02 Dec THE SOUND OF A BEER BOTTLE: A TWENTY-YEAR JOURNEY, ONE DAY AT A TIME

Twenty years ago, a
woman I knew came
to me with a heavy
heart. She was married
to a man who had
become an alcoholic.
This wasn’t social
drinking nor was it “a
little too much at kiddush or at a simcha.” It
was a pattern that was slowly hollowing out his
life and his home. She was clear on what had to
happen, but she lacked the courage and
confidence to confront him. She asked me if I
would.
As a young rabbi, I was inexperienced in this
area (and most others) but I knew one thing:
confrontation can humiliate or it can heal. It
can push a person further into denial, or it can
become the beginning of their redemption. I
agreed to speak with this husband, not because
I had guarantees about how it would go, but
because looking away and staying silent was
no longer an option.
I called him and asked if I could stop by. I
didn’t spell out why, I just asked if we could
catch up. I will never forget that evening: the
fear I felt pulling up to his house, the tefillah I
whispered asking Hashem to give me the right
words. When I arrived, we sat outside. In his
typical generous hospitality, he opened two
beers, one for himself and one for me. On the
surface, it was the picture of two people,
friends shmoozing on a nice Florida evening.
We spoke about work, family, life. It felt casual,
unforced.
But the whole time, beneath the surface, I knew
I wasn’t there just to catch up. I wasn’t there to
judge him, label him, or attack him. I was there
to share a truth that his wife, some close
friends, and I all saw clearly, and that he, on
some level, likely already knew but had not
allowed himself to fully face. At a certain point,
I gently steered the conversation where it
needed to go.
“Look, I didn’t come here only to hang out. I
came because your wife, some close friends,
and I are very concerned. We see the role
alcohol plays in your life, and it isn’t healthy; it
has gotten out of control. This isn’t easy for me
to say, but it’s harder to watch you continue this
way and say nothing.” When you bring
something like this up, you brace yourself for
the response: “You’re overreacting. Everyone
drinks. This is my business, not yours. Mind
your own business. Stay out of my personal
life.” You expect anger, denial, defensiveness.
This man didn’t do any of that. He didn’t blow
up or storm off. Instead, he looked at me.
Really looked at me. He gave me a long, strong,
searching stare that made time feel like it had
slowed down. It wasn’t a hateful look, and it
wasn’t even particularly angry. It was the look
of a man suddenly faced with a mirror he could
no longer avoid. In that moment, it felt as if he
was asking himself, “Is this really what people
see when they look at me? Is he serious? Am I
an alcoholic? Have I lost control?”

Then, without fanfare, without any dramatic
declaration, he put his beer down and the
sound of the glass made a clank. He did not
take another sip. We continued to talk. From
the outside, nothing dramatic had changed.
There was no emotional explosion, no tearful
promise, no big speech. But in that simple act
of placing the beer down and not picking it
back up, a line had been drawn. A decision had
been made.
That beer was the last drink he ever took.
From that day forward, he threw himself into
recovery. He did not try to do it alone. He
joined a recovery program. He went to
meetings. He got a sponsor. He surrounded
himself with people who understood his
struggle and were committed to helping him
heal and rebuild his life. And here is what is so
remarkable: he told me that not only has he
not touched alcohol since that day, but he has
not even felt tempted to drink. Not once.
Twenty years ago, he put down that bottle and
hasn’t picked up alcohol since, but that is far
from the only change in his life. Twenty years
of sobriety has meant twenty years of showing
up differently for his family, for himself, for
his career, and for Hashem. From the outside,
it looks like he made one decision and held to
it for two decades. But that is not how it really
works. Recovery is not accomplished in
twenty-year chunks. It can only ever be lived
one day at a time.
When someone faces a destructive habit,
whether alcohol, drugs, uncontrolled anger,
dishonesty, impatience, or anything else, and
realizes something must change, they often
hear or tell themselves, “You can never do this
again for the rest of your life. You have to stop
forever.” The natural reaction is panic. “The
rest of my life? Never again? That’s
impossible. I’m guaranteed to fail.” The
phrase “for the rest of your life” feels so big,
so heavy, that it nearly paralyzes the person
before they even take their first step.
We simply are not designed to live for
“forever.” We are only capable of living today.
But if instead you say, “Don’t drink today,”
something shifts. Today is manageable. Today
is concrete. Today feels attainable. Whatever
we need to eliminate or work on, as soon as
we move it into the realm of “forever,” it feels
hopeless. But when we bring it down to one
more day, to today, it becomes possible.
That is the secret of recovery: one day at a
time. Not, “I will never drink again,” but,
“Today, I will not drink. Today, I will stay
sober.” And tomorrow, with Hashem’s help,
we will say it again. You wake up in the
morning and you don’t stay sober for twenty
years; you stay sober for this morning, for this
afternoon, for this evening. You do that
enough times, and before you know it, those
individual days have added up into something
enormous. One day you turn around and
realize that one more day and one more day
and one more day without became twenty
years.

