On the Couch Where I Bottomed Out
Getting Sober Where You Scraped Yourself Off of the Floor
I woke up that morning like I did most mornings, wedged between the coffee table and my couch, one leg precariously clinging to the cushions in some subconscious fashion to break my fall. Dry-mouthed, a single eye watering without stopping, head pounding, cats staring at me in fear. I had the practice of sitting up between the couch and coffee table down to a science, even with my one bleary eye and compromised faculties, and I started the morning phone scroll.
“What damage did I forget that I caused last night,” somewhere between the vodka and the bourbon and the wine. This was a normal type of morning scroll, one that I later found was very common with people like me. I turned white at all of the apologies I had wracked up for how vicious I had not even remembered being.
“Well, it’s a typical morning,” I seethed quietly to myself.
Except, this time, it wasn’t.
I steadied myself and walked as far as my bed, where I ideally would’ve slept yet rarely did. I considered what excuses I’d use this time. I really had none. I had… feelings. I had guilt. I had shame. I had sadness. I had terror. I had nausea. I felt. “No, no, no,” I hissed. “We don’t do that.”
Work day excuses were easy since I worked with more than a few people very much like me at the time. “Ugh, a migraine, running late!” “Weird, scratched my eye while sleeping,” as I stared with one-eyed bloodshot at the camera. Enter any other medical excuse, and it was enough to get people to leave me alone, as long as my job got done, and got done well. Despite myself, it always did.
But, this was a Saturday, and I was suddenly feeling. Never before considering myself empathetic, I felt my own feelings and the ones that I’d been hurting for years. There was no self-righteous indignation, for which I darn near had earned a medal. There was only self-awareness.
I fucking hated it.
Weeks prior, I had gone to Dr. Leers and asked her to give me another shot at a prescription for Naltrexone, a drug that blocks the opioid receptors in your brain and is intended to discourage people from drinking. What’s the point of drinking if there is no joy? I rarely felt joy when I drank anyway; maybe the first three to four drinks, the next six to 10 took me to blind rage. The doctor was hesitant because we tried this a year prior and I Barney Stinson “Challenge Accepted” it and draink anyway to prove… what point, I will never know. There wasn’t any joy for those three to four drinks anymore; I simply went straight to rage. It worked. “Worked.” I didn’t.
On that morning I rushed to the unopened CVS bag and swallowed one so fast you’d think it would cure me of my ailment on the spot. The desperation mixed with all of that newfound feeling led me to say the two most powerful words I’ve ever said.
“No more.”
I grabbed a bottle of Smart Water, fed the poor kitties who, thankfully, were never hurt nor neglected though sadly often scared and seemingly worried about me — if cats worry about anything but food. I walked to my window that overlooked the Manhattan skyline and stared in a state of what I would later learn was surrender. I was powerless. I had nothing inside of me. I needed help. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic like so many ancestors before me; there was no more denying it. It was me. I was she. Powerless to whatever drove me to numb every feeling I’d ever had.
I had been in the midst of doing apartment hunting for a former friend who was moving to New York, a friend I consequentially picked a huge fight with the night prior. According to the text, at least. I didn’t remember a thing. So I set off to finish that promised errand, but only after I fed the kitty I was watching a handful of floors above me. People always suffered at the hands of my addiction; animals never did. That became a tiny tether of hope that perhaps I could be whole and loving and not hate feeling.
I finished my errands and made my way home, still dehydrated, off balance, dealing with the daily stomach distress that copious amounts of booze causes. I plopped down on my couch, hid my phone in a drawer and isolated myself. I didn’t text or email friends other than to send the promised apartment notes and cat-sitting pictures. I grabbed my laptop and tried to find some resources on “how to get sober.”
“Don’t drink.”
Fuck off.
I dug deeper and found a sober buddy type of app, but that was all people complaining about how they couldn’t stop drinking. A kind moderator with the screen name “Fiona” noticed my franticness and frustration and suggested that I try an online Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and told me where to find the meeting finder. “There tend to be more sober people there than here,” she admitted.
