3 Years without a drop and many more hence to come.
This post contains remediated, curated, and heavily edited handwritten, dictated, and typed, personal journal entries ranging from February 2023 to February 2026.
Sparked by a conversation with a friend over coffee - I started questioning why I’ve never shared my sober journey with the world before.
Stuck in thought breaking down the question of why repeats it repeats with frequency I don’t quite understand. Why have I never actually published these. I tend not to talk about what led me here instead to share the best express when conflicts in the moment. Talking about what I will look for myself adding a note to my house parties invites “Firmly asking you to leave with it.” is this the tale I’ve opted to only share with everyone? Do I do more? Should I share the whole thing. Maybe I will Maybe this is a good time for such a tale to be expressed. Share it with the world even if no one reads it. Public it will become for myself and those that maybe need to the story for their own growth. (Handwritten, Feb. 3rd ‘26)
I know not the tale of your exposure to alcohol or thus the first time such poison glazed your lips.
“And I bit my lip the second you sipped the poison that was mixed for me” - 3OH!3
As an Usonian Jew I learned of wine as a child sipping it briefly Friday evenings as we sat Lit, Drank, and Broke Challah to usher in the Sabbath.
Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen.
Blessed are you, oh God, who creates the fruit of the vine.
A regular tradition rooted deep in culture and religion. A sip of wine was common occurrence. It was so common and prevalent that age was seldom factored in towards its consumption.
Looking back it’s hard not to notice the prevalence of alcohol throughout all of human history. Take the story of exodus and it’s subsequent observance. For the better part of the last few millennium the Jewish Diaspora has recognized Pesach through the tradition of the Passover Sedar. An intricate multipart feast with symbols in the food, the questions we ask, and the story we retell each year. Part of this tradition includes the consumption of a glass of wine. Four glasses typically in total and often more. It was this holiday that led me to my first recollection of intoxication. Passover Sedar with the family on the porch by the pool in the Florida Spring Air my uncle filling up my cup and all the whilst laughing at the absurdity of an intoxicated little me.
My relationship with alcohol has always been a story onto itself. Likely ringing into echo one that will not form us strangers. (unfinished poem excerpt)
The casual consumption was not a detail of my life until the years of university. However, throughout the blunderous years of secondary grade school there were parties and a myriad of other occasions where the consumption existed often in copius amounts.
Like the first time I blacked out, a school trip to Italy whilst I was only merely 16. Maybe it’s worth acknowledging the time I was asked to leave the day camp on a cruise cause I was drunk after a shore side trip to Fat Tuesdays in Cozumel. Maybe it’s worth acknowledging the first time I laid on the concrete to stop the world from spinning. Maybe it is worth acknowledging the time an ambulance picked me up…
That should have been it. That should have been when I got sober but atlas it was not.
It was 2020, June 2020, June 12th 2020.
My 25th birthday had passed and the world was shit. Celebrating with people who were more Her friends than mine. Reckoning with my gender and a relationship held together by forces rooted in the familiar.
French 75s were the drink of choice that evening, gathered around a fire in the hills of the South Eastern Appalachia the night was turning over on itself and as the fire burned so did the spark of myself. Doused in liquid one glass after another until the wobble, slurs, and stars spun about. Masking myself and hiding from the reality of the world. Escaping the anxiety of wanting to express my dysphoria all drowned out in a sea of spirits who’s grip on my stomach had only begun. Laying as the world spun and echos of self loathing a crawl to the throne where the emesis commenced forth. It came in waves and occurred with frequency. In panic as the colour of my face changed She called the paramedics. Sitting on the couch as the odd people entered. I know not how I moved from the bathroom floor to the couch or from there to the ambulance and once more to the hospital. Those were steps that occurred that evening all the same. Discharged from the hospital then a visit without medical insurance led me to peruse therapy and a quest to reduce consumption.
It worked for a while.
Ultimately I still ended up drinking again. Despite consuming more soda, despite all the attempts to deliberately reduce consumption I continued same as before.
