By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

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I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately.

Last night, I went to dinner at my cousin’s house with her, her husband, and their daughter. They were my best drinking buddies and got sober 12 years ago, when their daughter was born. I thought nothing of it and kept drinking for 8 more years, until I was finally able to see through my own bullshit, and now I’ll have four years next month if all goes as planned. I mention this because it took getting sober to enter back into a relationship with them. They’d been some of my best friends, and now I’m finally getting that back.

Another close friend of mine responded promptly today when I reached out with an offer for amends. It’s a back pocket amends I’ve been holding on to and working living amends in the meantime. For ten years, he was one of my closest friends, but he’d cleaned up so many of my messes during that time, literally and figuratively, that he’d finally had enough and called it quits. When he told me he was done with our friendship, I respected it and waited to see if he’d reach back out. The living amends worked and he’s been one of many people who’ve told me they’ve noticed the change in me. 

My mother moved into the assisted living portion of her retirement community last week. Thanks to the work I’ve done and people I’ve met in sobriety, I’ve been able to show up for her as my authentic and true adult self, and rarely revert to my inner teen self. I’ve been able to help her and myself navigate this new chapter, and truly be present and available to her.

All this thanks to being sober, attending meetings, talking to fellows and actively being sponsored and sponsoring. Miracles do happen, and I’ve noticed the psychic change.

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I moved from New York to Italy a year ago. Five months in, I met a man and fell in love. He’s from a “good family,” just like my ex-husband. I am still recovering from the urge to self-sabotage and self-destruct. I grew up in a hard-working, yet “not-so-good” family and was socialized as a people-pleasing female. It was in a resource-rich, yet economically depressed rural part of Michigan: A place where workers (men) had historically been expendable and where work in the 1980s wasn’t so plentiful; and where employed and unemployed heads of household hunched on barstools and drank to self-destruct when they weren’t working or at home tyrannizing their families. I’ve been in recovery, beginning in my early twenties with live-saving, daily Al-Anon meetings. When I moved to Italy, I was moving toward something. And mostly I’m content, though I’d like to allow myself a bit of joy. I still experience “survivors’ guilt,” and can burrow deep into grief and lose days and weeks, which is progress because I used to lose months unconsciously.

In 2026, I’d like to spend less time in grief, the kind fueled by the loss of something I wanted but never really had (a good family), which becomes self-pity and progresses into self-hatred and finally the so-familiar intergenerational, isolating combo of self-sabotage and self-destruction. A selfish part of me wants to hunch on a barstool, too, obviously, and disengage from life. But I’ve fought too hard to develop myself (guilt and grief here, too, no surprise) and come too far. I’d like to give up the fight, though, and to spend more time in contentment, staying open to joy and believing, no, really, that I deserve it.

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I hope everyone had a serenity-filled holiday.

I’ve been sober 12-and-a-half years. I’ve been thinking for a while things should somehow be “easier” with the passing of time. Christmas since sobriety has been mediocre at best. I always experience joy watching my 15-year-old daughter and nieces and nephews enjoy the season but have a hard time experiencing any of that myself. I’m not sure if it’s seeing other people drinking and using that to get through it all and knowing that I have no such crutch. My wife who still partakes in a moderate amount of drinking and weed even seemed to be sick of it all by Christmas Day evening. I know there’s a lot of other addicts who experience the same thing around the holidays. I am grateful every day for my sobriety and thankful for the support of my family and friends but man . . . if I could fast forward to my daughter and nieces and nephews opening their gifts and be done with it I would. Anyway, just wanted to share and say thank you for this wonderful site and all the insights on navigating sobriety.

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I’m ending this year on a very quiet and serene note and I’m happy with that. Nine New Year’s Eves ago I was wasted and so sick on January 1. What a way to start the year!

I moved in with my boyfriend this year. He’s not in recovery but so incredibly supportive. We live a quiet, drama free life. He’s a self-proclaimed Workaholic so he oddly understands addiction. I made the mistake of dating someone I met in treatment (eight years ago) and it was [shocking ha ha] a disaster. I thought he and I would be the one couple who could make it! It was awful. After several years of off and on dating, I finally called it off and took the year I needed to be single and “work on myself.” It was incredibly hard for this addict and codependent to do that, but it paid off and set me on a beautiful path with my current boyfriend. I’m stronger in my recovery and in general for taking that year.

I celebrated eight years of recovery in July of 2025. I still think about what a disaster I was before I got sober. I was in a terrible place where I had switched roles with my 14-year daughter. She was cooking, cleaning, and putting me to bed. Putting up with me and my mood swings, crazy rants, driving while intoxicated, totally embarrassed in front of her friends.

After a true rock-bottom night (DUI, night in jail) in July 2017, I checked into rehab and it saved my life and I slowly rebuilt my relationship with my daughter and family members.

So to say I am honored, humbled, and thrilled to start 2026 with a quiet evening and will go to bed long before midnight, is a dream come true. One that I didn’t think I’d see nine years ago.

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I just finished reading a long article about a man who faked his own drowning in Wisconsin so that he could leave his family and start a new life in Eastern Europe. The cops eventually figured it out but as I was washing the dishes (a task I hate in the moment but force myself to do because it’s ultimately good for me) I was thinking about how I used to wish I could do that, how I felt like I had dug myself such a deep hole of shame and lying and terrible behavior that I wished I could disappear and restart my life somewhere else. 2025 was the most incredible year of recovery and growth for me (along with some missteps and fuckups of course) and now I am stable and sober washing dishes and eating blueberries and drinking water and doing exercise even when I don’t want to. My life is peaceful and I feel content. But even still there are moments when I wish I could blow it all up and disappear screaming into the arms of glittering fantasy and magical sexy infatuation and partying all night. But then I let the thoughts pass and they always do, eventually.

