How Sober Are You?

Sober enough to realize that *oh, shit* I’m as addicted to these other life-sucking things as I ever was to alcohol. Super.

Is there a single word that perfectly encapsulates middle age, lingering long-Covid symptoms, undiagnosed and untreated ADHD, menopausal estrogen depletion, hair loss, sleeplessness, man fatigue, spiritual exhaustion, addiction, existential despair, and an aching desire to maybe just one more time in this life feel like a glowing lantern of love lit from within?  

I asked Google that question and got ten pages of links to articles and studies about the negative impact of loneliness on the aging population and one article about women and menopause. 

Did my search include the word lonely, Google?

I’m just trying to feel a little bit better, you know? But with so many factors at play, it’s hard to know where to begin, so I’m trying to hit it all with a steady spray of mindfulness meditation and insight inquiry, writing, rest, and exercise. I’m starting hormone replacement therapy, seeking an ADHD assessment, and am actively working on the missing recovery piece of my 3.5 years of sobriety.

Digging through heavy-drinking phase selfies, I found this one from the time right after my ex said he wanted a divorce. I remember taking this after flopping into bed with the spins at 2 a.m. My eyes are pleading please, just fucking love me, because I have no clue how to do it myself.

My stepfather went the Alcoholics Anonymous route when his drinking blew up his (our) life. A few other key men in my orbit like my maternal grandfather did the same. When my genetic disposition kicked in and my relationship with alcohol became, shall we say, unhealthy, it took nearly twenty more years of steady drinking for me to put it down. But no way was I going to an AA meeting even though I’ve known so many other people whose lives were transformed by working the 12 steps and being active members of the community they found there. Right or wrong, I associate AA with a specific kind of patriarchal thinking that I’m struggling to articulate, and more painfully with being a young adult forced to navigate the emotionally abusive behaviors of a dry drunk in a codependent broken family system. I can’t seem to give myself permission to share these stories yet but trust me, I’m writing them.

He had good qualities. Just like I have some epically shitty qualities. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone with the emotional intelligence and maturity needed to shelter me and my siblings from the confusing, frightening storm that repeatedly blew through our home. I’ve had enough therapy to know everyone did the best they could with what they had. And to know that it wasn’t nearly good enough and that I will do all I can to not pass on those patterns. 

What I’m trying to say is I finally figured out I was wrong to think I could get sober on my own and not end up here, face-to-face with the same addictive patterns and unexamined triggers. 

And that I’m fucking lonely. 

🖕🏻Goddammit, Google.🖕🏻

I’ve spent the last 3.5 years sitting in that loneliness without filtering my feelings through a steady stream of alcohol. Monumental, but I’m not sober. I suspect very few people in the Western world are fully sober and that most of us are deeply lonely in ways we probably don’t even know how to begin to talk about. That thought helps me not get lost in a shame spiral.

I have a lot of wonderful people in my life; friends, family, and colleagues, and I’m grateful and happy for the connections. Some of those relationships are built on a foundation of intimate vulnerability. We can talk about anything. Politics, sex, sobriety, regret, fear, desire, anger, trust, and all of the mundanities of our middle-American, privileged daily life. I feel loved, seen, heard, and supported. And I’m lonely.  

The first time I drank alcohol was at my aunt and uncle’s wedding. I was five and the first in my generation of grandkids, so I got to be the flower girl. I have no memory of this event beyond the fading photos of us all wearing handmade 1970s flower print gowns with huge ruffles, and of laying on the floor under a table at the reception at the Vega Club in Brockton, Massachusetts with the room spinning around me. As the party progressed, the adults got drunk, and my three-year-old sister and I made our way from table to table chugging down half-empty glasses of what we thought were ice cream floats. Every big family function for years featured one of those cut crystal bowls with the matching cups hanging from its side on little plastic hooks, the bowl filled with a concoction we called Baptism Punch—a near-lethal mix of alcohol, fruit juices, and ginger ale, topped with scoops of rainbow sherbet. The crack cocaine of Long Island Iced Teas.

I always found a way to sneak some at family gatherings, but never to the degree I did that afternoon. First blackout at five. Woohoo! Off to the races. 

Now my blackouts look like me absent-mindedly yet frantically reaching for sugar the second I don’t like the way I’m feeling, even though I know sugar contributes to the inflammation that makes my body produce too many platelets, putting me at higher risk of heart attack and stroke. Now it looks like unconsciously (totally consciously) losing hours of my day and night to robotically scrolling reels and bingeing TV shows while telling myself at least I’m not addicted to TikTok. 

LOL. 

Honestly, I’m hungover every day. Sick with it, and so sick of it. I’m out of alignment with my values and purpose. Feeling like a real piece of shit. 

This is exactly how I felt in the months leading up to quitting drinking, up against the shame like a lover, pressing my naked self into its cold, sweaty back, ignoring the fetid morning breath so I can be closer to something, anything that might maybe feel better than the shitty movie playing in my head and heart. 

Now that I think about it, my true first experience with alcohol was in a Roman Catholic church probably around the same time as the wedding. Communion was given by passing trays across each pew with 2-ounce plastic souffle cups half-filled with blessed red wine and a basket with unleavened bread broken into pieces. I didn’t dare ask how this could be the body and blood of Christ for fear of getting shushed in that cold, cavernous room where Mom’s voice would echo and all of those strangers’ heads would turn to glare at me. 

