by A.J. Daulerio

*****

My first sober New Year’s Eve was in 2015. After almost two months in a Florida rehab, I finally returned to my Brooklyn apartment in early December. It was no longer an apartment, though — it was a museum of failure: every room had full ashtrays and thousands of dollars of dead plants. The outdoor deck had a rusty grill and a propane tank I had never filled. The expensive grill cover I bought for it was upside down a few feet away, filled with more cigarette butts. It was a big wet mess.

Under my filthy couch was the top-of-the-line foot massager I’d purchased because I thought it would feel great with poppers and Xanax. (It did.)

But the saddest item was a six-person inflatable hot tub, still in the box. Retail price: $1,259.

I don’t know what it was about that hot tub that sent me into a tailspin, but it did a real number on me. I think it was primarily due to the realization that I was no longer interesting or cool enough to have an inflatable hot tub on my roof. Now I was just this uncool, uninteresting sober person.

I navigated the first couple of weeks decently enough, opting out of many of the holiday parties I used to attend. I also didn’t go home to Philadelphia for Christmas that year. I spent a lot of time alone in my apartment, scrolling the internet for relief from my loneliness and agitation. I typed, “I’m 50 days sober, and I want to run into traffic,” into Google, hoping for an essay or an article that would connect me to some stranger or writer who had felt exactly as I had in this terrible moment. But the results were the suicide hotline and more ads for rehabs, many like the one I had just returned from. Oh, and there were a couple of tabloid stories about the singer Demi Lovato, who was also trying to stay sober. I tried to go to regular AA meetings, but the program wasn’t the solution I was seeking just yet.

And now it was New Year’s Eve and all I wanted was drugs.

I didn’t care what kind — something to sand down the edges or, better yet, just put me to sleep until March. I wanted to be medicated into a state of guilt-free, dull-hearted bliss.

Before going to rehab, I cleaned my apartment of all leftover drugs and booze. But I was terrible at cleaning my apartment, so I assumed a stray Xanax or some stale weed was lying around somewhere. I halfheartedly searched for about an hour, then checked all the couch cushions and emptied all my desk drawers. After that, I had one more place to look: an old toothpaste-crusted dop kit I hadn’t opened in God knows how long. After a couple of seconds of rummaging through dirty razor blades and rusted dental floss dispensers, there it was: an orange pill bottle with the white safety cap and that beautiful sticker near the bottom warning me not to operate heavy machinery. There was a brief whoosh of excitement, but I realized it wasn’t anything fun, it was just a few leftover Chantix pills.

Chantix, you might remember, is a popular stop-smoking medication.

I tried and failed to quit smoking with Chantix in early 2013. Not the pills I was looking for — but wait.

When I was taking Chantix, I became very strange, sometimes insane. Some of the changes were comical — I developed a ridiculous sweet tooth. I drank a lot of Shirley Temples and chocolate milk with margarita salt on the rim. I also ate many ice cream cakes. Once, I completely cleared out the grocery store freezer of all its Carvel products. I was not smoking, but I was subsisting on the food you’d find at an 8-year-old’s birthday party.

I also became obsessed with online shopping, especially for shoelaces — I bought dozens of colorful shoelaces for “my sneaker collection,” but I did not have a sneaker collection. And while I was manically online shopping, weirdly I didn’t buy any new sneakers. But I did purchase many Moroccan throw rugs from One Kings Lane.

There was also a very dark side to my Chantixing. I got into a loud, shit-talking argument with some random dude who cut the line on me at the grocery store. He could have easily killed me with one punch, but I had Chantix muscles.

And when I’d get drunk, there were some crying fits — we’re talking horrific ugly sobs because I’d get nostalgic about past relationships or the cruel impermanence of the universe. We’re all so small and doomed! It was pathetic.

Now a reasonable human being would throw the Chantix into the trash. Not me, though, not now — I wanted to scrape off the dull crud of early sobriety. I wanted to be a different person tonight, even it meant being temporarily, monomaniacally insane, because when I was on drugs, I was happy. And I wanted to feel that type of happy again — but more than that, I didn’t want to feel the loneliness, the loser-ness, and guilt that sobriety had opened up for me.

Unfortunately, Chantix takes two weeks to enter the bloodstream, so swallowing a bunch of them was pointless. Here was my next idea: smash ’em all up and stick this Chantix powder up my ass. It worked for Stevie Nicks, right? I have no problem doing that. It would not be the first drug I’d crammed in there. Besides, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I stop smoking?

I had the pills out on a wooden cutting board, a hammer in my hand. What kind of person thinks like this? A drug addict kind of person. I was a drug addict after all.

I set the hammer down and threw the Chantix away. I smoked three cigarettes instead.

*****

That night, I went out to dinner with someone even though I didn’t want to be in public, especially in a noisy restaurant full of drunk, happy people. There was a 12-top seated right next to us. They were boisterous and crazy, and they kept climbing over ice buckets of champagne to talk to each other, all of them laughing and falling into each other’s laps.

I was jealous. I wished I were at their table. I realized I wasn’t ready to be sober yet.

During the appetizers, I drifted off and transported myself to the previous New Year’s Eve in 2014, when I had a party at my apartment. It wasn’t a well-attended, happy-sounding party, but there were many drugs. Molly. Cocaine. Xanax. Fancy booze with bows stuck to the bottle.

