punks for the first time, I was relieved to find that there was a group of people who also hated society and couldn't accept what it had done to us.
I believed the government and organized religion were oppressing us. They worked hand in hand to deny us of our right to make our own moral choices about gay rights, abortion, and snorting coke. While cigarettes and alcohol were perfectly legal, marijuana wasn't, and you can make pants and paper out of marijuana. To show my protest against such abusive powers, I drank as much hard liquor as I could get my underage hands on.
But no party is complete without its poopers, and for me, those were the Straight Edge kids. The Straight Edge scene started as a response to Minor Threat songs, in which Ian MacKaye sang about not getting high, drunk, or screwing. I loved Minor Threat, but there was no way I was abstaining from drugs or alcohol. I was abstaining from sex, but that wasn't my choice—that was the cruel choice of awkward teenage pubescence. I was trying really hard not to abstain from that one. The Straight Edgers were obnoxious fucks who looked like skinheads and acted like militant Mormons.
Straight Edgers were notorious for ruining the good times of others. The classic move was when they'd knock the beer out of someone's hand at a show. Other more subtle moves would be when they'd ask for a hit off your contraband vodka half-pint, and then drop it on the floor on purpose. The most obnoxious move was the SE Cockblock. When you were getting up to talk to the unbearably cute punk girl, and were passing her your drink, they'd stand around and scowl. They were hard to fight, since they traveled in packs and they were completely sober.
Out of all the multitude of factions of the punk scene, there were those who drank and those who did not. The ones who drank were clearly the ones having the most fun. I went to parties in Oakland with all strata of punks and got entirely wasted. There was one legendary party for me in which my friend K___ got a 5-foot tank of nitrous oxide and her whole house sat around with the huge balloons, getting ripped all night. The kids who didn't drink or get high? I didn't know where they were that night, but they definitely were missing out.
But when I was sober, I never felt like I fit in. Looking back on it now, I'm sure that was the addict in me knowing I would drink or use anything as long as everyone else was doing it, and it would make me feel like one of the group. The East Bay Punx have their own styles of living, talking, and dressing. They have their own music, stories, and recreation. I never felt like I knew enough of them, no matter how many of them I met. I always felt like the new guy, even after more than ten years on the scene. There was a small circle of them who had broken down my wall, and I was afraid I wouldn't have them in my life if I wasn't drinking with them.
I had no idea that everyone at every part I went to wasn't getting as wasted as I was.
I didn't want to get sober and have to hang out with the Straight Edgers. Although by the time I was thirty-one, I didn't know many SEs anymore. Many of them didn't stay militant SE for their whole lives; they either started drinking at twenty-one or stopped giving everyone else a hard time about it. What I didn't realize is that there were plenty of Clean and Sober and Never Drank punks out there.
I had no idea that everyone at every party I went to wasn't getting as wasted as I was. I really believed that everyone else pounded back shots and beer to get to blackout heaven, and did drugs like cocaine to help them drink longer. There were people around me the entire time who either had never had a drink or had quit for good.
Even now, I sometimes have people come up to me and tell me how wasted I was at a party the weekend before. I have to tell them, no, I haven't had a drink since 2002. They swear to me that I was doing all kinds of shit, drunk off my ass. Either they have the wrong person, or they were projecting their own inebriation just like I used to do.
It took me more than a month after quitting drinking to get into a 12-Step meeting. A former bartender, who used to give me rides home from the bar because she didn't trust me to get home in a cab, called me up and offered me a ride. I had no idea she wasn't a drinker. I thought I'd go to a meeting to humor her, and then tell her it wasn't for me. But when I got there, I liked it. I enjoyed the story the speaker told. I thought it would be easy to go and sit in the back of these things and drink coffee.
But after a few meetings, it was really getting to me. I was still less than broke, and though I wasn't drinking, I wasn't having any fun either. I looked around at everyone, and they seemed different. One guy talked about living in his car during his bottom; I thought he was pretty lucky to have a car. Another man talked about hiding his drinking from his wife and children; a man with a family who would stand with him through all this was truly fortunate. I was the outsider again, until I ran into an old friend of mine who was a few weeks sober.
“F___,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
“Hey,” he told me, “I got sober a couple of weeks ago. How are you doing?”
“I'm okay, but these people are driving me nuts.”
“You gotta come with me to BNO.”
“What's that?” I asked.
“It's a men's meeting on Valencia on Tuesdays. You'll like it.”
I looked up the meeting on my schedule. Boys' Night Out. Sounded like a scout meeting or a bunch of gay men going shopping. But I trusted F___, and gave it a shot.
Outside the meeting, it looked like bands were about to play. There were punks, skins, and rockabilly guys of all sizes, shapes, and colors. They were all chain-smoking and hitting each other.
Running the meeting was a celebrity musician guy. He was in one of the bands that had broken through to the mainstream and had been played extensively on MTV. I didn't know what to think. Didn't he have his shit together? Why was he going to meetings? I read in SPIN or some shit that the whole band had gotten sober in the '90s. I figured he must have relapsed or something. Later I found out he had eight or nine years, which seemed like forever to me. I had no idea why anyone who had more than a year sober would go to a meeting.
When the meeting started, all hell broke loose. They opened with “a moment of violence followed by the Serenity Prayer,” in which they all turned to a neighboring stooge and punched the crap out of his arm. They relentlessly heckled the guys who read the steps and traditions. They made Yo Momma jokes during peoples' shares. This is what F___ had in mind? These scumbags were going to save my life? They couldn't even shoot dope right, according to their own stories. How were they going to help me? Depression overwhelmed me.
Who are these happy arm-punching motherfuckers? What's so funny? I am trying to get sober, and they're cutting up and acting like they're in some dumbass locker room. If they had towels, they'd be snapping each others' asses by now. How the hell am I supposed to get sober? At least they're not the weird meditation and God people from the other meetings, I thought.
As an alcoholic, I didn't spend precious money paying cover charges for bands. I stayed home and drank whiskey with the money. The drinks in the clubs and bars were way overpriced. I often got way too wasted at the clubs anyway, and had to spend more money on cabs to get home.
As a freshly sober guy trying to remember what he did for fun, I started going to clubs again to watch bands. It was like going back to my old hometown: I remembered the way but couldn't remember the name of streets. I got to the club and paid my way in on instinct. It had been a long time.
Not getting a whiskey right away was unnatural. Was everyone staring at me? Could they all tell I was stone-cold sober? Would the bartenders be mad if I didn't drink? Out of place, out of sync, out of step. Once again, I didn't fit in, and the whiskey urged me to make
