The responsibility to give honestly is my job; the responsibility to take honestly is theirs and not for me to determine. I could go crazy trying to decide which homeless person is worthy and which is not.
It’s one of the odd truths about life in New York City that some days a homeless person might just be the only person who talks to you, especially if you work solo and live alone. During my months-long stay in New York this year, I walked alone, ate alone, sat alone at two plays, shopped alone, got lost alone, took the subway alone, all with no conversations and no interactions. Of course, I was partially to blame. In my zeal to be considered what I thought a real New Yorker was, I had an impassive face perfected and was proud of my aplomb. I wasn’t a tourist, after all. I was there taking a class, trying vainly to get the city out of my bloodstream so that I wouldn’t suddenly run away from my husband in Arizona and move there permanently.
One of the things I had to do to be like a native was ignore the homeless. I took my cue from those around me, rushing to wherever I needed to be, looking impassively straight ahead when the solicitations started on my subway car. It was hard. Hands beseeching, cups outstretched, people sleeping in piles of blankets on the sidewalks, the distinction between blankets and human being inside not always apparent.
This plan seemed to work. At least, until my depression recurred and I began to feel I was dying. One night, before burrowing into my hotel room, I went to get some fruit from a market on Park Avenue, passing a man on the way there whom I thought was loudly ranting into his phone about “some woman.” Certainly none of my business so I knew I needed to paste on my impassive face and walk on by. But on the way back, carrying a bag of bananas and oranges, I listened more closely and I realized the woman he was ranting about was me.
“Look at her with all that fruit. She can’t give me some. Don’t even care, walking on by with bananas and oranges, swinging that bag. She’s evil, don’t care about nothing and no one.”
At my home in Arizona I carry money in my car’s center console in case I happen to be pulled up alongside a person with a sign standing in the center median at an intersection. I’m a little cautious so I move my purse away from the window, roll it down, look in the person’s eyes and wish them the best.
But I was in New York and taking cues from real New Yorkers. Yes, the homeless problem was overwhelming here, so overwhelming that perhaps the only way to deal with it is not to encourage it. I understand I was dropped here out of the blue with no history and no understanding of the differences between the New York homeless problem and that of my home state.
Back in my hotel room, the fruit put away, I was shaken. What did I think I was doing? My 12-step program teaches me that I am no better than any other human being on earth, and certainly no better than any possible person who may have a substance use disorder. It teaches me that judgement is poison for any addict. And that the responsibility to give honestly is my job; the responsibility to take honestly is theirs and not for me to determine. I could go crazy trying to decide which homeless person is worthy and which is not. I know from the program that if I hold something too closely I’ll lose it and only by living fearlessly and letting go can I be free. And I read somewhere that the universe, God, Higher Power – whatever – doesn’t handle money, that what we have in excess is for us to give.
It turns out that it’s impossible to get New York out of my bloodstream. If anything, I fall more in love with it, with the grid lines of the streets and avenues, with the museums, with the crowds and food, and with the beauty of spring when it suddenly appears, and I find myself basking in the unbelievable sunshine at Bryant Park.
I know all the controversy out there about the homeless and giving. I know that some say New Yorkers should only give to the Coalition for the Poor. Others say that giving only increases the homeless population, encouraging them to stay in certain neighborhoods. Some people give food, others nothing. It’s a seemingly unsolvable issue, even with nearly two billion dollars in the state’s budget to fix it.
But the political became personal when I suddenly understood that I hadn’t become someone else when I came to New York; I had to stop pretending.
I checked my wallet. Among some larger bills, I had nine single dollars. I folded them all and put them in the back pockets of my jeans, so they’d be easy to reach. The next day when I heard someone ask for help I looked into my fellow human being’s eyes and remembered that I’m one of them. It changed how I felt about the streets, the dread of the nonstop pleas. Suddenly I sought the encounter. I was waiting with their money in my back pocket.
I never ran out of single dollars and each night I had more of them in my wallet to hand out the next day.
In recovery programs, they say that what we’re doing by sponsoring people and doing service and putting ourselves out there is not so much to help others as it is to help ourselves, so we can stay sober. What I learned was that I wasn’t giving money to save all the homeless people in New York. I’m not that important and one dollar isn’t going to do that much. I was giving the money to save my own life. I was doing it so I could stay human.
This insatiable hunger to feel scared has almost completely jaded me, and now I have no idea what to do with this realization.
As a kid, I was scared of literally everything; as a teenager I was perpetually living in all forms of fear — of the real world and the imagined — as a result of undiagnosed (and then later, diagnosed but still active) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after surviving 9/11.
About two years ago, I started dipping my toes into the murky, red-running waters of scary movies, and then I became straight up obsessed. It was my go-to genre, and I couldn’t get enough; it became my favorite escape as a sober alcoholic, this new world that could pull me out of job stress or just take me away for a while.
And when I started to “tolerate” these movies, but still enjoy many of them, I decided to test my boundaries and go on a scary “haunted hay ride” (made for adults). I was grossly disappointed. I wasn’t even jumping when everyone else was. It was just a ride through occasional sketchy looking scenes and people in costume assaulting our tractor. I’m from New York City, guys. That’s pretty much how it is to drive in rush hour traffic.
My worst fear, now, is that over the past year I have become such a horror fan that I actually have become almost entirely desensitized to anything that is supposed to elicit that kind of fear. It’s to the point where not only am I now virtually un-scare-able, but even the jump scares in movies — scenes which are literally designed to assault your senses and that cause everyone else to flinch or scream — don’t even cause me to blink an eye. Or I’ll go see a horror movie with a friend and try to have fun, but…meh. It’s not like I set out to be a stick in the mud, I go in with high hopes. I’m always trying to recapture that initial rush of fear.
It almost feels as though I have binged on horror so much that it’s stopped “working” and half the time it’s no longer fun, the same exact way it was with alcohol. I still want to use it as an escape, but I just end up disappointed.
This insatiable hunger to feel scared has almost completely jaded me, and now I have no idea what to do with this realization.
To back up a bit, it is common for people with a history of trauma to turn to horror in order to drum up that adrenaline rush. It’s kind of like a coping mechanism used in the face of life stressors, or just in general: seek out events or experiences that evoke similar feelings to the original trauma. Often, survivors will engage in this behavior if the trauma hasn’t been worked through all the way. There’s this interesting place where the movie or the scenario is different enough, separate enough, to feel like you’re an objective viewer or participant, yet similar enough to conjure up the feelings you need to work through in some way, to trigger the catharsis that you crave. You feel brave, like you’ve faced or conquered the demons.
After years of therapy, I was able to work though my trauma and come out as far on the other side as is possible for someone with a condition that can always be woken up by the “right” trigger at the “right” time. It’s the same with my sobriety — with 7 years under my belt at 29 years old, my life and my brain and my body just work differently now because of all the work I put in.
Which brings us back to this: Have I started bingeing so much on horror that it no longer provides a “fix?” And even beyond that, I’ve stopped enjoying it altogether, and sometimes even get angry at Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb reviews for “lying” to me. I knew I had crossed an arbitrary threshold I had set for “stronger” material when I sought out stuff I said I’d never watch, or would never watch again. I started with the movie that ruined my entire youth, The Exorcist. It was boring. I slept like a baby. Something was not right.
So here I am, as another Halloween approaches, watching these meta-movies about really bad things happening on Halloween but nobody realizes they’re happening because it’s Halloween. I’m taking friends’ Netflix recommendations for movies I’ve avoided because I know they’re crap, on the off-chance they might not be and that I was too quick to judge (novelty seeking anyone?). It’s the worst. The smell of my own desperation is strong enough to make me gag.
I then wondered if it was possible that I’d already watched all of the “good ones,” leaving me scraping the bottom of the barrel for the undiscovered. But I don’t think so. Based on IMDb ratings, a lot of them should have held up — including a few new ones in theaters. Then there’s also the issue that I have simply run out of movies. Literally, run out. I’ve seen everything on every “list” of what’s currently out, streaming, rent-able, and every other option: the indies, the lesser-knowns, the big blockbusters of the past, oh, 40 years.
I just can’t get the same thrill from horror that I did last year. I don’t want to keep pushing to find more extreme movies — I don’t want to actually be disturbed by some underground violent, cruel nonsense. Gore porn is not my thing.
