Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: Problem Drinker

Episode 35 in a series of true rideshare stories

“Making my way closer to home, one bar at a time,” he explains as he gets in, traveling about a mile down the road, from one bar to another, around midnight.

“Sounds like a plan,” I tell him, starting to drive.

He’s a little wobbly, doing that slow-blink thing that tells you the booze is getting ahead of him and maybe it’s time to call it a night.

“I should just go home,” he mumbles. “But I’m gonna do one more bar.”

“You sure?” I ask. “We can change the destination if you want. It’s a slow night for me anyway.”

He seems to think about it. “Nah, I’m gonna have another drink.”

“Suit yourself,” I say. He should probably go home, but a guy in that shape doesn’t always respond well to a stranger’s judgment, and it’s not really my place to make a grown man’s decisions for him.

“I gotta quit doing this,” he says, as if reading my mind.

“Drinking?” I ask.

“Yeah… It’s getting to be a bit much.”

“Again, man, I can just take you home. You don’t have to go to another bar.”

Again, he thinks about it. Although he doesn’t really think. He just pretends to. If he were an actor and I was directing him, I would call ‘cut’ and tell him I need him to look like he’s really considering it.

“Nah,” he says. “I’m gonna get another drink. Wife’s gone, so I’m at home alone. You know, there’s only so much Netflix you can binge before you’ve gotta head out of the house, and this is always where I end up.”

It’s not clear whether he means his wife is out of town or whether he means she’s gone-gone, but I have a sense that it’s the latter.

“You don’t have any other hobbies?”

“I played pickleball for a couple hours, but you know, that’s not really a full day.”

“You don’t do anything lower energy? Playing music, drawing, reading… even video games? Nothing to keep you out of the bars?”

“I should start reading books. I haven’t really done that since high school.”

“Yeah, anything productive, or even just less destructive than drinking, is a good step in the right direction if you want to quit,” I tell him. “I’ve been cutting back in the last few years and I keep doing longer intervals. Like I took a week off, and then later a month, and recently six months. Willpower is like a muscle. If you work it out, it gets stronger.”

“I can go a day without drinking,” he says. “But I can’t go two.”

“Well, that might be a good goal then. Go two. Just work on that, and once you get good at two, try three.”

“It gets expensive,” he says. “Going out to two, three, four bars, taking rideshares between them. I’ll rack up a couple hundred bucks a night sometimes, and when you’re doing it four or five times a week…”

“A thousand bucks a week,” I tell him. “Fifty grand a year. You could probably do a lot with that if you managed to cut down.”

He nods, then asks, “Do you know who David Goggins is?”

“Vaguely. He’s like a fitness freak, right? Runs ultramarathons or something?”

“Yeah. He had a hard childhood and he says, like, he didn’t grow up really applying himself. And then one day he turned it around and started working out and running, and now he does all these ultramarathons and stuff. I find that inspiring.”

“Sure,” I say. “That’s an insane level of discipline though.”

“He was on Joe Rogan. And there was this other guy—I forget his name—he, like, moved to the mountains and just lived off the land.”

“Right, that’s cool. I just feel like those guys are… probably a ways down the road. I mean, if you can only make it a day without a drink, I feel like trying to be David Goggins is a years-long project.”

“I guess,” he says, seeming to deflate.

“That’s not to say you can’t do it; it’s just, that’s a huge goal,” I try, seeing I’m losing him and struggling to get him back. “You get to a huge goal through a lot of small goals, and you inevitably fuck up a thousand times on the small ones before you get to the huge one. But the successes on the small ones is what keeps you motivated toward the huge one. Instead of saying, ‘Dammit, I can’t run an ultramarathon,’ you’re saying, ‘Hell yeah, I can almost run a mile’. You know what I mean? Instead of saying, ‘Dammit, I tried to quit drinking and I failed,’ you’re saying, ‘Hell yeah, I made two days again. Maybe next week I can do three.’”

“Ugh. Yeah, even two is hard.”

“Sure, but you said you can do one. So now you gotta work on two.”

I pull up outside the bar and put the car in park.

“Last chance to go home instead,” I tell him. “You can change the destination if you know it’s a better decision.”

He looks at the bar, sighs, does that fake thinking thing again. “Nah, I’m gonna have another drink.”

“Okay, but listen,” I tell him. “Tomorrow and the next day, don’t go out. Don’t worry about the day after that. Just try to do two.”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve done two.”

“Just see if you can do it. Read a book. I bet David Goggins has written a book. Go get it from Barnes & Noble tomorrow. It’ll be cheaper than a night of drinking. Next thing you know, you’re going, ‘Hey. I’m reading a book and I made it two days without a drink.’ There’s your first step.”

“Yeah…” he says, staring longingly out his window at the bar, clearly just waiting for me to let him go. “I’ll have to see.”

“All right. Get home safe.”

I would like to be the guy who gets his number. The guy who says, “I’m gonna call you tomorrow to see what you found out about that book, and the next day to see how your 48 hours is going.” I would like to be that guy, but in the moment, I’m ashamed to say it doesn’t even occur to me. And even if it did, I probably wouldn’t follow through. I would probably worry about it becoming a burden.

But I do hope some of what we’ve talked about gets through, and he at least attempts 48 hours, or goes and looks for a book. At the very least, I hope the fact that we had this conversation leads to him having a similar one again soon. If he has enough of them, maybe he’ll start to act.

And I wonder, not for the first time, if there is a danger, in the digital age, of being oversaturated with the accomplishments of superhumans. I wonder if the ultramarathon champion on our phone drowns out the glory of the guy down the street who lost 30 pounds and did his first 5k at a brisk walk. It seems to me a lot of us might be better called to action by the guy down the street. Few of us will ever be David Goggins, but any of us could be the guy down the street.

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Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.