My Long, Slow Slide into Sobriety
Reflections on emerging from purgatory.
A remember a year ago walking past a neighbor’s house and seeing a small sign hanging near the walkway. It depicted five wine glasses of various sizes, all about half-full. The text read: “GROUP THERAPY IS NOW IN SESSION.”
These folks, I thought at the time, are my kind of people.
I don’t think that anymore.
But it took me a while to there.
Angry Meetings on Three Hours Sleep
I knew something had to change. But, try as I might, I couldn’t muster up the will to change it.
I struggled with my drinking in the mid-2000s. A combination of work stress and a hectic home life put me in a bad state. Alcohol became my refuge. I trashed my marriage and estranged myself from my kids.
I eventually got sober. Somehow. And I stayed that way for several years.
Flash forward to 2014. After years of financial instability, I scored a great job with a large tech company. For a poor kid from the sticks of upstate New York, the money was insane. It helped me pay off debt and pave the road to financial stability.
So naturally, since life was going so well, I decided: Hey, I should start drinking again.
I mean, why not? Isn’t the whole point of working so that you can enjoy the finer things in life? And what’s finer than a nice wine, premium Japanese sake, and cocktails made with top-shelf liquor?
And so I drank. A lot. Several times a week. For years.
I tried either to quit or reduce my consumption a few times. Then the pandemic hit and it just got worse. My heaving drinking days increased from one to two per week to three or four. (I’m not alone here: both casual and heavy drinking have risen during the pandemic as we’ve all grappled with the onset of despair.)
It took a heavy toll.
I would often stay up drinking until 3 am only to get up three hours later. My work performance suffered. I got angry at the drop of a hat — at colleagues, at family, at delivery people who brought the wrong type of taco. I got into nasty fights on Twitter — often with people who deserved it, but also, once too often, with those who didn’t. I made bad financial decisions while wasted; my bank account bled red.
Physically, I was a mess. My stomach was constantly in knots and I occasionally felt a dull pain near my liver. I learned these were all early warning signs of liver cirrhosis. Occasionally, I felt a mysterious pain in my chest about which I thought it best not to ask too many questions.
The more I Googled my physical symptoms, the harder it became to deny that I was drinking myself to death.
I knew something had to change.
But inertia is also a powerful drug. Try as I might, I couldn’t muster the will to change it.
“I’m Gonna Ruin This Relationship”
My tale of finding sobriety isn’t very dramatic. There’s no bottom — no tragic bender that ends with me waking up naked on the outskirts of Vegas next to a dead deer.
I feel like I simply ran out of excuses to drink. And found one very good reason not to.
About five months ago, I started a new relationship. We fell in love with one another almost instantly. From my end, it was a no-brainer. She’s the most beautiful, loving, compassionate, and supportive person I’ve ever met. And, somehow, she saw through my eight-Manhattan-a-day drinking habit and found a person worth loving underneath. I felt like I’d won some sort of cosmic lottery.
That’s when it started to dawn on me:
You’ve been treating the people in your life shabbily. Your relationships are deteriorating. And you’re gonna ruin this one, too, if you keep drinking.
That realization sobered me up. At least, figuratively. I still wasn’t to quit. Quitting seemed so…extreme.
What I need, I told myself, is to recalibrate my relationship to alcohol.
I was about five weeks out from my birthday, so I decided to set that as my goal post. I would dry out for 40 days or so and reset my body and mind.
I didn’t go to Alcoholic Anonymous or a similar program. I’d been down that road before and it wasn’t for me. Besides, I wasn’t really quitting, remember?
Instead, I focused on my work and on physical fitness — particularly on strength training — to fill the void left by the absence of booze. I also told my girlfriend, family, and friends about my plans and asked for their support, which they all gave enthusiastically.
Five weeks, I told myself. That’s all I need. Then, as a reward, I’d go on a massive birthday bender. Once that was done, I could settle into a sensible schedule of only getting completely blitzed twice a month or so.
You know, like any rational adult.
Emerging from Purgatory
But then something strange happened.
I got better.
Not gonna lie — the first week was rough. I was constantly on edge. I felt like exploding at people for breathing too loudly.
But the week passed. And at the end of it, I felt…lighter. Still foggy, irritable, agitated. But better.
A second week passed. And a third. With each week, a little bit more of the fog lifted. Instead of sulking into my phone while shoveling food mindlessly into my mouth at the dinner table, I was laughing and joking again with my family. I felt like I was speaking more coherently at business meetings. My concentration was better. I slept for six to eight hours a night and woke up feeling rested and energetic.
After 30 days sober, I’d lost 20 pounds and found myself. I no longer loathed the person I saw in the mirror. After years of shambling aimlessly around in the darkness, I felt like I’d crawled out of the maw of purgatory and emerged into the sunlight.
And I could never imagine returning to the darkness.
So I told everyone I loved that I was making my 40-day experiment permanent.
Instead of a drunken bender, I celebrated my birthday with dinner at my favorite steakhouse. I even treated myself to a bottle of their finest vintage mineral water.
Sobriety is Deliciously Boring
People say sobriety is a choice you make every day. I guess there are days where I feel that’s true. I do occasionally wake up from a dream where I’ve “innocently” taken a few sips of alcohol to find myself in a cold sweat. On the occasional Friday night, I’ve had to remind myself that, no, we no longer “celebrate” the start of the weekend by uncorking a new bottle of…
You know what? I can’t even remember the name of my favorite whiskeys anymore. And it’s probably better I don’t try. Suffice it to say that, at such moments, it just takes a little playing the tape forward to remind me why I’m not indulging today.
But, for the most part, sobriety is boring. Deliciously so. I work. I spend time with my loved ones. I indulge my hobbies. I sleep well. On most days, “not drinking” doesn’t feel like a decision. It’s just a fact of life.
A few days ago, I walked my dog past the house I mentioned at the top of this post. The “GROUP THERAPY” sign was gone.
I wonder what the story is there.
I hope it was a fast slide with a happy ending.
