It was still early when we arrived at our favorite restaurant, an Italian joint up the street next to an Albertson's supermarket. The place was half empty, but we still had to wait for a table because the part that was half full contained a group of 21 men of various ages and in various modes of dress. They occupied a row of tables that were pushed together by the windows and looked to be wrapping up what must've been a lengthy meal. We watched from barstools at a small wine bar off to the side as the two waiters and a busboy whisked away the trappings of a completed meal. Slowly the men got up, chairs scraping against the floor. They shook hands and hugged one another. "Must be a reunion of some sort," my wife said. Finally, as the last of the group of men filed out into the twilight outside, we were seated at a table.

"I'll bet that was an AA group," I said.

"How could you tell?" my wife said.

"Well, for one thing they were all drinking iced tea," I said. "Plus I think I recognized one of the guys from the meetings."

+

Five years earlier...

"The reason why I stopped you," the motor cop said through the open window, "was because of that stop sign you blew back there."

I had enough presence of mind not to blurt out, "What stop sign?" figuring that might be some sort of admission of guilt. In truth there had been no stop sign. The cop had sandbagged me pure and simple. He must've been lurking somewhere in the broad, dark parking lot behind a tavern called the Goat Hill, where I'd stopped to have a few beers with some former colleagues. He must've spotted me leaving the tavern, followed me a ways, then lit me up after I turned onto a broad boulevard. It was, to my mind, a bogus stop, but I was in no position to argue the finer points of probable cause. So I answered his questions truthfully more or less and with a sense of resignation followed instructions when he invited me out on the sidewalk to perform a few field sobriety tests.

About midway through this exercise a funny scene popped into my head and I had to stifle the urge to giggle. The scene was from one of Steve Martin's early movies, The Jerk, I think, where Steve Martin is put through a series of sobriety tests that get increasingly more difficult till he is made to juggle three bowling balls while hopping on one foot. Boy, he tells the cop, you guys are tough! Any urge to giggle, however, abruptly disappeared when the cop snapped the cuffs on my wrists and put me into the back of a cruiser that had appeared.

+

I'd spent a lot of time around cops early in my career, so I fell into an easy patter with the one booking me. Afterwards he even thanked me for not being an asshole.

The results of the Breathalyzer test were disappointing and rather surprising, since I didn't feel all that drunk. I blew a .11 the first time and a .12 the second time. If I understand the biochemistry correctly, that blood-alcohol level might have been even a notch higher in another hour or so when the alcohol was more fully absorbed into my blood stream.

After pictures and prints, I was put in a cell, which was cavernous and painted floor to ceiling in a pale shade of green not found in nature. It was bare except for a toilet that looked simultaneously out of place and like it belonged. A narrow ledge ran along the walls a couple of inches higher than the floor, which sloped gently to the center of the cell where there was a large drain. The decor was what you might call postmodern dungeon.

Fortunately for me, it was a city jail and not county lockup, which is usually crowded and filthy and can often feel like the inside of a powder keg ready to explode. There was one other guy in the cell. He was sprawled by the bars, whimpering. Occasionally he would plead to be let out and a burly cop named Sean would come by and tell him to shut up. I picked a spot as far away as possible, curled up on the hard concrete under a thin army blanket and waited to be released. It was a long wait.

Finally, at around 4 a.m., I was let out. The burly cop named Sean gave me back my stuff in a large manila envelope and let me use the phone to call my wife.

"Was she pissed?" he said when I hung up.

"No," I said, then noticed how disappointed he seemed by that. "Not yet," I added.

He laughed, then pushed a buzzer to let me out a steel door. "Have a good one," he said.

"You too, buddy."

+

I'm about as smart as the next guy -- or perhaps just as dumb -- but the truth is, neither the night in jail, the appearance in court where I pleaded guilty, the suspension of my driver's license, the AA meetings I was required to attend nor any of the penalties I had to pay did anything to affect my thinking about drinking and driving. But my thinking did shift. It occurred during the first of two months worth of DUI classes I was required to attend.

