Does It Get Better?

October check-ins are here, and we’re just asking for a friend . . .

It’s go-time here in Los Angeles. The days are darker and spookier, and on some mornings, there is actual frost accumulating on lawns and leaves, adding to a feeling of remarkable change surrounding us all. Change is a good thing, correct? Then why does it feel terrible sometimes — not physically painful, but such an emotional upheaval, as if some of the consistencies and joys we’ve become accustomed to are now dying. Anyway — AUTUMN! Let’s find some apples and gorgeous leaves to look at or bury ourselves under forever.

Also, if anyone else is feeling something they don’t want to feel or unable to express fully, we have a meeting today at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. More info, including a full schedule, here.

Onto the check-ins. —AJD

If you are unfamiliar with our Check-In format:

All the Anonymous writers below are credited collectively as “The Small Bow Family Orchestra.”

The ***** separates individual entries, as do pull quotes.

And, of course, TSB looks incredible because Edith Zimmerman drew everything.

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A Spirit to Heal the Wounds I Cannot See

by The Small Bow Family Orchestra

I am terrified that I’m boring without drinking. I had a dream last night that I was at a party and these two men wanted to talk to me and I didn’t know how to talk to them sober, I didn’t know how to flirt anymore. I am worried that my life has been reduced to a big ball of blah. At the 4-month mark, sobriety has lost some of its pink cloud. Now the monotony of living feels abrasive. The highs aren’t as high and the lows aren’t as low, but it makes me kind of depressed not having the highs to look forward to, even if they came at a cost. The cost was the reason I got sober in the first place. I guess my “why” has lost some of its color; the substance is harder to identify from this vantage point. I feel pretty certain most days that this is better than the chaos of polarizing experiences, but some days it’s harder to convince myself. Some days, I just want to get shit-faced and have my mind be anything other than a running list of self-criticisms, to-do lists, and existential thoughts that end in bed-rotting with my nihilism. Do other people feel this way in early sobriety? Does it get “better”? Asking for a friend.

*****

It finally took blood work and a liver scan to make me realize that I had no choice. Even though in 2025 alcohol took me to the hospital twice, once with a concussion and once with an alcohol induced anxiety attack. My blood alcohol both times was unheard of to my fiancé who was a highway patrol cop and he’s seen it all. Finally in September of this year I went for a routine bloodwork, and the reality set in. I either do it now or it will take me within a few years. The second person I told was my 13-year-old. “Hey guess what?” She looked at me with eyes wide open. “Mommy is sober.” She smiled and said, “That’s great Mommy, I hate it when you drink, your eyes get glossy and you forget things.” It broke my heart. Two days later while she was at her dad’s house, I made my usual evening phone call to say good night and she asked me, “Hey Mommy, are you still sober?” This matters. This is not just my journey. It’s hers. I can’t erase the fucked up things I did when I was drunk in front of her. Luckily she didn’t see a lot. Anyway, this is day 13!

*****

I got a pretty major surgery on Friday of last week. I chose to have most of my female reproductive organs removed because of complications with menopause. I’ve been healing well, but I have to say that being cut open and having my lady bits removed has made me feel a bit more . . . vulnerable.

I routinely go to a couple of online recovery women’s meetings every week because I miss being connected to my community of women in Los Angeles after moving to Massachusetts. My all-time favorite recovery meeting is called All the Things (ATT), and it’s named that because it’s for women who are recovering from anything (food, sex, drugs, alcohol, codependency, technology, you name it). Even though this meeting is virtual and I’m three thousand miles from most of the women who go — when I’m with these women, I experience an internal healing that can only be described as alchemy. By the end of the meeting I am transformed from one thing to something else entirely. I like to think of this collective as my coven. Week after week, those witches heal me.

As I go through the long, slow recovery process from my surgery, I’m reminded of the power of connection, pausing, and letting a power greater than me take lead on the mending process. When I take a moment to slow down, investigate where it hurts (mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually) with fellow travelers, they and the great universal spirit helps to heal the wounds I can’t see.