So, what’s a girl to do?
For now, I think the only thing left to do is the same thing we all do when we realize we’re feeling a little restless, or bored, or like we need a hit of something to make us feel different. And there’s no universal formula for that; for an alcoholic, it’s whatever we’ve learned works to help us feel settled and peaceful.
As for finding more ways to get Halloween thrills, chills, and just plain have fun with these movies again—the jury is still out, but there are two things I know.
One, when I have the thought “I bet if I was high, this would scare me way more” it means I need to take a step back and evaluate what’s going on with me. Why do I feel so disappointed at not getting my “fix” that I even begin to go down that road? Honestly, my life is pretty great right now, and it’s a lot more stress-free than it used to be. I need to tell myself: girlfriend, enjoy your reality, please. You worked hard to get here.
Two, I need to look at the forest and not the trees—I have conquered horror. And if I’m being honest, every movie or show I’ve watched recently hasn’t been a total stinker. It’s kind of a victory, I suppose, that I actually smile really wide when the rare good scare hits me, even if I don’t jump or scream, and that I feel happy when an entire movie comes together for me, which it still sometimes does. I have to realize that’s kind of a good thing–I went from being scared of everything to understanding that the real world is a lot scarier than the movies—and that is a mixed bag of tricks and treats that I’ll just have to be satisfied with this year.
Though I’ve developed tools for dealing with heartache and anguish in sobriety, this level of grief is a sadness on steroids against which I feel futile and frightened.
My father’s older brother, Stephen Dale, died at age 69 in mid-August. He was more than the family’s patriarch; he was its ballast, its mooring. The home he made with my aunt Linda served as safehouse to a chaotic tribe on holidays, birthdays, and just-for-the-hell-of-it pop-ins.
Uncle Steve and I enjoyed a relationship where calls and text messages about long-debated or joked about topics would rouse the other in real-time. “Hey Uncle Steve, guess what I just saw…” We lived our lives in each other’s pockets — an intimate, instant-access closeness that is simply irreplaceable.
He died very suddenly. One day he was there; then the next morning, before I could even reach the hospital, he was gone. Massive heart attack. By the early afternoon, I was writing the obituary, a prelude to the eulogy I would deliver days later.
But this is not an obituary, nor a eulogy. This is about what happens next — when a recovering alcoholic, like me, finds himself mired in grief and unable to anesthetize himself with drugs or alcohol. It’s about the specific attributes of grief that, I’m finding, are particularly dangerous to people in recovery. And it’s an attempt to identify with my peers who may have suffered similarly but, as often happens to me, couldn’t quite congeal their disjointed feelings into a cohesive narrative.
Grieving has peculiarities and pitfalls for those of us in recovery. Let’s discuss why.
Pain That Many Know, Reactions That Few Experience
Everyone in recovery has heard the cliché: “Bad things don’t stop happening just because you got sober.” In my seven years of sobriety, my wife has miscarried and, during her next pregnancy, I had a small stroke a week before our son was born.
And given the recovery forums in which we now find ourselves — AA meetings, SMART, sober networks, etc. – most of us see death. We witness fellows with a common disease relapse and die. A record 72,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2017. I personally knew three of them — people who, sadly, literally couldn’t get clean to save their own lives.
But Uncle Steve is different. He knew more about my past, my present and my psyche than anyone save my wife. He was incredibly well-read and unyieldingly tolerant, a combination that made him my chief counsel and safest sounding board. He was flesh and blood that, given a world of other options, I would have chosen to be my flesh and blood.
A lot of us have Uncle Steves, that most special of relatives. Upon losing that person, anyone — normie or alky — suffers a harsh blow. We feel like a piece of our foundation has been uprooted, part of our shared history deleted. There are secrets about us that die with our Uncle Steves. They leave an unfillable hole, forever, and we know it.
For those of us in recovery, though, grief of this depth has its own oddities and perils. Strangely, upon learning the terrible news, our initial reaction can be both validating and shame-inducing: When I learned that Uncle Steve had died, my very first thought was “Shit, I can’t drink over this.” And because I knew I couldn’t, I knew I wouldn’t; the work I’d done in sobriety was about to pay off again, big time.
Though comforting, this survival-minded reassurance brought an unsettling guilt exclusive to recovering addicts: the self-congratulation of passing a tough test to sobriety. It was just the beginning of what has become an ongoing struggle to rectify grief with recovery.
Disruption, Deserved.
Many of us in recovery have struggled mightily with both temperament and resentments. As someone for whom anger has been a tremendously burdensome issue, one AA literature passage that has always resonated with me is from the Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions. In the chapter discussing Step Ten, it cites justifiable anger as an emotion that “ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.” Alcoholics are inherently tone deaf when it comes to the level of outrage a given situation warrants – usually, we overshoot it considerably.
In sobriety, then, we work to temper most of our emotions — good and bad — to find a balance most of us never knew. My dramatically downplayed demeanor has been a crucial element to my recovery. In this space a few months ago, I discussed the importance of limiting the amount of people, places and things that can “anger, intimidate, or otherwise derail” us. In my opinion, this is as true a marker of sober progress — and maturity — as exists.
Grief, however, sticks out from this everyday mantra like a sore thumb. Especially when we lose someone of Uncle Steve-caliber closeness, deep sadness is not only justified but altogether appropriate. In fact, lack of sadness could be considered insulting to the deceased… our dead loved one deserves our emotional disruption. We owe our Uncle Steves that.
For those of us whose recovery includes maintaining healthy habits and routines, the combination of a broken stride and broken heart is uniquely troubling. The aversion we’ve built up to emotional disturbances can be a disservice to our sobriety in these instances.
Since my uncle’s passing, I’ve found myself nipping around the edges of a turbulent sea of grief, afraid to do anything more than dip my toe in lest I drown. Though I’ve developed tools for dealing with heartache and anguish in sobriety, this level of grief is a sadness on steroids against which I feel futile and frightened.
More than anything, I fear that wading into these waters may lead directly to diving into a bottle; as far-fetched as that may seem for those of us with longstanding recovery, this guarded approach to our most valuable asset — our sobriety — is entirely understandable. In grief, however, it can become a hindrance — a defense mechanism stranding us ashore, emotional landlubbers.
At least a portion of this procrastination, I realize, is rooted in fear of a less drastic reversion. With seven solid years of recovery, I know the chance of a physical relapse from this is slim. For one, it would be the absolute last thing Uncle Steve wanted. Whether they were in recovery themselves (my uncle was not an alcoholic), our Uncle Steves are vital aspects of our sobriety, and drinking or drugging upon their deaths is undoing part of their legacy. For that reason, among others, getting drunk over this is a nonstarter.
No, what many of us fear upon losing an Uncle Steve isn’t physical relapse, but rather regressing to a state of heightened emotional vulnerability. In addiction and fledgling recovery, we were often hypersensitive and underprepared to meet life on life’s terms. Now, atop solid sober ground, meeting death on death’s terms feels like a rare, even unique scenario capable of causing a catastrophic earthquake.
Sure, I’ve been shaken in sobriety before — but not this violently. I’m afraid of the aftershocks of so seismic an event. In recovery, we have healthy fears not only of drinking and drugging, but of revisiting the level of emotional rawness that made us stuck in addiction in the first place.
Gradually, in recovery we’ve pieced our lives back together, and we don’t want these blessings to unravel in one calamitous emotional nosedive. This may ring particularly true with the multitudes of addicts who, like me, also have struggled with depression. Regardless, everyone in recovery can recall a time when emotional fragility made us unable to adequately function. As a husband, father and career communicator, it’s that panicked, fuzzyheaded state that I most fear.
Like hard truths in early recovery, though, I’m finding that Uncle Steve-level grief has a ready-or-not resonance. When we lose someone that close, there’s simply too many things in our day-to-day lives that remind us of the deceased. Almost daily, I find myself reaching for my phone to share something Uncle Steve would find equally interesting or humorous. The resulting double-edged sword leaves me both missing my uncle and mad at myself for forgetting, albeit momentarily, to miss him.
And more frequently, during fleeting moments of calm in my crowded-with-blessings sober life, Uncle Steve is there, quietly commanding attention. Ever patient, his spirit seems to loom as large, or as little, as I can handle in that moment. I swallow manageable doses of sadness with limited side effects and reassurance that, like in recovery, more will be revealed.
