Navigating Curveballs: A Tale of Sobriety, Family Cancer Diagnosis, and Healing

Navigating Life’s Curveballs: A Foray into Sobriety, Resilience in Family Cancer Crisis, and Unintended Healing

From Binge Drinking to Sober Curious

I first drank the summer before college at 18, and that turned into going out and drinking anywhere from 1–4 times a week for my time. I had equated it with having fun. After graduating, I kept it up for a couple of years as I traveled the world, with Aperol spritz in Italy and Palm wine in Ghana, and while working, and Sangria at happy hours (the more I think about it, the more I realize that the moniker is antiquated and sends the wrong message) during the week, and bars and bottomless brunches on the weekend. I had acne growing up, so after a few years of post-grad, I decided to start on Accutane to finally resolve my acne problem, whose contraindication is alcohol.

Never in a million years, did I see myself abstaining from alcohol after the medicine was completed, so I viewed this as a short respite. I took the medicine for 6 months, and just as I was finishing it the pandemic hit. Shocked by the global trauma, I didn’t drink in lockdown after getting habituated to abstaining from alcohol for my medicine, still thinking that as soon as lockdown ended I would return to my ways.

However to my surprise, during lockdown, this new feeling rose within me of peace and stillness without the drunken stupor, twilight running to the bathroom to throw up, and waking up and moving my neck to see how hungover I was. The whole apparatus of it started to come into question for me. Don’t get me wrong, I get the appeal; it’s a vibe to be uninhibited and free, but I had to ask myself if there was another way to achieve this without the cost it was invariably taking on my mind, body, and soul, after having a moment to take stock of the benefit of the respite. I started by seeing if I could find another way to feel free and uninhibited without sacrificing my mind, body, and soul.

Embracing Sobriety: The Power of Self-Reflection

I thought about the ancient wisdom I could incorporate into my life, and started by aligning my life roughly with the circadian rhythms. I started by getting up at the same time every day (7 am). And slowly, as I acclimated to that, I added journaling before my morning cup of joe. Then, as I felt more free from negativity from journaling, I felt my body wanting some love from me, so I added a morning run and stretching. I started to feel more alive and aligned with my body and soul. By the time I got used to all of this, the lockdown ended, and I had an important question to ask myself: was I going to abstain and use the newfound freedom to continue the dry run of sobriety, or was I going to fall back into old patterns and imbibe? This was less a question of judgment, and more a question of how committed I was to this lifestyle change and why, both questions I didn’t have answers for yet.

That’s where therapy came in: I talked to my therapist about it, asking myself why I wanted to drink and why I didn’t. For me, it came down to wanting a break from alcohol because I felt like I wanted to see who I was outside of it. So I decided that I would try to go 1 year of intentional sobriety, not due to a contraindication. To me, this felt like a way to experience and understand if my “why” was up to snuff, or if I still felt like I needed to drink to feel free and uninhibited. I kept with my routines and started seeing friends at the pre-games and bars, and ordered my virgin kombucha, non-alcoholic beer, or just a Coca-Cola if all else failed. Initially, I felt like I was missing out when everyone would get hyped and be more free, telling everyone they met how much they loved them, and I would awkwardly say hello and go back to my friends. But over time, an interesting thing happened: I started to feel comfortable in my skin and felt like I could connect with my inebriated friends without needing a drink. Over time, it even got to the point where I felt comfortable going up to new people and connecting.

Sometimes in life, we need time to acclimate to something new, and how we initially feel about this change is not indicative of how we feel over time. If I had not taken the time to feel uncomfortable, I may very well have returned to my old ways, which is fine — no judgment or self-punishment — but I would have missed out on this insight about myself and life at large, which goes so beyond drinking, and which I am so grateful to have today.

Resilience in the Face of Family Cancer Diagnosis

Sometimes in life, when things are going great, the world will test you and your resolve, and as it happens, this was just about to happen to me. I was doing great with my routine and my newfound learnings about myself, then one day I found out a member of my family was diagnosed with cancer.

It felt like a sucker punch in the stomach, and the first thing I wanted to do was take a swig of the nearest bottle of alcohol. I seriously contemplated it, but in the end, after hearing the voice of my diagnosed family member when I spoke to them about it, I knew I couldn’t. I had to be strong for her and help her process her feelings and to do that properly and help create the most strategic and aggressive treatment plan, I had to be on top of my game. I instead worked doggedly on a game plan with her. We scheduled appointments and got second opinions at the best hospitals in the area with the best practitioners, and got her started on treatment. We looked at clinical trials and found a way to get her into a relevant one. I focused on her emotional state and did what I could to help her process her emotions and stay the course we chartered. I remained in awe at how strong she was throughout the process. In the throes of the logistics for the treatment, I threw my routines to the wayside focused on what needed to be done, as anyone would, feeling the sucker punch hardening into a pit in my stomach.

Over time, it started to trend positive; the treatment was working. I have not felt a greater relief in my life, and the hardened pit in my stomach felt some relief. After making sure everything was set logistically and that, god-willing, it was just a function of time, I started to face the emotional reality of what had happened. Sometimes in life, when we have to be strong for others, we find strength we didn’t know we had. In any other circumstance, I would have freaked out and not been able to regulate my emotions enough to be of service and be caught in a sea of my emotional triggers and subsequent coping mechanisms: drinking, socializing, binge-watching, eating, and more. But when your back is against the wall, you have no other choice but to do what needs to be done. I started to let myself process what had just happened in my private time. I cried in the shower, binged lots of mind-numbing TV, and ate tons of junk food, namely Sour Patch Kids and Hot Cheetos Con Limon.

Healing: Bouncing Back from Life’s Curveballs

One day, months later, I built up the courage to journal about it, and after a few entries of struggling to scratch the surface of my pain, something within me wanted to open the floodgates of feelings, and so I did and embarked on the journey of healing. Sometimes we need to cope, whether it’s drinking, binge eating, consuming mind-numbing media, or throwing away the tools that help us, and that’s okay and completely human. It is adaptive and human to avoid ourselves, sometimes it’s just too much. To me, it is an important first step in healing. All that matters in the end is that somehow, someway, we find the courage to try to heal in whatever way we can, with the tools we have at the time. It doesn’t matter if we are successful or not; maybe it’s not our time, and that’s okay, but it is in trying in whatever way we can, we ease our burden and invite growth into our lives. If not for ourselves, for our loved ones we must try. How could I show up for myself and others moving forward if I didn’t at least try to heal, even if to no avail?

In the end, she went into complete remission and is now working and living her life normally again, thanks to the powers that be. After taking some time to stabilize emotionally, I found myself able to reflect again. I realized what I had experienced had nothing to do with drinking and everything to do with life. It was one of those experiences where you can only understand its impact and implications in hindsight.

I ultimately started my routines back up slowly and decided, for my own soul, mind, and body, that for as long as I have drank, I plan to not drink before reassessing my long-term relationship with alcohol. What started as a contraindication for medicine turned into a whirlwind of curveballs and life lessons. For now, drinking isn’t a part of my life, but even if I go back to drinking after this period of abstaining, I know I will have a completely different relationship with it. All that I can say for certain is that the next time life invariably throws me a curveball, I trust I will give myself more grace initially and have faith that over time I will find my way back to healing, however I can.

Note: Out of respect for my family member, I have substituted some of the details and kept that part to a minimum. I have also reviewed this with them to make sure they were comfortable with the story.