When Yaakov Avinu agrees to work for Lavan
for seven long, challenging years in order to
marry Rochel, the Torah tells us something
very surprising: “Vaya’avod Yaakov b’Rochel
sheva shanim, vayihyu b’einav k’yamim
achadim b’ahavaso osah.” Yaakov worked for
Rochel for seven years, and they seemed to
him but a few days, k’yamim achadim,
because of his love for her.
At first glance, this is difficult to understand.
When we long for something, when we are
waiting for someone we love, time usually
moves slowly. Every day feels like an eternity.
When a chassan and kallah are waiting for
their wedding, when someone is waiting for a
refuah, when a person is waiting for vacation
to start, it rarely feels like a “few days.” If
anything, it feels like forever. So how could
the Torah say that seven hard years passed for
Yaakov “like a few days”?
Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski z”l, who was a
world-renowned expert, thinker, and writer on
addiction and recovery, suggests a beautiful
insight. He points out that the word “achadim”
shares a root with the word “echad,” one.
Yaakov did not live those seven years as one
overwhelming, crushing block of time. He
lived them as yamim echadim, one day at a
time. Each day was a single unit of avodah:
one day of working, one day of being one step
closer, one day of commitment, one day of
holding on to his love for Rochel and his trust
in Hashem. Seven years is daunting. “Today”
is not. When one lives in the present day,
focused on what today demands, seven years
can indeed pass “like a few days.”
When my friend quietly put his beer down that
day, I don’t believe he was consciously
committing to perfection for the rest of his life
or picturing celebrating his twentieth
anniversary of sobriety. He was taking the
next right step. He was agreeing to face the
truth, to seek help, to walk into that first
meeting, to say no to the immediate urge. He
was choosing to live that day differently.
Hashem took that one courageous “today”
and, one day at a time, turned it into twenty
years.
He and I met recently to sit and talk once
again and to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of that fateful conversation. He
shared with me, “When I put the bottle of beer
down, something happened. Something
humanly unexplainable. A profound change
happened instantly. The only attribute could
be Hashem. He was the catalyst that began
this journey.” In recovery, step three is to
submit to a higher power and trust in God for
help. Twenty years ago, my friend discovered
a real and raw relationship with Hashem, a
genuine and ongoing conversation with the
Almighty.
As I marveled at his fortitude and
accomplishment, I thought to myself: every
one of us has something we need to work on,
a temper that flares too quickly, a tongue that
speaks too freely, a laziness that holds us back,

a jealousy that corrodes our happiness, a
private behavior we are ashamed of. When we
tell ourselves, “I must never do this again for
the rest of my life,” we set ourselves up to feel
crushed and defeated. We mean well, but we
are thinking in terms that only Hashem can
handle.
What if, instead, we thought and spoke to
ourselves the way Torah and recovery both
teach us to: “Today, I will be careful with my
speech. Today, I will work on being more
patient. Today, I will not open that site, that
bottle, that door. Today, I will show up as the
husband, wife, parent, friend, Jew I know I
can be.” The next day, we take a deep breath,
trust in Hashem and say it again. Forever is
not in our hands. Today is.
If you are like the woman in this story,
watching someone you love slipping into
something destructive, the feeling of
helplessness can be overwhelming. You look
at their future, and at yours, and “the rest of
our lives” feels unbearably heavy. But you are
not responsible to fix the rest of their life in
one action, and you are not expected to know
exactly what the next twenty years will bring.
You can take one step. She took one step by
reaching out and asking for help. I took one
step by agreeing to have a hard conversation.
He took one step by putting down that beer
and walking into recovery. Each of those steps
was a yom echad, a single day’s act of courage.
Hashem can multiply that.
And if, in this story, you recognize yourself
not in the wife but in the husband, if you sense
that your drinking, or some other behavior,
your private life, has become something you
no longer fully control, then please hear this
clearly: you do not need to promise perfection
and you do not need to swear that you will
never struggle again. You need to be honest
today. Today, admit that this has gotten out of
control. Today, share it with someone you
trust. Today, make one phone call, walk into
one meeting, send one message asking for
help. Today, ask Hashem for the strength not
for the next twenty years, but for the next
twenty-four hours.
The yetzer hara, the voice of self-sabotage,
loves the language of “forever.” It whispers,
“You’ll never keep this up. You’ll fail
eventually. Why even start if you can’t be
perfect?” Torah and genuine recovery answer
with the language of echad: not forever, but
one. One step. One day. One honest
conversation. One sincere tefillah. One refusal
to pick up the next drink.
Twenty years ago, a wife’s fear, a husband’s
hidden readiness, and one difficult but loving
conversation converged on a porch. I can still
hear the sound of him putting down that beer.
That small, almost unremarkable motion did
not just end a drink; it began a new life.

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