And there, on the same couch where one leg clung that morning, I sat upright and did my first Zoom AA meeting. In that same spot, on that same couch, I did one more, then 10 more, and then by the time I was 90 days sober, I had done 174 in total. All from that seemingly cursed couch where I passed out every night in what seemed like lifetimes ago. I chose the couch over outings with friends because it would sit silently with me while I drank. The couch that took me from joy to rage every day up until the day that it didn’t. The couch had suddenly become my safe space.
My only saving grace during the active addiction portion of my alcoholism was that, in true OCD fashion, it had a schedule. I didn’t think much about drinking at all during the day until 6 p.m. rolled around (“witching hour,” I still call it), and then the obsession was all I cared about.
Meeting after meeting. Share after share. Step after step. Promise after promise. Amends after amends. Therapy session after therapy session. Book after book. I healed. Never cured. Only healed.
And that was enough. Until it wasn’t.
“Sobriety isn’t enough for me,” I said to a former sponsor, who gawked at the words as they dripped out of my mouth. “Now that I have it, what do I do with it?” I did not want to be someone who went to multiple meetings a day or even meetings every day for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to simply be “a sober person.” While grateful for AA, and I truly believe every person would be better off if they did the painfully confronting steps, my relationship with it was similar to that of the one with my mother. I had deep love and appreciation, but I did not want to be codependent with that program just as much as I worked hard not to be codependent with her.
I transitioned from sponsor to sober coach who helped me build my own program and pushed me to find my purpose — which I now know is to heal myself so I can use my words to heal others. I want to give people who thought they could never get it right — especially people I had fooled into thinking I had gotten it right — the hope that there were lifesaving solutions that also helped stave off misery and other pains. That they can be okay even in the darkest of days. I still went to meetings on and off, mostly when I wanted to be of service to others. I will, again, forever be grateful, but my sobriety will never be predicated on the false adage that “meeting makers make it” when so many do not. My sobriety will be predicated on my bespoke program and on my relationship with the universe as a spiritual parent and around the earthly support system, the embrace of which grew with every person I told.
My program is also predicated on gratitude. For everything from my sobriety to the tiny claw pokes in my comforter where I now sleep nightly with the cats, who are always relaxed and snuggled. That formerly enabling couch and that program saved my life, and I am grateful for both. They put me on a path to where I am now, and where I am now is fucking beautiful. I am painfully imperfect. I am also graceful, generous, accountable, present, kind, protective, nurturing, intuitive, and spiritual. Not every day, but most days.
Today I am 16 days away from two years of sobriety, one day at a time, or #odaat (in fact, my current AA fellowship calls me “#odaat Jen” because I always say it). I will never say I will never drink again. I don’t have that freedom. I don’t fear alcohol but I don’t want it, either. Every day is an active choice to stay sober, especially when I don’t want to feel. Especially when I am heartbroken. Especially when I am stressed. I sit in my feelings now. I soak it all up and I emote in new ways — talks with friends, writing, vapid or dark social media posts. Or, I revisit my steps, my journal, my amends I never want to have to make again.
Sometimes life feels mundane, boring, slow, or sad because I’m still so conditioned to the drama I used to create. Still, I’ll take it. I’ll live the principles I’ve learned through my program. Through my studies. Through my fellows and mentors. Through my sometimes insignificant little life. And I’ll write about it, so others can learn to be helpful to others or go on to heal themselves. Sometimes I’ll write where I am now, sitting in my car after getting caught in a rainstorm on a bench at Squantz Pond, and sometimes I’ll write from my couch.
Where I bottomed out.
Editor’s note: I learned after sobering up that it was dangerous for me to detox alone. If you feel you need to detox, tell a friend or family member, go to a meeting, call a helpline, or leave a message here.
(Written on location at Squantz Pond, New Fairfieild, CT, on Thursday, August 12, 2024)
