BONUS BLOG: the second half of Jimmy Buffett

Dale J. is an online friend from whom I got this —

A lot of my old hard drinking friends are making posts about drinking today in honor of Jimmy Buffett, but what they don’t know is that he got sober in his 40’s.

“So many of my fans don’t realize that ‘Wasting away again in Margaritaville’ is not a drinking song, it’s actually about the loneliness of drinking and the slow acceptance of accountability that comes with sobriety,”Buffett says.

Buffett started sobering up in his 40s and turned to therapy for a little help and now, at 73, he’s amazed he wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll casualty, like so many of his friends.

“You think you’re bulletproof at that age… but to me, at that point in time, I didn’t want to make my family ashamed of me, and that was a very strong deterrent from doing that and to make that change in my life at that time.”

“I had friends who are gone along the way to that end, and I always wanted to emulate those guys. Jim Morrison was 27 years old when he died and Mama Cass was 32 and I’m sitting here at 73. I forgot about how young people went away and I just feel lucky I got through it. I made some kinda right decision at the right time.”