That last sentence would have made for an artful sign-off, but life — or death — seldom provides such tidiness. As much as a loss can be a learning experience it is still, on the whole, a loss. And, like some of our worst acts in full-blown addiction, sometimes the knowledge and growth bestowed in recovery aren’t enough to offset the bad with the good. Some transgressions can’t be wiped away with transcendence.
Uncle Steve has been gone two months and I, a recovering addict whose present peak required a series of bottoms, still subconsciously — and egotistically —expects this is building toward something grander than the inglorious absorption of tragedy. Often, our post-relapse recoveries from addiction have been linear, accruing wisdom and utilizing lessons learned. I keep waiting for Uncle Steve’s death to ascribe to a similar, simpler healing process – an expectation that has proven persistently misguided.
No such revelations exist. In the end, those of us who struggle with addiction, despite being affected by grief in ways that differ from others, must deal with it in the same fashion: imperfectly, inconsistently, and with ultra-personalized feelings toward the dearly departed that were endearing in life but alienating in death. Unlike recovery, there’s no program for losing our Uncle Steves.
When we demand answers without a deep, authentic understanding of the problem, we wind up putting band-aids on gangrene.
As I wandered into the opening plenary at the 12th National Harm Reduction Conference in New Orleans last week, something felt off. It wasn’t just the four white-robed women on stage, solemn and elegant in contrast to the mostly grungy, tattooed crowd. It wasn’t the massive indigo chandeliers, which cast a somber blue over the room. It was an energy I couldn’t quite place at first. Then, slowly, it washed over me.
Grief.
Throughout the morning, as various speakers mounted the stage, the story of grief unfolded. The harm reduction movement is grieving the loss of one of our pillars, Dan Bigg, who died suddenly last August. We are grieving the political landscape, feeling vulnerable and scared as overdose deaths continue to mount and hard-won reforms in drug policy are reversed through a tide of drug-induced homicide laws and other punitive policies against drug users. And we are grieving the conflicts, hypocrisies and dysfunction present within our own movement that at times threatens to tear it apart.
My last report on a harm reduction conference for The Fix was in 2014. At the time, I described harm reduction as a community standing at a crossroads. The 2014 conference in Baltimore embodied the culture clash of a movement that had started as a radical underground community of people who use drugs being overwhelmed by mainstream and professional interests. Tension crackled between old and new, as did fear of co-opting and straying too far from its radical roots. Now, four years later, some of those tensions have boiled over.
One of the plenary speakers in New Orleans, Micah Frazier of The Living Room Project in Mexico, described the harm reduction community as a family full of love and dysfunction. With gentle admonition, Micah urged the crowd to watch how we treat each other and to be careful of how we engage in conflict.
Another speaker, Erica Woodland of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network, offered a blunt account of how he had left harm reduction six years ago over concerns about the lack of black leadership in the movement and the devaluation of black expertise.
“I got divorced from y’all,” Erica said, to a smattering of laughter. “I came back; we’re dating!” But he warned that the reunion would be brief unless harm reductionists could show capacity for change.
Harm reduction has changed in the past few years. Several of the largest organizations have experienced a shift in leadership as white, male executives who held power for decades have been replaced by women and people of color.
In fact every speaker touched on the need for a “changing of the guard” within harm reduction. They pointed out that the movement, supposedly centered around racial justice and recognizing the dignity of people who use drugs, does not always practice what it preaches. They criticized the prevalence of white, male leadership, while queer staff, people of color and active drug users are often reduced to underpaid “peer outreach” positions or token members of panels, trotted out for the public, then silenced once the cameras are gone. They stressed the pitfalls of sacrificing long-term vision for short-term gain, warned against co-opting by the public health system, and urged the crowd not to forget its roots.
Change is coming. Change must come, the speakers insisted. And transition is not always pretty.
Their words seared right through me.
A few months ago, I left my position with the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) after eight years as their advocacy and communications coordinator. The decision was voluntary, but born from a place of pain. The organization had recently gone through its own changing of the guard and the process had, at times, been ugly.
In fact, the past couple years of my life have been marred by grief as the organization I have loved and helped grow, an organization that has done so much to advance harm reduction in hostile territory, has been tested and torn by the tension between demand for change and resistance to it. These past years have involved a lot of soul searching for me as I have second-guessed past decisions and wondered if I have allowed enough space for the voices of people most impacted by the drug war to lead.
The plenary was an epiphany. All this time I had bathed in private shame thinking that NCHRC was alone in its struggle, uniquely unable to have tough conversations without dissolving into anger and defensiveness. Now, for the first time, I realized that the movement has been changing and hurting across the whole country. We had never been alone.
The heaviness of this opening plenary hung over me for the remainder of the four-day conference. Even the siren call of New Orleans—the bright lights of Bourbon Street and hot gumbo spice—could not penetrate the fog. I don’t think I was the only person struggling. Even as other attendees greeted old friends and met new ones in between workshops, you could feel grief and tension hovering over everyone. There was no relief from it, not even in the blizzard of breakout sessions.
I tried to attend some breakout sessions, of which there were a dizzying number including topics such as fentanyl, friction with police, racial justice, indigenous healing, queer drug use and much more. The breakout sessions seemed designed to ask questions, but not necessarily to answer them. This frustrated a lot of people. I overheard many grumbling conversations in the hallways about how such-and-such a panel had not provided a “solution” to the problem being discussed. Years, perhaps even months ago, I would have felt this way too. Today I feel differently.
A couple of years ago I attended a town hall meeting hosted by activists and founding members of Black Lives Matter. After over an hour listening to them talk about racism and oppression, a white woman in the audience asked the question that had been burning in my brain the whole time: “How can we fix it?”
The speaker responded by politely suggesting that the young woman have conversations with family and friends about racism. The woman sat down, seeming dissatisfied with such vague marching orders. I was disappointed myself and, I’ll admit, a little appalled that the speaker didn’t seem aware of the importance of giving people concrete actions so that they stay engaged in the movement. But today I see the wisdom in that answer. The speaker didn’t give that young woman, or me, an easy answer because we weren’t ready for one.
Lately I have come to appreciate conversations that do not end with solutions. Most societal problems are so complex that any “solution” that can be discussed in a 60-minute panel is probably bullshit. Most of us know surface level things—racism is real, drug policy is killing people, there are too many people in prison—but we don’t truly understand the history or scope of these issues, especially if they don’t directly impact us. We want a quick recap of current affairs and a quick fix, but when we demand answers without a deep, authentic understanding of the problem, we wind up putting band-aids on gangrene.
This, I think, is what the conference was attempting to do—to encourage discussion and exploration and self-reflection, not to provide instant gratification.
I left New Orleans without answers, but with a great sense of responsibility to seek them, even if it takes a lifetime.
Members of Harriet’s Apothecary open the conference with calls to be mindful and present. Image: Nigel Brundson
Recovery is not something we wear lightly; it is a lifelong challenge to recover our ability to regulate our bodies, heal from our trauma, and lead a healthy and fulfilling life.
Sober October is a great way to gain awareness of your drinking — whether your goal is to get sober or just take a break from alcohol. As positive as that lifestyle change might be, however, it has caused some controversy in the recovery community. For many of us, sobriety isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity if we want to stay alive. So it feels somewhat tokenizing when people are trying on recovery for size. On the other hand, what if it is a doorway to change? What if it creates sufficient awareness to help someone make a few adjustments to lead a healthier and more fulfilling life?
