Three Bottles of Beer

Three Bottles of Beer

I lie here with my aching head and filled with regret in this dark, dank cell. I have six months to think about how I got here and what I’m going to do to make sure I never come back.

I’ve got time to relive the events of last night. I feel helpless, turning the wheel in mid-air. Then comes the searing pain as my head slammed into the dashboard. I can see the dirt splattering the shattered windshield when the car crumples into the ditch. When I come to, I stagger from the steaming wreckage, drunk and disoriented. I fall, hitting my head again on the ground.

I cringe thinking about all the other times I’ve gotten in trouble with the law. Standing before Judge Collins again for being drunk and disorderly. The flashing lights the night I got caught ripping a stop sign from the ground with my bare hands. The glass shattering when I threw a rock through George’s Bar and Grill after they kicked me out for yelling at the bartender.

I shudder at the thought of my current situation, trapped in this cage. The menacing glares of the other inmates fill me with dread. The stale, moldy food that makes me want to wretch. I can smell the testosterone-fueled violence in the air.

As I toss and turn on this sweat-stained cot, it hits me: this is a dead-end street. I see where it’s going. I see myself lying filthy in a gutter, clutching a whiskey bottle, singing dirges of despair as people walk over me. I see the next time I end up in this hell, locked away forever because I killed someone. I see myself slumped over the blood-stained steering wheel of the next crash.

In a vision born of life and death desperation, I see three empty beer bottles. I pour my meditations on my past, present, and future with alcohol into each one. I label them with a skull and crossbones: poison to mind, body, and soul.

From that day forward, whenever I feel tempted to drink, I conjure my three bottles—and my thirst disappears.
In 37 years, I haven’t had another drop.