Let me tell you a story. Writing is one of my coping mechanisms. One I have neglected lately and it is showing.. be it books, short stories, or just stuff like this. This contains portions of my story, portions of friends stories, and things you never realize until hundreds if not thousands of 24s have passed. I hope you enjoy. (Ryan isn’t my real name btw 
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“The Weight of One More”
Uh… hey. My name’s Ryan, and I’m an alcoholic.
Funny thing — I used to think that line was just a formality. You know, like a password you say to get into the club. I’d sit there in the back of rooms like this, coffee shaking in my hand, and think… “Sure, buddy. You’re an alcoholic. Me?..Na I just like to unwind.”
I used to laugh at people who said they hit rock bottom. Thought it was melodrama.
But rock bottom’s not one moment. It’s a slope — slow, slippery, and silent. You don’t even notice the fall until the light at the top starts getting really, really small.
The moment I realized I had a problem, I woke up on my kitchen floor. There was a note on the counter that said, “Took the kids to Mom’s. Don’t call us.”
I remember staring at that note for… I don’t know. Long enough for the hangover to fade, long enough to pour another drink to make the silence stop ringing.
I told myself I’d quit tomorrow. It was always tomorrow. And every tomorrow became another promise I broke to myself. Tomorrow never becomes today.
I wasn’t drinking to feel good anymore. I was drinking so I didn’t have to feel at all.
That’s the trick no one tells you — it’s not about chasing the high. It’s about running from the crash. And I ran hard. Until there was nowhere left to go but down.
I’ll tell you about the night I really lost everything… that’s the part I still wake up sweating from. Guess that’s why I’m here — because maybe if I say it out loud, it’ll stop echoing in my head.
I said I’d lost everything.
That wasn’t true.
That morning, I still had a wife who believed maybe there was something left to save.
I still had kids who waited at the window when they heard a car in the driveway.
I still had a house that smelled like pancakes on Saturday mornings.
What I lost that night was their faith.
It started like any other — couple drinks after work, telling myself I’d earned it. But the bottles were gone before the sun was set. I remember driving anyway… because drunks always think distance makes them sober.
A red light. A screech of brakes. A horn that didn’t stop.
Then silence — just the hum of the engine and the taste of copper in my mouth.
They said no one died. This time.
But when I saw my little girl’s face through the police station window — fear, confusion, disappointment — something inside me did.
You know the look a child gives you when they realize their hero isn’t real?
That’s what she gave me.
I signed the papers. Lost my license. Lost visitation. Lost the right to tuck them in.
Every promise I’d ever made turned to ash the second that breathalyzer beeped.
And that morning, when the sound of her car faded after dropping me off at the curb without so much as a goodbye… I opened my door to the quiet.
No laughter, no toys, no footsteps — just the click of a fridge light and a half-empty bottle staring back.
I drank it, of course. Because what else do monsters do when they see what they’ve become?
It was that monster that stood staring into the bathroom mirror, the one where my kids used to get ready for school each morning, a gun in my hand, barrel pressed to the side of my head, screaming at the top of my lungs to just do it… … just do it you fucking coward.
I woke up the next morning on the floor again.
But this time… there was no note…because there was no one left to write one.
Just me…the smell of spilled whiskey mixed with drying vomit…and regret, mixed with shame.
They tell you “rock bottom” is the worst night of your life. It’s not.
It’s every morning after that, when you wake up and realize you still have to live with the person who caused it. You still have to live with that monster in the mirror.
I don’t remember what made me go to a meeting for the first time. Maybe it was the court order. Maybe it was guilt. Or maybe it was just the sound of my own heartbeat in an empty house— loud, lonely, and tired of begging to stop.
I sat in the back. Hoodie up, head down, waiting for someone to tell me what box to check to fix my life. Then this old guy sitting next to me, gray beard, coffee-stained smile, deep knowing eyes, looks right at me and says, “Son, you don’t fix your life. You start a new one.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream. But instead, I cried. Head down, hood hiding my face, balling like a baby. Because for the first time in years, someone wasn’t blaming me. He was just… seeing me, not the monster, but me.
You spend so long hiding in a bottle that you forget how heavy the world is when you come out. The air hurts. The light hurts. Feeling hurts. But it’s real. And after drowning for so long, even pain feels like oxygen.
I still see their faces — my kids — every day. The kids I haven’t spoken to in years now. They don’t need to see what happens when a monster breaks. They don’t need to hear me attempt to be a part of their lives, not now, not after I wasn’t when they were there. They have a good mother who has raised them right, a new “dad” that is there for them in ways that I never was. Their last memories of me will be at a jail, and maybe that is best. A reminder not to be like me, a monster living among those that love him.
I still wake up wanting just one more. One more drink. One more taste. One more reason not to care.
But every morning I tell myself the same thing: “One more” is what almost killed me last time. And I’m not ready to die again.
That’s what drove me to do it…thirty days in rehab. Locked way from everyone and everything I knew. Thirty of the most miserable, depressing, honest and freeing days I’ve ever known.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be who I was before. Maybe I’m not supposed to be.
Maybe that man had to burn so this one could crawl out of the ashes.
What I do know is this — if you’re sitting here thinking it’s too late,
that you’ve done too much, lost too much, hurt too many…it’s not.
You’re still breathing. And as long as you’re breathing… you’ve still got a chance.
My name’s Ryan.
I’m an alcoholic.
And today…
I’m still here.
Part 2
It’s been 2190 days since I walked through the door for the first time.
That is 6 years to the day, since I sat where you’re sitting — eyes down, skin crawling, wondering how long I had to stay before I could drink again.
I don’t count the days like trophies anymore.
I count the mornings I wake up without shame.
The nights I actually remember without drowning in guilt.
The moments when I can look someone in the eye and mean it when I say, “I’m okay.”
Don’t get me wrong — I still hear it.
That whisper in the back of my head, telling me I’m one sip away from peace.
But I’ve learned peace doesn’t live in the bottle.
It’s in the people who show up for you when you don’t even like yourself.
It’s in the chair you sit in every week, even when you’d rather disappear.
The truth is, sobriety isn’t some mountaintop moment where the sun breaks through and the music swells. It’s a thousand tiny choices made in the dark. It’s saying no when everything in you screams just one more. It’s forgiving yourself one breath at a time.
And it’s worth it.
Every miserable, beautiful, lonely, miraculous second of it — it’s worth it.
If you’re new here, I won’t tell you it’s easy. But I will tell you this:
One day, you’ll wake up and realize the voice that used to own you has gone quiet.
You’ll stand in front of a mirror, and instead of hating the reflection, hating the stranger staring back at you with red rimmed eyes and vomit crusted to your chin…
you’ll see someone you vaguely recognize, someone trying for the first time in a long time.
And that, is where it begins.
My name’s Ryan.
I am an alcoholic.
And I’m still here.
Still fighting.
Still free for one more day. And that is all we can hope for. Just one more day.