The challenge — initially called Go Sober for October — originated in the UK as an alcohol awareness campaign and a fundraiser for MacMillan Cancer Support. It is now gaining traction globally as more of a lifestyle change leading up to the holidays. In a recent Forbes article, Sober October was touted as a way to help reset your body and prepare it for the damage that inevitably takes place over the indulgent holiday season. They point out that a month off alcohol combined with other wellness-supporting measures such as a healthier diet and more exercise will lead to better sleep, increased energy, and a clearer mind. With those small lifestyle improvements, people who participate in a month of sobriety will no doubt mitigate the health damage of the party season should they return to drinking. And that’s a positive outcome no matter who you are — whether you’re seeking sobriety or just want to improve your health and wellness.</p
But for people in recovery, the problem occurs when those trying Dry January or Sober October flippantly celebrate how easy it was, or alternatively reach out to recovery advocates to ask for support during their challenge. Writer and advocate Tawny Lara describes why this is annoying in her article, Why Trying On Sobriety is Offensive: “Strangers frequently reach out to me asking for suggestions on how to get through 30ish days without drinking,” she says. “I don’t think they realize that my sobriety doesn’t have an end point. It’s fine that someone who probably doesn’t have issues with substance abuse, is ‘trying on sobriety’ for a little while, but why are you asking me, someone who does struggle with substance abuse, for advice? I can’t be your cheerleader for 30 days just so you can celebrate day 31 by posting photos of mimosas on Instagram.”
She continues, “If you really want to experience the lifestyle of us sober folks, try on recovery … not sobriety. Almost anyone can take a break from drinking. Try doing that, paired with the emotionally exhausting work of identifying why you drink and why you’re choosing to give it up temporarily.”
I understand Tawny’s frustration. Recovery is not something we wear lightly; it is a lifelong challenge to recover our ability to regulate our bodies, heal from our trauma, and lead a healthy and fulfilling life. And I used to find these types of challenges as offensive as she does. Now though, as I have become more of an advocate for harm reduction, I see them as a gateway to change. I support anyone in their desire to lead a less harmful and destructive life, whether they have a problematic relationship with alcohol or just want to temporarily improve their health.
So, to those of you who tried the challenge to improve your health and are ready to return to moderate drinking: I salute you. Even though I cannot drink normally, I respect those who can. It is also my hope that you’ll be able to recall how great you felt when you were sober for a month, and how you achieved it, should your relationship with alcohol change.
And to those of you who entered into the challenge hoping to try sobriety on for size with that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that your drinking might be a little out of control, I’m here to tell you that life only continues to improve in sustained sobriety. Truly. I am not going to tell you that it’s easy because it’s not. But it sure as heck is worth it. As a woman who has been in recovery for over six and a half years, my life is immeasurably better: there is less drama, I have fun, I don’t have to sell my belongings to get four bottles of wine on the way home. I feel great most days, and I can’t imagine a life so painful that I have to numb myself every day. Today I want to be present and I want to show up.
If you want to extend Sober October into November and beyond (or if you think you might want to try again sometime in the future), there are many resources to help you on your journey to recovery. As Tawny suggests, we need to examine a problematic relationship with alcohol and get to the heart of why we’re using it as a coping mechanism. There are many pathways of recovery and many supportive groups to help you with the process. Here are my top five tips:
Find a pathway of recovery that works for you. Whether it’s AA, SMART Recovery, or a meditation community, there is something for everyone. Don’t give up until you find one that works.
Work with a great therapist to help you through the process.
Build social supports. Find a local recovery community in your area, like an Alano Club. The Meetup website is a great way to find sober groups to hang out with.
If you’re still unsure and want to ponder the idea of continued sobriety, why not follow Joe Rogan’s Sober October thread? Or you can continue to read recovery publications to see if this is a lifestyle you want now that you’ve had a taste of it. I can recommend staying alcohol-free indefinitely, but you have to do what is right for you when you’re ready. If Sober October opens the doorway to that challenge, then I wholeheartedly support you!
Note: heavy drinkers should not stop drinking alcohol suddenly without medical supervision. Going “cold turkey” can cause serious and even life-threatening complications.
Women have had to endure a generic “He” for God all these years. I am not rewriting the Big Book. I am simply asking for a moment to honor my God as a She; for a moment of freedom to express my God as I understand God.
After attending AA meetings for 12 years, I picked up a coin this month celebrating ten years of continuous sobriety. Throughout my sober years, when asked at meetings to read “How it Works” from the AA Big Book, I sometimes replace “He” with “She” for the word “God.” Recently, an old-timer in my AA home group became highly offended when he heard me read my “She” version of “How it Works.” My improvisation became such an issue that it was put on the agenda at our home group’s monthly business meeting. A motion was presented to place wording at the top of “How it Works” stating, “Please read as written, do not make changes.” After much discussion, members of my home group decided not to make this change to our meeting format. Whew! How interesting!
As with any issue in recovery, I learned from this experience. I learned that people get offended at meetings! Ha. We can’t please everyone. I mean, I get offended at meetings, but I just accept things and go on. If I do not like the way a meeting is held I move on to another one. “Attraction, not promotion.”
Thanks to my messing with pronouns, I find that I am no longer asked to read at AA meetings very often. Yes, the whole Big Book is written in He/Him-antiquated-patriarchal-Bible-form and I accept this. I mean, I got sober underlining everything in red that pertained to me as I worked my first step not caring about the gender terms! I simply did what my sponsor asked me to do. The pronouns were not important at that point. What mattered was that I did and do identify with the men who shared their message. Yet still, today, when asked to read at a meeting, I feel it causes no harm to insert She/Her instead of He/Him for my God. Women have had to endure a generic “He” for God all these years. I am not rewriting the Big Book. I am simply asking for a moment to honor my God as a She; for a moment of freedom to express my God as I understand God. That is all.
Lately I have begun using a gender-neutral term for “God.” Instead of saying “He” or “She,” I simply say “God as we understand God.” For truly, I have experienced God as a spiritual man, as a spiritual woman, and most recently as pure divine spirit, with no gender identity at all. How could GOD be reduced to a He or a She, to a mere sexual form? Hence, my favorite definition of God is “Group Of Drunks.” Namaste: “The Drunk in me greets the Drunk in you” (the sober drunk, of course). I see GOD in all of you at meetings! It is my favorite vision! I love you all so much!
I have to remember that “love and tolerance is our code.” If an old-timer is offended because I say that I have made a decision to turn “our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Her,” umm, hey, imagine what it took for me, a Hindu, and a lesbian, and a woman to read through the patriarchal (with Christian overtones) Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous! I am so, so grateful that my homies love and tolerate me enough to let me be me and accept me for who I am! As the Third Tradition of AA says, “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.” And Tradition One calls for UNITY. That means members are given the freedom to think, talk and act. No AA can compel another to do anything. Nobody can be punished or expelled. Our traditions repeatedly say, “we ought,” never “you must.”
I have to remember that we are evolving. I believe the AA founders, Bill and Bob, left room for change when they wrote on page 164 of the Big Book: “Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us.”
Today, there is a new updated version of “How it Works” created by Hillary J and the Sober Agnostics Group. That alternative to the Big Book text is used at their meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada. There are also two gender-neutral versions of the Big Book available on Amazon: The EZ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Same Message -Simple Language and A Simple Program: A Contemporary Translation of the Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Neither book was created by AA so neither is designated as “Conference Approved Literature” by the AA General Service Office (GSO). It is important to remember that the term “Conference Approved” has no relation to material not published by GSO. AA does not tell any individual member what they may or may not read. Each group is autonomous and is free to decide what material is read at the group level.
Offending someone at a meeting drove home the point that I’m a drunk, plain and simple. I just want to get and stay sober, that’s all. I learned that I am not the only one who replaces “He” with “She” when reading AA material. Many other people are doing this and changes are being made to the literature. Someday, we may see changes to the first 164 pages of our Big Book.
I have learned that God is beyond gender – and it is comfortable to refer to GOD as simply “God” instead of a He or a She. For me, God is pure divine spirit. Close the eyes. Feel GOD now. Pure Divine Love! God is Love! I love loving God, plain and simple. I love feeling Shiva embracing his beloved Devi in divine union. Sigh, bliss. This breath, here, now.
I also learned that AA has evolved enough to publish a new pamphlet already approved in British AA called, “The God Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA.” There is a quote in this pamphlet that Bill W. wrote in 1965 that says: “We have people of nearly every race, culture, and religion. In AA we are supposed to be bound together in the kinship of a common suffering. Consequently, the full individual liberty to practice any creed or principle or therapy whatever should be a first consideration for us all. Let us NOT, therefore, pressure anyone with our individual or even our collective views. Let us instead accord each other the RESPECT and LOVE that is due to every human being as he tries to make his way TOWARD THE LIGHT. Let us always try to be INCLUSIVE rather than EXCLUSIVE; let us remember that each alcoholic among us is a member of AA, so long as he or she declares.”
