(Note: If you can’t get enough sobriety talk, check out episode one of Season 3, all about feminism and sobriety!)
I’ve put off writing this post for a long time. There are a lot of reasons for my procrastination, one being I’m a champion procrastinator. I’d hate to start behaving too responsibly and risk disappointing myself or my fans. The other reasons are far less quippy. The reasons I’m not racing to tell this story are bound up in the story itself. But it’s time they were aired, along with the rest of it: Why I no longer drink and how I stopped.
I started drinking like many other American teenagers: In my friend’s parents’ basement. (My parents patrolled their own basement far too closely for me to get away with any deviant behavior in my own home.) I don’t remember what year of high school it was, but I wasn’t scandalously young, nor did anything scandalous happen to me. I do remember that we drank Lynchburg lemonades and I was horribly hungover the next day. I don’t know if my parents knew or not, but I always suspected they did because they made me paint the gutters when I got home, almost causing me to vomit in the bushes from my perch atop a rickety ladder. (Perhaps they’ll read this and answer that question after all these years.)
This was the 90s, and I had aspirations of being an artsy grungy sort of girl who didn’t GAF. The problem was, I ran in the wrong circles to achieve this status with any level of authenticity. My parents were university professors and my friends were all nerds. The artsy grungy kids had formed their alliances and begun cultivating their grunginess in middle school; they were light years ahead of me in coolness. I knew I’d never catch up, but I always felt I had it in me to be a girl other people looked at with a mixture of judgment and admiration, fear and awe, the way I looked at the art kids at my school. I wasn’t 100 percent sure how to get there, but I was pretty sure drinking had a lot to do with it.
When I went to college, I really committed. I achieved my dream of being one of the cool kids (whatever that meant at a tiny school in the middle of Iowa also attended exclusively by nerds), and the cool kids got shitfaced and smoked a ton of weed. All the time. Nothing seemed unusual about that. Everyone got shitfaced and smoked, even at my private liberal arts school. We also studied. The college I went to was very rigorous, so if you didn’t study, you quickly paid the price (as was evidenced by my grades the first semester of my sophomore year).
College was definitely a time when I drank a lot, but I don’t think of it as a key to my story in terms of my difficulties with alcohol. I didn’t perceive myself to have any such difficulties. I loved college (yes, even the learning part). I spent four years in a relatively safe little cocoon. Nothing dangerous or traumatic happened to me. My drinking was (or at least seemed) completely normal within the context of where, when, and with whom it was happening. What was not normal, and came back to haunt me later, was the sense of invincibility this granted me. I developed a strong attachment to my identity as someone who could drink—as a woman who could drink. And who would drink, at any opportunity. Because I was one of the cool kids.
After college, I figured I would just transplant my party girl identity into a new place and continue on as I had been. This turned out to be easier imagined than done. The post-graduation years were, for me (like for many other privileged young people out on their own for the first time), a rude awakening. I overdrew my bank account constantly. I couldn’t afford a car, and my crappy bikes kept getting stolen. I moved to Oregon and sunk into a depression as I watched the rain fall day after day from my shitty receptionist job (at least I sat in the front where I could look out the window). That fall when Princess Diana died, I was crushed, although I could not articulate why.
Looking back, this was when I stopped smoking pot and started drinking more. I lost my taste for marijuana; I felt annoyed and mildly disgusted by the obsession with pot that existed around me in Eugene. Any time my friends and I went out, they spent at least 30 minutes getting high before we could leave; sometimes we wouldn’t make it out the door at all. I was starting to feel like everyone around me spent so much time and energy finding, buying, and smoking weed that their own lives were becoming stagnant. I didn’t want to be a receptionist forever. I wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. But it was becoming clear that if I wanted my life to move forward, I was going to have to take those steps on my own.
Over the next few years, I transitioned into social work and took on a series of increasingly demanding and high-stakes jobs. I began socializing almost exclusively with my colleagues. This strained my already-strained relationship with my boyfriend at the time. What I perceived as his indifference to me drove me out of the house. I drank after work almost every day, again in the company of other regular drinkers; our vodka sodas were poured as soon as we darkened the door of our favorite bar. We were all stressed out by being young professionals thrust into emotionally draining jobs. George W. Bush got elected (twice) during this time, and 9/11 happened. The world seemed like an increasingly terrible place. Eugene was dark, my boyfriend never wanted to hang out with me, and my job was grinding away at my soul for $32,000 a year. Fuck it. Let’s drink.