Like everyone else in the class of 25 or so first-time offenders, I was only half paying attention that Saturday morning when the probation officer leading the class said, "Half of you in this room today will be arrested again for drunk driving. A quarter will be arrested for a third time. And one or two of you probably will be arrested more than that."

That got me to thinking, and I realized that the only reason why I was sitting there in the first place was because I thought I'd never get caught. In fact, I'd used those very words just that morning before I drove to the DUI class, even though my driver's license was already suspended. "I won't get caught," I told my wife. Sitting in the classroom, I realized that as long as I thought that way I'd always be at risk of getting caught. It seems pretty obvious now, but like a lot of other people I'd gotten away with drinking and driving for so long that getting caught seemed improbable. In that moment I realized my thinking needed to shift or I'd be doomed.

And just like that, in a classic light-bulb-going-on moment, it did shift, a hundred and eighty degrees -- so abruptly in fact that suddenly I became paranoid. It was an odd feeling. By the end of the class I'd almost convinced myself that I was going to get caught. As I drove home that afternoon, I took back streets and kept to the speed limit. Then I stored my car in the garage and didn't drive again until I got my license back.

+

I never bothered to keep my arrest a secret. When I told my boss that first morning she burst into laughter, then quickly covered her mouth and apologized. "Gee," I said, "I'm glad you're taking this so well." Later I would talk it over with friends, who seemed quite curious about different aspects of the ordeal. I talked to one coworker in particular because he seemed most at risk. Sure enough, two weeks later he got popped for DUI. So much for my cautionary tale.

One aspect of the experience that I found rather interesting -- in a reportorial sort of way -- was how an industry has been created out of DUI enforcement. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the pie. Police departments beef up enforcement just to get state and federal funding. On top of a hefty fine I had to pay in court, there were fees for just about everything. There was a fee to sign up for the DUI course and another fee when I finished it. There was a fee to get my license back. To attend a mandatory MADD meeting, I had to shell out 40 bucks. The MADD staffers at the door would only take cash, and there were several hundred of us that night. Then there was the increased car insurance costs -- almost triple what I'd been paying. And that's assuming your insurance company will still carry you. Throw in the services of a lawyer and that could be another several thousand dollars.

About the only thing that didn't cost anything were the AA meetings I had to attend. I was given a little booklet that listed all the AA groups in a two-county area. I found one within walking distance of home and attended the meetings every Thursday night for six weeks. One of the first things I noticed about recovering alcoholics was how much coffee and cigarettes they consumed. They'd stand outside the classroom at the Christian school where the meetings were held and guzzle cups of coffee and power smoke their cigarettes.

I don't mean to knock 12-step programs, but I found no solace among that group, no camaraderie. I never felt compelled to speak. One night, an old guy started talking about his visit to his cardiologist that day and was told that his heart could give out at any moment and that there was nothing to be done about it. It was a death sentence, he said. He burst into tears as he told us this, and I noticed how some guys at the other end of the room were chatting and laughing amongst themselves. I was pretty damn glad when I finally finished my last meeting.

I stopped drinking for nearly a year after that, mostly to prove to myself that I could do it, maybe to convince myself that I'm not an alcoholic. Maybe the jury is still out on that. Alcoholism is an inheritable disease and though neither of my parents was an alcoholic, a grandfather supposedly loved his fortified wine a little too much, so maybe it skipped a generation. I don't know.

I do know that I'll never drive drunk again -- know it with the certainty of the sun rising in the east each day. It's no longer even a question of deciding not to do it, because in the process of making a decision there is always the chance of deciding wrongly. I'm no teetotaler, no reformer, no proselytizer. I'm not on any campaign. I realize, of course, that as long as people drink there'll be those who'll drive. I just won't be among them.

Originally posted 12.20.03