Here's the thing about alcohol

First, because this is not fiction and no one needs a cliffhanger, I know my last post on the pit and heartbreak struck a chord for some of you. Today I am feeling more peace. Turns out love was right, we just keep going. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I'm doing my best to lead with love. And a shit ton of curiosity. I will share more about it soon, but this piece isn’t about that.

It is about alcohol. Will it make you want to have a drink or stop drinking, I don’t know.

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I have been circling whether my relationship to alcohol is a problem on and off for years. I go through periods of pretty reckless alcohol use. I forget whole evenings extraordinarily easily at this point. I drink often - it's built into my work culture and my social circles. Sometimes I can't stop once I start. On health screenings I check the box for 3 or more a week, sometimes because it’s true and sometimes because daily isn’t an option.

When I started this piece, I was on my fourth attempt at “Day 1” this month. I hadn’t intended to do Dry January or any New Years Resolution type goal, but I just needed a break. I was very sad and I was reaching too quickly for a glass of anything strong to turn off my pain.

But I tripped the first three times. I wasn’t really committed to it - it was always just an idea, a maybe, a “should”. Every time I started, and then got into a place where I really wanted a drink, some part of me said, “but here’s the thing…”

But here’s the thing

I don’t really have a problem. I can stop! I can do a sober month. I have done them more than once. I can set boundaries and follow them for a little while. It’s not that bad! I’m not showing up at work drunk, I can say no to a drink, I am not sneaking around, I am not drinking in the morning, and I’m certainly not a mean or violent drunk. I’m a fun drunk, an extremely loving drunk, a probably hilarious drunk. Most of my friends tell me they didn’t even know I was drunk when I complain about the massive hangover or the bits I forgot the next day. I like to drink with my friends and at social events, that’s normal! I like to drink alone sometimes, but I live alone, and alcohol just pairs so well with this food and that dessert and movies and reading and anxiety - what do you want from me?

But here’s the thing

I have some good reasons for taking a break, or maybe even stopping completely. Sobriety is hot right now - there are alternatives out there to help cut habits, there are apps, there is less social shame in saying “I’m not drinking,” and the health reasons to quit are popular to tout on TikTok.

And the health reasons are big: weight, skin, organs, sex drive, the list goes on. Plus I also already have chronic depression which is exacerbated by alcohol, a DEPRESSant. Some doctors even say you shouldn’t drink on antidepressants (though my doctor isn’t one of them). Why am I batting against myself?

There are more reasons like money, my addictive personality, the fact that alcoholism runs in my blood, hangovers that last days and make me call out of work, and the bone I broke and didn’t notice until the next day.

But the biggest for me lately is that I don’t even know if I’m having fun anymore because I don’t remember most of it. I usually have gaps in my memory after just one drink. I don’t know drunk me anymore. Apparently she’s fun; I get told about her afterwards.

But here’s the thing

Will my friends stop inviting me out?

Will I lose part of me?

But here’s the thing

And this one is my therapist speaking, “what does alcohol offer you?”. She asked me this last year when I was shaming myself for alcohol as a coping mechanism.

It offers me comfort in social situations where I am worried I will feel awkward. It offers me ease.

It offers me lower inhibitions and helps me chill the fuck out.

It is extremely effective emotional first-aid, a bandaid with very little stick on a sweaty knuckle, Neosporin not included. But when I am in the pit and hurting, long term isn’t on my mind. One glass of wine stops tears in their tracks, leaving dried streaks on my face. I can breathe and open a screen and move on, at least for a moment. And that moment is all that matters.

One drink can knock me out of an anxious spiral and onto the page where I find poetry and a simpler answer than I thought was possible. Often, it feels so good that I don’t stop at one.

Last March when I first tried to answer this question, I wrote,

“A little freedom, play, time with a pen and a notebook surrounded by the voices of other people and music I don’t know well enough to sing along to. The woman two bar stools away on her laptop drinking a margarita at 8pm - maybe kindred.