Eventually, I went to grad school, left my boyfriend, made new friends (including joining a weekly knitting group that still meets!), got a new boyfriend who was much nicer to me, and Obama got elected. I also helped start a roller derby league. Things were looking up. Let’s drink!
It seemed that no matter where I went, I found the drinkers and they found me. It was as if we all excreted the same pheromone. Roller derby, in particular, made it easy to “skate hard and party harder.” But it was during my grad school years that I also met people who enjoyed “a good microbrew” or “a nice glass of wine” (singular? eye-roll!) but who were definitely not getting kicked out of bars or closing down afterparties. They liked me, but they were also amused—and confused—by me. I began to see myself reflected in their eyes. It was the first time I started to realize that my drinking was in any way remarkable (other than remarkably awesome, as evaluated by me).
This was also a period when I had a few blackouts. This did not happen frequently, but when it happened, it was far from awesome and I definitely heard about it the next day. The aggression, the refusal to cooperate when it came time to leave or get in a cab, the realization I had called or texted people spewing bullshit, posted embarrassing nonsense on social media, or—worst of all—driven.
It was after a particularly nasty blackout when I woke up with no idea how I’d gotten home only to discover that I had (unbeknownst to me) called and berated my boyfriend the night before for absolutely no reason (he wasn’t even in town) that I sought professional help for the first (and only) time. I made an appointment at a local treatment facility and asked to be evaluated. I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I was going to get help and I was going to get out of this spiral. I would get a counselor, go to meetings, do whatever it took. I was going to be myself again.
That’s not what happened, though, because the woman who did my evaluation informed me that I needed to check myself into residential treatment. I stared at her, dumbfounded. Residential? Like an alcoholic? No fucking way. I had a thesis to write, three part-time jobs, and a roller derby team to co-captain. I was just supposed to scrap my whole life because I needed help learning how to control my drinking?
When I told the intake counselor I was not in a position to seek residential treatment, she basically said there was nothing else she could do for me. Based on how I had answered her questions about my drinking habits (honestly…for the first time ever in a professional’s office), it was her opinion that I was “headed for real trouble” if I didn’t get in-patient treatment; going to a 6-week course of meetings wasn’t going to cut it. I left her office determined to prove her wrong. If she wouldn’t help me, I would do it on my own.
And I did—for a while. On my own, I succeeded in staying sober for about three months. I finished my thesis, got a full-time job, and graduated with two master’s degrees. The holidays happened. I had some mulled wine at a party and marveled at my ability to drink moderately. Then my birthday happened. A few glasses of wine with friends—so adult!
You can probably guess where the story goes from here. People who drink like I drank don’t suddenly become good at moderation overnight or in three months—or ever, in most cases. Within six months I had ramped it all the way back up. My boyfriend and I broke up and my roller derby career was waning. I decided the answer to my problems was to move to Portland. Eugene was dragging me down. I knew tons of people in Portland, and it was becoming the hippest city in the country. My work had just opened an office there. Clearly, it was where I belonged.
I loved living in Portland, but in many ways, that city is where I hit rock bottom. Despite the fact that I did know tons of people there, most of them were married with children or practically married or had friend groups that were impenetrable to me. I was incredibly lonely and, on top of that, I lived in a building at the epicenter of an entertainment district; there were literally 17 bars (I counted) within a two-block radius of my unaffordable apartment.
I was also traveling constantly for my job, which was becoming increasingly stressful and toxic. I spent many nights alone in hotel rooms around the country, drinking overpriced room-service pinot grigio and chatting online with a totally unattainable guy who lived in another country. I did have a boyfriend for about six months while I lived in Portland, but it was crystal clear to me that I could never be myself around him. He was a two-glass-tops kind of guy while I saw no point in ordering wine by the glass at all. At first, his goodness appealed to me; maybe he would be the reason I finally chilled out on the booze. But, ultimately, I knew it would never work between us. He was only interested in a version of me that didn’t exist and, if I’m being honest, I was only interested in being with someone who wasn’t going to limit my drinking (explicitly or implicitly).
After a couple of years in Portland, I decided I had had enough of being broke, hating my job, and getting nowhere in creating the fabulous, fulfilling social life I had envisioned for myself when I moved there. I still miss Portland terribly and feel wistful every time I go back there (I am there now, in fact!). But leaving was probably the best decision I ever made.
