Gosh August is a slog, isn’t it? Too hot, at least where I am. The air is stagnant; perhaps the soul is, too. Today, the sweet little dog I’m dog sitting could not bear to be outside for more than ten minutes. Inside, she’s splayed, lounging. The fan is her best friend. Pal, I get it! Our second batch of August check-ins is below; read on, as our readers try to catch a little late summer breeze. —TSB Editor

Sobriety Is the Weightlessness

By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

Last weekend we made the incredibly difficult decision to help my 14 year old sobriety dog make the transition across “the rainbow bridge.” 

I thought that when my dog died, I would die with him. Instead, I’m left here in the quiet stillness. No more curious sniffing. No constant reminders to go outside and find the mysterious links to a higher power. 

I used to joke that my dog, Miller, was an alcoholic like me. He craved things that could kill him. When he found fried chicken remnants tossed onto the street (we lived behind a KFC at one point) I had to pry the greasy bones out of his clenched jaw so he didn’t choke to death. He was allergic to chicken, too, but that didn’t stop him from giving me the “maybe this time I won’t get sick” eyes whenever I roasted a bird. My dog was strong willed, prone to obsession (he could chew on a ball until his mouth bled), and craved constant attention and treats. 

And Miller was undeniably a spiritual being. He gave me a fast pass to connection whenever I needed to talk to God. I’d click the leash to his dog collar, grab some poop bags, and hit the pavement searching for great smells. We experienced Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter in Los Angeles, Miami, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We chased bunnies, gave feedback to no-good-mean-dogs, and said hi to new friends. 

Miller was there when I launched my business 5 years ago and started working from home. He assuaged my fears, calmed my anxiety, and showed me that I was truly never alone. 

Now that he’s gone, I just need to look harder for proof.

Four years ago, I arrived in London at six and a half months of white-knuckle dry-drunkenness, and I made my way from Heathrow to a pub where I promptly ordered a nitro beer and a shot of whisky. Had not the previous 195 days of suffering proven that I wasn’t an alcoholic? And who could possibly be sober in England? What followed was a great trip during which I was consumed by alcohol calculus. What followed was returning home, desperate to cut back, and quickly picking up the pattern of destructive nonsense that had kicked me into my thousandth attempt at sobriety. 

Here I am now back in London, two and a half years sober in AA. A different person, both for worse and better. It kills me now to think about how even packing is different (no wholesale bottle of ibuprofen), even the stop at the market (no whatever crap I needed to purchase for anticipated hangovers). This week, I’m up early with jet lag, making it to church. The sun punches into my third floor flat, and I’m making coffee, reading books, eating bread. There was music this morning that had me texting my husband that I’d seen God. It occurs to me that now I always do.

I’m a few days into my 90 meetings in 90 days and I’m already at the point where my need for individual solutions for my addiction is at odds with being in a “one-size-fits-most” program.

I’m on my third attempt at a sponsor. The first one rescheduled on me six times and then rejected me because I’m bipolar and they didn’t feel like they had the experience to deal with it.

Oh, and I still smoke weed — at the directive of my psychiatrist to avoid outsized withdrawal, granted. And I’ve been a pothead longer than I’ve been an alcoholic.

My second attempt at a sponsor was fine with that explanation, but questioned my willingness after I declined to text her every day. Wasn’t my stellar progress on my own, while smoking weed even, so impressive that I was the exception to the norm?

She didn’t remind me that thinking I was above rules was how I got into the mess that necessitated finding a program in the first place. So I quit again, even after laying out my life’s problems at the foot of this stranger who I trusted to help.

I don’t know why I trusted her. I guess an offer of help made me think I was still special while this pursuit of sobriety reminded me how horribly average I actually was.

My current sponsor gave me a challenge which, every day, random people congratulate me for undertaking.

86 meetings to go.

I have 11 months of continuous sobriety. I am now back at the time of year that really convinced and motivated me to surrender completely to NOT DRINKING ALCOHOL after almost 40 years of struggling.

I have made a lot of hard choices and life changes. I couldn’t have made it this far without a lot of resources: financial (inheritance), fellowship (new AA home group, sponsor, new recovery buddies), and friends (checking in, listening).

It has been filled with a mixture of pain, wonder, gratitude, anguish, guilt. Some days it is one moment at a time.

I really hope to get to 12 months and get my chip.

I am going on vacation this week but already have local in-person and Zoom meetings scoped out.

Both my therapist and my sponsor have instructed me to go out and HAVE GREAT SEX, so I hope that might happen but am also terrified.

My mantra: No Expectations. Curiosity, Play, Presence.