I love the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love that we keep evolving and changing. I love that we get to ask questions. Here’s one more (ha ha): Why do we close some meetings with the Lord’s Prayer? I’ll have more to say about that topic later. That’s enough for today. Peace and love to one and all.
While watching the film, I would look over at Nic sitting next to me and get so emotional. I would start to cry and I feel like I’m about to start crying right now because I came so close to losing him.
In “The David Sheff Solution,” The Fix interviewed the National Book Award-winning author of Beautiful Boy about his struggles as the father of a child with a substance use disorder. Now David Sheff’s story is about to be vaulted to the next level of national prominence. On Friday, Amazon Studios released the feature film Beautiful Boy, starring Steve Carrell as David Sheff and Timothée Chalamet as Nic Sheff.
As opposed to being intimidated by this move into the public eye, David Sheff is excited. Since helping his son Nic find the path of long-term recovery, Sheff has dedicated his time and energy to raising awareness and continuing his efforts to reduce –and ultimately remove—the stigma surrounding addiction. Without stigma, Sheff knows from firsthand experience, prevention efforts will improve and treatment will become more accessible. Indeed, Sheff’s ultimate goal in allowing his story to be brought to the big screen is to bring greater compassion and understanding for this disease. Given our similar focus at The Fix, we are thrilled to again speak with David Sheff.
The Fix: Beautiful Boy is a rare combination of both your most deeply personal work as a human being and your most successful book as an author. Was it hard to decide to expose such a story to the world, particularly in a visual format that lacks the distance of the written word? Was it difficult to let go and give director/writer Felix Van Groeningen the space to tell your story?
The direct answer is yes. It was hard. Even from the beginning, exposing our family to potential criticism in a public forum was worrying. It has been worrying from the very beginning when I first decided to write about what was happening to my family for The New York Times Magazine. I remember asking a friend of mine to read the manuscript after I first wrote it. She was an editor, and I respected her opinions. I must admit today that her response surprised me. She told me, “You can’t publish this. There is all this stigma against addiction, and your family will be judged harshly.” As you can tell, she really counseled against moving forward.
At that point, I already had made the commitment. I had talked with everyone involved, including Nic, and we decided to move forward. When it came out, there were no negative consequences at all. In fact, it was the opposite. I heard over and over again from people who had been impacted by addiction. It was all about sharing stories, and people seemed relieved to be able to share. They had kept their experiences quiet because these were their deep, dark secrets. They also had felt that they would be judged. It was so positive that the article and then the book led to the creation of such an open dialogue in a variety of ways from in-person to on the phone to online messages in emails plus on Facebook and Twitter.
It’s important to note that every word in that book I scrutinized. I wanted to make sure that I said what I wanted to say while also protecting everyone involved. It ends up being really complicated. I felt everybody had suffered enough, and I didn’t want to increase anyone’s suffering. As a writer, I tried to be as meticulous as I knew how to be. The idea of allowing someone else to tell our story was scary in a different way: I knew I would not have that kind of control.
Before it happened, the idea of doing a movie had never really occurred to me. To begin with, the writing started as a way to get through the night. The writing was a way of expurgating this deep, dark turmoil that I was experiencing. When we were approached about doing a movie, the first guy turned out to be the right guy. We were approached by Jeremy Kleiner, one of the principals at Plan B Entertainment, and he was sincerely moved by both of our books. He cared deeply about this issue because he had been through it with friends while also being deeply affected by the Dad’s perspective and the family story. He felt it made it different from the vast majority of addiction memoirs. The key point he made was that addiction was not portrayed in either of our books in a simplistic or clichéd way. He made the commitment to make a movie that would show the complexity of addiction, the fact that there are no easy answers.
Although Jeremy was just starting out at this time, we believed in him and in Dede Gardner, his partner at Plan B, along with Brad Pitt, who is the CEO and started the company. It seemed obvious to make the decision to make the movie with them. Since then, they have won Academy-Awards for making 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, but this was before they experienced such incredible success. When they brought on Felix Van Groeningen, the director of the movie, I was even more convinced. He’s a genius, and I was incredibly impressed and moved by his past films. Like the producers, he was connected and committed to the material. I knew we were in good hands, and I knew they would tell our story in all of its complexity.
Steve Carrell is an American comic icon. In movies like The Office and The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, he has made us laugh (although he showed dramatic chops in Foxcatcher). What do you think of his portrayal of you in this film?
There is no doubt that he’s a comic genius, but he’s so much more as well. Steve is an astounding actor, and I knew that long before this movie. Indeed, Nic and I remember so clearly the experience of seeing him in Little Miss Sunshine together. He was heartbreaking in that movie in such a beautiful way, and it was a moving experience for us to see that film together when it first came out in the theaters.
When I met Steve, he was so sincere, warm, and committed to telling the story right. The other thing I realized was that he connected to the story as a father. It was not the drug experiences that drew him to the story, but the opportunity as a father to play a father desperately trying to help a child. He understood the deep desire as a parent to do anything we can to protect our kids. He expressed how badly he wanted to play that role because of the emotional component of the story.
I must admit, however, that when I saw the movie, I still couldn’t imagine anyone playing me. It just seemed too weird. It really is disconcerting when you think about it, and, as a writer, I tend to think about things. When I finally saw the movie from beginning to end, I feel like he nailed it. He captured how hard it is and how hard it was for me to go through this period in my life. He captured what it’s like to be a parent of an addicted child, somebody you love more than anything and all you want to do is save them, but you keep running into obstacles like the denial and the horror of addiction. He captured that difficulty of helping someone who is angry and rebellious and lashing out at you as you try to save their life. I lived through that anguish, and that anguish is in every nuance of his performance and his expression and in his acting. I really was blown away and felt that he got it. Before I saw him do it, I honestly doubted whether anyone could do what he has accomplished in this film. You see his optimism and his crushing defeat, then you see him become optimistic again and then his desperation as his son keeps relapsing. The up and down and up and down is so powerful, but even more powerful is the through-line of his love for his son.
How did you and Nic decide to move forward with the movie project? Did you both feel from the beginning that your book and his book should be turned into a combined film? How did you decide to combine the Beautiful Boy story with Nic’s Tweak, or was this choice made by the filmmakers?
The choice was completely made by the filmmakers. It was inconceivable at first that they would be able to pull off two such different takes on the same story in a single film. However, I had heard how valuable it was for other parents to read Nic’s book and develop a new perspective on what their addicted son or daughter was going through. At the same time, it was really valuable for a lot of kids to read Beautiful Boy to get a sense of what their parents were going through, both from the perspective of the how much they suffered and the depth of their love. Many kids don’t realize how much a parent’s love is a constant in the process of trying to help their child recover.
Still, each story had been told in book form with over three-hundred pages dedicated to each story. The idea that somebody could pull it all together in a two-hour movie was hard for me to imagine. It was not at all our choice, and it felt like they were jumping into the deep end of a stormy ocean without a life vest. Also, there was no precedent for it. I can’t think of a movie that was ever based on two different memories; one from the parent’s perspective and the other from the child’s perspective. I wasn’t sure that it could be done.
However, you really got the emotional journey through the parent and the kid. I knew it was going to be challenging, but, once they made the decision, they never looked back. Over the two years that it took to make the movie, they kept to the course, and I feel they did it masterfully. It was a hard choice to make in the beginning, and it definitely was the decision of the filmmakers.
As an aside, Nic did amazing in his interview. I was so impressed by the depth of his compassion and the veracity of his gratitude.
He’s an extraordinary example of recovery in practice. All the time, I hear from people who are so discouraged because they’ve been through years of watching a child’s descent into addiction. I hear it about other family members and friends as well. They just don’t feel like recovery is possible.
We are so lucky that Nic made it. Any parent is lucky that has a child who makes it. Nic’s drug use was so extreme, and the combination of drugs that he was doing was truly dangerous. He put himself into so many life-threatening situations during those dark days. There were so many times when it could have ended up differently. Tragically—and I feel so deeply for them because I could have been there— so many parents now experience the unforgiving horror of that outcome where they lose a child. Given Nick’s recovery now, we were very lucky.
