On September 11, 2011, I woke up and swore I would never again pour alcohol down my throat, smoke a joint, or ingest any other controlled or uncontrolled substances.

At the time, I told myself that the decision had nothing to do with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 or the then-worldwide pandemic that was attacking our very existence.

It was just a coincidence.

Now, fifteen years later, twenty-five years after 9/11, I sometimes wonder.

There is so much emotional commonality between the chaos of my life in 2011 and the chaos of 9/11/2001.

That one day not only changed the survivors and the families and friends of the dead. It turned an entire nation into a united people, ready to do whatever was necessary to protect itself.

Unfortunately, for many, that act meant turning them into fearful, angry, vengeful, hateful citizens willing to strike out at anyone they thought looked like the “enemy.”

9/11 brought to the fore the ugly past of anti-immigrant fury so ingrained in the nation’s DNA.

A hysteria crawled out of the nation’s sewer history and crept into their minds and hearts. It was repulsive and emotionally devastating, and it has persisted for years, even to this day.

Note what is happening in New York City with the right-wing mongers and the Mayor of that city.

I am not making a comparison between the death of thousands of people and my life in 2011.

Feelings of fear, anger, even hate, and self-hate had crawled out of some sewer in my life and captured me.

I had been dealing with alcohol and drug addiction for forty-five years. Emotionally, it sometimes turned me into an unrecognizable human being.

The gut-wrenching vitriol. The despair of sinking into a bottomless hole. Countless relationships were injured, damaged, or excised from my life.

I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2011, and decided that it was enough.

All those emotions had been bubbling up, oozing out of every pore, and exploding inside me. I just couldn’t go on. The exit strategy was simple. Just walk away.

I’m not saying it was easy, nor that I did it alone.

My family and friends were there.

They were always there when I needed a reminder. I was not going back into that hole, that very dark hole. And not once, in fifteen years, have I ever peeked over the rim and wondered.

Not once.

Now, here I am fifteen years later, in the age of Trump, recovering from a mild stroke.

We are surrounded by deniers, threats to our democracy, threats to the future of this country, more divided as a people (remember when we all rallied around the flag?).

I’m still sober, having graduated from college at the ripe age of 75 in 2024, trying to recover gracefully from my stroke, and wondering how to make sense of why we even celebrate 9/11, because it sure isn’t the same nation.

Some people don’t remember because they weren’t born yet or were too young.

We like to tell ourselves that for a moment, a very small moment, we united as a people.

But we all know that was an illusion.

When the shock wore off, we went back to not caring about our next-door neighbor because they were too Brown or Black, or they didn’t quite look American enough, or their names didn’t sound American enough, and who knows what’s in their minds and souls.

On this my 15th Sober Anniversary in the middle of a pandemic of lost hope, I honestly don’t want to relive 9/11 or the personal nightmare from which I escaped.

There had been enough emotional suffering to last a lifetime. I want to move on with my life, free of a lifetime of emotional burden.

However, Sobriety allows me to look back and consider that I was more than a drunk and drug addict.

I have accomplished a lot in my seventy-seven years, and I wasn’t always the worst person in the world.

The goal is to find the best in me and build on it for the future. That’s what I’m doing.

All while battling my health demons.

It’s easy to mourn the lost lives but to forget what we became because of the tragedy.

I have not felt this much tension, vulnerability, despair, and sadness for us as a nation in a long time.

What the fuck happened to us?

We can mourn and still push away from the worst of what we have become.

I have come to realize that the real enemy isn’t terrorists from some foreign country.

Each of us Americans has become the enemy of each other.

It’s us, those who see this current government as a threat to this planet, versus those who want to impose this government and its MAGA movement on all of us.

As I review my status today, fifteen years sober, I see a man trying to stuff a whole lot of “would’ve, should’ve” into the years of my life that are left to live (I hope it’s another thirty years).

The reality is that all I can do is take it one day at a time. I commit myself to challenging the worst in me and being a better human being and citizen. 

I can only hope that we, as a nation, can do the same.