DUI’s sit on a driving record for seven years. It will ruin chances for jobs, credit, insurance, living accommodations. Penalties include jail time, high fines and court costs, and license revocation. Depending upon the BAL within two hours of the time of arrest, sentencing can also include probation, ankle monitors, and two years of daily breathalyzer tests from a machine installed in your car. Education classes are usually scheduled and if you’re without transportation but required to go, you’re screwed. Everything costs money and lots of it. The commercials that say “I lost my job, I lost my wife” don’t begin to explain the enormity of the fuck up. I’m here now to do that. 

If you think you’ll be treated with any respect, either by law enforcement or state personnel, think again. You’ve put not only your own life on the line but that of others who, in the terrible haze and blackouts, don’t even exist in your line of vision. I’ve hated the drunks who killed mother and children in Denver at the holidays a year ago. Interestingly enough, after I was released from detox I checked the news to be certain I hadn’t become one of them. According to the police report, the only thing I knocked over was a tree. But the possibility that I could have destroyed much more than I did haunts me and propels me to sobriety. I’m enough of a statistic already. 

There will be no meaningful conversation with my family, no tearful Hollywood confession that ends with a weeping prodigal daughter in the arms of her mother and brothers, no relighting of the family fire. I’ve already tried. Mother would make it about her and fall into an emotional semi-catatonic state wringing her hands and asking “why, God?” Oldest brother, retired military, would probably have a hard time (we have just recently reconnected and I don’t want to shake that ground because I actually like him); middle brother, who has his own share of problems, would have an intellectual conversation to try and rationalize it; and youngest brother, PhD over-achiever, would send me one of Dr. Phil’s books. I would then be left on my own as I have been so many times, trailing behind my brothers’ successes like the little Pied Pooper that I am. My family would compare me with my drunken Uncle, no doubt. 

There is no reason to invite more shame and pain.