This Is Our Year

A 2024 Year-End Recap with Very Special Guest Stars.

It’s time for our second annual end-of-year recovery roundup. What follows is a list of things I've learned, discovered, loved, feared, etc. Instead of doing it like last year, where I let my mind crack open and freak, I enlisted the help of another writer, the great Julieanne Smolinski, who kindly wrote up a series of questions to help me make a more proper, coherent end-of-year recap. We’ve also asked some of TSB’s friends to assess their own 2024 recovery.

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Alright—let’s burn it down.

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JS: I'm going to ask you annoying, end-of-the-year pat trite journalism wrap-up questions, but maybe they'll spark something for you. Don't complain, you asked me to do this at 8:45 AM and I'm not David Marchese.

Okay, it's the end of the year. What would it look like if you were doing a Spotify Wrapped of your sobriety? 20,000 minutes spent meditating, 100,000 Oreos eaten after midnight, 5000 hours of AA, and 75 strips of bacon you ate while considering becoming a vegetarian?

AJD: According to Insight Timer, I did about 37 hours and 15 minutes of meditation this year. Approximately 12 of those hours were done through guided meditations. (I'm usually not a big guided meditation person, but I vibed with it more this year.)

As far as recovery meetings, I averaged around three meetings per week for most of the year, so let’s say it was about 150 meetings. Most of those were AA/Adult Child meetings, but I also tried out Debtors Anonymous for a few weeks, too. I did about ten hours of step work with a sponsor and another ten-ish with a sponsee. As far as service—I was secretary at the Wednesday TSB meeting for three months. I had the phone list commitment at my Al-Anon meeting but also served as the alternate secretary and got to do that a couple of times.

It wasn’t that many Oreos, and it was probably 75 strips of bacon but maybe 100 Jimmy Dean sausage links. I’ll try to go Veg again at some point maybe not right now.

JS: What did you notice about Check-Ins this year? Any trends? Do you have a favorite or one that stuck with you?

AJD: Every single month, there was at least one entry where someone contemplated leaving their relationship or was in the process of divorcing while trying to hang onto their sobriety. As far as favorites—I tend to put mine in the first and the last spots in the order each month. (Now you know.)

The entry that stuck with me the most was a two-parter.

“Last month, I had a week-long relationship with a guy I met in the rooms. He immediately relapsed after the first time we had sex, and I smoked crack and fentanyl with him, something I‘ve never done before and will never do again. He OD'ed twice in my apartment, and I Narcan'd (proper verbiage?) twice and called the paramedics once. We're both too young and too old to be doing this stuff (29/30). I had been sober for 4 months before that, from alcohol, my DOC. Now he's dating another girl from the rooms, one I'm friendly with. I feel like he stole my sober time, although I'm obviously the one who made the choice to enable him and paid the price. So now I'm a month clean, for the millionth time, and he and this girl are happily dating cleanly and soberly together. I still have to see him at meetings, and we both pretend we don't know each other and act like strangers even though I held him while he cried and called me an angel over and over again, and he held me while I cried when he said he couldn't see me anymore because we had relapsed together. This feels like some high school shit, except this time people die. Either way, I'm still sulking about it.”

And then a follow-up a few months later:

“The guy that I relapsed with 6 months overdosed and died. I found out at work while helping my new boss set up his computer. As soon as I read the text I knew I would have to push every feeling I might possibly have about this down, really down deep into some other place that I guess I’ll get to later. I’m trying to look good for the new boss this week.

Earlier in the month my sister was in town and I laughed harder than I have in a really long time when we tried to do the Sunday Times crossword together. I think she’s starting to see me as a person again instead of just a liability.

The guy who died, I had to Narcan him twice the week he lived at my apartment. I had plans for when he finally cleaned up for good, we would go to meetings and take hikes and stuff normal couples do. But I saw how strong his death drive was.”

I found the whole saga so vivid, terrifying, and exhausting but also poetic. The part where she wrote, “We're both too young and too old to be doing this stuff…” is such a wise, hopeful refrain.

JS: This was a tumultuous year "in the news" — how do you think people handled the extra discord in sobriety?