40 Years Sober

For this week’s Sunday Song (which I usually post on my Instagram), I decided to embrace Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up.” The message at the end, to “just give up,” is a message for those struggling with addiction. For me, the struggle didn’t end until I stopped struggling – until I just gave up. And then life began again.

Last year, after attending a very special open mic and having one of those heart-opening experiences that only comes along a few times in a lifetime, I decided to take all that transformative energy and pour it into finally talking about drinking and the circumstances of my family life, genetics and upbringing that made alcoholism a near inevitability. That post, here and on social media, got more attention than anything I’ve written in years.

Sharing that burden led, as it so often does, to it being lifted up by others – people said things to me, about me, and about their own struggles, that touched my heart like it never has been before. I was deeply touched by every person who reached out. And since then, I have tried to keep that open heart, to provide a listening ear, to just be there for anyone who needs it.

We had another heart-opening experience in November, when we threw ourselves a party for our 40th anniversary, and celebrated with some of our oldest friends and some of our newest friends over an incredible weekend that left us in awe of the gifts of friendship that we’ve been given for so long. I’m personally amazed that anyone who knew me then, in some really terrible days, would still want to know me now – it feels undeserved, as I certainly wronged each of them and more than once. But, apparently, I redeemed myself somewhere along the way, and ultimately my seven years or so of drunkenness didn’t outweigh all the other years. I need to remind myself of that; it doesn’t always feel that way. Most important to me is that, although I absolutely made mistakes as a parent, my children never once saw me drunk. Every mistake was a sober mistake.

I wrote last year that my approach to sobriety was really just white-knuckled, hardball resistance and denial – purely just shutting down the response to the desire to drink. I didn’t process a thing, I didn’t examine a thing. I just didn’t drink. That made things better, in that I wasn’t drinking, but it did nothing to address my feelings about it all, not even slightly.

Last year, a specific trauma – an attack by a dog while on a bike ride a couple of years ago – became overwhelming, leading to severe panic attacks. I started EMDR therapy just to be able to walk around the streets again, to be able to go to the farmers’ market without having my heart jump out of my chest every time a dog crossed my path. As is so often the case, it wasn’t just that single attack that caused the problem – it was that the attack opened up a whole array of past trauma that I had never dealt with in the least – trauma related to accidental injury, to physical abuse, to a sense of being unprotected and unguided, and to a whole series of deaths that affected me in ways I never addressed.

EMDR is an incredible, weird tool whereby you re-experience, re-explore the traumatic events while having bilateral stimulation applied to your brain. It is absolutely trippy, and absolutely works, but it is a process, it is work, and it is intense. Through that, I finally began to address some of the things that made me who I am, for bad and for good.

And so now, in my 64th year, I’m finally coming to terms with things I should have done years ago. It doesn’t matter that the years have passed, at least I’m finally dealing with it all. I listen to our younger friends and marvel at their vocabulary, their tools for dealing with their emotions, their traumas. I marvel at their willingness to struggle openly, their unwillingness to hide it, and the strength they have to take it all on. It’s just a better way than holding on to it all, than not even knowing what you’re holding on to, for decades.

So, another year has gone by (as of April 2) and I haven’t taken a drink. I’m just going to let myself recognize that’s an accomplishment.