#4 When everything that mattered stops mattering

A weekend newsletter about why post-apocalyptic films can feel so good, right now

This week I turned 43, a full decade between the age I was when I first started to try and get sober. The weekend I turned 33—the “Jesus Year” as some call it and by some I mean me—I was so fucked up. I was the walking dead, and as some kind of hail mary to fix that brokenness, I booked a weekend at Esalen to learn how to meditate.

I almost didn't go, almost stayed in bed and passed my birthday alone with a lot of weed and alcohol and 30 Rock, but then at the last minute, perhaps only out of fear that the following Monday there would be questions about how it went from my boss and co-workers and friends and I'd have to lie and that would make me hate myself, I peeled myself out of bed and packed a bag and rented a car. 

Esalen is about three hours south of San Francisco, and you have to drive along a cliff-hugging patched together stretch of Highway 1 to get there. I didn't get out of San Francisco that Friday until dusk, a storm hit an hour or so into the trip, and just ten miles away…