2026: Chapter 3

After I got done drinking a healthy amount more than usual, I had the brilliant thought of hitting the weed pen — which was damn near empty. There was this like heavy wax buildup inside the opening, which is used for sucking out the smoke, and so I kept attempting to inhale that shit really fucking hard even though nothing was coming out. So finally I did get an extremely generous rip off the sumbitch, which was precisely the moment I knew it was going to be Long Night.

I paced the tiles of the interior of my condo and within a handful of minutes began to lose my grip on reality. I began losing my grip on my motor functions. I was dizzy and wobbling forward and backward and side to side. I tried to channel all of my old tactics for dealing with marijuana-induced anxiety, which was basically to tell myself everything was going to be okay, and that this too shall pass, and to remain upright, and drink water. But also: By then it was already too late. I wasn’t okay. I was panicked.

So I blew straight past all the minor helpers which once acted as my go-to’s and went directly outside to take a walk. I walked in a circle around the gated community, but by the time I made it back to my doorstep I understood that there would not be a quick remedy to this awful affair. I went inside and grabbed my car keys such that I could go into my car and remove the clicker I utilize to open the front entrance — because if I know anything about getting way too fucking high it’s that I need a door to be open for me. I need an escape route.

So I did the same walk, except this time I opened the gate and began walking around the neighborhood. It was brief. Because by the time I made it about a hundred yards outside the gate and down the street I realized that it was like 4:30 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, and it’s not as if I live in the worst neighborhood in the world — especially compared to the humble streets I once roamed in my hometown of San Bernardino CA — but it’s also not the best neighborhood, either. I didn’t want to become a statistic, in other words, so I turned around and walked back to my front door.

I’m still here, I kept telling myself. Everything is going to be okay. Stay upright. Breathe in deeply. Breathe out slowly.

But then I found myself pacing around, and stumbling, outside my condo. Even in the midst of being completely out of my mind, in terms of not being able to focus on anything other than what was directly in front of me, I still had these weird flashes of self-awareness, knowing that anybody who may or may not have been awake to see me in that instant would have to assume I was a fucking crazy person. And this piled onto my panic, and anxiety, because I could have been anybody. Were the cops going to show up? No. But you could have convinced me of anything.

So I went inside. I was on the phone with my friend and she was very encouraging and supportive. I’m still here, I would say. Yes, Eric, you are still here, she would respond. I paced the tiles of my condo some more, kind of just waiting for the inevitable. I have to let it go, I told my friend. She didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘What’re you talking about?’ she asked me.

I had to throw up. That was all I meant by that. So I went to my restroom and keeled over in front of my toilet, and then my friend told me I shouldn’t do that, and that I should wet my face with water. So I turned on the water and my cat in the blink of an eye hopped up on the counter because he probably thought I was turning on the water for him — since he likes to drink from the faucet in lieu of the full ass bowl of water I always have sitting for him — and so my cat and I were sort of sharing the water. I’d put some on my face. Then I would try to drink some of it off of my fingers.

By then, roughly an hour into the Long Night I knew was coming for me, there was no position I could stay in and no direction I could adjust towards that brought me any peace. I got up and opened the front door so my cat could look outside and get some somewhat fresh air, and then I returned to the restroom in the same huddled-over position I was in before. Wetting my face off and on. Consuming as much moisture from my hands and fingers as I could.

I began to prostrate on the restroom floor, ironically, as I became entrenched and fully committed to making my peace with God — unironically. It’s been a while, I told my friend (who was on Facetime with me during the duration of this entire exercise), since I have been here. I have to let it go, I said again. And: I need to be forgiven.

Forgiven for what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Everything, maybe? For all of my past and present and future. For all of the damage I have done to my body and mind over the years. For eating fast food when I could very easily imbibe in much healthier options. For drinking. For smoking weed. For smoking cigarettes. For taking so much for granted all the time. For not appreciating my life nearly as much as I should. Just give me this one, I pleaded, while I remained stuck in that same helpless prostrated position, going in and out of consciousness while I waited for the sweet relief that my body refused to offer me.

When my eyes were open they stared at the floor mat that wraps around my toilet like a peninsula. It’s a plush floor mat, made up of little light-mint-colored bulbs with the purpose of sinking one’s feet into them while they are taking a dump. I think it was around $18 (USD) on Amazon. I’d close my eyes for several seconds or several minutes, but I can’t be certain which. I would think about everything I was doing wrong with my life. Then I would think some more about everything I have been doing wrong for as long as I could remember.

Then I would open my eyes again and stare deeply into those little bulbs on the floor mat. They turned grey, and then pure white. It looked like they were mountains, snowcapped, and I was gliding over them in a helicopter or some other vehicle used for aviation. It was an extremely slow flight. I couldn’t focus on anything else, so I closed my eyes again.

I didn’t have nearly enough food in my system, because I haven’t been eating a ton of recent, and thus my body didn’t have anything for me to regurgitate. ‘Your face is super red,’ my friend told me. I must’ve been in that keeled-over position for 45 minutes, doing nothing other than thinking, and breathing, and trying my mightiest to convince God that I deserved to wake up the following day with a new lease on life.

I adjusted myself and looked down at my phone at how my face looked in the small rectangle in the bottom-right corner on Facetime, and sure as shit it was redder than a fucking tomato. Which made sense since, you know, the way my body was positioned had my face basically kissing the little floor mat, so all the blood was rushing straight to my head. My face was on fire. By the time I got up on my knees I was naturally lightheaded. All the blood began rushing this way and that, and I could barely feel my legs, or my toes, since I had been applying so much pressure to my lower half.