My experience seeing Nic go through this process has been incredible. People that go through recovery and come out the other end don’t just survive. Because of all the hard work that needs to be done, because of all the suffering, because of all the self-examination required to get sober and then stay sober, they become some of the most extraordinary people that you’ll ever meet. In fact, John, you are a case in point, and that journey from addiction to recovery, as you know from your own experience, can be inspiring to other people that you meet along the way. People that come out the other side can have the most rewarding and fulfilling lives afterward.
I hear from so many families that are close to losing hope or have lost hope. Their relationships have been shattered, and they can’t imagine them ever being put back together. My experience with Nic has shown that families that do explode; [families that] feel—amidst the ruins—that it’s almost inconceivable that they will survive it—they do survive it, and they can survive. Recovery is still a possibility. If they do the hard work and give it time, they can be closer than ever. I believe we can say that about our family.
Nic and David Shef Image Credit: Reed Hutchinson for UCLA Friends of Semel
If this movie could accomplish one goal, what would you want that goal to be? What do you believe can be achieved?
I feel the biggest impediment moving forward to end addiction, to face this disease in all its difficulty, to prevent people from becoming addicted and to treat people that do become addicted, is the ongoing stigma. Too many people keep their problem hidden because they are judged. People don’t go get treatment because they are hiding the reality of their addiction. When people start to get treatment, if they have the normal challenges of the usual ups and downs, if they relapse, they are judged very harshly. Being judged in such a way is the last thing needed by somebody who is addicted. They already feel terrible about themselves. They are caught in a cycle that’s like a vise, and they don’t want to be doing the terrible things that they do to themselves and to their families.
I hope the movie can show people that addiction is not about choice. It’s not about a young person going out and doing these things just because they want to have fun and party and get high. It might be about that a little in the beginning, but it quickly shifts. Essentially, it is about pain and suffering and a desperate attempt to find some sense of peace within themselves. Addicted people talk about this hole inside them that they are trying to fill. The hole can be anything from an undiagnosed psychiatric problem like depression or anxiety to untreated childhood abuse and trauma. Whatever it is, I have come to see that it is about a pain that the person is trying to self-medicate.
If this film can help with anything, I hope it opens the door to greater compassion and understanding for this disease. Without the burden of the stigma, we can move forward and actually help the people that need our help. We need to help people by overcoming stigma by focusing on effective prevention and treatment. People who are addicted are not weak. They are ill, and they deserve our compassion.
At the Colorado Health Symposium in August, you start your keynote address after watching the film’s trailer by saying, “I’ve only seen that once, and it’s hard to watch.” What parts exactly were so hard to watch? Was it a combination of Nic’s descent into addiction and your inability to stop it? Did you have any PTSD-like reactions to the film, or was it a cathartic experience that freed you from the lingering demons of the past?
Wow! That’s a good question. I guess the answer is both. It brought it all back, and it’s not like I had forgotten. However, when we get past traumatic experiences in our lives, we do put them in a place that we can live with. I feel like I had done that to some degree, and it made watching the film challenging. The experience of seeing it again opened up the whole thing again, meaning it opened up the old wounds. I just remembered how hard it was and how hard it was to watch Nic suffer. I felt again how hard it was for all of us to survive as a family.
At the same time, it was amazingly cathartic to process what we had been through as a family. It was another version of writing the book, which had been really cathartic as well. It also was an affirmation of the hard work Nic has done to get sober and to stay sober. It was a reminder of how lucky we are to have come out the other side. While watching the film, I would look over at Nic sitting next to me and get so emotional. I would start to cry and I feel like I’m about to start crying right now because I came so close to losing him. It was a reminder of how close I came to losing him.
In another sense, it was cathartic because I felt like it mirrored the experience of so many other people. It was a reminder of how many of us are in this together. When Beautiful Boy first came out in 2008, I thought it couldn’t get worse in terms of the number of people that were dying from addiction. The number then was about 36,000, and that doesn’t include people dying from alcohol-related causes. Of course, we know that in 2017, it was 72,000 dying from addiction-related causes alone, twice the original number. Things have gotten so much worse, and that’s why I feel that this movie is coming out at just the right time. So many people are suffering, and I hope this movie can help bring us all together and make us feel that we are not alone.
You talk about how hard the disease of addiction is on families. Should families see this film together? Should parents take their teenagers? If they do, how should they prepare both themselves and their kids for the film and what should they do afterwards?
Wow! That’s another good question. I guess what I would say is that every family is different. A reality that many of us would prefer not to face is that every kid is going to encounter drugs as they are growing up. It’s a prevalent reality in the world. Many parents ask me if it’s too early to start talking about drugs with their child if they are a freshman in high school. The clear answer is no. It’s not too early to start talking about drugs to your young, young child. Drugs are pervasive in our culture, and kids are curious by nature. They are confused, and it’s our responsibility to provide them with quality information to help lift that confusion. It’s our responsibility to shed light.
Still, every family and every parent has to determine what’s appropriate for their own child. When it comes to seeing this film, that decision needs to be made for each family. In general, if your child is mature enough to see explicit and disturbing scenes of drug use, then I think this film could provide an amazing way to start that conversation in a family. What does it mean to use drugs? Why do people use drugs? What are the potential consequences to using drugs? These are crucial questions. Before watching the film, there should be a conversation that provides some education. In other words, a conversation that opens the door to a conversation. The best part of such a conversation is if parents can get their kids to talk.
It reminds me of this recent work I’ve been doing with Jarvis Masters, a California inmate at San Quentin on death row. I’ve spent a lot of time in the prison, and I recently sat in with a group of inmates in the program as they talked about their experiences and their lives. They are trying to face the consequences of their actions by doing restorative justice. When I was leaving, I happened to be going to talk to a group of teenagers that night. I asked these men: “I’m going to talk to these kids tonight. Is there anything I should tell them? Is there anything anyone would have said to you that would have helped you growing up so you could have made better decisions later on? Maybe you would not have fallen into addiction and fallen into crime?”
A lot of the men had really interesting things to say. At the end, there was this one guy who has been super quiet the whole time. He said something under his breath, and I couldn’t hear him. I asked him to say what he had said again. He looked up at me and said, “When you talk to these kids tonight, don’t say anything. Just listen to them.”
I thought that was incredibly powerful, and that’s the message I would give to parents. Try to engage your kids in conversation and really figure out who they are and what’s going on in their lives. Then, it’s super important to continue the conversation after the movie. Keep talking and, more importantly, keep listening.
Finally, people in early recovery should be careful when deciding whether or not to see this film. Given the explicit drug use and the unvarnished reality of addiction presented in the film, it may not be the best choice so they should talk it through with their counselors, therapists, sponsors or whomever they are working with to maintain their recovery. The research tells us that such scenes of drug use can be triggering, and that’s the last thing we want to do with this movie. Part of the reason the movie is so powerful is because the filmmakers committed to telling the truth, and that truth is that drug use is not glamorous in the slightest, but rather horrifying to watch.
Alcohol, when construed as the first or best line of self-care, actually renders us less effective in resisting an exploitive system that makes legal space for our bodies to be legislated, controlled, and raped.
“Should we get some wine?” I asked him, pushing a bit of sweet potato around on my plate. I felt my cheeks flush and a weird half smile launch across my lips, the way it always does when I feel embarrassed or awkward or sad or anything really. Whenever I’m feeling anything too much. My partner looked startled.
“What? Why?” he set his own fork and knife down, leaned back in his chair. “I mean, an IPA sounds really good right now. But I guess, just, what’s the motivation behind it?”
It had been 62 days since either of us had had anything to drink, thanks to a self-imposed sobriety challenge after I’d watched my already heavy alcohol consumption creep up and up and eventually become overwhelming in the years since Trump’s election, post-Access Hollywood tape, post-everything. Two months was a long time, I reasoned now. A quality effort. And in all likelihood, an accused sexual predator would sit on the Supreme Court when we woke up the next morning. If there was ever a good reason to nurse a nice bottle of beer to ease some of the anxiety, fear, anger and hopelessness I was feeling, both as a woman and a victim of past sexual abuse, now was it.
Wasn’t it?
“I mean, would this be about escaping things?” he continued, gently, pushing, asking the question I had begged him, at the start of our not-drinking, to raise when I inevitably said I wanted back off the wagon. Because the answer was, is, will always be: Of course.
