At 1:00am on June 12, 2012, I was several months past 40, drunk on a Monday night, sitting with a friend at an outside beer garden. I was afraid. I knew I stood to lose everything I valued in my world, namely my wife and daughter, if I drank for another day. The course of my drinking had been a slow evolution from college binging to knocking back at least a six pack of tall boys a night and a lot more than that during the weekend. It took more than 20 years to get there, but I knew there was a point where I couldn’t fix the damage I was doing and I’d lose everything I was taking for granted. And that point of no return was close, really close. I’d watch my dad fall over that edge when he was 40. I didn’t want to be my dad.
