JB Smiths Blog – Author @ books4free.com

What a long, long weekend.

Sobriety is filled with firsts. Whenever I’ve begun to feel comfortable and well rounded in this program, seems like I always find a new challenge to face, a new layer of the onion to peel and learn somehow to yet again grow a bit. I’m a VP of Sales for a technology company that sells to amongst other clients, restaurants. The National Restaurant Association has a huge event in Chicago every year and my boss signed me up to go this year and I didn’t think twice about going, in fact I was quite excited, as I’ve always done inside sales, and never in my career ever traveled to do any kind of sales at all.

How’s the saying go, wear your sobriety like a loose shirt, but don’t forget to put the shirt on every morning. Well, for some reason, I forgot to put the shirt on. Or I was just careless or didn’t think it through, I’m really not sure. I asked a friend of mine who I’ve known in Chicago for over 20 years, who grew up with me in Atlanta and whom I began my drinking and drugging career with back in middle school. Why the thought didn’t occur to me that this might be careless, hell, even dangerous is beyond me. I really just didn’t think it through.

I woke up early to get to Chicago and after landing, walking the convention all day I get back to his place, where he’d left a key, and try to go to sleep. After about an hour, he comes in there, into the room I’m sleeping, and drunk as hell, shakes me until I wake up, all with the best intentions, but just 100% oblivious as to what waking up to an obnoxious drunk idiot might be like to a recovered alcoholic. I was already irritated he failed to mention his huge white lab, as I’m allergic to dogs, but good lord, to wake me up in the middle of the night drunk off your ass, to reminisce, I mean seriously? It went downhill from there.

I didn’t get back to sleep till 4 am, I walked the convention the whole next day, when I returned he was drinking red wine. I love the guy, but I don’t hang out with drunk people for a reason. I’m just a different person than I used to be.

What’s more was the insight into my personality changes he noted. He told me, “As soon as I saw you, I could tell your confidence was shaken.” I am still not sure how to take this. The thing is for 20 years I had a false bravado, an alcoholic fueled, megalomania that was delusional, dangerous, and was leading me to death. Perhaps humility is what he saw and just misinterpreted it. I don’t really know. I don’t really care. As the quote above says, deep in the center of my being I know who I am and what I want, and I have the answer, and it is to be a good humble human being, not a self assured, ego driven nut-job that I used to be. I’m much more confident now in my heart of hearts than I ever was before, whether that shows on my face or not.

I know what he means. He’s referring to the kind of confidence, a con man uses to pull his cons. Or a womanizer uses to seduce. He’s referring to a certain arrogance that actually does work in this world most of the time, but one that I don’t and prefer not to emit anymore. I can still sell good ideas I believe in, and I can still convey good ideas, I need not beam a ray of greater than thou bullshit to accomplish the missions I choose to embark on now. I might lose a few girls, or a few accounts, or be thought of as humble or weak from time to time by not emitting that King of the World egotistical confidence game I used to carry around with me so effectively, but in my heart of hearts I knew that person was a fraud. I was never that confident, it was always a lie. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex we call it. How true, and how sad. I didn’t fight because I was a bad ass, I fought because I was scared. Mark Twain said “Never fight a little man, he will kill you.” I carried around an aire of superiority while I was drinking and drugging that some recognized and even loved, but that ultimately drove me to drinking alone, friendless, hopeless, dying in a rat infested shack all by myself. I may not be that same confident man, but I am a better man for it, no doubt.

And it’s no great loss that someone still suffering in the throes of addiction, and ultimately denial, would recognize my lost ego, and point that out as a blatant negative change, and then lecture me on how it’s all about a relationship with God and a higher power, drunk and high, at 3 am, walking in an alleyway in Chicago, while all I wanted to do was rest. In fact, I should have expected it, and I should have prepared better for it. Fortunately I have a program of recovery. I have a sponsor, who has a sponsor, and even after the meeting at the Mustard Seed AA Clubhouse in Chicago turned out to be another fiasco of the trip, I had a network of men I could call in Atlanta and talk to and thankfully, relate to. I didn’t need a drunks approval, or assessment of my “confidence”. I have a network of men in Atlanta that know how much I’ve been through, how much I’ve changed, and know that there’s no going back to that old ego driven JB but that the way to self esteem is doing esteem-able things, and if at 4.5 years sober that’s still not as high as it was when artificially amped up by drugs and alcohol, well then you just need to keep on working on it. So I don’t have the woman of my dreams yet, or all the tea in China, or the BMW M3, I still have good friends and family that love and care for me, that know I’m way better off here and now than when I was back there killing my self slow.

Still it was good to land back in Atlanta and get to a meeting. I went straight to 8111 and caught the 10 pm meeting, and I felt like I’d touched home base. Confidence shaken, lol, yeah, well, I learned a few things this weekend. 1) Don’t stay with friends who still drink like fish 2) Know where the good meetings are  3) don’t park next to the anthills at hartsfield and 4) get your own rental car in strange cities. I am an alcoholic, and I can’t be dependent on other people to get to meetings when I’m elsewhere, period the end.

Oh I did think of an awesome APP we should develop though, “CLOSEST AA MEETING” using your smart phones GPS ,geo locate you and timestamp to find closest applicable AA meeting. I can’t believe it’s not already on the market?!! Who wants to partner on this, I kind of have my hands full. It’s good to be home, great to be sober, and good to know just who I am, and who knows me. My name is JB Smith and I’m an alcoholic, and also… not fond of smelly people on airplanes.

-Jared Bryan Smith