I’m finally beginning to see why people soften as they age. I can see why we don’t take to violent movies the same now that I’m into my fifties. I can finally understand why they don’t send old people like us to war. I’m on the back nine, in a golfer’s parlance, and it’s beautiful back here…

The glorious thing about a human liver is that, if you choose to beat the ever-loving shit out of it in your youth, if you stop abusing it soon enough, it’ll repair itself. I had less than a decade left when I quit alcohol and drugs. Estimates were seven years. I would have been dust twenty years ago had I not turned it around.

As a kid, I tended to think I was on the immortal side. I thought the doctor was just trying to scare me. I’ve seen family, on my wife’s side, die. A week after, “The doctor says if I just quit for a year my liver will get better and I can go back to drinking”, she was dead.

I couldn’t see life without alcohol and drugs a week before I quit. I couldn’t see how it could be any fun to live without an escape from the fear, from the nagging down, from the misery I caused myself and others with bad choices and thinking. How can you have fun if you can’t escape, was the line of thinking.

I know the answer today; you build a life you don’t have to escape from.

There’s a downside to that, though, even if it’s technically an upside: Life is so sweet I’ve actually come to cherish it.

My life isn’t perfect. I don’t have caviar dreams and, the irony is sweet, the champagne wishes were flushed long ago. Every morning I wake up, though, I’m grateful for being on the right side of the grass. I lead a happy life today, and I care enough about it that it’s changed my attitude and outlook.

I went from hoping my days were numbered to hoping that number was huge.

Folks, recovery from addiction, especially early in life, is better than cheating death. I wasn’t even all that good at the work as is evidenced by the what I’ve had to correct in the last year… and things turned out so much better than I could have hoped, I’m thankful I’m not the architect of my fate. If I’d have tried to sit down and map my life out as a recovering 24-year-old kid, I’d have shorted myself.

If you’re struggling, don’t quit five minutes before the miracle happens. Remember perspective. If you can’t think of a reason to be happy, or to even keep breathing, try looking at it differently; why not repair the damage so you can help others in your same spot recover from their pain, too? The key is in helping others, folks. If you’re struggling, try it. If feel you have nothing to give, the answer is to work at it till you do.

Recover hard, my friends. It’s beautiful out here.