what I learned in 5 years of sobriety

On anniversary milestones, it’s become “the thing” to write out the moment you realized you needed to stop drinking/using. It’s that cinematic moment of clarity that everyone chases. I have previously put some deep thought into that and came up with this. But today, as I mark 5 years of continuous sobriety without a drink or drug, I wanted to honor (and share) some of the things I learned while I’ve been sober to give you insight into what it’s like to give it up and for life to get good:

Left: Enjoying an “after interview” beer at Penn Station Right: Photographed by Vincent Tullo for the New York Times

• The first year sucks. It just does. Your brain and body has been utilizing alcohol or drugs as your coping mechanism and it’s painful to find new things to self-regulate with but you will find those things if you search
• GET SOME SUGAR. As we know sugar is excellent substitute in the early days so get that cupcake and hot chocolate with extra whip without guilt.
• Take a “dark” shower, weird but hear me out. I didn’t learn this trick until year 4 but it works for me. Go start the shower and hang out with the lights out. Listen to the water and take a deep breathe until you feel more normal
• Get a program. Mine is 12 step, yours can be whatever you want but make sure you have a community that shares your desire to stop ingesting substances. See: Smart Recovery, /stopdrinking subreddit, the Bubble Hour podcast etc
• Relapse. It happens. It does not mean you are weak or can’t do what needs to be done. It’s as simple as it happens to the best of us and we don’t need to feel ashamed. ADAAT.
• Controversial but…. I don’t date in the rooms, anymore. Some people totally make this work (a couple of my pals that I love deeply and are in love deeply) but for me this always ended badly because I found myself focusing on the people versus the message. I date a “normie” and while it SHOCKS ME that he can drink a glass of wine and be “finished”, it feels good to have my sober community be a place just for me
• Find your people in the meetings, seek out people that make you laugh so loud at the diner (when we used to do that) and make you forget that you are an addict. Loneliness is likely a part of why we drank, we need to inoculate against it
• Don’t move apartments/housing so much: I moved 6 times in recovery and very little stressed me out more that packing all of my things and moving it to another box. Just stay put!!!
• You can still be (very) ambitious. I recalled feeling fearful when someone with a couple years said they had “put their life on hold to get sober” and that anything you put in front of sobriety you would lose plus your sobriety. I panicked! My job as a documentary filmmaker required all of me and I knew I could be sober and get it done and that I did. In the past five years I have directed and produced the films Thought Crimes: the Case of the Cannibal Cop, Mommy Dead and Dearest, I Love You, Now Die: the Commonwealth Vs. Michelle Carter, At The Heart of Gold and the tv series Dirty Money and How to Fix a Drug Scandal, for HBO and Netflix respectively. Prior to this, I was a smart but equally sloppy employee and while I had big dreams they were semi-impossible to realize when battling active addiction. In sobriety, anything is possible. You have the time, make it happen

Wearing a rented dress in July 2019. Courtesy of Michael Loccisano/HBO

• You. Don’t. Need. To. Go. Bars. Full stop. So many people subscribe to the “I can go anywhere a free man can drink” but for me, envy would take hold and I decided for the first couple years I just don’t need to be in those spaces. I had donated YEARS of my life endless conversations in shitty bars (what on earth I was talking about from 8pm to 4am I have literally no idea. Sometimes I would dance?) But it’s not something I needed to do in sobriety. Keeping distance between me and the bar was a crucial aspect to my early recovery
• Break-ups are terrible but manageable. These happen and can bring you to the brink but just don’t pick up and you can get through them without setting either of you on fire
• Coffee friend or romantic dates are AWKWARD. Sucks but if you wanna date and you don’t want to go to bars you have to do this
• Other people’s sobriety is none of our business. I remember getting really into feelings when “cali sober” became a hot trend. Cali Sober is defined by not drinking but allowing in a little green (marijuana) every now and then. I can’t do that but whatever works for other people in stopping consuming their DOC (drug of choice) is a win
• Temptations come but nothing like that first year. Around year 2, my intense drinking urges were taken away, not completely but in large part
• Your relationships will improve! For example, for years I tortured my twin sister with repetitive phone-calls where I described the shame spiral of my latest bender. She listened carefully, trying to remove the judgement from her voice but it was uncomfortable for both of us. She couldn’t always pick up the phone and after awhile I stopped calling, it was just the same thing, on repeat. When I got sober, we started to really talk and it’s been one of the most fulfilling relationships of my life (as it was meant to be)

Left: Me and Meagan. Right: a high-school graduation card from my parents in 2006

• Help others! I remember when my lovely but pragmatic sponsor suggested I do 3 esteem-able acts daily and not tell anyone. I was shocked! What are you talking about? Then I did it and felt some of the pressure lift, maybe it wasn’t all about me…
• People die. I got sober in 2014 and relapsed in 2015 when my father died and almost everyone in my life gave me a pass to use and drink as much as I needed to. This kept me from experiencing the extreme but universal grief I had incurred. On August 23, 2015 I said no more but the grief came as me in waves and I could do nothing but feel it
• Go to THERAPY! Being cash strapped because of my massive student debt and being a “freelance filmmaker” I wasn’t sure if I could afford a New York therapist. In a stroke of luck, I found a psychotherapy training clinic where I paid $35 a session. I thank the lord(s) for this necessary mental health treatment and knew I needed this additional help. Look in your area for therapists in training
• Don’t go training dental school because you have said little money. JUST SPEND THE MONEY ON A DENTIST PAST ERIN

Stuff of nightmares, plus Stephen King. Maybe my 5th time at this particular dentistry school?

• Speaking of money. I was the worst with money. In my 20s, I constantly overdrew my or maxed out my credit card. I remember a particularly embarrassing moment when my card got declined whilst trying to purchase an $11 pack of Hanes underwear at the Target on Atlantic Avenue. Instead of my hide-under-the-cover mentality I had previously about finances, in 2016 I finally logged into my account and made a plan. A year later, I got a SEP IRA and an accountant and started paying off my student debt and saving small amounts for a retirement that I hope to have. Some of this stuff is just growing up and I am still in the process of figuring it out…. (in 2019 I paid off my student debt in full, one of the proudest achievements of my life, to date)

Debt free proclamation! Posted October 30th 2019

• You age in reverse, seriously. A vast majority of the people I know who have managed to de-pickle themselves come out looking pretty damn nice. Maybe it’s the fact that sleep and skincare has finally entered into the picture versus day 5 of bed-time tequila shots but it’s a wonderful thing to witness in yourself and others
• Gratitude. I write a daily list about what I am grateful for and it has a sort of magic that I can’t explain. I just am more even after I write it. I also read other sober babes’s lists.
• Rock a new look. See red suit

LA Style (loud). Taken November 2019.

• And finally my belief that sobriety is a superpower.

I could go on! Recovery is one of the wildest rides I’ve gone on. I truly expected my life to become a dull and drab montage in which I stare at the ceiling begging sleep to come. To be clear, I’ve had those nights (mostly in quarantine) but it is the mornings that have kept me here. I feel a profound amount of happiness when I wake up Sunday mornings, like today, full of exhilaration.

I feel like I have really lived these past 5 years. It’s been an intense, brutal and yet beautiful time. I have gotten sick, grieved, loved and been loved and made a lot of disturbing movies ;). Grateful doesn’t even begin to describe, but it’s a start…