Of course. I have made a lifestyle out of escaping things, of turning away from what’s hard and ugly and painful. Either that or confronting darkness only when I was a couple of drinks in or after I’d settled beneath the protective blanket of Klonopin or during the rush of false energy following a purge, all the food I’d consumed vomited up and flushed quietly away. In a very real way, I can trace my life as a ping-pong game of silences and rages, each assisted along by some substance or behavior I’ve begun to describe as “not me,” in that they’ve all been designed to take me out myself and, as a result, out of proper caring—for this world, its injustices, its humanness, its pain.
There’s a lot of rhetoric around the usefulness of women’s rage right now, but what keeps getting left out is how, so often, we (middle-class, white women) use anger to stand in for or erase action. How, so often, anger becomes the justification for harm. And for me—and the rising number of American women turning to alcohol to deal with stress, trauma, and its aftereffects—that often takes the shape of self-sabotage in a bottle to numb out, ease anxiety, filter boredom, help us slip into apathy dressed up as protection and self-care. Let me be clear, and I speak from experience: Drowning your sorrows is the opposite of self-care.
Wine will not heal your wounds, will not even tend to them, no matter what the patriarchal messaging around alcohol promises you. And I say patriarchal because it’s true: Our American culture of binge-drinking and heavy alcohol consumption is directly and implicitly tied to the capitalist, racist, structural misogyny upon which our country is founded—and through which marginalized groups are subjugated, oppressed, and continually, insistently Othered. We only have to look to history to see the ways in which alcohol was used to keep said groups under the heel of white men in power: White Europeans, for example, notorious for their “extreme drinking” on the frontier, encouraged both alcohol trade and excessive consumption among Native populations, later weaponizing the stereotype of the “drunk Indian” against them. Years later, slave masters on Southern plantations developed strategies to carefully control slaves’ access to alcohol during the week, only to encourage them to drink heavily on Saturday evenings and special holidays. Frederick Douglass later castigated the so-called controlled promotion of drunkenness as a means of keeping black men and women in “a state of perpetual stupidity” that reduced the risks of rebellion. More recently, increased experiences of racism have been explicitly, causally linked to riskier drinking among black women on college campuses. Meanwhile, growing wealth, educational, employment, housing and health disparities between minorities and white Americans have led to a much greater increase in alcohol consumption among those communities between 2002 and 2013, a study published in JAMA Psychiatrysuggests (although it’s not much of a stretch to say that increase is significantly greater in our Post-Trump world of racist nationalism, its cruel policies, and resulting demoralization among the people affected the most).
Alcohol, too, has become the primary coping mechanism for women in America, regardless of race or ethnicity: Overall, female alcohol use disorder in the United States has increased by 83.7 percent, according to that same study. High risk drinking among women, defined as more than seven drinks in a week or three drinks in a day, has increased by 58 percent. We only have to look at mommy or work wine culture to see the ways in which alcohol is used to keep women quiet, dulled, apathetic and convinced they need booze to survive motherhood or employment or both. So perhaps it is no surprise the contemporary rhetoric of white feminism is rife with messages that draw a supposedly intuitive connection from anger to self-care, which is inevitably linked to drinking. We get tired? We pop open a bottle. We get scared? We fill a glass. We get angry? We rage over shots or cocktails or champagne. None of this helps us. In fact, all of this renders us less effective in resisting an exploitive system that makes legal space for our bodies to be legislated, controlled, and raped.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” Audre Lorde famously said in her 1984 call to and critique of the internalized patriarchy of white Western women. Alcohol, when construed as the first or best line of self-care, I’d argue, is one of the master’s tools. We indulge in the drinks that American culture (and American feminism) says we deserve, and we get raped while the men who were drinking alongside us get off and then get nominated to the Supreme Court. It’s a double bind—one that bears calling attention to, however hard it is to look at. We should be able to say that it’s absolutely, undeniably immoral for a man to abuse a woman’s body while she is drunk (or sober or somewhere in between). That rape or abuse is never a woman’s fault because of what she was drinking (or wearing or saying or where she walking or what time of night it was, etc., etc., forever, etc.). And we should also be able to challenge the messages that encourage a woman to relax or to rage or to start a revolution only after she has a glass of wine in her hand.
Alcohol is a depressant. It anesthetizes our pain and our power, our minds and our bodies, and we will need all of ourselves to fight what will come in the next weeks, months and years as those same bodies become the battleground upon which men’s petty force and overwhelming self-hatred wage war. Look, I’m barely nine weeks sober. I never hit the rock bottom people describe in AA or alcohol recovery programs. I don’t know if I plan on a lifetime of sobriety or if I’ll have a celebratory beer after I finish grading all of my students’ papers over fall break. What I do know? I spent years using alcohol to avoid the work I knew I should be doing. The healing I knew should be seeking. I know many women who don’t drink, who don’t turn to alcohol to deal with exhaustion and fear and heartbreak. I know many, many more who do. I’m not advocating for prohibition or teetotalism. But I am asking women—white women in particular—to take a hard look at what they mean when they say self-care, and what they’re hoping to accomplish by drinking their way through.
We certainly don’t need #BeersforBrett, the hashtag that surfaced among white, wealthy men celebrating Kavanaugh’s confirmation Saturday. But we definitely don’t need feminist cocktails, either, as I saw recently championed on a Facebook group for women scholars and rhetoricians. Jessa Crispin has warned white women against misconstruing the philosophy of self-care that Audre Lorde conceived of as way for activist women of color to ease some of the burden of dismantling racism and misogyny while living at the very intersection of such oppression. “Now it’s applied to, I don’t know, getting a blowout,” Crispin writes. “And pedicures. Even if your pedicurist is basically a slave.” Especially if you’ve got a glass of champagne to assist you along in ignoring that reality. So, no. We don’t need rage if we’re going to use it as an excuse to drink, to sink into dispassion.
We need real action. We need true healing. I didn’t need wine on Friday night, and the community of women I want to support through this troubling time didn’t need me buzzed or drunk or hollowly chill. We need the opposite of that. In our activism and in our downtime, we need a clear-eyed, hangover-free commitment to dismantling absolutely everything that violates us—whether through false comfort or force, apathy or abuse.
For me, leaving was about survival and going back to supportive friends and family who had known me my whole life and who would give me a temporary place to stay.
When I moved to the city of my dreams, I drove my Navy Subaru Impreza stuffed so full that I couldn’t see out of the rearview mirror the entire 1300-mile trek. My backseat was packed with my white cat Toby, my maple-bass guitar Helga, a vintage amp, a typewriter, a case of angsty journals, and a ridiculous amount of polka-dot and striped clothes. All things that I deemed too valuable for the moving truck. A month later, my serious boyfriend finished welding school back home and joined me. After finally leaving our sleepy home state of North Dakota, we were excited to start our new life together.
Fast forward a few chaotic years to a plot that is achingly familiar for those of us who struggle with addiction; a plot almost sad and pathetic enough to make me a country song — if only I drove a pick-up truck and was a dog person rather than a cat lady. When the city of my dreams became the city of my nightmares, I decided to leave. My addiction counselor warned me that running away from my problems wouldn’t fix me, but I didn’t care. My drug hook-ups practically lived outside the Whole Foods across the street from my apartment, the same store that I had been kicked out of for stealing. My rent check bounced so I was on the verge of eviction. I needed to get the hell out.
When I left the nightmare city, my cat Toby had died, my car had died, my identity had been stolen, and worst of all, I had broken up with that boyfriend who was supposed to be my forever mate. Then I fell in love again and that passionate, drug-fueled love also didn’t work out. Since I had sold or given away most of my possessions, pawned my bass and amp, there was no need for a moving truck this time around. I left, feeling broken.
I sobbed as I said goodbye to the stunning Pacific Northwest wonderland with its gleaming snow-topped mountains and volcanoes, waterfalls, rainforest. As I drove east, I felt as flattened and empty as the prairies of my home state.
I knew that just because I was moving home, it didn’t mean that I’d be magically fixed. I tried not to fall under the spell of what folks in the program call the “geographical cure.” Kerry Neville recently wrote a beautiful, lyrical, and illuminating piece on the geographical cure in which she says: “a change in external position on the map doesn’t reset the compass and point us to true north, because we always meet up with the self we are, no matter where we are.”
