To Sobriety & Beyond

On January 23, 2020 I verbalized to my parents that I wanted to… needed to quit drinking. I immediately set sail into sobriety; I was finally going to take charge of my life.

That lasted for all of nine days.

As an addict, I came to know this cycle all too well. I wanted to stop; I knew that drinking was only causing me harm, yet I still continued to crumble under cravings. My sobriety didn’t start on January 23, but my recovery did. Maybe not every time, but more than ever before, I was making a conscious effort about how much I was drinking, and continued to fight until I had finally quit.

Healing isn’t linear and recovery is no different. My path to sobriety was hard fought and exhaustive. With every step throughout this journey, I had to fight the ugly before I could face the beauty. Nothing seemed to come easy, it was a back and forth battle of fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Nothing came easy in recovery, I knew that my sleep and energy would improve, and eventually they did… That is, after I — a chronically cold sleeper — would wake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat as my body detoxed from the poison it consumed for so long.

Maybe a month after I vowed to quit drinking I lost my job, totaling three jobs I’d been fired from during my active addiction. I found another job, and almost lost that one too. I finally pulled my head out of my ass and at least quit drinking on work nights. This process isn’t perfect, okay?

I was stuck in a perpetual cycle — sober for ten days, drink, repeat. When I did end up drinking, it was at a friend’s house, who had no idea I was even trying to quit. Or sometimes I’d sequester myself in my room, binge watch my favorite sitcom, and finish a six pack without even getting out of bed. Nothing felt more shameful than hiding my addiction in this way. Sometimes the shame motivated me, sometimes it provoked me.

I was gutted when I, the Maid of Honor, decided to decline the invitation to my best friend’s bachelorette party in New Orleans — arguably the drinking capital of the south — because I was newly navigating recovery and needed to do what was best for me. I wasn’t sober yet, but it seemed easier to not go than to either cause major problems because I was drinking, or restrict myself from drinking and act like a miserable fuck the entire trip.

Like clockwork , all throughout the day, thoughts would pop into my head telling me that I could go for a drink right then. I had to work twice as hard to convince myself otherwise, I was exhausting my willpower. Eventually, I would make it to fifteen days without drinking and then one month. I was overjoyed to have made it an entire month, and the only way I knew how to celebrate was with a drink. A meager month of abstinence was no match for my addiction, and my consumption quickly picked back up where it had left off turning my life upside down once again.

I had been fighting for sobriety for the better part of six months when I was arrested for drinking and driving and spent eighteen hours in jail. Embarrassed and ashamed, I hesitantly told my parents; I remember saying to my mom, “Maybe this needed to happen.” Despite my sleepless, sweaty nights, canceled trips, and multiple threats to my job, I was still struggling to quit. Getting arrested was the last piece of the puzzle in order for me to quit drinking. Still, it was almost three months after my inevitable incarceration that I finally broke up with the bottle, for good.

There are numerous aspects to recovery. Initially, it was realizing that I drank far too much and had no control anymore; It was recognizing that everything unfavorable in my life stemmed from my drinking and setting out to fix it; It was continually making an effort to not drink, in attempt to rewire my brain’s (faulty) chemistry.

It has now been two years since I announced my addiction and set forth into recovery. The first eight months of this journey seemed to be just as chaotic as my active addiction, but I prevailed in the end. So many beautiful things have happened in my life, and I have my recovery to thank for it all. I often have to remind myself that this is not a dream, but my life now!

I’m still in awe that I have been sober just shy of a year and a half; I am thriving in my freshly instituted career; I volunteer to cut hair at sober living facilities for other friends in recovery; I stood beside my best friend on her wedding day and didn’t desire a drop of alcohol; I’ve inspired curiosity in others as they analyze their individual relationship to alcohol or experiment with momentary abstinence.

“Giving up alcohol didn’t solve all of my problems, but it made my problems solvable.”

Choose yourself first. Always.

Much love,

Ken