On Wednesday, Dec 7, 2022 I turned ten years sober. I have been looking forward to that ten year mark since late summer. Waiting for it to arrive, looking back at what was happening for me in fall 2012. Y’all, this unexpected combination of love and tenderness for myself showed up while I was waiting- I could see how much I was suffering then, and I have enough distance from that time to look at it from the outside, even though it’s part of me.
Back then, I watched episode after episode of Intervention, checking to see how I compared to the people on that show. “Am I that bad?” I would think. “I don’t think I’m that bad.” In a weird way it would make me feel better about my drinking, because things could be so much worse. I wasn’t in jail, or losing my job, or in and out of rehab, wrecking my car or abusing my children in alcohol fueled rages. I was just sitting on the back porch determinedly drinking myself to a slow death. I was dying on the inside, not the outside.
It’s been ten years. Ten years since I drank at things that went wrong- like my marriage ending or two different cancer scares. Ten years of not drinking in celebration for birthdays, weddings, and vacations. Ten years since I picked up a drink and felt the rushing relief of the alcohol as it entered my bloodstream, ten years since I bought extra alcohol as insurance, that 12 pack of beer just in case. I can still feel the way it felt to get back home from an unnecessary trip to the grocery store: the kids safely in front of the TV, cigarettes in my pocket, giant glass of sauvignon blanc in my hand, the whoosh of the glass porch door, down the deck steps and I was safe. The relief of that moment is so real, it was like I could finally be my whole self. In that moment the walls came down, and I was exposed. And then I went about the work of getting drunk, filling in the dirt, covering over myself again.
For me, the most surprising thing about long term sobriety has been how the behaviors still show up after the alcohol is gone. It was enough for the first few years to simply not be drinking. Not drinking was a buoyant triumph. I stopped thinking about booze all the time. It stopped feeling like an old dysfunctional lover, calling to me when I wanted to escape struggle. It got quiet, and stayed quiet. The thing that I didn’t know how to do was what came after that.
It’s the what’s next? that I struggled with for several years- riding the line of my success at staying sober, staying right there at the surface, my quitting a touchstone that proved I was a good and healing person. Wasn’t it enough? I was in therapy, I dedicated myself to self help, I had quit drinking. I was sober. Nothing more to do I guess. I didn’t go to AA meetings or anything like that because I was building my new identity, and didn’t want to be reminded of the old one.
That kept me stuck for a long time, my success at quitting drinking a thin badge of honor that helped me pat myself on the back and avoid the rest of myself- until I heard Elizabeth Gilbert use the term “emotional sobriety” in an Onbeing podcast with Pico Iyer. “Oh”, I remember thinking. “Ohhhhhhhhh wow.” The thing I was having a hard time understanding was that sobriety wasn’t just quitting drinking, and then not drinking, the end. It was quitting drinking, not drinking, and then not drinking becoming something more and more alive, and always evolving. I had been living a half life.
Sobriety is much more than not drinking. It’s a set of behaviors and accountabilities that keep me in recovery- in a truthful relationship with myself and the rest of the world. It cushions me. Cares for me, guides me. For a long time I felt like I had to defend and protect my sobriety, but also avoid it, and also like it was armor protecting me from the world. It’s wild to see it as much more free than that- as a mentor, a best friend. Long term sobriety gives me the leeway to play around with that.
The past ten years have been simple and complex. Simple because my one basic rule is: drinking is never an option. The complexity comes in when I try to understand myself and my behaviors- how I can still behave like the me that drinks, but without the drinking. It was really tough for me to reconcile- that I was making choices and acting how I acted when I drank, but I was sober. Some choices that seemed wise, and real, heartfelt and genuine, some close relationships that seemed healthy and good slowly began to reveal themselves as an old way of choosing and connecting that were dependent on me being the old me- holding me back from growing and changing.
Until I could see myself differently, I couldn’t do things differently. Long term sobriety for me is about telling the truth, when I want to run from it, and looking at my excuses. One of the hardest things was seeing how I chose situations and relationships that kept me in places that made me feel generous, loving and helpful, but weren’t generous, loving and helpful for me. Seeing, believing, and behaving in ways that show I matter has been some of the hardest work I’ve done. Holding myself up as a person who is deserving of respect, recognition, and care still feels unnatural sometimes. I have standards y’all! This makes me giggle with delight every time I say it. Who knew I would grow up and have standards?!?
Another huge lesson is something that just came to me in a therapy session on my ten year sober anniversary. I mentioned above that I didn’t get sober with AA (or rehab). I put together my own sobriety by blogging, writing to a pen pal, and a deep desire to stay in good, close relationships with my children (then 4 and 7) forever. I had community online for the first few years, and I had a sober friend for a minute, and I was part of a women’s sobriety group for a minute, but I haven’t had close sober friends or felt a substantial presence in a recovery community in many years.
At the beginning, I didn’t want to go to AA because I adamantly stood with my idea that I didn’t need to stand in a room and declare myself an alcoholic. That wasn’t who I was anymore! I was trying to grow and solidify my identity as a sober person, not steep myself in the stories of the past. I think it also helped me not feel like I’d failed, like if I didn’t have to go to meetings I was already well enough. Like I was safe or not as attached to alcohol as people at meetings. Ugh.
It was a huge moment for me to recognize (at ten years in!) that going to meetings is not an accusation, or a way to shove my nose in shame. I realized that going to meetings could be about building community, helping others, and keeping my past with me- not as something bad, but as something real and true. It helped me to see how I have been open about my sobriety but also hidden it away in many ways. I have been working so hard to invite these two parts of me to integrate, to come together- and I have also been the one working so hard at keeping them apart. Recognizing what I did about going to meetings means I can suddenly see those parts of me together. That they can intra-act.
That makes me think that what I have truly gained over these past ten years is maturity. That I have, at 51, grown up. There is still work to do, always. Thank goodness. It used to feel so daunting- that to heal from the past, cope with the present, and contemplate the future took so much work- but now, the biggest relief for me is understanding that as long as I live I can keep trying. Life is many things, but it is not a thing to be avoided. My sobriety gives me recovery, and my recovery gives me my whole life.
