People Ask How I Feel After Quitting Drinking and I’ve Had a Hard Time Coming Up With an Answer
A sweet friend recently asked me how I feel now that I quit drinking. The
truth was I felt tired, irritable, and irrelevant. I wanted to claw at her shirt
collar like some rabid aardvark and hiss in a throaty twang, “Make it stop!” as
I swipe the sticky foam from the sides of my mouth with my skinny tongue.
But we were waiting in line at a newly opened pie shop and I didn’t want to
bring down the vibe. Instead, I stared at the container of plastic knives sitting
behind her elbow.
I had been sober for six months and I regretted I couldn’t inform my friend I was feeling clear! happy! and fit! as if I was rounding the bases of a cleanse that promised a glow from the inside out after thirty days. My puffy eyes were an unfortunate giveaway that I wasn’t glowing from much of anywhere. I had been sober long enough for the naive enthusiasm to wear off, and I was left with having to deal with the issues I had been neglecting for all of my adult life. This wasn’t a splashy time for me.
My life was also on pause, or so it felt. I spent my free time at twelve step meetings, or on the phone with my sponsor, or in a therapy office, or at church. I quit searching for the next guy to get into a relationship with or the next job to bring some sense of importance. I even deleted Instagram, which I was pretty sure would seal my irrelevance for good. This work was hard and necessary, but I feared that once I got through this, everyone would be ahead of me — whatever that meant — and I’d be left, pitied at best.
By the time I got sober, I had a decade of boozy nights under my belt — nights that lent themselves to an array of alarming behavior. There was one night, not too long ago, when I yelled obscenities at a kind stranger in passing after he complimented my then-boyfriend and me on how cute we looked together. Or the night in my twenties when I got roofied in a ski town and woke up in a confusion I hope to never relive. Or the night in college when I got kicked out of a bar and threw up in the middle of Charles de Gaulle Airport the next day. Most nights in my late twenties and early thirties, though, I was having a blast poking at the status quo with my radiant girlfriends in Brooklyn bars.
But about a year ago it got to a point where I could no longer ignore my impulse to lose my mind on tequila or whiskey. I wanted to be a wife and mother one day, but I wasn’t sure how that would happen as long as I relied on these extreme moments of indulgence to feel like life wasn’t a complete bore.
As a way to dip my toes in sobriety, I developed a new fascination with famous non-drinkers. I’d read up on celebrities who were sober as a way to convince myself that there were cool people who didn’t drink, and I could point to them if anyone called me lame for not drinking.
A relatively tame night in October 2018 led me to decide I’d give sobriety a chance. I had been training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon. This meant that the last four months I was eating healthy and abstaining from drinking all together. Cycling between binge drinking and abstinence had been on-going for me ever since I was in college.
I completed the marathon on a damp fall day in Prospect Park with a new personal record. I felt exhausted and proud of myself. All I could think about in the Uber ride home was how I couldn’t wait for it to be late enough in the day to have a drink without raising eyebrows. I went home and made a tequila sunrise at 10am. I earned it, and the sun had risen after all.
My roommate had cheered me on during the last leg of the race, and she was on the couch across from me as we finished eating the free bagels from the race’s concessions. I forget if she had a drink with me or not, but I do remember making another one for myself and her not taking a second round. I never understood how people could do that.
There’s not one friend I haven’t secretly despised who didn’t take another shot, order another round, or smoke a final cigarette with me. I chalked it up to me being more full of life or something. I believed that I was the Real Cowgirl — the true trailblazer- and normal people were just boring. I hated myself, but at least I was better than everyone.
Later that night, I met up with a couple friends in a quiet cocktail bar in Crown Heights. I was bored. I felt pretty, and wanted attention from a man. But there were no men in sight. This time, I noticed and acknowledged my frustrations — a new practice for me. Typically, I would have convinced my friends to go somewhere with more options and proceed to drink until my target and I found each other for the night. But tonight, I simply noticed my resistance to small talk with my friends as I tried to tame the feeling that I could fly and rule the world. I resented the bar wasn’t loud and messy enough to match my heightened energy. I only had one drink and went home, simply noticing I hated everyone.
The first recovery meeting I attended was a Celebrate Recovery (“CR”) meeting. In short, CR is the same twelve-step program as Alcoholics Anonymous, but the Higher Power part is interpreted through a Christian lens. I had been to a CR meeting with my dad before, so I knew it’s a program for anyone with any issue, chemical dependency or otherwise. Even though I had a hunch, I wasn’t fully convinced I had a problem with alcohol, and I assumed people in AA would call me a poser and kick me out the door if I ever showed up. I was also curious about how the Bible and Christianity could be applied to addiction.
The evening of my fist meeting, I took an hour-long train ride from my finance job in Midtown Manhattan down to the depths of Brooklyn. The juxtaposition of the fancy people at my job and the odd balls in that church office immediately made me think I had made a grave mistake. I literally thought, “How did a person like me end up in a room full of people like this?” The gap between who I was and how I saw myself couldn’t have been wider.
I usually go through my day with a posture of confidence mixed with just the right amount of aloofness to keep a safe distance from people. When someone tries to talk to me I usually flip the switch and become an interviewer asking the questions so I don’t have to answer any. But this room was full of people who were visibly struggling and they were totally admitting that fact out in the open.
At one point a rather feeble person hobbled their way to the front of the group and almost unintelligibly admitted issues with low self-esteem and insecurity. My cold heart melted in that moment. This was the bravest person I had ever seen. I sensed something special happens here, and I left thinking that perhaps I’ve found my people after all. Oh Lord, help me.
Still staring at the plastic knives, my silence would soon become disturbing. My friend politely shifted her attention to the case full of assorted pies just before I managed to say, “I feel more like myself.” This wasn’t completely untrue.
I let that moment with my friend happen without flipping on the interview switch. I knew an authentic answer would come because I now had practice in getting to my point. I told her it’s a hard question to answer because sometimes it’s great and sometimes it sucks. I was six months sober and if anything, I was learning that I won’t die if I tell the truth. And that feels good. And sometimes “good” is good enough.