I can feel that blood wine burning my mouth even now, coiling in my belly like a snake. My whole body was an electrical vibration, tight, dark, and sparkly like the white noise on the TV that always launched my father out of his seat to bang on the console and adjust the antennae. It scared me and I liked it. Those first stolen gulps of Baptism punch made me feel the same thing. 

Most of my friends drink and that’s often hard to be around. At first it was hard because I wanted to drink. Now it’s hard because the conversation gets circular, repetitive, and boring (apologies to everyone I ever bored shitless when I was four whiskeys deep telling the story of how I once picked Katherine Hepburn up off the sidewalk in NYC for the ten thousandth time, you are legion and I owe you. But seriously, now I lose my tether to the conversation’s flow because I don’t have that boozy anchor. I often bow out early if I even go out at all.

Gee, Kelly. Maybe you’re why you’re lonely? 

I quit drinking many times, for pregnancies and breastfeeding, for dry Januarys, plus other longer stretches to reset. I always intended to come back from these breaks as a person who can have just one, despite all previous evidence to the contrary. I always returned to being the person at the potluck who spent half the night not-so-discretely monitoring the booze supply on hand and finding a way to order one more drink at dinner before the plates were cleared.  

At the end of my long drinking career—48 years if we count that first sip in church and the wedding incident, which we absolutely should—I could put down half a 750ml bottle of Bulleit Rye in a few hours. I thought I was good because I never drank alone at home anymore. By the time I decided to let it go, I was having memory blackouts when sober. Yet I was so good at masking, that nobody ever suggested I should think about quitting. In fact, people were surprised when I did.

If I can let go of alcohol, surely I can allow my cravings for sugar and Instagram-dripped dopamine to arise without acting on them. Even during this election season that feels like the prelude to the to the upcoming novel, The End of the World.

Man, I’ve been trying and I give. I can’t do this alone.

Recently, I learned about a Recovery Dharma meeting at a local meditation space and figuring that so far meditating has been good for me on many other levels, I decided to try it. I had no idea how much my recovering self needed community, but I felt that truth in my bones the first time I attended. I’ve been to a handful of meetings since and intend to continue. I’m going to one tonight.

Applying Buddhist teachings to addiction recovery resonates for me in a way the 12-step program couldn’t. What a gift to sit in silence with others who are actively learning to live with their cravings and love themselves. The energy in the room is soft, accepting, and curious. We’re all practicing self-compassion.

It’s a community/volunteer-run meeting with no leader, which I notice dissolves my insecurities and the people-pleasing feeling that I need to do it right. After we sit in shared silence for twenty minutes, we read aloud from the Recovery Dharma book, taking turns around the room until the chapter is complete, and then have a period for discussion and sharing before a short closing meditation. It’s the best hour I’ve given to myself on this journey.

It makes so much sense that I need to hold space for others and feel held myself while sharing how painful it is to realize exactly how not sober I am, despite my hard-won freedom from the grips of alcohol. To sit with that on the cushion. To practice loving the awareness instead of beating myself up for it. That muscle is weak, but I’m working on it every day, sitting with the uncomfortable feeling of existential loneliness under the waves of desire for sugar and distraction. 

I’m finally beginning to understand that this loneliness is not something I can fix. Not by feeding it sugar. Not by ignoring it. Not by distracting myself from it. 

Lonely is a wave that rises and falls. I can identify my entire being with it or practice letting it wash over and away.  

Lonely is a thing I have to learn to allow by practicing.

In a year, I wonder what I’ll think, feel, and say about all of this.

Soul Card

I’m starting something new with this post. For the last thirty-odd years, I’ve used the Soul Cards tarot deck by Deborah Koff-Chapin to help me tap into my inner knowing, creativity, and truth. I love the illustrations that evoke such strong emotions and bring hidden questions and answers to the surface. Usually, I draw a single card about a question, concern, or project, but they can also be drawn in spreads like traditional tarot. The cards don’t have set meanings. Instead, they help you connect with your inner wisdom and interpret the cards in ways that are most meaningful to you.

When I first started exploring the idea that even though I no longer drink alcohol, I am nowhere near sober, I drew this card:

What it brought up for me:

• The light above the figure feels like it signals possibility, but it’s also blinding, so there’s no sense of clarity about what she’ll find if she comes out of the hole. I wonder about following the light of others’ teaching to heal my patterns. It’s a relief to have some sort of guide, but I know I need to feel it inside myself before it’s true healing. I’ve never been here before, so I have no way of knowing what will happen.

• The figure is perhaps poised to emerge but also seems comfortable and at home in the confined space. It’s always easier to stay where I am. Change is hard and scary. Letting go of my stories about myself is terrifying. If I’m not what I’ve been telling myself my whole life, then what am I?

• Her expression is calm, open, and curious about what’s outside. Truth. What will it feel like to accept these hard things about myself?

• Her body posture seems maybe a little self-protective but also tender and at ease with herself. Of course. Cover the tenderest parts until safe.

• The walls of the cavern look ancient, like she’s been there for quite a long geologic time. We’re all playing out our own versions of the human condition on Earth. There is nothing new here.

You can get the Soul Cards and the Soul Cards 2 Decks at many online booksellers and of course on Amazon along with several other books by the same artist. I have them both and plan to continue working with them for the rest of my life.

Curious about Recovery Dharma?

Find an in-person or online Recovery Dharma meeting.

Buy a copy of the book Recovery Dharma: How to Use Buddhist Practices and Principles to Heal the Suffering of Addiction or download the free PDF.