I worked a 4x10 with a day off in the middle of the week a day I often spent going to the grocer, returning home, and being drunk all day long. I told myself as long as the chores were done and dinner was cooked than such a habit was ok. Thus it continued, first it was a few beers, than several, than a pack, then multiple, sometimes an entire handle or an entire growler.
A sailor would gawk in disgust at the quantity that flowed into my gut.
As I moved into a more traditional 5 days a week work schedule I wasn’t able to hide this addiction with such grace. It became evident to many the levels of consumption I was capable of. There were nights I’d open and toss the contents of an entire box of red wine.
This continued for the likes on a scale of years.
It all came to a close as the week single before moving out transpired. I cleaned an entire handle of tequila straight from the bottle only to vomit it right back up and than to do the same the following evening. I promised myself I would abstain until I was in a head space not clouded with grief that the conclusion of those 7 years shrouded me.
I had my last drink, a sour beer, at Wissahickon Brewing, on Sunday February 26th, 2023, at approximately 2:01pm.
That promise lasted several months of some of the most challenging time I never expected.
I craved the taste, I craved the euphoria of a buzz, I ached for the release of careless blunder, and the aura of confidence such poison provides.
I battled through taking advantage of Ritual NA liquor especially the faux tequila mixed into a delightful Bloodless Mary. I brought na beer to every party and function. I signed up for Athletics’s membership club and got two cases delivered every month. That first year was soaked with the nectar of dealcoholized concoctions and elaborate home made sodas.
Drinking Vinegars? I did that. Make my own soda syrups? I did that. Buy a 5lb co2 tank and plumb it into a soda stream? I did that. Make elaborate coffee cocktails? I did that. Develop a nicotine addiction? I even did that too.
These alternates slowly dwindled with the cravings and changes my body experienced. My anxiety took on a different light. One that had me ensnared in ways I never expected. I spent so long perpetually intoxicated I never truly knew what navigating my world felt like. Navigating with anxiety at turn, an experience not numbed by the effects of a flush became a new challenge of its own. Feeling my dysphoria and listening to it was an experience that cracked my egg so far open the shell might as well been calcium citrate.
My world changed in profound ways. One week became a month. One became three. Three became six. Before I even knew it a year had fully passed.
did I fulfill my promise? Am I in a space where I could drink again and be in control? Can I do that? Should I even try? It’s been a year now and I don’t know. What will I gain from drinking again?
Pros:
easy to socialize
Feels good
Many many "culinary" options and experiences
Cons:
Hangovers
Memory loss
Health
Vomiting
Embarrassing myself
Embarrassing others
Losing who I have become.............(Dictated and typed, Mar 2nd, 2024)
One year sat in itself as a quiet accomplishment I wasn’t sure I really earned. It felt unreal. Especially as the challenges the first few months held had since faded. Cravings seemed gone. The fear of accidentally drinking being one of the only markers I found myself being able to succinctly point too.
I stand now with the struggles of communicating it all. Some of my best friends recognize the accomplishment these rounded years that tick up as such. Even when I continue to feel unearning. Dating has been challenging too. I’ve thrown drinks away because someone drinking alcohol reached for mine to try. I’ve turned away from an approaching kiss as even the smell on one’s breath harkons back memories I wish weren’t there. There was a time when I dated someone also sober. A chance out of an algorithm that brought force a realization that understanding of all that is here without the inherit need to explain it exists in this world. Holding onto what I had been through. Knowing that my experience no matter how unique was not truly an insular one. That touched me in a way that opened how hard this can truly be.
Sometimes when someone opens a particular potent smelling beer or pours a glass of wine too close, my mouth waters and a craving emerges. Some spaces are hard and some experiences I’ve found better to avoid. Being sober continues to be a challenge in ways that feel unreal. In ways that feel like they are mutually exclusive from the accomplishments that each days brings.
Year three trickles in. Stuck again with this unearning feeling as I continue to be sober, as I continue to abstain.
As I continue to say
IWNDWYT