I left Portland feeling hopeful. I took several months off, lived with my sister, took care of my baby niece, did yoga every day, and traveled to India and South Korea. I still drank some, but I wasn’t out of control. I dated. I read. I hung out with my wonderful sisters. Six months later, I moved to Montgomery, Alabama.
Moving to Montgomery felt like Portland all over again, except without the awesome, artsy metropolitan city full of fun places to hang out and people to date. I was immediately lonely again—although the drinkers were there. I knew who they were, and I found myself pulled into their orbit for a time. But I had made the decision to move to the South for my career, and I knew that getting shitfaced all the time was not going to work out well for me in a small, gossipy town. I pulled back, still drinking, but mostly at home.
Then, I started dating a man I met at work. Suddenly the things that felt jagged and stressful about my life, and sad and unappealing about myself, just went away. He absorbed them, seemingly effortlessly. I couldn’t get enough of him. He liked to drink, too. We would stay up late, drinking and playing music for each other and talking about how in love we were. It was magical.
A few months after we started dating, we went to a concert in Birmingham. We prefunked at our Air BnB, then at a local bar, then moved on to the venue. I made friends with one of the bartenders; she started pouring me doubles. The next thing I remember, I woke up back at the Air BnB. My date was in the shower. When he emerged, he wouldn’t look at me.
The realization that I had clearly said or done something awful to the kindest most loving person I had ever met was one of the worst moments of my life. The story isn’t really worth telling, but the short version is I became a megabitch for no reason a la my old blackout days. I wept and begged him for forgiveness, which he immediately gave.
From that moment on, I was careful. I knew I was way too old for this shit and that I had been dangerously close to fucking things up with the person I had already decided I wanted to marry. The writing was on the wall, and I knew it. It just seemed so unfair. When my sweet, wonderful boyfriend drank, he just got happier, funnier, and more lovable. What the fuck was wrong with me?
Over the next few years, I continued to drink. There were a few questionable incidents but, for the most part, I kept it together. Fear of losing my boyfriend (who eventually became my husband) really flipped a switch in me. He looked out for me and found ways to steer me home when it looked like I was headed off a cliff. I wasn’t always happy about it, but I kept it—and us—together.
Other things changed, too. I found I could no longer tolerate being hungover. Drinking was affecting my sleep and my anxiety levels. It felt increasingly pointless, and I did cut down, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I started to feel desperate. I didn’t drink every day and I wasn’t physically addicted, so why couldn’t I just stop when my relationship with alcohol had clearly run its course? The fact that I kept trying and failing (and looking back at years of trying and failing) made me feel pathetic.
It is important to acknowledge that part of what held me back from really committing was my own hang-up about how I would explain to other people why I wasn’t drinking. I realize this sounds ridiculous coming from a woman in her 40s, but the fact was (is) that almost all my friends drank, and they all knew me as a drinker. It would be extremely obvious if I just stopped, and the thought that I would have to tell people and be perceived as someone with a drinking problem was intolerable to me.
It is also worth noting that I am someone who has always held intense jobs, worked very hard, and identified as an achiever. I do think drinking held me back to a degree (that’s another blog post), but I certainly never lost a job or got in trouble for not performing due to my alcohol use. I never got a DUI or ended up in the emergency room or experienced any kind of terrible consequence while I was drunk—the kind that might force a person to stop or their loved ones to intervene. (I’m very clear about the fact that my “luck” was due, in part, to the many unearned privileges I carry around becuase I was truly shitty in public many times.) My friendships are strong, I am close with my family, and my life was full. In other words, my rock bottom was not particularly low, but it felt low to me because I knew I was capable of more if I could just get out of this cycle of feeling like shit all the time and, and top of that, feeling even more like shit because I was doing it to myself.
As I’m writing, I realize I am going to have to write more blog posts about the sub-stories contained within this story (and about what came after) because I am hardly doing it justice. But for the sake of getting this post DONE rather than making it PERFECT, here is what happened and how I finally stopped the cycle.
First of all, I began a morning practice that was completely unrelated to drinking or any conscious effort to stop drinking. It is called the Miracle Morning; I heard about it on Instagram, and it is the branded brainchild of a guy named Hal Elrod who is a cis white man and pretty much the epitome of an Internet-based self-help used-car-salesman kind of guy (actually, he began his career as a door-to-door knife salesman—no lie). Anyway, no shade to Hal because he indirectly saved my ass, here, and he does have a very compelling personal story.
