One of the things that has helped me the most on my sober journey has been reading the journeys of others. I think one of the best ways for humans to connect with others is to commiserate. The more painful and cringe-worthy the sharing, the better. That’s why you save your worst stories for those closest to you, and by sharing them, often solidifying that closeness.
It’s possible only someone who has suffered from the pangs of addiction can relate to the deep-gut-emptying feeling of the things we hide away and tell no one. But in the hiding, and the not-telling, we also solidify the shame cycle that keeps us there. In the pit.
Even without addition, I am certain most of us have a collection of cringe-worthy experiences that we speak of to only those we trust. Everyone I know has a core list that repulse them enough with the memory to cause a physical reaction. Mine is a shiver. Usually I shake my head upon the remembering as if to release the thought from my brain like an etch-a-sketch.
This is why I have decided to do the very terrifying thing and share some of mine with you today. They are definitely not the worst. You may never see those, and that’s ok. The worst I will save for those I trust more than the unrelenting judgement of the internet. The internet is forever, after all.
This list, I noted while reading the very brave and very hilariously dark story of Catherine Gray who managed to pull herself out of a level 10 alcohol addiction and likely saved her own life. She had help of course, but she did do that hard thing herself. Because that is the hardest part of the hard thing: when it’s your thing, it’s your thing. And that sucks (as Annie Grace so eloquently describes) because when it’s your thing, you have to take ownership of the hard part of it, in order to overcome it. When I read her story and kept repeating to myself: SAME, it became more data, more boxes to tick, to remind myself why the journey began and why my life actually might be a smidge BETTER if it didn’t contain alcohol at every turn. That’s a twist isn’t it? Instead of missing it, I might actually not miss it. Time will tell …
These examples come from Catherine’s book The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, in the section aptly named “Failed Moderation Attempts”. I was no where near Cath’s worst (yes we are best buds now and I call her that, having re-read her book enough times to assume this) when I started to take action, but I related a HELL of a lot to this section. The Myths of Moderation and their deceptive ways. She writes:
It was so demoralizing, never being able to live up to my best intentions. What I wanted to do, and what I ended up doing, never matched.
Same. I think the thing no one realizes about people struggling not to drink is they struggle REALLY damn hard at it. We say things to ourselves like: tonight I will wait until the kids go to bed to have a glass of wine. I will only have two. I will stop at half a bottle. I won’t leave the house to buy more. I will delete the delivery app from my phone. Spoiler alert: you can re-install apps very very easily after they are deleted. Cath also says:
At 8am, the morning after a big night, I would lay down the cast-iron rule that I would not. drink. that. night. Definitely not. Not drinking tonight. No way! But my mind would slowly dismantle it, as the day rolled on. By 3pm, the rule had been chucked out of the window…
Same. There’s something powerful about 3 pm. 3 am as well – but that’s a different power. Nothing good happens after 3 am. Counter to that, all promises made to oneself in the early throws of a hung morning are always undone by 3 pm. I do not know why, but it is fact. Ask anyone who drinks. Cath goes on with:
It was becoming indisputable that if I bought a bottle of wine, I drank a bottle of wine. So, I decided that I would manage my consumption at home by only buying those teeny tiny 250 mL bottles. It worked, for awhile. Until it didn’t.
Same. My hubby and I actually bought a whole case of these lovely little 250 mL bottles when we started making wine with THIS VERY INTENTION of curbing our drinking. If we opened a tiny one, we could each have a nice glass and then done! Easy! Ya, so that didn’t work at all. We just went through bottles faster. Cath continues:
At the start of the week, I would write in my diary which days I could drink, and which days I couldn’t. The plan was to keep drinking to three nights a week. Easy, right? Except, it didn’t work. I never managed it.
Same. And the worst part about this is you are literally punishing yourself all day, all week, by obsessing over how much you’ll be allowed to drink later. All the time. Guess how much that helps addiction? She also said:
Another bright idea: the drink-switch fix. It’s white wine! That’s my problem. It’s just too strong and too easy to down. I’ll switch to red. *still drinks four or five big glasses*
Same. Exact same everything. The exact same. The paragraph from Cath’s book that really got me was:
Nobody had the foggiest, not a notion, that I was engaged in this relentless struggle. This eternal quest: the three-drinks-and-then-home quest. Or the ‘don’t-go-back-out-to-the-off-licence-tonight-after-you’ve-finished-this-bottle’ mission. Regardless of my best intentions, I would always stagger home after five drinks, or sneak back out to the shop for ‘just one can of cider’.
The largest of all SAMES. And I would sneakily drink it in the alley or the garage where no one would see. What does it mean when you sneak off to finish a drink where no one can see? I think we all know what that means. And the irony is not lost on me that I was hiding my drinking long before I said out-loud to people “I think I might have a drinking problem”. When you’re hiding it, you definitely already know that. You’re just not ready to face it yet.
This list isn’t my worst. But as discussed, those stories don’t need to be told here. And it’s not just the shame of them stopping me. I truly believe there is a time and a place for that, and this is not it. And I also believe the shame keeps you in the game (as Abby says) so in the telling of a piece of it again today, I’m slowly – but surely – taking myself out of it.
On-ward sober soldier. We can do hard things.