Ninety Days by Bill Clegg

doughnut that is OUT OF THIS WORLD, which she’ll shout about loudly and with mannish glee. Whatever it is she’s shouting about, I’m there. And I’m sorry it’s over when it is. There are more commercials in the second half hour, so my glimpses of the show are skimpy and I’m cranky it doesn’t start later. The first time I get back to the apartment by four o’clock, I can’t believe how long the show goes on without a commercial break at the beginning.
    Later that year, in the fall, Oprah picks a book about drug addiction for her book club. The book came out a few years before and, at the time, I started to read it but stopped. I’m not sure exactly why I stopped—probably because I had too much reading and editing to do for work—but I didn’t make it past the first twenty or so pages, which I barely remember. I do remember thinking it had a macho arrogance but that the writing—vivid, swift, fresh—was very good. That’s all. This was during a period when I was struggling—and not successfully—to control my drug use and my drinking. No one but Noah knew I smoked crack. But this guy, this author, said he smoked crack, too, and I was fascinated that he was able to get sober. I read many of the interviews with him when the book was first published, pored over the articles where he talked about rehab, what they tried to teach him there, the tools for recovery they suggested he use—the Twelve Steps, the support of other alcoholics and addicts—and how he rejected it all and relied on his own willpower to quit. Over the years, Noah had begged me to go to rehab, but like this guy I didn’t think I needed what they had. In all of his interviews and later, on Oprah, he described confidently, persuasively, how he realized he could quit on his own and he didn’t, and still doesn’t, need a program of recovery. It was all very appealing, what he described, and the willpower he cited appeared to be incredibly strong. He simply chose to stop drinking and drugging because, he said, he knew if he didn’t he would die. Back when the book first came out, when I first heard what he had to say about recovery, it sounded perfectly logical, and I strongly identified with the belief that the usual routes of rehab, Twelve Steps groups, and other fellowships of recovery were not for everyone. Not for this guy. Not for me. I just hadn’t made the choice yet, I reasoned then, and figured that when I finally did decide to stop, I would, like this guy, be able to.
    Now, after losing most everything, going to rehab twice, and only eight days from my last relapse, I cannot identify with him at all. What he describes seems superhuman. Why is it so easy for some people? I wonder. It must be that I’m made of lesser matter, I decide, and continue to believe that, later, when I see Oprah heap praise on him for being so strong. When I see the show featuring the author that fall, I am still going to three meetings a day, have no job or other obligations, and watch people in the same situation relapsing as I did again and again and again. And this guy, well, he just chose to stop using. By his own account, he doesn’t go to meetings, certainly not three a day. He’s like those people who don’t have to work out to have perfect bodies. I’d give anything to be one of those people. Pizza, ice cream, bowls and bowls of granola, and six-pack abs. No meetings, no sponsor, no fellowship and—poof!—long-term sobriety. But it’s still April and that author won’t appear on the Oprah show until September. The book is already a big success before Oprah picks it for her book club, and from time to time over that spring and summer I hear people who don’t want to go to meetings or work with a sponsor use the book as an example of how it’s possible to stay clean on one’s own, without help, through sheer willpower.
    Eight days sober and finishing my fourth bowl of granola as the Oprah show ends, my willpower isn’t feeling so