I purchased a set of those multicolored Hue lights the day before the party I spent several hours by myself, testing all the different color schemes, chain-smoking, inhaling poppers, as my feet got warm on the foot massager. There was an app that let you set a countdown timer to midnight, so the lights would change colors rapidly from pink to blue to white and fireworks, champagne-pops, and other joyful sounds would play through my Sonos speaker system at the exact moment 2014 dissolved into 2015. It would be sensational — everyone at the party would love it.

I also bought a bow tie and wore a white shirt with buttons, my cleanest black pants, and one of my favorite visors from a random golf course I never set foot on. I wore visors back then because I was a real hipster jerkoff, and I thought they made me look cool, especially when I was on drugs. It didn’t look cool, though. Some girl at the party asked me if I was dressed as a poker player. I was a little offended and embarrassed by her comment, but I’d been high as hell pretty much since 10 a.m., so I got over it pretty quickly.

At some point, I had a dry-mouthed, meandering conversation with a friend as we smoked cigarettes on the filthy deck. “This is the best time of my life,” I said. I couldn’t breathe through my nose anymore and hadn’t eaten anything all day. My friend looked at me with a mix of concern and pity. “You seem lost,” she said.

I knew she was right, but I wasn’t capable of fixing it that night. I went to find more molly.

I don’t remember if there was a ball-dropping moment at midnight or a raucous countdown. I don’t know if I had brunch the following day or if I wished my parents or anyone in my family a Happy New Year. I don’t remember if the timer with the Hue lights and party sounds ever went off. I remember I was high. But I was so high that I didn’t feel high anymore. I just felt awake but also tired. And joyless. It was like someone took a handheld vacuum cleaner and sucked up all my joy.

Now it was a year later and here I was sitting in that noisy restaurant, sipping soda, still joyless, still lost. It was a painful realization. And I thought about next New Year’s Eve. Would I be healed, or spiritualized, or in Brooklyn, or maybe even high again? Either way, I would not feel like this, and I would not be in this restaurant. 2016 would be better, I hoped.

*****

It was not. It was a historically, comically terrible year for me. I got sued for millions of dollars and along with a thorough public shaming, and my small media company fell apart and I was drowning in debt. I also had a minor, uneventful relapse to go along with an uncertain future.

I spent New Year’s Eve 2016 in Los Angeles in my girlfriend Julieanne’s tiny apartment off of Vine Street. She was a couple of months pregnant. When she told me initially, I thought that was another historically and comically terrible thing, but I softened. Maybe it’s a great thing.

Then, in 2017, it all changed. We had our first child and moved into a bigger apartment. I got a new job. The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, for Christ’s sake. And I stayed sober — one entire year. Joy had miraculously returned.

If you’ve decided that 2026 is the year you’re going to stop drinking and stop using, congratulations. But at some point, if you find it difficult or frustrating and you feel like you’ve lost your friends, your identity, and your joy, be patient. You’re not alone, even if you feel like it. 2026 may not be as joyful as you hoped — in fact, you might be miserable — but I promise it will be different. Something will be different, especially if you stay sober. And in sobriety, you’ll have a better opportunity for joyful moments to happen.

Right now, though, it’s okay if you feel frustrated. It’s okay if you feel alone.

And it’s okay if you’re not ready — but please don’t stick Chantix up your ass.

by Jim Harrison

***************

Overlooking the Mississippi
I never thought I’d get this old.
It was mostly my confusion about time
and the moon, and seeing the lovely way
homely old men treat their homely old women
in Nebraska and Iowa, the lunch-time
touch over green Jell-O with pineapple
and fried “fish rectangles” for $2.95.
When I passed Des Moines the radio said
there were long lines to see the entire cow
sculpted out of butter. The earth is right smack
between the sun and the moon, the black waitress
told me at the Salty Pelican on the waterfront,
home from wild Houston to nurse her sick dad.
My good eye is burning up from fatigue
as it squints up above the Mississippi
where the moon is losing its edge to black.
It likely doesn't know what’s happening to it,
I thought, pressed down to my meal and wine
by a fresh load of incomprehension.
My grandma lived in Davenport in the 1890s
just after Wounded Knee, a signal event,
the beginning of America’s Sickness unto Death.
I’d like to nurse my father back to health
he’s been dead thirty years, I said
to the waitress who agreed. That’s why she
came home, she said, you only got one.
Now I find myself at fifty-one in Davenport
and drop the issue right into the Mississippi
where it is free to swim with the moon’s reflection.
At the bar there are two girls of incomprehensible beauty
for the time being, as Swedish as my Grandma,
speaking in bad grammar as they listen to a band
of middle-aged Swede saxophonists braying
“Bye-Bye Blackbird” over and over, with a clumsy
but specific charm. The girls fail to notice me —
perhaps I should give them the thousand dollars
in my wallet but I’ve forgotten just how.
I feel pleasantly old and stupid, deciding
not to worry about who I am but how I spend
my days, until I tear in the weak places
like a thin, worn sheet. Back in my room
I can’t hear the river passing like time,
or the moon emerging from the shadow of earth,
but I can see the water that never repeats itself.
It’s very difficult to look at the World
and into your heart at the same time.
In between, a life has passed.

— “Jim Harrison: Complete Poems”

Happy New Year, TSB Readers. Every single one of you.