Can it be called sobriety if one was never quite an alcoholic in the first place?
That’s a big question, bigger than the scope of a single blog post like this.
Personally, I’m calling it such, as this marks the 1000th day in which I haven’t had an alcoholic drink, and 1000 days of sobriety sounds more thrilling than 1000 days of not drinking.
I’m also open to the fact that while I may not have been a raging alcoholic, it was one of the off-shoots of the path I was headed down a number of years ago, a path I once glamorized and embraced and perhaps exaggerated in the way that we want our artists and creators to be dramatically suffering. When the real world creeps in and shows you what true suffering and loss is, one doesn’t feel the need to pretend as much.
While I may have had my last drink on October 26, 2019, the trajectory I had been on in the year or two prior to that was one of slowing and cutting back drastically on the thing that once felt like a normal part of life. In the years leading up to my quitting, I’d found that alcohol no longer brought the same thrill and enjoyment it once did – mornings spent quietly hung over felt regretful, while the actual moments of drinking felt more robotic and a force of habit, as I slowly came to the realization that I was merely trying to attain some semblance of comfort in an ill-fitting world. It was partly a way of dealing with events where social anxiety ran high (and for me that was almost all the time) and also of dealing with a world where we all have to go it alone. Elaine Stritch once explained that she would take a drink before going onstage because it was scary going out there alone. I felt the same way about life. No matter how many friends or supporters you may have, no matter how married or partnered up you might be, and no matter how many people genuinely and unconditionally love you, we still go out into the world alone. All of us. And that’s daunting. If I once needed a drink to feel ok about that, I can forgive myself for it.
When I figured some of that out, however, the need for alcohol instantly left my body. It wasn’t difficult to stop cold turkey, and though it felt somewhat foreign and strange 1000 days ago, today it feels easy and unremarkable. The ease with which I was able to do that without withdrawal was a lucky thing. Maybe it meant I wasn’t truly an alcoholic. Maybe I was an alcoholic who found the right combination of tools to stop. Everyone wants to label everyone else, myself included, but that rarely helps. I’m humble and smart enough to acknowledge that alcohol wasn’t helping, and it was healthier to simply stop.
Overall, the last 1000 days have been calmer and happier than many other 1000-day stretches in my life. Considering the insanity of the world at this time, I’ll chalk it up as a great success, and one that I’d like to continue.
