Twelve
I go through this every year as June 23 approaches …
Do I talk about it?
Brag about it?
Honor it?
Forget about it?
Twelve years ago on this day I made the very excellent decision to stop drinking alcoholic beverages.
I also don’t do any drugs, but that’s pretty much been the story of my whole life, with the exception of teenage experimentation and discovery that I didn’t like being on any kind of substance that left me feeling out of control.
Not that I’m that much of a control freak. I just like life as it is, which is so weird already that no drugs seem necessary.
Which maybe misses the point of drugs and alcohol: to get away from life, which was precisely what I was trying to do when I was drinking so much a little over a decade ago.
The circumstances of the time have been well documented. By me. I’ve written about this over and over, year after year. Always the response is strong; we all know that very few people are drinking to enhance their meal or their life.
I don’t think there is anything new I can say, this is just my life now. Things have changed a lot in twelve years: the market is loaded with tasty, fancy non-alcoholic drinks. I mean, it always has been: root beer; ginger bear; lemonade, sweet iced tea, etc. But some folks saw an untapped market and now we have all kinds of things that can make us non-drinkers feel more like we’re not outsiders.
I do have mixed feelings about that, the idea of trying to include the sober folks in on the drinking experience by putting a drink in their hands that looks like an alcoholic beverage. I wish it were the other way around and maybe someday it will be, but probably not any time soon. Adults cling to their booze the same way babies refuse to give up the bottle. God, we had to have a whole ritual when Coco was little and would only drink her “mulkie.” Milk in a sippy cup, all day, every day. Right before our summer trip to Martha’s Vineyard we all stood around the trash bin with her and applauded as she tossed the sippy cup in.
Looking back now, it probably wasn’t necessary and there are probably one or two traumas lurking in her around that situation. I think we just wanted her to eat some actual food for a change, which worked. She’s always been a healthy kid, great eater, solid in her skin. But maybe there was a gentler way to accomplish that, who knows?
There was no gentle way to accomplish giving up booze. It was full-stop and never look back. And it is hard, hard, hard to do this and to keep doing it.
I was motivated by the love of a man I adored and respected, a person who had been sober a long time. After another stupid bender in which I acted like a colossal jerk, I stopped drinking.
AA was not for me. The rooms where meetings were held, usually church basements, were oppressive; the secret society feeling was weird and the whole we don’t talk about this outside of here was stupid. It added to the sense of shame that already surrounds drinking. The whole my name is {x} and I’m an alcoholic business struck me as very ball and chain. If I haven’t had a drink in twelve years then I’m no longer an alcoholic, I’m free, healthy and clear. It didn’t feel like a positive approach to sobriety, this AA ritual, it felt like more self-punishment.
So I stopped and I stayed stopped, even though the world cleverly tries a million different ways to get you to start drinking again … join the party! You’re missing all the fun!
Which, no, I’ve seen booze turn regular people into morons and assholes. Make people mean and dumb. Cause illness and disease and trauma and accidents. Make people aggressive and abusive. Kill people in car wrecks.
It wasn’t fun when I was drinking and it definitely doesn’t seem fun from the outside looking in.
Today I really just want to say a huge thank you to the people who have partnered with me on this walk. You know who you are, the ones who sidled up next to me and loved and supported me when I was floundering. The ones who have stayed the course with me, encouraged me when I was losing strength and, most especially, the ones who chose sobriety with me, if only temporarily, in order to make life sweeter and less complicated. Thank you. I love you more than words could ever convey. You all helped make life better, which, in turn, has made me a better person, and that, after all, is the goal, isn’t it?
xomo