Today I celebrate 10 years of continuous sobriety. As they say, I am happy, joyous, and free. I don’t have everything figured out, but I feel everything is figureoutable.

If you happen to be reading this and you happen to have a desire to stop drinking or drugging, email me. I’ve been where you’ve been, and I know a way or two out.

I won’t recount my terrible years of drinking, but I will take a second to thank people like my brother Corey, my friends Shawn, Matt F, Matt W & Katie, Jon M, Jessi, Josh K & Shan, and DK, who knew me before I got well and loved me anyway - they were around for the worst and they’ve stuck around. I want to thank my mother for never flagging in her belief that I could get well, and my father, for being a role model of sorts in this department.

I want to thank my in-laws for going along with Meg’s belief in me and becoming a pillar of support in my life.

I want to thank my wife Meg for all of her many gifts; love, support, encouragement, counsel, warmth, and dedication (to name but a few).

I want to thank Zac C, John C, Joe E, and Jason S for showing me how to work the 12 steps. I have yet to decide I want a refund on my misery and that’s a credit to you. I want to thank Sarah F and Tony B & Erika for becoming the friends I needed after getting sober. I feel a great deal of thanks that we got a chance to start our friendship from a place where you can assume the best of me, and I try to live to that.

I want to thank the Boone County Circuit Court for giving me the opportunity to try Alternative Sentancing Court. I can confidently say that, difficult and humbling as it was, I would not have been successful with out it. It is quite possibly the most important thing I’ve done.

I want to thank the 12 step program for always being there, and for all of the people who trudge along the road to happy destiny. Your service, and your fulfilment of the responsibility statement, is why I stayed sober.

And I want to thank my son, Felix. I never need to wonder about whether something is worth it; whereever I go, a little fellow follows.

There’s not a grand finish here; this is a celebration, not a graduation as we like to say. But while I have your attention I’ll say these two things. First, as big a deal as this is, I truly feel that it is not extraordinary or extravagant. It is not beyond you or most everyone to do the right thing today, do it again tomorrow, and so on, until one day you look at a calendar and its been a minute since you even thought about doing the other thing. Whether thats with the help of a priest, or a therapist, a 12 step group or medically assisted, it takes what it takes for you, and it is no less valid or praiseworthy.

Second, and more importantly, it’s not a solemn occasion, Today or any other day. Long term sanity for me has been predicated as much on finding what’s joyous and worth giving gratitude for as anything else. Celebrate something today - something precious, something frivolous, something silly - it doesn’t matter, just celebrate it.