I have never been in such physical shape. I have never gotten such perfect numbers on my physical exams and blood work. I am packing on muscle and growing in strength. I have boundless energy and I can.. and do, demolish 4000 calories daily while still losing two pounds a week.

At my gym I get fist bumped into distraction by my clients and fellow gym rats. In the distance I hear, “Ya know how old he is?” If someone had told me I would be an athlete in my 73rd year, I would have asked for a “hit offa that thang.”

I run for an hour every night and I bike back and forth to my gym 10 miles. Every day. I got rid of my car and walk back and forth to the super market daily. A mile each way. With groceries. 🙂

I have health I could never imagine. No aches, no pains and no delusions. How can this happen?

40 years ago today, May, 20, 1979, a Sunday, I woke up in a smoky, dingy motel room in Saugus, Massachusetts, bleeding from both eye sockets.

On the nightstand was a half a pack of Kools, two hits of speed, a hash pipe, an empty Southern Comfort bottle and a Trojan wrapper.

The girl in the room, (a band admirer) was sitting in a chair chain smoking waiting for me to come to. When I staggered past her to the bathroom, she casually mentioned that my face was “kinda blue”. It was.

I was wheezing, shaking, couldn’t focus and my teeth hurt from constantly chewing gum while speeding. I had hit one of my many bottoms.

Thus ended my short career as a road musician. I was paying the high cost of low living.

That night found me at St. Francis Church in Medford, sobbing through the “Lord’s Prayer” and asking around for some Librium to get me through my first sober night in decades.

Wasn’t gonna happen. I slept  with my mother that night. Weeping like a baby.

Then I remember throwing up in the parking lot in Chelsea the next morning with Arthur Keenan, my new AA sponsor. God bless that man.

I mention these two realities because it’s the 40th anniversary of my near death experience. And the fact that four decades later, the human body can forgive just about anything.

Despite my best efforts.