I made it to a year clean, and I’m proud of myself. Prouder than anything I’ve done in a long time, to be honest. I’ve had long-term sobriety from substances before, but this has been my first extended experience with both physical and emotional sobriety in a very long time. This time last year I was just desperate not to give up on everything, finding a reason to get out of bed at all, but I made it and I’m doing as well as I could have hoped. I like being proud of myself for something real. It feels a lot better than that false ego-driven pride that came from spinning the story I thought everybody wanted to hear, and it doesn’t lead me to the same darkness. I’ve cried a lot this month, some because of the past life that still plays on repeat in my head, some because the anniversary itself brings back the guilt of the damage I did, and some because my father is dying. But through all of that, I stayed sober, I stayed honest, and I showed up. I don’t know how much longer I have with my dad, but he told me tonight that I’m his rock and he couldn’t do any of this without me and I’m so fucking grateful I can be there for him. For years I wasn’t there for anybody I loved — turns out it’s impossible when you fucking hate yourself. But, I’m here for myself now, and that means I can be there for him. It’s the hardest gift I've ever received, but what a gift it still is.

August 10 will be the 36th anniversary of my brother’s death. He was in recovery for three years and then “went out” and died in a drunk-driving accident at age 21. My sister also died tragically seven years after him. I used to “drink at” the calendar. June, the month my sister died by suicide; July, my sister’s birthday month. August, the month my brother died. September, his birthday month. Now that I’m 15 years sober, I no longer want to live in grief and sorrow during these dates. But I still want to acknowledge them. I have my brother’s Twelve and Twelve. I came across it when I was in early recovery, forgotten on a shelf. I flipped through the book and landed on a page with a phrase highlighted in orange: “. . . our drinking even then was no mere habit . . . it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression.” My brother spoke to me through the highlighted words. I’ve recently started Al-Anon. I don’t go to enough AA meetings as it is. So I don’t know how I’m going to fit it in with my already packed schedule, but I know it is important.

My recovery, such as it is, is going fine. I quit cold turkey, I quit without AA, I quit without community. I got cancelled in 2020, six months after I cleaned up, and you know how everybody’s worlds got weird during the pandemic and then I guess went something like back to normal? Mine never did. 

Sobriety kept me from killing myself and I’ve done the work to make sure I’ll never take that way out, but man is it crazy how it still pops into my head a few times a week or a few times a day. Now my addictions are banal and embarrassing, like wolfing down peanut butter straight from the jar to quiet something inside me. My challenges are so middle-of-the-road: needing but not wanting to exercise to keep my mood level and my body from turning into a tub of pudding; working to understand that my teenager not needing me is healthy and not another rejection in an era of my life flooded with them; trying to communicate honestly and patiently through a separation that needs to become a divorce. 

I started this check-in wondering if I could put my finger on what the weight I feel is and instead what I realize is this: Sobriety is the weightlessness allowing me to swim through all this midlife bullshit and know that whatever happens and however lumpy I turn out, I’m gonna be okay.

I was recently on a dating show — a live comedy show, really — and while I didn’t ‘win’ by choice of the bachelorette, I got plenty of attention afterwards from the women in the audience. I enjoyed it a lot, and left with six phone numbers and a message request, all from pretty girls. It’s exciting to have this kind of attention and potential for connection after a year of not dating followed by sparse and often un-sober connections in the three years since. It’s also stressful and anxiety-inducing to this sex and love addict, trying now to juggle conversations with seven women and make sure all of them pan out, even the ones I’m not that interested in — and that’s worrisome. And yet, I think it’s just going to be anxiety provoking to be dating at all without my whole-life strategy of desperately trying to make myself needed, indispensable, and desirable. I get into a state when I’m looking for dates, where I’m constantly looking at every pretty girl I see as if she’s the last chance I’ll ever have of happiness. I don’t know how to balance it and keep my equanimity, so today I’m letting myself be a little anxious, and letting go of the ones that don’t text me back, and letting things be as they are, even when I’m uncomfortable.

I’m clean and sober long enough to recognize my annual cycles, and I have a summer seasonal affect thing that happens and I just feel blue. It’s partly some painful anniversaries, like the death of my first husband to an overdose back in July 1999, when I was just three years sober myself. It’s partly the heat and humidity. I guess it doesn’t really matter why. But last night I went out dancing with my also-sober current spouse of 24 (!) years, and it was fun and scary and exhilarating and loud and trippy and amazing and we both woke up sober today. 

It occurred to me that I could lead with gratitude, rather than with my usual whinging? (Don’t doubt — there will still be whinging.) I feel grateful for the good dog, and for the cat draped over my feet. For a second cat, asleep and dribbling off of the arm of my chair. And for the third, who abruptly wakes from dreams with the sweetest, surprised, mews, as if she’s calling out to be sure of me. For the car in the driveway that gets me out of the house and out of my head. For the food in my belly, the beautiful world around me, for this safe place, for my mother’s love, for this time to struggle. How could I possibly deserve all of this? I swear I don’t. 