It offers me time with a different part of my brain. Why? Does it quiet a part? Make them all silly? Youngest me can’t drink, but she probably enjoys the poetry. Maybe she takes the wheel when everyone else relaxes. Does alcohol slow the critic down? Does she sit down with us? Or it is just an escape and not the coming together I think it is?”

And here’s the thing

I also really like alcohol. Some of the times I’ve had with alcohol are some of my very favorite. I like how it tastes. I like the places that serve alcohol - a rolling hills winery, a basement dive bar where the people know my name.

It feels like part of me, like a big part of my life, and formative to who I am in some ways. I feel complicated about how saying that out loud feels.

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I wrote this piece about alcohol almost a year ago.

I’m going on a date with a guy who doesn’t drink.

I’m so unreasonably nervous because I don’t know how many first dates I’ve been on without alcohol. So nervous I’m drinking a spiked Topochio while typing this an hour before the date and I don’t know how I feel about what that says about me.

My ex and I couldn’t even be sober together on dates at restaurants four years into our relationship because we were happier and nicer when drinking. It was a way to step over our own insecurities and anxieties and into love. We would stay until our heads were spinning because we loved existing together finally uninhibited and sexy in that space.

This guy’s lack of drinking also makes me feel like our lives might just be totally different. Can we even relate to each other?

Has he never…

sat in a bar until 2am (4am, okay New York City) meeting strangers or on a really incredible date that just keeps percolating with “another round” as an excuse not to leave?

gotten a little tipsy on cherry wine and laid in the streets of another country with a stranger singing to the stars in two different languages?

escaped work early on a summer Friday and plopped down across from a friend, a flight of five crisp different flavors between you, promising the start of an adventure.

tasted the way a perfect paired glass of red changes a steak or pasta?

said, “let’s get a beer after” to a friend in the middle of a rough day at work?

tasted the tangy hit of a sour beer? Or the smooth warmth of bourbon? Or the celebration of champagne bubbles popping?

swirled through people under a disco ball? 

found main-character-solace in a book and a glass of whiskey in a candle covered bar surrounded by the soundtrack of hushed voices?

giggled with his siblings over cups of cider secretly spiked at a family reunion?

written alone in a notebook and had friendly strangers check in on his progress? 

felt a sway transform by liquid courage into full dancing at a party?

made friends with a group of 60 year old men who watch jeopardy over a beer across from the dog park every day at 6pm?

felt the full body tension release of sinking into a glass of wine and Scandal on the couch.

felt the first sip of a drink on a patio on the first warm day after winter?

waited, smiling knowingly from the end of the bar, for the bar to close so he can go home with the bartender to their pitbull on the short bus to jersey after making out in the basement store room of the bar?

had the familiar home feeling of someone he’s only seen in this bar knowing his preferences and offering it the second he walks in? Has he had a place in midtown to drop a suitcase?

And are those things so ingrained in my experience that despite having a similar career and industry, we are fundamentally different?

Are all of the times I’ve felt infinite laced with alcohol?

Couldn’t I have done it all sober?

How many people on both sides of the bar have I loved for even just a moment as we spill our lives over our glasses.

Alcohol has been the lubricant for some of the most beautiful moments in life. It has created possibility and comfort and freedom. And those experiences have formed how I move through the world today in a pretty big way.

Is this a love letter to alcohol? Maybe it is. But I’ve written love letters and still said goodbye before.

But here’s the thing

I recently watched the You Are What You Eat mini-series on Netflix (yes, the twin thing) and it had me marinating on addictions in a new way. When asking myself about addiction I’ve only pictured the worst version of the disease - where you can’t stop, can’t take a sober month - where you are destroying yourself. And that’s real.

But addiction can also be smaller - it can be a thing that isn’t always destructive, but still has immense control over us. It’s physical conditioning. When we crave something we’re addicted to, it’s not just a choice or a want, it’s chemicals in your brain that zap in just the right way, it’s glands in your mouth that water.

I feel that physical conditioning when I pay attention to my body during a craving. I feel it when I take that first sip.