The basic premise of the Miracle Morning (I always called it the Morning Miracle) was that by getting up early and being really intentional about how you start your day, you can increase your happiness and productivity. I found this to be true. The practices themselves are nothing revolutionary (meditate or pray, say some affirmations, visualize your future, exercise, read something inspirational or educational, and write something), but doing them in combination and getting really disciplined about the process totally hooked me. I have never been someone who was good at following through on things, finishing challenges, or committing to daily anything, but I got really into the Miracle Morning and I found myself wanting to get up and do it. It quickly became something I looked forward to and enjoyed. Clearly, I needed it. (It also kept me from drinking as much because I had to get up!)
The second component that, I think, led to my ultimate decision to quit was that, for the reading element of the Miracle Morning, I read exclusively quit lit books. If you are not familiar with quit lit, it is a whole genre of books written by people (the ones I read were mostly by women) who had quit drinking and had a story to tell. (I will list some of my favorites in another post, and there are some listed in the show notes for Season 3, Episode 1 ).
It turns out if you commit to reading every single day, you get through a LOT of books. I took three main messages away from my massive quit lit-only reading list: 1) Alcohol is toxic bullshit, and our society is in collective denial about how much we drink and what it is really doing to our bodies and our lives. 2) Choosing not to drink doesn’t mean you are weak; it means you are strong—so strong that you’re making a choice that goes against what literally everyone around you is doing. 3) Alcohol dampens our greatness; without it, we are free to become the best versions of ourselves because we will actually have to deal with our lives and our emotions and each other. (Author Annie Grace calls this having a “naked mind,” an image/idea I have come to embrace.)
And, then numbers three and four happened—and it is worth emphasizing that they happened in quick succession within the context of this new era of regular meditation, journaling, getting stronger physically and mentally, indoctrinating myself with anti-alcohol messages, etc.
Three, I started Feminist Hotdog. I won’t go into the origin story, but you can read about it here. Again, I am not someone who usually acts on my creative impulses or follows through on things. But this was different. This was mine, it came out of my brain, it fulfilled something in me, and I was very committed to making it happen.
Four, I went to a concert to see a band I used to listen to all the time back in my heavy partying day (Ween, if you’re interested). I got hammered and I blacked out. Nothing bad happened, but it took me days to recover from that night (remember, I was hardly drinking at all at this point), days during which my heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I felt like I was on the verge of having a panic attack at any moment. It was terrible. My body had sent me SOS signals for years, but this felt more like my heart and soul were literally pounding the message into me: PLEASE STOP, PLEASE STOP.
That was October 2018, the month I began my recovery. That was not the last time I drank, but unlike the times I had tried to quit in the past and fell off the wagon, the slips I experienced in the subsequent months were just that: slips. They weren’t failures, and they didn’t mean anything about me except that I am human and old habits die hard and that I needed to read some more quit lit. My resolve remained—and remains—in tact.
I have a LOT to say about what life in the last year and a half has been like, but I will save that for another post. The short answer is: It has been awesome, more awesome than I ever could have imagined. And I don’t mean that in a “pink cloud,” Pollyanna way that newly sober people often describe because they are so relieved to be free of their addiction. These last 15 months have also been, at times, terrifying, annoying, and depressing, and I haven’t always handled any of that well. But I am here to tell you that living in the world 100 percent as myself all the time—with no head change, no blanket of brain fog, nothing mediating my experience—is exhilarating.
It is also affirming that life can still be fun. I can meet new people. I can dance at weddings. I can go to concerts and have a blast (and not spend hours in line at the bar or waiting for the bathroom!). And I can wake up the next day and feel great and never ever ever have to worry about what I said or what I may be forgetting. If you’ve ever lain in bed with waves of hangover shame washing over you, you know this is worth some money.
I have a lot of hesitation about putting this story out into the world, but I read something this morning that galvanized my belief that it is time to do it. I am done feeling any kind of shame about this, and who I am now is someone who is safe enough to be honest about the times when she wasn’t good at keeping herself safe.
Here is what I read:
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. … When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. --Clarissa Pinkola Estes
That’s me—a great ship (LOL). But, seriously, isn’t that great? Don’t you want to go unfurl your sail? I do!
There’s so much more to say—especially about how this all relates to feminism, why I am not in AA, etc.—but I will stop there for now. I hope you enjoy the new episode. Please send me a message if any of this resonates with you. I would love to connect. I love you.
