A time before getting sober
For the last six years, around this time, I begin to feel a sense of joy, gratitude and even a little excitement bubble up, as July 27th marks six years of sobriety for me. If you ask me what I’m most proud of in my life, sobriety is near the top of the list. While my sobriety is a vital part of my life, I am also aware of my strong attachment to this date. I understand that pride has a particular way of keeping us out of shame and attachment can create the illusion of security. So rather than writing about six years of sobriety, let me tell you about the years before I got sober.
Let me tell you about…
How I finished the coffee at the bottom of my mum’s coffee mug as a kid, then when I was a bit older, how I finished the sickly sweet wine at the bottom of the crinkly silver wine bag I’d extracted from its box when my parents were entertaining friends.
Let me tell you about…
How the initial sip of alcohol offered a warm rush of relief, a buffer to my social anxiety, a breath from the suffocating demands of life, and how quickly the relief turned into a blurry, nauseated and melancholy feeling, and how I swapped alcohol for drugs that were sharper, faster, offered pleasure, and altered my sensory experience, and how the next day my body would shatter like a porcelain vase dropped on the floor — tiny ceramic shards scattered in every direction.
Let me tell you about…
How when my boss offered me a two year position in Boston, I knew deep inside moving to Boston was going to save my life, and how leaving was the only option, even though it cost me so much — lifelong friendships, my family, my country, and how the wreckage of these ambiguous losses and the pain of this unnamed grief would haunt me for decades, and how I needed all the time and space of being half way around the world away to get sober.
Let me tell you about…
When I gave birth to my first child, and held her sweet, soft, tiny little body against my chest, I realized I could never drink again, and how it took another seven years of working on my sobriety alone before I’d get sober, because I felt too ashamed to talk to anyone about my drinking, and how I stopped going to therapy partly because a thick wall of shame prevented me from putting into words to how much I wanted to stop drinking, and how I felt trapped by the way wanting to get help with drinking makes you someone with a big problem but not wanting to get help means you are responsible drinker.
Let me tell you about…
How I would whisper to my daughter's father, ‘I don’t want to drink any more,’ hoping he would grant me permission to get free of alcohol, and all the times I poured a bottle of wine down the sink after one glass, and how many times I drank and instantly remembered how much I hated drinking, and how I would not drink for days, weeks and eventually months at a time, and the time I had a conversation with my daughter about drinking a glass of wine with dinner and how she correctly reminded me that I always had two glasses of wine with dinner — because our kids see us completely even if we don’t think they’re paying attention.
Let me tell you about…
How challenging it was to get sober alone, and how I thought I needed to master sobriety before I could talk to anyone about my relationship to alcohol, and how things get a little lonely for a while in early sobriety, and how with patience life changes in the most incredibly unimaginable ways, and now I am closer to myself than ever before, and sobriety is just the beginning of the journey, and when you stop using alcohol to try and regulate your nervous system, what comes after getting sober will blow your mind.
So if you are exploring your relationship to alcohol and a moment, day, week or month has passed and you haven’t let alcohol slip past your lips — you are doing it. The early days of sobriety are some of the hardest. Every single moment you choose to stay with yourself, enduring the fullness of life, is a big fucking deal. Each moment of sobriety that you accumulate is a precious moment in a series of moments where you are no longer the person you were and not yet the person you are going to become. Because most of our lives we spend in process, transitioning from one place to the next, and sometimes it takes years, so don’t lose sight of where you are heading and never forget why you are going, even if you get turned around for a bit. You are worth it and you are not alone.
Thank you for reading the Enough newsletter. If you enjoy these posts, please feel free to subscribe. And if you have already chosen to become a subscriber, I really appreciate your support.