Breaking Bottles

Essay 2: The John Mayer Dilemma

I apologize for the long delay between writings in this series. I made some promises around the Holidays to some feedback the first brought in that I failed to live up to. As I discussed in that introduction, I believe this series is the most important thing I’ve set out to write. It may be the most valuable arena of thought I have to share. I am going to point my focus back on this project now. I intend to start each by linking the one before; then finish by linking the next once published.

Essay 2: The John Mayer Dilemma

I remember the moment clear as day. I remember all of those sessions as they were deeply introspective. I’ve always been a looking-inward kind of person. I’ve always had a running dialogue in my head; my own way of processing the world. This machine (that never turns off) does a lot of self-analyzing, especially when times are tough. And during the doldrums of drinking there were many tough times.

That consuming process would always begin on the car ride over. You have to keep in mind, I was not attending these sessions by court order. I wasn’t really even attending them on family ‘order’ at this point. There had been those rounds - I’m telling you, man, my ground floors had more fissures than I realized at the time - when the Mrs had basically forced me/us to counseling on threat of marriage. My drinking had reached that level of severity. It was ever-present or, as one brilliant counselor put it, “your drinking colors everything”. “Colors”. It was such a good use of the term. I’m going to do a whole essay around that line as it didn’t prove to be as true as he framed it. But the framing was still painfully accurate. My head would be filled with thoughts on the short drive from my Jax Beach office (and booze fest) over to the nondescript building where my cognitive therapist had his practice. It was up on the second floor of a strip-mall. It had blue metal railings and a stairwell. When you walked up them you could see the river and marina next door. Beautiful life! Boats would be out, fishermen folk, fancier folks enjoying the tides. Very normal stuff… but I was walking up those stairs to talk about how and why my life had become very abnormal. (Tragically, that’s not the right word, but let’s stick with it.) I was often running through what I was intending to share as we did a little daily journal thing. Again, my choice here (or his recommendation and my choice to follow); no one was making me do this. I knew I had to.

As the office was near my work and my work nowhere near my home, I was always in a suit when I went to those sessions. I’d walk up those stairs, peep off at the normalcy shining off the marina, open the door, check in with the receptionist and sit down. There was never anyone in that lobby except for once. I was always edgy; not nervous, but edgy. I’d sit alone and usually read a magazine. I wasn’t as much of a phone guy back then. I didn’t do social-media at all. One day there was a mag on the coffee table that had a photo of John Mayer and some fashion guy I didn’t recognize. Mayer has always intrigued me; both the unique and own-drum man himself and also his uniquely marvelous talent on guitar strings. The bi-line of the piece caught my eye and I decided to page through to the number and read it. The interview wasn’t too memorable. John had teamed up with this guy who did high-end tees and fashion for stars. They were doing some collabo and had grown tight through the process. But one part of the interview grabbed me intensely…

John spoke of his recent sobriety. He shared (with what came across as genuine pride) about the two years he had behind him. More than that though, he spoke of the fork in the road moment two years prior that had brought him to this new and clearly invigorated place. He had woke up after a banger! Again. He had gotten so shitcanned the night before that he couldn’t piece together much in the morning about the evening. Again. He quickly learned that he was so intoxicated at the event the previous night he had embarrassed himself. Again. It was some birthday party of a famous guy down in Miami. He described with powerful clarity how he stared himself in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. He was pale; his eyes looked like shit; he seemed half ghost. Been there, done that, brother. I’ve had many’a “come to Jesus” moment in the mirror myself while staring at the same foreign pale sweaty doppelganger in the morning. Headache banging so bad I can barely see; full dragonbreath back at me! He had a conversation with himself in that mirror…

“John, you have to make a choice. You can continue drinking and be about 60% of what you’re capable of being. And accept it; this is actually an option. You’ve already become successful, you can enjoy the fast-lane and the booze. Can even argue you earned it! Or, do you want to be 100% of who you’re capable of being? Because if so, you must stop drinking entirely. There is no third-option here.”

That sense of no third option would come to dominate my own thoughts a bit further down this process. We’ll get there later in the essay around “moderate drinking”. John said it was difficult to make that decision/that moment; to frame it that way and force that man-to-man with himself in the mirror. But once he saw it from that angle, he said the decision itself became really easy. He never touched alcohol again, even though he’s around it constantly. He didn’t seem to have any issue with that either. He was done with it. I believed him.

What was downright flooring for me was time frame. Two years?!? Dude, I wasn’t sure how I was getting through the rest of this football season. For real! Like, that’s what’s currently dominating my thoughts on this quitting endeavor I know I have to do - and importantly this time, I know I’m at the plate with two strikes and no outs left - how do I watch a Canes a game without boozing? I mean, maybe I could not do all the Fireball shots and stuff, right? But no alcohol at all? Do I just sit on the couch during gameday? Holy shit, man, it was all just so foreign. And when my mind would drift down these roads (remember, this is just football here. I had a LOT of good reasons to drink!), it would genuinely feel insurmountable. Those are the mental paths that make people fail. It’s really hard to find any other one when you’re as deep as I was.

I’ll never forget what a daunting feeling that two years seemed when laid out in front of me. It even stretched through the following season. I’m thinking this in the lobby. But, stop the tape right there! What is my mind doing? It’s thinking about when this (quitting) will be over. It’s already planning the return party! The point, if you’re truly on the path to quitting, is that you’re become someone who doesn’t drink. Doesn’t. Drink. There isn’t a time frame; it’s a state of being. I wasn’t ready when I read that article. I was close, but I wasn’t there. To be honest with you, which I plan to do a lot in this series, reading that interview scared me. I was shook! Because it made me realize I wasn’t as close as I thought I was when bounding up those blue-railed steps outside. It made me respect Mayer immensely, and it made me set this mental mark of two years as a true mountain to climb and achieve. But at that moment it made it all feel so far away. It was almost a sense of hopelessness. An interview that would go on to become a massive source of inspiration. Crazy to think back about; swirling mental tides!

And then he came out and called my name. “Ready?” Yeah, I guess, Doc…