A sobering thought

I conducted 26 years of exhaustive research on whether I could consume alcohol and continue to lead a productive, respectable life.

In that time, I had received some very strong indications that these things were mutually exclusive. However, it wasn’t until April 2017 that I decided to quit drinking.

Wait. That’s not entirely right.

I decided to quit plenty of times. It just wasn’t until April 2017 that I was able to make it stick.

For a few months, I kept this fairly quiet. My wife knew, of course. My younger brother did as well. But I was keeping it to myself. When the Husky football season started and I attended a tailgate with a couple of my college roommates, I didn’t mention it. I just didn’t drink.

And then, a couple of weeks later, the topic of Steve Sarkisian came up during the afternoon radio show I hosted along with Jim Moore and Dave Wyman.

Sark had experienced a fairly public issue with booze back in 2015 when he lost his job as USC’s head coach and entered a rehabilitation facility. Now Sarkisian was back in football, serving as the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, and as we discussed that, I began talking about my own drinking problem and what it meant to stop.

In retrospect, that conversation was a very significant step in my own recovery, and I’ve always felt a connection to Sarkisian because of that. I wrote about this for the News Tribune in my first column of 2025, explaining how I feel not just about him, but the transformative power of sobriety.