On the Course, Off the Wagon

How I Used Leisure Sports to Justify my Addiction

Russ W
4 min readSep 5, 2023
Photo by mk. s on Unsplash

The afternoon was sticky, and the air hung heavy. I was sweating bullets (and my morning vodka) before we even stepped off the putting green.

We were a rag-tag bunch playing in a golf tournament for police officers. It was three Irish bartenders, me — one their best customers — and a hundred cops.

Like the other tournaments we played, it would be an all-day bender. Coolers stocked with beer sat on every tee box. At this point in my drinking career, I needed something stronger — so I’d stashed some vodka in my bag.

One of my teammates asked me if I’d drank that morning because he could smell the vodka. I casually dismissed him.

“It must be sweating through my pores.”

This had become my go-to excuse.

On the first hole, I barely missed a birdie putt. So, on the second tee box, I wound up on my drive looking to fully release my frustration by smashing through my little white Pro-V1.

After I made contact, I couldn’t stop my follow through. I spun around in a sloppy twirl and landed on my ass. Sitting on the tee box undeterred, I studied the sky and found my ball in flight, slicing over a ravine and cutting into the corner of the fairway.

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Russ W

Addiction therapist with an alphabet soup of degrees. Writer. Creative. Human. Hit me up: russ.w.medium@gmail.com