked and didn't like, and all the things I wanted and didn't want.

There's more to the story between here and there but no alcohol. And that's probably more than enough to share. I've never actually had a drink in a bar, though I've spent my life closing down bars and singing, jumping around, talking to people, and having as much fun as it's possible to have in public, and private, without getting in too much trouble.

One thing I've been careful about over the years is not being evangelical or mawkish about all this; when you are young, especially, any line of talk about not drinking can seem a bit of a petulant parade. I brook no truck with the intolerant or the prohibitionist and I don't look down on the drinkers or the drunk. In music, I've spent a lot of my life being paid to encourage people to drink. But with recent writing pushing back against the new Canadian Health advice against drinking and a lot of new interest among younger folks in a drinkless lifestyle, the rise of mocktails, and all the health science news, it seems as good a time as any to at least mention this choice.

I can share with anyone who is thinking about or just now getting off the booze, it's like buying stock in yourself. Get in on the ground floor. And even if you're late to the idea do it anyway. My grandmother used to say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the second best time is right now. You can still rock it out any night with all the soul that's in ya. There's no rule that says you have to be drunk to do it - even if there was, rebel and don't follow it. I guess I'm asking you to just open yourself up to the idea; to imagine how fun it could be. It's an investment that accrues dividends and capital gains, way beyond sober Sunday mornings without a hangover, that just keeps growing and growing over a lifetime in good times and bad. It's got compound interest and a high rate of return.

After all the years, both looking back and looking forward, I'm only recently understanding the real value of, and enjoying the benefits of, not drinking in terms of health, wealth, and happiness, how much easier it is for family and friends around me, and how rich it's made my life.

And it can do the same for you.

Sometimes it’s good to talk about.