What Converse Taught Me About Sobriety

I didn’t start drinking until I was twenty two. For those of you keeping score that means I had a good quarter century of hard living before I finally hung up my spurs. The first two years of my touring career I was stone sober save for a rare occasion. In Amsterdam I drew the short straw of having to sleep / guard the van so I pounded a whole two Heineken’s to pass out while holding a tire iron. What can I say? I was a lightweight.

At that point in my life I was burdened with glorious purpose as Loki would say. I was hell-bent, all I wanted to do was make music and tour. I was laser focused, bordering of obsession that I now know as the signs of a workaholic but people don’t call it that when you’re young. Needless to say that during this manic period of my life I had neither the desire nor the time for drinking. It wasn’t until we were successful enough that I didn’t have to do as much that I decided to pick up the bottle. I had been demoted to just “lead singer” and I was lonely and bored so drinking was the way I coped. It sounds counter intuitive to most people but depression doesn’t follow logic, it can come on even during the best of times. But… I digress.

In those early years I started wearing Converse Jack Purcell low top sneakers. If you’re not familiar they look almost exactly like Chuck Taylor’s but with a lip on the top of the toe. Most folks don’t even notice that they aren’t Chucks unless you know what you’re looking at. I got into them because that’s what the guys in The Promise Ring wore and I dug their casual mid-west thrift store style. Upon learning that the real Jack Purcell was a champion badminton player I was even more on board. What’s more punk rock than that? He wasn’t some jock basketball star, he was an ace with a shuttlecock. I adopted the Jack Purcell as my own and wore them for years and years and years.

Somewhere in the haze of over the following decades I stopped wearing the Purcell’s. When I think about it now it seems almost like the symbol of how much I had lost myself during that time. It wasn’t like I had grown out of that phase of my life, letting go of childish things. I had lost direction and lost confidence in myself and didn’t know how to get out of that hole. I know that it wasn’t literally because I had stopped wearing the shoes, they’re not the fucking ruby slippers. But, I bought a pair the other day and I felt like myself again.

This isn’t the first time this has happened in the last two years. After about a month into sobriety when the fog in my mind started to clear I finally felt like myself again. I have noticed, in this clarity, how it parallels the time in my life before I started drinking. Some people say that you get stuck emotionally at the age you were when you started using and you start growing again when you quit. If that’s the case then I’m only twenty four. Happy Birthday to me.

So, what did Converse teach me about sobriety? Nothing really, they are just shoes. But, embracing the Jack Purcell again feels like healing to me. It feels like I can be myself. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some badminton to play.