*****

I’ve been experiencing the nesting doll effect of addiction. Strip one away and another appears in its place. When I meditate and let things get quiet, I recognize it’s all the same void. It points back to the same place. “Recover” has a few meanings. The ones that stick with me include “return” and “get back.” In September, I realized the black hole spinning at my center is part and parcel. Not something to hide or fix, just a bit of my blueprint. I can’t unsee it. Can’t ignore the flickers of light around its edge. They say the antidote to addiction is connection and I’m starting to see it. I go to meetings, share what’s true, and listen to other people do the same. Each hour spent, each story exchanged is encouragement to do things differently. When I feel the need to tend to the void urgently, I’m getting better at pausing and asking, what’s the rush? Finding your footing (while occasionally still falling) takes time.

*****

I lost my job exactly one month ago and am still in complete denial, spending money as though I’ve just won the lottery, in trying to stay sane. I feel weirdly positive about my employment prospects though.

As someone with the perfect trifecta of eating disorders, alcoholism and drug abuse in my system, I’ve been shunting between these addictions for years but am now desperate to start a healing plan. I’ve also been drinking a few beers lately for escapism, but have now decided to stop drinking and allow myself to eat whatever I want instead, because deep-down I am truly freaking out and all these rules seem too much.

I’m also ensnared in a codependent knot with an addict that I just cannot seem to escape. I’m hurting and he showed up, surprisingly, when I pleaded. Now, of course, he’s disappeared again, so here’s my chance at freedom. I sped-read through Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book, All The Way To The River, and was horrified to recognize myself on every page. I’m now reading books about PTSD and realize I’ve never been able to release all of my trapped trauma. Will try mushrooms instead.

Aaaaand finally in another act of stupidity, I’m sitting here typing this with my face on fire, which cost me $550. I did a “microneedling” facial session for the first time ever yesterday, to get rid of wrinkles, but didn’t follow the instructions properly, so now I have “bruising.” I look like I went 8 rounds in a boxing ring and now my blotchy, bloated skin is stinging from the tears currently running down my sunburnt face. Why am I such an idiot? How do I stop beating myself up outside and in?

*****

This ain’t my first rodeo. I was dubbed the relapse king, hospital after hospital, waking up covered in my own vomit, and nearly jaundiced from liver disease. There’s the saying “a man takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” That was my life for 15 years, and I’ve tried quitting several times. The law of diminishing intent: Trying to complete a goal but abandoning said goal will make it twice as hard for the next attempt. My drinking had gotten to the point where it wasn’t fun, it became a need. Fast forward to today, currently 9 days sober and this go around I’m making it last. It really is almost surreal sitting with your emotions and processing them while sober but I wouldn’t change a damn thing about it.

*****

A little while ago, one of my uncles sent my mom an email that she helpfully forwarded on to me and my siblings. He was looking through some family history and shared some nuggets of info, including a few sentences about how my great-grandmother came to America. It turned out that she came over at the age of 16 for what was essentially an arranged marriage to a man who, she would not learn until she arrived, was such an abject alcoholic that she had to pick up his pay from his workplace every week so that he didn’t drink it away on the weekends. Escape from that kind of situation, in those days, would have been nearly impossible.

Neither my mom nor my siblings has said a single word about this since. “Your great-grandmother was kind of a victim of sex trafficking” doesn’t have a nice ring to it, I suppose. One day at a time.

