I’ve been sober almost continuously for a year and a half. I’ve had a minor slip or two, but they’ve been inconsequential and strangely detached from my former drinking habits and patterns, as if I was not involved in them like I used to be, but separate from the experience. Distance, in general, allowed me to see those slip-ups that way. So, unfortunate as they were, they contained information I’m glad I was able to discover: the fact of my newfound indifference to drinking.
When I turned 30, something changed in me and alcohol was aversive, in a way it had never been before. Maybe something within my biology had changed, maybe it was just the accumulated despair and frustration of a decade of struggling with it, of repeated attempts to remain sober and the helplessness, guilt and shame that came with repeatedly failing.. A burden I’d carried for so long, I could bear it no longer. But I could never just drop the burden like a weight I might have carried on my shoulders, I’d tried so many times. This had always been more like a tumour that had grown within me and, I’d always felt like I had to tear at it and then desperately wait and, hope that it would stop growing and let me be, just let me be free of the struggle. I had just come to know and believe a huge part of the process had to be feeling the pain, the yearning, the vacancy… and letting it dissipate with time.
Addiction always felt to me like a visitor that inhabits you, and it takes a while to realise it’s there, maybe you even invited it in willingly, but it’s an entity that eventually becomes recognisable, and as something seperate to you, or at least who you believed yourself to be–seperate to your rational self, your goals and wishes, your very essence… but still seemingly a part of you, increasingly gaining in mass until you wonder where it starts and you begin. And because it feeds on you and merges with you in a sense it will not be vanquished without a struggle. As much as you’d give anything to be free of it.
At first it’s unreasonable to believe it isn’t you, you’re making the choices, enjoying what the drug (alcohol) gives you and going along with it, until at some point you wonder who, or what, steers the wheel. On a sliding scale your actions start to feel less and less like results of your own discretion, and you end up wondering who you are, who…. what.. you’ve become.
What I would feel when I would go sober, ignore this entities voice, would be a void, and with that a painful longing, and that was what I’d never succeeded in accepting and allowing myself to feel for any significant period of time. I came to believe maybe I’d never surmount this, maybe I was not strong enough. But I wouldn’t, couldn’t be okay with giving up. Even this constant internal divide, the painful cognitive dissonance was better than simply accepting it.
The strange thing is, somehow, somewhere along the way, with all my repeated attempts something did change, without me having to truly endure any longer the internal struggle. At some point the weight of the burden did just fall off my shoulders.
I still carried and do carry a weight of a burden. And often the suffering is heavy. But it has nothing to do with alcohol any longer. Alcohol is not part of my day-to-day thoughts or awareness. And the best thing about not drinking for me is that I’m making progress in all the areas I couldn’t before.
And more than anything it feels like a have a sense of positive continuity. I lived without that for so long. Like a plant without the sun.
All this is mostly to say– If you are struggling now and you’ve had repeated attempts to stay sober. Do not give up.
This burden will not be yours forever. Do not stop fighting. Do not stop quitting.
It won’t always feel like this.
It won’t always be this hard.
More thoughts on this topic
Freely Feeling – Sober the Highs and Lows
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