Posting my experiences with sobriety in case it helps someone this holiday season.
For some, Alcohol is the devil, and sobriety is peace. For others, myself included, alcohol is the devil, and sobriety is a merciless god, blind with rage, smiting down anyone who dares question Thee.
Am I broken? Why set yourself a definite limit of failure? Why throw away all your success because you held yourself to some sort of standards with stakes so high you can’t see where they lie?
The first time I got completely sober from alcohol (December 2021), it ended in life-altering catastrophe- the higher the standards, the harder the fall. What saved me was the simple concept of harm reduction. My first relapse was big, bigger than any other traumatic moment in my life, in all honesty. I had almost no one near me physically; I was completely and utterly alone in an apartment filled with booze and roommates who wanted me freezing to death on the sidewalk. I stole their booze, half out of spite and half because it was the only thing I knew would numb my anguish. I took a fuck ton of Ativan, too. But you know why I’m alive? Because I had a friend who understood what was happening and asked me what I wanted to do about it. “I relapsed,” I told him. “Okay, what do you want to do about it?” Christian inquired. Naturally, I replied, “I wanna get more fucked up,” and that right there is why I’m alive. I was not shamed or guilted into doing anything; he was not trying to reason with a drunken bastard. After an entire year, it felt like the first recess of the spring in elementary school. A Jack and Coke felt like a shot of 1200 IU of vitamin D straight to the bones in the middle of a Norwegian winter. I am not proud of this. Rather, I feel completely disgusted and ashamed. But in that moment, I felt renewed and alive for the first time in over a year. I have a hard time imagining I should feel such intense amounts of shame for something that provided me such great relief, but I do. I feel broken. I feel disgusting and detestable and every other negative adjective imaginable.
My second relapse came soon after that in March of 2022. That’s when I came to terms with the fact that I was holding myself to astronomically high standards; I was not a perfect human, and I needed to stop treating myself as such, or I would combust again and again until I learned my lesson.
But how come so many other people can manage this? How can so many people be completely stone-cold sober the rest of their lives? Once again, I ask, am I broken? Is there something wrong with me? These days, I don’t drink a lot. I have a maximum of 3 beers at the bar with a trusted friend. Maybe some wine with family. But I believe that if I were to strictly limit myself, I would surely face dire consequences. Setting a definite benchmark for failure assures me that I will reach that point. Defining rock bottom only puts the possibility out there that it will happen.
I get scoffed at for all of this. I am consistently fed media online and elsewhere that asserts that I will never come into anything good unless I am 100% completely sober. I am consistently made to feel that disputing these assertions makes me a bad person. The internet is the sort of place where, if the 12 steps don’t work for you, people will tell you to end your life. I don’t feel like there is a place for me in the world of recovery, and I think that’s what makes it so difficult. When people tell you that you’re not good enough to be considered “in recovery”, you start to believe it. But I don’t want to believe that. I know there is a place for me, I know I’m just enough of myself to deserve compassion. I know that recovery looks different for everyone, no matter what AA/NA says.
So if this holiday season, you find yourself grappling with substance abuse issues, whether yours or someone else’s, remember that harm reduction saves lives. Compassion saves lives. Checking in on your friends saves lives. Be good to each other, and have a warm new year.
Phrenectomy 