The juxtaposition — and, mayhap, the whinging — lies in the lovely Wendell Berry quote you shared in the latest edition of TSB. Indeed, I have a choice (for which I am also grateful), and indeed, I don’t know what to do. I expected the way would be clearer, even if the road I picked was difficult. My heart bursts with possibility, but I can’t seem to MOVE. Nothing feels right. Perhaps this is because the guilt I carry is pressure to simply choose the path that makes me feel less of a burden, rather than taking the path that might fill my soul, if I let it. Doing nothing makes me feel as if I’m slowly sinking deeper into the biggest, softest, most insidious, pillow, and it’s threatening to close around me.

Two things are true: I don’t feel especially confident in my ability to halt the momentum into nothing. I want to look back at my life and feel something more than shame and regret; to know I did the real work. 

On Sunday, I saw the sign as I was cycling through a nice neighborhood: 50% off Last Chance Estate Sale, and I decided to stop. It was packed with people sifting through CDs of Christmas music, staring at a shelf of rabbit figurines, and scrolling their phones to see if the item in their hand was “worth more” than anyone else realized.

I was weighing the creamer pitcher collection above the kitchen sink when the sharp smell of weed filled my nostrils. Wow, it really does reek. It wasn’t just a bag of bud, but the burnt resin inside a bowl. I easily spotted the source behind me: a normal-looking woman with long brown hair, who I assessed as high in her one awkward laugh and a slightly confused movement.

Did I stink like that? Was that really how I spent my weekends for 25 years?

Who I am now came into sharp focus — moving through the house with awakened senses, softly stitching together an impression of the couple who’d lived here. Contrasted with a vision of my past self, evoked by the brown-haired woman: fuzzy, clumsy, like a 90-year-old with cataracts shuffling through in loose slippers.

Some people say it was just weed, that I didn’t even have that big of a problem, that it’s just a plant, medicine. You don’t have to explain it to me — I was the one with the addiction, the internal struggle, the regret, the shame.

Sunday, I let the memories pass. I only know a handful of people who’d understand. It seems like you’re either a lifelong stoner or you never liked the effects. I’m beyond grateful for my 8+ years of continuous sobriety from weed and alcohol. I don’t feel as isolated as I did in my use, but moments like this still make me a little lonely — I don’t have anyone to reminisce with.

I don’t know if we had these this month. I looked for the email. I couldn’t find it. But it’s in my calendar, “check in with TSB.” Give a little over to the world and hope that it helps someone. 

I don’t know how to help anyone right now. They fired me on Wednesday. They had to have the head of the department do it because apparently nobody else wanted to handle the conversation. That’s how unpopular the decision was. But there’s always a guy somewhere who says, “Yeah, I’ll be the heel. Let me have the ugly conversation.”

I used to be that guy, there. 

It was one of the last things I did before they wiped my computer during the termination call. It was a regular weekday morning for me to go toe to toe with some random guy and point out that no, he just didn’t read the contract he signed. Sucks to suck. Just another Wednesday corporate shakedown. 

The thing I kept telling myself as I moved up and made more money was that there’s always a bigger fish. In this analogy, we’re the fish, and we’re never at the top of the food chain. Even at the highest upper echelons, some asshole comes in with more money or more taste or better friends and you lie awake sweating at night, dying to know how he made it happen and terrified you’ll never get there. “There” being a security deposit, sixth house, private club referral, new car, jet rental, jet purchase, plane tickets, birthday party for your kid. It doesn’t matter where it is. But you don’t have it, and you can’t define yourself by it. There’s always a bigger fish. You’ve got to be satisfied somewhere, or you’ll never stop. 

The thing that kills me is that I was happy and occupied. The thing that kills me is that they told me they’d take care of me. The thing that kills me is that they let this linger until my third trimester, and that they know I’m going to be job searching while the whole company is partying at the aquarium next week, which they rented out for a little over twice my salary for four hours with canapés. They released me into the worst job market in a decade, pregnant, with no hope of parental leave while they boogie down with sharks. All those big, big fish swimming over them. 

My desire for substances has been relentless. Ravenous. I don’t know if it’s the four hours of shitty sleep I’ve been averaging a night or the insatiable impossibility for my brain to stop strategizing to protect my family, but the need for an off switch, for just a little while, has crossed into the unholy palpable. I’m an animal and the cage keeps getting smaller, or the water keeps getting hotter. Analogy analogy, no solutions. My jaw hurts from clenching. I want to shave my head. 

Here’s the ugly secret from someone who’s been there: There’s recourse and there’s justice, but it comes at a risk and it comes at a price. Most people don’t get it. They’ll tell you to fight for it in principle, but that’s because they’re not the ones backed up against a wall, trapped by the economic realities of the world we live in. Knowing how to play the game means knowing how to walk away. You walk away so much more than you want to, or think you will when you’ve never had to before. 

That’s the real problem of being a fish. You’re still just a fucking fish. 

fin

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN