There were people who believed I was headed for a disaster, that being, of course, that I would get loaded. I worried that they might know something I didn't at that point.
I did not have enough time sober, back then, to dispute the possibility with much conviction. All I had was a stubborn streak a mile wide that refused to get drunk on any given day.
It helped that they thought I would, because I relished proving them wrong. I could just picture them running off at the mouth in a meeting, or at coffee, saying, "Well, did you hear about Bobby Jameson?"
Thinking about it convinced me more than ever not to give them the satisfaction of fulfilling their Goddamn prophecy.
It was my one great success, I believed. Bobby Jameson, sober and clean no matter what. Meaner than shit and angry at the world, I vowed I would die before I ever got loaded.
The Doc Holiday of AA and NA. I would not fold in the face of a crisis, any crisis. I took on all comers, and come they did.
The advice givers, the God freaks, the false prophets of a reason to slip, as they called it. I knew I was doing the best I could no matter what they said or thought. I knew that in my gut and in my heart.
I had found sobriety in the cesspool of my life, and it proved a far more reliable asset than the tinker-toy version they talked about.
I chalked it up to experience. My experience versus theirs. Mine was honed in hell; too many of them had been light weights, so recovery for them was easier, smoother, more appetizing.
Sobriety for Bobby Jameson was like reassembling a completely shattered individual...it was just gonna be that way...it was just gonna take more time...more work.
At times my opinion counted; when others saw their own failings with regards to someone they had sponsored or guided, they'd say quietly, "Send em to Bobby Jameson, he knows all about living sober through disaster."
That was about the only time I got credit for anything with most of them...when they needed me to tell the truth to someone they'd been feeding pablum to.
Otherwise I was just looked upon as someone who couldn't, or wouldn't, let go of my anger and resentments. I was the poster boy for who not to be like.
In 1983-84 I got involved with a girl from Northern California who stopped into a few Southern California meetings when visiting her father in L.A.
Her name was, DJ, and she was a good chick. She seemed undaunted by my moods and angry rhetoric about how sobriety was not going too good for me.
We used to go to Harley Davidson shops in various places and look at the bikes and buy t-shirts. I played her some of my music, and she would push me gently back toward it, telling me I had a gift.
"Yeah, well that gift is trying to kill me, so I don't know what to do with it," I told her,
"Well you just have to keep trying, Bobby, you are a talented human, and you can't escape it no matter where you run to."
I knew she was right, but I was not ready to entertain any more attempts to make use of it at that point, so I would nod my head and say, "Yeah, I know, and someday I'll start again and see what happens, just not right now."
