As I awoke from my very brief slumber alone on my neighbors’ front porch swing, the party raged on in the house behind me. What happened? Did I pass out? Only minutes earlier I was engaged in conversation with the smokers in attendance who were indulging their habit outside. I was indulging my habit, too. I was probably five or six beers into the evening when I ventured outside to join their conversation. Sometime while trading stories and laughing effortlessly as drinkers do while drinking, I passed out mid-conversation. It seemed the long work week and soothing motion of the swing combined with the alcohol to lull me to sleep. Now awake, I slithered back across the street to my house and joined my family who had left the party and gone to bed in the previous couple of hours.
I was not drunk. I was not slurring my words and I had not said anything rude or insulting. I had not gotten sick or danced on a table or spilled food or drink on the carpet – nothing like that. Nevertheless, I was embarrassed about my undignified nap.
Comfort. Comfort is necessary. Comfort is release. We seek comfort constantly – whether we are aware of it or not. Our brains are wired to equate comfort to survival, so it is the first order of priority for our subconscious, and often our conscious minds, too.
Love and marriage are nothing like I expected when I met my wife, Sheri, going into our last year in 
As we drove to high school soccer training on Thursday evening, Nick took thirsty gulps from his water bottle. My son had spent the day with a friend at Elitch’s (Denver slang for Elitch Gardens amusement park). Nick’s friend, Sammy, has significantly more risk tolerance than Nick, so I was eager to hear if the boys had ventured onto some of the rides that Nick usually avoids. Nick told me about Mind Eraser, Half Pipe and Brain Drain, all between gulpy slugs from his water bottle. His speech was slightly slurred and his descriptions of his adventures a little disconnected. I struggled to understand him between chugs of water.
Last week, I wrote about 
An hour or so into a several hour 
My relationship with my father has been strained and distant for many years. When I got sober, that relationship got worse. Sobriety doesn’t fix anything. It just takes away the cover we are 
The only difference between me and the homeless drunk who dies in a gutter is our starting point. All alcoholics fall toward death. It can be a slow, gradual decline or a crashing, tumbling, free-fall descent. Some of us 
Independence is a myth. The question is, what do we choose to depend on?
For an alcoholic, sobriety doesn’t fix anything. When we remove alcohol from the situation, what is left is a quagmire of broken relationships and damaged lines of communication. Alcohol often serves as a bandage on a huge, gaping laceration. It doesn’t heal the wound, but it can in many ways hide its existence for a period of time. When the bandage is removed, the pain is exposed and the family is forced to take careful and precise steps to begin the healing process.