On this day some 28 years ago, I woke up in a drunk tank, hungover and shouldering a DUI from the night before. It was humiliating, telling, and a wakeup call.
Having to explain to my 5 year old son why daddy hadn’t come home the night before was not a great moment. However, it was also the last week I ever drank, the last (and only) time I woke up in jail, with a hangover, and likely the best thing that might have ever happened for me.
At some point before I was to appear in court, I’d made up my mind to pursue a deferred prosecution, and did so. I got clean and sober and pulled my young head out of my drunken butt and started living more right than ever.
That was over half my life ago. I look back quite often and am glad to sigh a happy sigh, knowing I saved my life then, and made myself a better soul than I had been destined.
I’m not preaching to anyone, but if anyone gets a message out of my sharing this, then more power to you. I would have been dead within a year had I not stopped when I did. Period. At the very least, I owed my son and my family a better effort than I had been putting out. Life hasn’t been easier, better, or a bed of roses. BUT, it has been a life; alive, trying, and earning my way to this moment.
I’m grateful for all my gifts, and not some, but ALL of them are made possible daily because I made a great and wise decision about 28 years ago this coming week.
If you’re on the boat I was so long ago, get the hell off of it on the shore nearest you, NOW, and not in the middle of drowning sea a while from now.
Love and prayers for my friends out there. Matthew.
Matthew Lyle Landsman 
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