*****

I’ve been meaning to quit drinking for more than 30 years and finally got around to it last month, someday could be today type thing. I’ve quit before, but it was only to prove that I could and then fell right back into it with renewed confidence and fervor. I’ve also been to AA. First as a child, then once in my 20’s where I felt instantly overwhelmed by the outreach and kindness. A woman gave me a Big Book. I tried again in my 40’s. That time, as I approached the Alano Club a kind person asked if I was looking for the ACA meeting? I wasn’t, but I checked it out because I had no idea what they were talking about and “No” has always seemed like a lot to communicate. A friend once told me that with AA, you can never go back to drinking without a lot of shame and guilt. That stuck. It was enough for me to resist those rooms for my whole adult life, “Not if it’s going to ruin drinking. Rude.” Until now, because I don’t want to go back to drinking and those rooms are full of the most honest and open and aware people I’ve ever heard.

*****

It’s been a month and two weeks since my last binge before I surrendered once again to my sex and love addiction. I’ve been sober from alcohol for over 7 years through AA, but I realize that codependency, SLAA, and ACA are at the root of many of my addiction struggles.

Alcoholism and drug addiction run in my family, but so does a lot of dysfunction and codependence. I used to think that putting down alcohol and drugs would automatically make my life better, and in many ways, it did. However, I found other ways to act out my dysfunction. When I was 8 months sober at 25, I got involved with someone in the program who was 15 years my senior with long-term sobriety. Four years later, I had to surrender to the fact that I had turned another person into my Higher Power — only to realize I had simply replaced one addiction with another.

Admitting powerlessness in my romantic relationships has been one of the most humbling experiences. I hated having to work another program. Wasn’t being in AA enough? I’ve learned I can’t safely date without risking wanting to get high off that person. I finally broke free from that trauma bond and have been without contact for over two years. Still, my patterns are hard to break, and I found myself in similar situations with emotionally abusive and unavailable people.

About a month ago, I went no contact again with my last qualifier and finally accepted that I can’t do this alone. I need an SLAA program. I’ve gotten a sponsor and am actively working with her. I know the 12 steps work, and it’s time to work this program as seriously as I’ve worked my beverage program.

I have a deep desire to change and to stop acting out in my old patterns. It just doesn’t work anymore, and I’m tired of suffering through the same issues with different people. They’re not the problem — I am. With God, a good program, others, and a little faith, I believe I can truly change.

*****

October 1 marked one year since I smoked weed, ate an edible, “used marijuana” whatever that means in today’s drug society. I took a heroic number of gummies and THC mints, put in my air pods and cranked up The Doors as loud as possible to make the walk from my hotel to watch the Orioles get zero runs in their opening wild card game. I felt like a tesla coil for 3 hours; it was pretty amazing. As “People Are Strange” rang through my body, I knew it was likely the last dance for a while. Two weeks later while I was at my daughter’s college parents’ weekend in Boston, I got a text from my wife (on my daughter’s birthday) that she was moving out and into her sister’s house with our 3-year-old son. It’s been a wild year of a bitter custody battle, leveraging myself to the max financially, coaching my daughter from hundreds of miles away through her own mental health crises, and only seeing my youngest son for two weeks at a time. I’m navigating a brutal schedule that sees me flying him up to D.C. every two weeks, handing him over at IAD and then getting on the next flight back home to attempt to be the best Dad than I can be to my oldest son, a senior in high school in the middle of college applications. Then we wait for two weeks to pick him back up at the airport when his mom flies him back down. I smoked weed almost every day from high school until that Orioles game. As a legal resolution approaches, I think about how it might feel to get high again and turn on, tune in, drop out just for a few hours to watch The Big Lebowski or something. I hope my own will power is enough to sort myself when I don’t have the specter of a court ordered drug test scaring me straight.

*****

In the before times, I used to believe that love was stronger than addiction, that stability could beget sobriety, and that time was a predictable constant. I miss that innocence and optimism.

I now know better. I know that love will never be enough to save someone else. Consistency isn’t a life vest. Holding my breath won’t breathe clarity to someone else. Time is not linear or predictable.

Loving someone I can’t seem to help is like living life through a grayscale lens with intermittent bursts of the most spectacular colors ever seen. My heart has found corners it didn’t know existed. Should I be proud of that? Should I be grateful? Will it matter in the end? Did it ever?

