Why I consider my sobriety to be a (mostly) delightful choice and not a miserable consequence
This past weekend, Billy and I took an overnight trip with our baby Abigail to celebrate our anniversary. As we drove towards the beach, I watched the billboards along the road. Wine ahead. The billboards had bottles of wine arching out above the billboards, each with some foofy Arbor Mist nonsense drinks that I didn’t even ever like to drink.
Winery ahead. What those words would have meant to me a few years ago.
A few years ago, I would have been drinking on the road. I would have had a can of champagne opened, maybe, or maybe a beer. There would have been excitement in the air. The beach, I would be saying. The beach!
It wouldn’t have been malicious. It would have been fun. Vacation! I would have been doing something vaguely naughty, vaguely dangerous, something that made it feel like a special treat.
In the quintessential Drinking: A Love Story (a drinking memoir written before drinking memoirs were cool), Caroline Knapp says something to the effect of she still feels a pang in her heart when she says a chilled glass of white wine being delivered to someone in a restaurant.
The signs for the winery -- albeit terrible fruity wines that I would not have drank (okay, I would have if there was nothing else) — rolled off my back. There were times in the past where that would have caused that pang for me, and this may be the first time I’ve been away from home that I didn’t feel that pang at all.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s unusual for people to drink on vacation. I don’t think it’s unusual for people to drink too much on vacation. I don’t even think it’s all that unusual for people to drink too much on vacation, even with a baby.
Vacation is where you’re meant to overdo it.
But on this trip: I could hear my baby cooing in the back. I drank my Diet Dr. Pepper. Billy and I kept talking. We had brought the cooler we’d bought at Costco filled with sodas. Seltzer waters. Seltzer waters with real lime.
I looked out the window. I could smell the ocean and feel the air getting damp.
When I first got to the rooms, I heard an old timer say something about practicing constant vigilance. To be on alert for the unguarded moment when you might be tempted by a drink. That your disease is doing push-ups in the parking lot.
Jesus. I thought. This sounds like a miserable existence.
But what I have come to realize is it is not miserable: it’s about knowing yourself. Knowing your limits. Moving with the universe to acknowledge those limits and cooperate in what is. Not living in what we want or hope and waiting and wishing for what we’d like.
“Your boundaries can shift in sobriety,” a friend reminds me. “What you can’t do today, maybe you could do yesterday, or tomorrow.”
It’s about taking stock and being honest with yourself.
It’s not the thing that gets you. It’s the thing before the thing before the thing.
Practicing constant vigilance is being on the lookout for the thing before the thing that puts you off guard. The real thing, deep down, that eats at you. Being brave and bold and genuinely looking the thing in the face and experiencing it. Actual caretaking of the self. Not just patches and band aids.
Sobriety has been about genuinely living, in full color, with the volume turned all the way up. Not just dodging life and getting from one thing to the next.
I thought life would be ruined when I had to quit drinking. But instead it cracked wide open.
When I was about four months pregnant, Billy and I went to a sports bar.
“It’s probably not the best idea for you to be drinking fake beer in a sports bar,” my friend said to me.
But it was. The game Billy was looking for wasn’t on anywhere except at this particular sports bar. I wasn’t feeling tempted to drink, or uncomfortable, and furthermore, I was pregnant. Billy asked again and again if I was sure I was comfortable.
And I was comfortable. Surprisingly, maybe even to me. It didn’t draw against my sober reserve. If anything, it strengthened it. Because I did love to sit at a bar. And we did have fun.
(I should also be clear that all I know about football is that I oppose traumatic brain injuries and domestic violence, but my husband loves the Cowboys, so I show my support.)
But what I’d like to reiterate is this: on another day, maybe it wouldn’t have been a good idea. Maybe I would have inadvertently been putting myself in a situation that would have drawn against my sober reserve. It is my responsibility to ask myself — and to respond honestly — about whether or not this is a good idea for me today.
There is tremendous freedom in that concept : I don’t have hard and fast rules for myself. I can’t go here, I can go there. I can do whatever the hell I want to do, so long as I’m being honest with myself and making loving, gentle choices that demonstrate that I care about myself — or at least, stay on the lookout for the first step into a self-destructive spiral.
What was remarkable to me, too, was how much the other people at the bar could consume and just how normal that was to me. Shots and beers and . And all this on a Sunday afternoon, which again, would have been so beyond normal to me in my drinking days.
I want to reiterate, too, that I don’t take issue with this. These people, (at least some of them, I’m sure), don’t stop for a 6-pack on the way home. They don’t wake up in the morning hating themselves. They don’t do this every day.
There’s another thing I enjoy about sitting at a bar in sobriety: I never, ever, not once ever get tired of getting the check total at a restaurant in sobriety. I never get tired of not looking for the waiter, trying to sneak in one more drink before we hit the road. I never get tired of not watching my seltzer water drain, wishing there was more.
The entire concept of sobriety felt like a punishment, the worst punishment, when I first faced it.
Today it is mostly a delightful choice, and the entire sobriety and sober-cuious movement is pushing for that, as evidenced even simply by the titles of the books:
We Are the Luckiest -- The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (Laura McKowen)
Soberful: Uncover a Sustainable, Fulfilling Life Free of Alcohol (Veronica Valli)
What these titles tell me is that the general perception -- as mine certainly was -- is that a life without alcohol will be shitty. Lame. Not fun.
But holding my baby in my arms with my feet in the Atlantic. The waves rushing up against my feet and thighs. The baby smelling the salt air for the first time, hearing the crashing of the waves. Billy holding my hand.
The baby looked down the beach. She was seagulls flying.
I can fully trust me, I thought. This baby can fully trust me. Her skin on my skin, the salt air curling my hair and will one day curl hers, I’m sure. She had a hat and her chubby cheeks.
I have said many times in sobriety that everything is so bright, and so loud. That’s why the alcohol helped to turn it all down. Putting that film over everything helped to tone it down.
I could feel everything. This was it. This was the enhanced experience, the pinnacle. This was living.
My husband's an Eagles fan, this could cause some issues lol