"I Remember" Exercise

This past December, I wasn't doing my best work at life, but was working on it.

Part of that time was spent in group therapy sessions; the exact context isn't essential here. What you need to know is that the group, with no preamble, was told to write for 60 seconds, and to write an "I Remember" tale.

At this point I had been 100% sober without so much as a cough drop for 23 days. I wrote the following in my 60 second allotment:

I remember the most horrible 36 hours of my life, the time my girlfriend, a girl I had been engaged to, nearly died in front of me. I remember we were having a last hurrah, a final drug experience that was supposed to be fun. The ecstasy and cocaine did not mix well for her.

I remember her seizing, and eventually finding out she had fractured both shoulder blades due to the strength of it. I remember calling an ambulance and trying to keep her focus on me.

I also remember dropping her at the hospital and watching her being wheeled away screaming.

I remember cabbing it back home and not knowing if she’d live or die, but knowing I needed to hide my coke, and do some more.

I remember cabbing around New Orleans for hours because I was too fucked up to remember which hospital.

I remember the looks of nurses, how I felt.

I remember doing much more blow in the hospital bathroom.

I remember the calls to her mom and dad, their arrival from Maine.

I remember the lunch we had when we found out she would live, and how I thought I shouldn’t order a beer as drugs were the cause of their daughter’s near-death experience, then doing it anyway.

I remember her recuperating in my apartment, her dad staying a week, the bruises on her arms from being restrained.

I remember her healing, and leaving me.

Next I remember increasing my cocaine use. I remember wondering if my heart would burst, realizing I’d never had a pulse this fast. I remember trying to kill myself with drugs.

And now I remember the salvation of a hurricane driving me from New Orleans and that life.

This exercise was a clutch moment for me, and my pivotal change in lifestyle this last year. I needed to get this out of me, and I was the first to volunteer to read that day, the first to share aloud, and the first to break down in tears.

Though it's impossible and unrealistic (and would be quite a downer) to keep your worst moments at the forefront of your thoughts, it's good to keep things in perspective. Bad day at work? That blows...no one you loved almost died though, right? Okay, then let's dial back the drama-meter (patent-pending), shall we?