“Yeah? That sounds pretty fucking arrogant. What about all that ‘higher power’ stuff they preach inAA?”
“I never went to AA. NA meetings have worked for me, but I don’t really believe in a higher power. At least not one that’s gonna take all my fucked-up shit away. I just needed to get my head right. For me, that’s what ittook.”
“That’s all,huh?”
“Yup. And that’s all it takes, every second of every day, over and over and over again. Definitely not as easy as itsounds.”
“Doesn’t sound easy atall.”
“Never would’ve worked if I didn’t stop mindfuckingmyself.”
Yeah. That I could relateto.
I’d been mindfucking myself all my life. At this point, I was a master of the self-inflictedmindfuck.
I’d mindfucked myself for years over my parents dying when I was so young I couldn’t even rememberthem.
Mindfucked myself before I went onstage, pretty much every time I wentonstage.
Definitely mindfucked myself to hell and back overMaggie.
But unlike fucking Buddha here, mind over matter wasn’t gonna cut it forme.
I did believe in a higher power: the music we made together as aband.
I believed in the structure of the Big Book, too, the guidance of working through the Twelve Steps, even when I didn’t fully buy into them. Even when there were times I totally fucking resented needingthem.
I needed AA. Most of all, I needed the meetings. They’d always worked for me, too. When I went tothem.
Since this tour had started, I hadn’t dragged my ass toone.
“And just to be clear,” Seth said, “I’m not preaching anything. Everyone’s got their own path to sobriety. You got a road to walk that’s yours alone. For a lot of alcoholics, AA works. Belief in a higher power works. I’m not offering solutions and I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what works for me, because you asked. I’m your friend, and I’m a friend who’s walking a similar road. So I’m here to listen, to talk, to share, to support, or whatever it is you want me to do short of lying to you, supporting your addiction and getting you booze. And I’m not gonna blow sunshine up your ass, placate you or sugarcoat this shit, either. I brought you to an alcohol-free environment so you could get your shit straight with a clear head, if that’s what you want todo.”
“What, rightnow?”
“You got a better time in mind? A betterplace?”
I looked around at the desert like we were on the surface of the fucking moon. “It’s not like I can do this shit in onenight.”
“It doesn’t happen in one night. It happens in onemoment.”
I looked at Seth, but it was too dark to see his eyes under the brim of his hat or the expression on hisface.
“And in every single moment there is, it happens over and over again,” he said. “All you really need is onemoment.”
I ran my hand through my hair. Christ, but I wanted atoke.
Did I really have to listen to thisshit?
“Just one,huh?”
“What else have you got? The past is done. The future is uncertain. All you’ve got is this one moment, right now. You’re alive and sober, right now. What are you gonna do with thismoment?”
He went silent for a long moment, and I was silent as that sank in. I really didn’t have an answer for that question. Which was maybe myproblem.
“You gonna have a drink?” he pressed. “Because you take one sip of booze and your life is fucked, I guarantee you that. And by the way, case you haven’t figured it out yet, you think your life isn’t out of control because you smoke pot daily to mellow out and you’re itching for it right now and you’re in love with Maggie but you keep fucking it up, you are straight-up deludingyourself.”
I stared athim.
