21 Days Sober

That D.U.I. changed my life.

I am twenty-one days sober as of this posting. Not only do I feel better physically, but mentally I am a lot clearer, too. I can think straight again.

Not having to pay nightly $100 bar tabs I find myself with an abundance of cash. My Roth IRA is quickly reaching its yearly limit. I've purchased (and read) multiple books. I have invested money into hobbies and research. And debt is history.

I no longer have a car so I am forced to walk everywhere or wait for Tracy, my live-in girlfriend to drive me to where I need to go. Thus, every trip to the store, every outing for food, every movement I make must be carefully planned and executed. I can no longer just run out the door, jump into the old Mitsubishi and run off somewhere on a whim. I have to plan bus routes. I have to wrap myself up extra tightly in warm clothing to fight the cold air of Virginia's winter as I walk ten blocks. I have to plot out where I need to be and in which order to be at these places.

But the most interesting change is my sudden desire to do something with my life. Sobriety was just the beginning. I will be thirty this year which means I have been a waiter for almost a decade. There have been times when I have applied the moniker "professional waiter" to myself and that notion scares me. Having just read Steve Dublanica's "Waiter Rant" wherein he, also a professional waiter, eventually escapes the food industry to become a writer, I, too, want to escape the restaurant biz. I am sick to death of reciting specials to guests that don't listen and opening $100 bottles of wine for people that don't appreciate them. I want to stop explaining to people what foie gras is without being too literal. I want my dry cleaning bill to go down drastically from a lack of grease-stained shirts. I want my knees to stop hurting. Most of all, I want to do something fun and creative and stop being a worker drone for a restaurant in downtown Richmond.

Like many "professional waiters" who don't want to admit their profession outright, over the years I have told people that I am anything but a waiter, from accounting major to film director, writer to entrepreneur. The cold truth of it becomes apparent when I put on those black slacks, that French blue shirt, my wine key and pens and start memorizing the evening's specials. It's then that I can no longer lie to myself. Shit... I really am a professional waiter.

Sadly, Dublanica explains in many of "Waiter Rant's" chapters that substance abuse is a huge part of most waiters' lives. We work around boozing and partying and debauchery so much that we want to be a part of it, too, to capture that sense of the excitement we see in others 40+ hours a week; it's our job to keep the party going and when we're done making other people tipsy, we too want to get that way ourselves.

But now I am sober and I have to find my way "out of the bottle." I have to do something else with myself that doesn't involve trying all sixteen beers on a bar's list in one sitting or drinking that $100 bottle of wine that I tell myself I can afford.

So I chose board games.

It will be ten years in February when I met my gaming friends. Back then I was nineteen and a victim of the relatively new and exciting world of MMORPGs; I was a huge Ultima Online geek. I delivered pizza on the side and lived at home with no desire to be more than what I was. Glenn Gibson, one of the other drivers at work, invited me out to a poker game with some friends. Reluctantly I agreed and he drove me out to an apartment in Richmond's Oregon Hill district. This is where I was introduced to the world of gaming.

And not just poker, either.

The guys at the HUB (the nickname for the apartment) had it all. Diplomacy. Axis and Allies. Civilization. Risk. Any kind of board game you could imagine. They collected miniatures and had giant plywood gaming tables. There were shelves lined with books on role playing from D&D to Call of Cthulhu to Vampire. This was a whole new and exciting world to me.

Pretty quickly, gaming changed my life. For the first time since graduating high school, I had new friends and in a few months of meeting those guys at the HUB I moved out of my parents house, got an apartment in Richmond, and stopped delivering pizza.

Over the years I grew apart from the old gang at the Hub, a large part of that having to do with our opposing schedules as they are mostly 9-to-5'ers and I work until 10pm most nights. Their game night is on Saturday one of the busiest nights for my restaurant. They are free to go to conventions and paint miniatures and still be a part of the gaming world while I am mopping the floors and counting my cash tips.

Yes, I also chose drinking a lot of times over gaming. Instead of leaving the restaurant and making my way to the HUB for a late night game, I headed for the bar. Instead of buying Zombies!! new expansion pack at One Eyed Jacques, the local gaming center, I picked up a six-pack at Kroger. No time for Betrayal at House on the Hill when you're recovering from a massive hangover.

So here I am now, sober and looking to start over, hoping to redefine myself at the age of twenty-nine. I need to reconnect socially and one of the best ways to do it, in my humble opinion, is through board games.