I agree with some of Neville’s points, namely that taking vacations to topical locales will not get rid of our problems and provide us with a healthy, extended recovery. Yes, I knew that changing my zip code wouldn’t necessarily change my soul. I knew that I’d have to really dig down and do the hard, gritty work of recovery. But for me, leaving wasn’t about a vacation. I couldn’t afford vacation, I couldn’t even afford my rent. For me, leaving was about survival and going back to supportive friends and family who had known me my whole life and who would give me a temporary place to stay.
Now that I mention it, the geographical cure warning is ironic because it contradicts other 12-step platitudes. These platitudes are like currency in the rooms, exchanged as freely as the collection basket for money and meeting lists: If you go to the barbershop enough times, eventually you’re going to get a cut, and: The only thing you have to change is everything. Change people, places, and things.
Why are those of us who do decide to change our location criticized? Why do certain meetings and rehabs keep using their one-size-fits-all mottos rather than listen and embrace the many winding paths that lead us to recovery? In the few meetings I attended and the online recovery groups I participated in, people reacted negatively when I told them what I was doing. The consensus was that I was making a mistake. Even my counselor was quick to remind me that I wasn’t “special and unique,” and if this plan didn’t work for others, then why should it work for me? But I chose to do the thing that I knew would help me and my recovery. It wasn’t a mistake; it saved my life.
Surely I wasn’t the only one who felt that perhaps the geographical cure may have been successful, so I decided to research the power of environmental cues, aka triggers, for addiction, relapse, and recovery. It’s likely you’re familiar with Pavlov’s classic dog study and the mechanics of classical conditioning, but I want to review it because it’s the foundation of every study that I read on this topic. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs when he noticed that the dogs salivated every time a door was opened, even when researchers didn’t have food. This was because the dogs began associating a neutral stimulus like opening a door (or, later, ringing a bell or flashing a light), with food. Researchers later used this model to study people with addictions.
Studies found that people who develop alcoholism and addictions develop strong associations with drug-associated cues and environmental stimuli like Pavlov’s dogs. In other words, after repeated experiences, drug users relate the rewarding effects of a drug (like euphoria and relaxation) with the people, places, and things that are present when we are using. For example, one study found that smokers who received IV nicotine still reported cravings, whereas smokers who received IV nicotine and nicotine-free cigarettes didn’t. Why? Because of the power of environmental cues, including the feeling of holding a cigarette in one’s hand, the smell of smoke, and even packaging of a cigarette box.
I mention these study results not just because they confirm what I already knew in my heart to be true and I love being right, but because they are vital for understanding recovery and relapse prevention. We must acknowledge the power of our environment and triggers. Although most of us won’t take the extreme step of moving across the country, we all can minimize our exposure to triggers until we feel strong enough to deal with them. We can also bring a friend or family member to face triggers and create new associations, as the studies I read suggested.
Above all, we should all learn to embrace our own unique path to find what works best for us, even if it goes against the current of AA axioms. I will always be grateful that I listened to the fluttering in my chest. Wisdom means knowing when to keep your feet firmly planted in place or when to take flight. Sometimes leaving is the thing that saves you after all.
Even though it’s a positive change, adjusting to marriage with a newly sober spouse is a challenge. Some situations are a little tricky to navigate.
After being with my husband for 15 years, it might seem like there would be few suprises left. We have the kind of relationship that includes conversations like, “Hey, Harmony, will you cut off this skin tag on my back?” followed by, “Um, no; I’ll make you a doctor’s appointment.” And later, “Does this look infected to you?”
Robbie is what people in recovery like to call a “normie.” When it comes to alcohol, he can take it or leave it. He can just have one beer, and he doesn’t obsess over when he’ll have the next one. He likes to have fun, and he doesn’t really care if that fun involves alcohol. By the time I entered recovery, he rarely drank anymore; I was always the one drinking, and one of us had to stay sober enough to drive.
The suprise here is that I am the alcoholic and he is the normie, because everyone who knows us assumed it was the other way around.
My husband and I built the foundation of our relationship on having as much fun as possible. (Read: we partied a lot.) We’ve been to New Orleans, our closest major city, many times over the years, visiting for Mardi Gras, romantic getaways, concerts, plays, art events, and stuff with our kids. In true alcoholic form, I remember very little of any of it.
Since I entered recovery, our relationship has shifted considerably. He is exactly the same as he’s always been, but everything about me is changing — how I react to things, what I do and say, how I view and enjoy my life, and how I relate to my husband. All these changes bring up a lot of questions and discussions, obviously, like if we go to New Orleans, will my husband drink? How much? Will I be able to handle it?
Recently, he scored amazing tickets to an NFL game in the New Orleans Superdome. When he asked me to go, I panicked: I’ve got under two years of sobriety under my belt, and we’ve never been to any major city without alcohol. In fact, the last time we went down there, I started with a hand grenade on Bourbon Street and ended with what I believe to be absinthe. None of this was my husband’s fault — we were just there having fun — but his version of “fun” is a lot less dangerous than mine. When I start drinking, I drink to forget.
Neither of us knew how severe my issues were when we met and fell in love. We got married, had a bunch of kids, and BAM! I was in so deep I almost didn’t find my way out. But that’s the beauty of true partnership; Robbie supports me fully in everything I do, and he wants nothing more than to see me happy and healthy. Even so, adjusting to the evolution is a challenge, and even though it is a very positive change for our family, there are still times when it can be a little tricky to navigate.
So, what does my sobriety mean for us as a couple? What are the rules of marriage when one person is an addict and the other is not?
What to do with the alcohol. The issue of what is and is not allowed in the house is a big one. I’m a stay-at-home mom, which means I’m the one staring at the liquor cabinet at 5 p.m. while our children complain about dinner. For us, getting the alcohol out of the house and keeping it out was vital to maintaining my sobriety. I can’t even have Oreos in the house, lest I eat them all, so for now, it’s better this way.
However, I do know many couples who still have alcohol at home and the alcoholic partner isn’t bothered by it. It really boils down to triggers. I, for example, am triggered every damn day when I’m home alone with the kids. If I have alcohol around me and no other adults as backup, I would have a very hard time resisting. Robbie understands that and it’s not a problem for us. Also, we didn’t have to throw any of it out because I drank every last drop of it myself before sobering up.
Prescription medication. Because I’m the mom, I’ve always been in charge of the meds. Uh, I wasn’t exactly responsible — and it was very hard to admit that, both to myself and to my husband. So for a while, and at different points since then, he’s had to take over administering the medication so I don’t eat the entire bottle like candy. He’s been willing to do that because he knows it’s an easy way to help me on my journey to wellness.
What about the chocolate? One of the biggest problems I’ve had in recovery is my insane sweet tooth. Every time my husband or the kids bring home candy, cupcakes, Lucky Charms, or cake, I generally eat it all before they have a chance to even taste it. Robbie started hiding his stash of cookies from me, which naturally I found, and to be honest we’ve had more spats over the junk food than anything else.
Am I always going to be the designated driver? GOD NO. I’m not stable enough to drive around a bunch of drunks. This is why there is Uber.
Football season is huge in our house, and as I mentioned above, we went to an NFL game where everyone was drinking. And it was tough — but as long as I’m honest with him about my struggles, he is happy to help. It’s the honesty part that gets me: being willing to admit that I am powerless over alcohol.
On the morning of the game, I got up early to attend a meeting, and prepared before we left to avoid getting too hungry, tired, or thirsty. It was literally the most fun I’ve ever had at a football game, ever — and that includes when I was drinking.
Parties! We go to them. We might have to leave earlier than we’d like. I hope that gets better, but I’m proud of myself for going.
Meetings. We have three children under the age of 10, and my husband is rarely home before 8 p.m. Finagling our schedules to allow for me to make it to meetings is probably one of the biggest issues we face, and sometimes I get resentful when I really need to go but have to wait until another time. He learned pretty quickly that when I go, I’m much easier to live with, so he does everything he can to accommodate me. Smart man.
Sex. That’s a topic for a whole other essay. Suffice it to say, it’s been an adjustment.
I can honestly say, for the first time in a very long while, that I’m truly the person that Robbie fell in love with all those years ago, and his patience with me as I fumble my way through recovery has completely renewed the love I have for him. Marriage in recovery is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