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I’ve lived so much of my life in fear, desperately trying to control everything around me to protect myself. For the last few years, I’ve been torn between craving an honest unafraid life and being absolutely terrified to let go of control, to feel the consequence of choices nobody made but me. The rug got pulled out in July and the illusion was shattered. I didn’t drink, but I had to confront my relationship with weed, and I’m five months sober now instead of fifteen years, working the steps like a newcomer. I’ve worn the grief of the life I gave away, the hurt I caused. I miss that life, the dreams, the chosen family, the pets. I pray that they’re all on their own journey of healing and love and I don’t get to decide what that looks like. I’ve worked really fucking hard, and I’m coming into this year barely able to recognize the man that made those choices, who lied to the people he loves, who built a double life he didn’t understand, who never sought to hurt anyone but wouldn’t get out of his own way. So, here I am. I’m immensely grateful for the friends who’ve challenged me but loved me while I’ve learned to love myself. I’m grateful for the memories, the flickers of the past I see all around me, in spite of the sadness that accompanies them. I’m grateful to have a normal job again, to be done chasing the lie that getting rich quick will fix me. I’m grateful for authenticity, even when it’s hard. I’m grateful to have had my ego fucking annihilated, no matter how terrifying it was to face. I’m grateful to be moving in with my dad to help him get ready to go to assisted living, to be present with him. I don’t know what 2026 holds, but I pray to accept it with grace and gratitude. I don’t want to die anymore. And if I keep going, maybe I’ll continue to learn how to live. Grant me the serenity.

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It’s been a while since I’ve been to a SB meeting, I’ve slacked off listening to the podcast and the intensity of the ACA literature that has felt like a rescue and roadmap have dulled. I’ve taken on a new population of therapy clients who are pushing me to the limits of what transformation and reality-based living is all about. I know that I am helping them — I can see it and feel it. Why do these same things not work for me? Listening to podcasts where people who are being generative discuss their inward struggles is fueling my feelings of isolation. At least at live meetings I feel relationship, like I’m alive, but on podcasts it’s too easy to idealize people and there’s no way to be in dialogue. Everything except looking out the window hurts. I am grateful for the window.

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I’ve never gone into sobriety pessimistically or resentfully, but that’s where I’m at this January. My first (and longest) stretch was two years, between 2020 and 2022. It was all new and promising. When I began drinking again, I told myself it was intentional: I had proven to myself I could be sober. Since then, it’s been periods of on and off sobriety, each time the magic wearing off faster than before.

I can’t deny that my life is infinitely better when I stop. My anxiety is in check. I’m clear. I sleep well. But when I’m drinking, just in the first moment, it feels like a great escape from reality. And when things feel this bad, I want the escape more.

So I’m begrudgingly going into January trying to abstain along with everyone else doing Dry January. It’s hard not to look at social drinkers with resentment. For them, it’s a cleanse. For me, it’s the same loop I've been stuck in for years.

This January, I’m hoping sobriety becomes less of an endurance test and more of a decision to choose what’s good for me. I’m soberly accepting how I’m wired instead of blissfully choosing otherwise. It sucks to be sober in the long term when pretending otherwise is so tempting in the short term.

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Three weeks ago I retired from my job of 12 years. Because I’ve been sober for 13 years, my coworkers have never seen the most insane side of me. How insane? Well, I started my half-assed working/drinking/shooting/tripping/snorting/smoking/porning career back in the early 70’s, and this is the longest I’ve ever held a job and is the first time I’ve ever left a job on my terms.

I had to leave Australia in the 70’s because if I stayed I would’ve become a heroin addict. In the 80’s I spent all my money, all my family’s money, and a lot of my in-law’s money on cocaine. I was able to quit because my wife decided to quit, and I am codependent. I then became a porn addict, which saw me through the 90’s and aughts until it cost me my marriage and my job. When I was waiting for the bus to take me to rehab for the porn addiction, I was chugging gin & tonics and laughing hysterically. I realized I was probably an alcoholic too. Oh, and I finally realized that even though I’d been smoking it daily for decades, I had never really liked what pot did to me.

I was lucky enough that one (10-week) stay in rehab cleared my head. I found a daily home group and a sponsor. Having been a fan of Gawker media I sought out their dispersed authors after its disintegration. Since I didn’t hold a grudge against AJ Daulerio, I was happy to eventually discover The Small Bow.

AJ’s writings and Edith’s illustrations really spoke to me and pulled me through some dark times, especially during the pandemic.

My real retirement starts tomorrow: the first Monday after New Years. It’s terrifying. I feel like being busy has been the crutch that kept me sober. I panic inside every time someone asks me “So what are you going to do now that you’re retired?” Being an addict has been my way to avoid having to deal with the future. Now, here it is. 

Thanks for helping me keep the crazy at bay.

*****

I aspire to take another shot at rigorous honesty this year.

Honesty was one of the most valuable gifts of early sobriety for me. Less lying. Less tracking who I’d told what. Less prompting people with contextual questions just to figure out which version of me they were holding. It was a relief. Just going about my day not lying to anyone.

In recent years, my rigorous honesty hasn’t been so rigorous. White lies to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Small evasions to get out of a jam. Less truth with myself about how I was actually living. The good news is I wasn’t lying about drinking or using. The bad news is I got comfortable again with half-truths. And half-truths, I’ve learned, are how bigger lies stretch their legs.

There was a big one. A lie that had nothing to do with sobriety and everything to do with self-destruction. As corrosive as anything I’ve ever lived through. I’m still shaking that motherfucker off. Still stepping back from the ledge. Still cleaning up what it cost.

Last year took skin. More than one layer. Some of it I offered willingly. Some of it came off because it had to.

This year, I want to get right again.

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