Suddenly, it came. Straight up through my gut and out of my mouth and into the toilet. It tasted acidic, like alcohol does when it backfires. Then some more. And then some more. My grip on reality began to return. I stood up on my two feet, real woozy-like, and started chucking water onto my face. I walked to the front door and closed it. But it was so weird because still I could barely walk straight. I paced the tiles of my condo some more, thinking the nightmare was over. Then I started noticing all the sharp corners at the edges of my kitchen counter, and benign objects such as doorknobs, and the side table next to my bed, and I thought it would be really fucking stupid if I survived this onslaught only to misstep and crack my head open.

Then I threw up again, this time all over my white Ralph Lauren thermal that was sprawled out in the doorway leading to the restroom because I had taken it off an hour earlier. Almost everything I had remaining in my system ended up on that goddamn thermal. Then I put some more water on my face. And started drinking water out of a water bottle.

I felt better, and I also didn’t. I grabbed the wastebasket from the restroom and placed it directly next to my bed. I laid down and my friend told me I should sit upright — why, I wasn’t sure — but at that time I hardly possessed the leverage necessary to protest. So I sat upright. That is where the last of whatever remained inside of me came crashing out, mostly in dry heaves, and into the small trash can that has since been thrown into the community garbage tank. I laid down on my side and don’t remember falling asleep, but that’s what I did.

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Ever since I started drinking again — on December 18th — I had been trying to find the right date to go sober for a second time. Once I crossed over the February threshold I kind of resigned myself to the idea that I would wait until after I visited Sarah, in March, before I gave it another run. That was my plan.

So it’s coincidence that that particular morning, February 4th, turned into the date I began anew — because that day happens to be Sarah’s birthday. Doesn’t mean a goddamn thing, of course, but it’s funny in its own sort of way that for many months I bounced the idea of sobriety off of Sarah before I inevitably executed it, back in June 2025, and it was on her birthday in 2026 when I got way too drunk and way too high and decided then and there that I’ve officially had enough. Again.

I am neither blind nor naive to my history with substance abuse, nor am I immune to the one-day-at-a-time process that both life and sobriety demands of me. But this time around I feel much more secure with my intentions of keeping myself clean. Not only have I known this is the only path that makes any sort of sense, but thanks to the episode I went through the morning of February 4th, I carry with me an extremely poor taste in my mouth from my last — or should I say most recent — experience.

In less than two months I went out several times, making two (unplanned) trips to the casino, and lost over $5,000. The casino represented roughly 80 percent of those losses. Because of the losses I ended up having to use money earned to pay off the money lost (crazy concept that is), and thus I was forced to freeze the weekly $200 cash withdrawals that I so much looked forward to during sobriety. More or less, I effectively worked for free for about a month.

I’m not saying this is my quote normal behavior when I am off the wagon, but it’s within the realm. It’s in my wheelhouse of outcomes. During sobriety I found myself debt-free to the point where I was looking for reasons to spend money — whether it be on furniture for my cat, or a kit to grow and maintain my own bonsai trees — on top of the aforementioned withdrawals at BoA once per week. It was such an easy and stress-free lifestyle that I came on this very blog and started complaining, or at least having philosophical discussions with myself, about what was to be of my identity.

The jury is still out on what’s to come for me, but what the last 40 some odd days has taught me is that literally anything is superior to my non-sober identity. It feels almost like childish, being a 35 year-old who has proven that a different path is not only possible but realistic, and still resorting to the old way. As much fun as I’ve had with my old ways — otherwise known as Who I Am — it is nothing if not a proven loser.

There is a lesson in there somewhere about not necessarily getting everything right all the time but rather minimizing the wrong. Bill Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl winning former head coach of the New England Patriots, credited a lot of his success to simply learning first how not to lose. That learning how to win only comes after a team has transcended not shooting itself in the foot.

So maybe I am in a similar position in my life, where I’m constantly fixated on getting everything I want all at once, and then dealing with the perpetual angst that comes from falling short of my expectations, when in reality I need only to take a step back and keep the damage to a minimum. I’m not exactly a Baby Steps type of guy, but if the alternative is running amuck on the desert and watching my money seep through my hands like water, it can’t be the worst idea in the world.

It’s been a while since I’ve made an honest plan to shift my routine, but I know it has to start with eliminating alcohol from my life. After that the import of my desired habits wanes considerably. Such as waking up earlier. Such as running before work rather than flipping a coin and seeing if I’m in the mood for it after. Such as putting in real sweat on my law books rather than making excuses for myself. Each and all of these relatively small steps forward are easily obtainable — right there for me to take.

And so this particular blog — 2026: Chapter 3 — has taken damn near a full month for me to post. I completed two articles in the meantime, one on sobriety in general, the other on a much more detailed Plan for the future, and yet I scrapped both of them because it was nothing more than a lot of fucking talk. I needed a reason to put a plan in motion, and a reason to pay off all my earnest sentiments regarding sobriety. That’s why February 4th, 2026 was so crucial. It sucked to go through, and because of how much it sucked it allowed me to get on with my life.

I am sure to fail many more times in the future, of course, whether it’s with sobriety or this plan of mine or anything else. But I’m looking forward to accomplishing what I set out for. As long as I stay upright. As long as I’m still here.