On the same night in March that I wrote about what alcohol offers me, I wrote,

“The first hit of tajin closely chased by tequila and lime slaps shock on my tongue and soothes calm all the way into my fingers and toes. It feels like something out of Across the Universe. Is that addiction?”

What if I don't have the control I think I do?

And here’s the other thing

I’ve been using alcohol to turn off my feelings and now that I’ve done a shit ton of healing and work, I wonder if perhaps I need to be feeling all that stuff instead.

The things just kept building

Learning my grandfather’s story through addiction and AA.

Ambition poking at me about how much time Drunk Stephanie is monopolizing that she’d like to take back for projects.

Beautiful pieces on sobriety on Substack that make me want that life.

A deep and loving relationship with a person who didn’t drink where I felt seen without alcohol.

One too many nights forgetting how I got home and wondering if I should be embarrassed the next day.

Until all of my parts were standing at the top of a mountain of things, peeking over the edge at sobriety and curious Stephanie came over and pushed them all over.

So much of “should quit I drinking” has been based around a question of shame. Is what I’m doing bad? Has it gone too far? Am I making unhealthy choices for myself?

But curiosity instead of judgement changed the questions. And the new questions were more interesting to me, more worth the effort it would take to investigate them.

What happens if we try it?

Part of me worries that if I stop drinking, I’ll lose access to the parts of me that Drunk Stephanie holds: the social butterfly, the more socially and sometimes sexually uninhibited.

But what if that’s not true? What if an addictive substance has actually taken those things from me - has put them behind their own gate - and what if, when alcohol is removed, the things don’t disappear - they’re free. What if I’m able to regulate myself out of an anxious spiral, what if writing is easy all of the time, what if being social is easy AND I get to remember it? I’m super social at work and I don’t drink there. What about a bar would change that except that I always have a beer? What if I have built these inhibitions with alcohol laying the mortar.

Is it possible that alcohol helped me build inhibitions so that it could uninhibit them. Manipulative, but aren’t addictions and drugs exactly that? My brain and my depression lie to me all of the time - why do I trust that alcohol is telling the truth?

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We don’t have to make a forever change. Dramatic Stephanie can sit this one out. I’m just curious who I am without this? Especially during a period of struggle. What does my brain feel like? What does my time fill with when the hangovers and 2ams I don’t remember are gone? How do I hold my friends? How do I show up? What do I get to remember?

The last time that I didn’t have alcohol as a crutch was high school. Almost 20 years ago. I was a whole different person then.

How do I even know who adult Stephanie is without alcohol? How do I know she’s uncomfortable in social situations? How do I know where her inhibitions are?

What choices do I make that are really mine and not patterns and addictions?

What might my life look like?

Why not see what happens?

Curious me… she's fun, we should let her out more.

After the fall

On the other side of curiosity’s push were a lot of tears.

I decided to take a break from alcohol last Sunday. On Monday, heartbreak had me by the neck, instead of by the hand. I was in tears and I wanted them to stop. I wanted my crutch. My numbing agent. I wanted to not feel what I was feeling. And I knew what could do that for me.

What if we don’t?

I cried for actual hours. I gasped and screamed and I said all of the things I was scared of out loud to myself. My dog became so accustomed to my wailing that he went to sleep. I texted my friends. I reached out for help, something I’d never done before.

I stopped crying and took three breaths and then would immediately start heaving again. I cried so hard I thought I would vomit. I cried so hard I was thirsty. I cried so hard my head started to hurt.

And then I ran out of tears. And found comfort in my friends. I wrote A Letter From the Pit. And I found curiosity and compassion for the thing that hurt me. I still ride the waves, it’s not some miracle change, but it feels… different.

Is that because I felt everything instead of having a drink?

I don’t know.

But I’m going to keep going, just to see what happens.

If you’re considering sobriety or even just giving up alcohol for a little while, here are some of my favorite pieces I’ve read here on the topic lately. Thank you,

Laura McKowen

and

Madeleine Dore

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The Wrong Damn Question

The thing that helped in my first year of sobriety

The Tipping Point