That one night I almost died

There was a lot going on the week of January 13, 2013.

The project that I had given my life to at work for the past 18 months was going live the following Monday, requiring my staff and I to travel to New York, D.C., Boston, and Chicago over a ten-day span to train a few hundred employees on a system we still hadn't tested. My sister, who lived in Los Angeles, was about to give birth to my niece and had asked me to be in the delivery room. Her due date—the 11th of January —had come and gone.  I was drinking again after abstaining for two months, and was back into my old two-bottle a night routine. I had just met Gabby Bernstein for the first time, and I was on Day 12 of May Cause Miracles. My 34th birthday was that Saturday, the 19th of January.

I had arranged everything perfectly around my sister's original due date. The child would be born on the 11th, I'd spend a few days in L.A. with my family, hop back to San Francisco to be with my team by the 15th, celebrate my birthday with a $3…