Six years ago, August 2nd was also a Sunday, and it was the last time that I’ve ever had any alcohol. Here is why.

I started drinking that day with a Boulevard Wheat Ale and a glass of Jameson whiskey during a late lunch at Applebee’s. I went straight from there to a Quiktrip and bought a sleeve of Fireball cinnamon whiskey. I decided to go for a drive while I was drinking the whiskey. Now, I don’t remember this, but judging from my Google Maps timeline and my bank account, I bought a second sleeve of Fireball a couple of hours later at a different Quiktrip.

The next thing that I do remember was waking up at 2:30 in the morning, shirtless, in the emergency room at Research Medical Center. There weren’t any police around, but I did have a couple of traffic tickets waiting for me. One was for drunk driving. At the hospital, they had measured my blood alcohol content at 0.254 which was more than three times the legal limit. Apparently, someone out for a hike at Longview Lake had found me passed out in my wrecked car on the trail. They called the police. The second ticket was for driving on a pedestrian trail in the park. I had wrecked the car trying to drive across a pedestrian bridge that was too narrow for my SUV.

I’d been a drinker since 1984 when the drinking age in Kansas was still 18. But I’d never given much thought to the idea that I might have a drinking problem. It’s lucky as hell that I never hurt anyone over those years because I’d gotten drunk a lot of times in those 34 years. This was the wake-up call that finally got me to stop drinking though. Fortunately, it was not a struggle at all for me to quit, and I haven’t desired a drink since. A DWI and a totaled car were a small price to pay.