I grasp to hold on to memories like a child in the deep end for fear of losing them alongside losing him. Do the good memories outweigh the bad, the fear, the pain?

I don’t think the answers are up to me. But I’ll keep trying.

*****

315 days since my qualifier moved out, and 71 days since I spoke to him. I spoke to this man every day for 15 years, and now I’m learning who I am without that relationship. We began to really unravel as a couple when, after a string of weird choices, I asked: “So, how do you make decisions?” A thousand yard stare came over him, and I wonder if he was thinking about all the lies and infidelity I didn’t yet know about. (Hey! At least he wasn’t drinking!) Sometimes, I still miss what I thought I had: the greatest love of my life. And then I remember, the greatest love of my life wouldn’t have a secret girlfriend.

*****

It’s been three months since I was laid off/fired and every day is getting more and more difficult. My self-esteem is non-existent after many interviews and nothing coming of it. Emotional sobriety? Also non-existent. I’m back attending AA meetings regularly because it’s once again a place where I can cry for an hour and have no one judge me. I don’t want to k*ll myself but I don’t want these feelings, this pain, this suffering anymore — things far beyond being broke and jobless. I have visited a brujeria twice now out of desperation and been turned away both times. It’s pretty bad when you’re told witchcraft can’t even help you. And yet, I am still sober. I have no fucking clue how I have done this. I’m trying to remind myself, “You may feel like a piece of shit but you are doing one of the hardest things on earth — not drinking.” That’s what I am going to do one goddamn day at a time.

*****

I’m kind of depressed.

I’ve been off booze for a year as of 10/2 and totally sober (weed) for about 4 months. I don’t think I’d gone more than a week or so without drinking in 15 years. I feel all the right feelings, like in the Radiohead song “Fitter Happier”: “Fitter, happier, more productive.” But I also feel like the last line, “a pig in a cage on antibiotics.”

Without the rush of hiding bad behavior, the glee of drunken indulgence and the slippery passage of time that comes with a great high I feel bored and lonely a lot. My friends all have families or demanding jobs. I’m volunteering my time, going to museums and events and even doing some creative writing for the first time in a decade, but it mostly feels like I’m just finding ways to kill time before I go to bed to get up for work tomorrow.

The time and clarity I’ve gotten back is a gift and a curse. I have no interest in or real fear of relapsing but being sober kind of sucks.

*****

So, my divorce was finalized on Aug. 7 and sometime in the middle of September I realized I’m the happiest I’ve been in decades. It’s not that my marriage was always miserable, it’s just that I spent so much of the first half of it living in survival/drinking mode, and the second half in recovery/what-am-I-doing-here mode that everything was fraught all of the time. I remember when I was first getting sober, I had no idea what was coming next in life. No idea how I’d make it to one month, then six months, then a year. And someone suggested taking it one day/one hour/one minute at a time — such an old saw in recovery circles, but the first time I heard it in a recovery context it blew my mind. So I really had no idea how getting divorced/post-divorce life would go, but I was down for trying it one day at a time. I came to accept that there was a pretty good chance I’d be alone forever, which was my biggest fear. Once I realized I’d be just fine alone, it made all of the rest so much easier. I also had to accept that I’d probably be significantly poorer on my own than I’d be with two salaries, and I’m OK with that as well. So now I’m back in school, training for a new career, and I just started dating this really amazing person. It’s too early to judge whether either the career change or the boy will work out long term, but I’m feeling super optimistic about both. And am kind of singing my way through my days and sleeping like a champ. I’m glad these updates are anonymous, but I wish I could point to some of my old ones to show you all how much of a bummer I’ve been in the recent past. This happiness is so new, and I’m enjoying every second of it. I feel like I’m back to some really good, earlier version of myself.

*****

fin

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OTHER RECENT CHECK-INS:

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This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.

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