Good morning. It’s the third Tuesday of the month so it’s time for another batch of wisdom from a notable Sober Oldster. Today’s guest is writer and editor Nick Catucci. Thanks again to Sari Botton from Oldster for the collaboration. —TSB Editor

How old are you, and how long have you been in recovery?

I’m 47, and I’ve been sober for 14 years.

How did you get there?

To be exact, my dad drove me to my first AA meeting after picking me up from the hospital that my now-wife checked me into to dry out. He put a fistful of cash into the basket when it came around, and someone made him take it out (LOL). I had been drinking around the clock since flying down to Miami a couple weeks before to report out a profile of a DJ group (remember, it was 2012) who were playing a festival sponsored by a vodka brand. I drank every day for a long time, and all day every day for a less long time, but this was the first time I couldn’t stop. After that meeting, I never drank again.

What are the best things about being in recovery?

Never waking up, looking at the clock, and wondering whether it’s 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. I still regularly have dreams about drinking and being drunk, and what’s scary about them is the profound disconnection I feel from everything: Now knowing how I ended up where I am, what the people around me are thinking or feeling, what might have happened. I was a blackout drinker and the blackness had started to wash over me completely — I was losing hold of my place in the world (sorry to be dramatic). But those dreams don’t worry me, they remind me of how vivid my life has become.

I should also mention that I also smoked a lot of weed — quickly alternating bong hits and vodka shots alone in my kitchen was a favorite — and it is so rewarding to do sober the everyday fun things that I once thought were so enhanced by getting high, like watching movies, riding the train, swimming, eating junk food, etc. It’s not simply that they’re better because you understand that they’re not artificially boosted, you actually do experience them more fully.

What’s hard about being in recovery?

The work. It does require some effort — eating when I’m hungry, sleeping when I’m tired, avoiding anger and stress. And worst of all, I cannot indulge my dumbest impulses, mainly telling off drivers who run red lights and are hostile to people walking and riding bikes. Pathetically, when I flip them off or say, “You’re blocking the crosswalk, dipshit,” my heart rate spikes and I think about how easy it would be for most people to kick my ass.

How has your character changed? What’s better about you?

I’m honest. I have always hated lying, but I lied easily and often if it meant protecting my drinking. I don’t think I’ve told a meaningful lie in 14 years. Although I will tell my daughter what I think she needs to hear when she asks if it’s true that there are tornadoes in New York City or that Donald Trump (“Donald Chomp”) is putting children in prison.

What do you still need to work on? What “character defects” do you still wrestle with?

Everything else. I’m anxious and irritable and impatient; I’m egotistical, selfish, and a little vain. The meds have helped a lot with those first three (see below). And the latter three have slowly been ground down by my many, many humbling moments in sobriety: Getting laid off, becoming a father, experiencing whatever twink death is for a straight guy who was once described in someone’s memoir as resembling a “a poor man’s young Al Pacino” (it’s a reference to my big Italian nose, but I genuinely find it very flattering).

What’s the best recovery memoir you’ve ever read? Tell us what you liked about it.

It’s not a memoir and the main character does not get sober, but I love Involuntary Witness, the first book in the Guido Guerrieri series by Gianrico Carofiglio. Guerrieri is a criminal lawyer who, dumped suddenly by his wife, is gripped by anxiety and sleeplessness. It turns into a great courtroom drama, but—audaciously, for the launch of a genre series—slowly builds from Guerrieri’s struggle to start feeling again, which is a big part of recovery.

What I would loosely call men’s midlife crisis novels like this, Richard Ford’s Bascombe books, Lawrence Block’s Scudder series, and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Spring resonate with me more than memoirs. Even in my 20s, I loved these weary characters battling through everyday lives upset by the extraordinary or just unexpected. And what seemed mysterious about them then is now an instructive contrast to my own life. (If you want a prismatic narrative of drunkenness and sobriety, read all 18 Scudder books, in which he struggles with both.)

What are some memorable sober moments?

Well, I got married and became a dad and rebuilt my career, moments from which are all of course enshrined in the memory Hall of Fame. But there are so many beautiful happenings every day that I know will blur. This week it was my 7-year-old showing me the “hip-hop dance moves” a camp counselor taught her, cracking up with my wife at a fan edit of Ormund Hightower, riding my bike through Prospect Park when the humidity fell below 50% . . .

Are you in therapy? On meds? Tell us about that.

I have written at length about this, so please, give me the click before you comment, but: I think too many people are in therapy, many of them for too long, paying too much money for too many therapists who are happy to accept it in exchange for listening to patients just talk about their weeks. Therapy can absolutely be beneficial, but only with a good therapist (hard to find) and concrete goals (hard to stick to). For Americans today, it has become just another individualistic luxury item. We should talk more to our spouses and parents and siblings and friends, not pay someone to encourage us to go no-contact with them.

I’ve seen numerous therapists and attended many AA meetings, and what I love about AA is that it is virtually free, and it is communal. We help each other. Does that mean sometimes being subjected to an interminable share, or struggling through Robert’s Rules to resolve a disagreement over what sign is hung where in some basement? Absolutely, and that’s life with other people. I don’t like it more than anybody else, which is why I have to be there.

I’m aware that as I help foment the therapy discourse, there’s a small backlash brewing against antidepressants. I only started on SSRIs last year — not because I was resisting them, but because I am so dumb about my own body and brain that I didn’t think my anxiety merited them — and they have changed my life. I ruminate much less on things I can’t control, and as a result I sleep better, I’m easier to be around, and in general, I’m just more content. I had to try a few before I landed on one without undue side effects, but the process was worth it.

What sort of activities or groups do you participate in to help your recovery? (i.e. swimming, 12-step, meditation, et cetera)

There’s AA, as I mentioned, but truthfully, I only attended meetings regularly in my first few years of sobriety (I did 90 in 90, and at least one a week for over two years). It’s always rewarding to go back, as I do periodically, but it’s been very helpful for me to make time for extremely basic stuff: Make sure I see and talk to people, exercise, read, take walks, attend to my various minor maladies (a former boss once called me a “hothouse flower” due to my allergies, reflux, etc.).

In sobriety I’ve very, very slowly layered in the essentials. It’s only this year that I started writing regularly again, after a decade away from it. I remember it being stressful, frustrating, and difficult. Now it’s much easier and more rewarding, probably because I’m doing it for myself, although honestly I think the Lexapro may have helped. Or maybe it’s just that I’m older and care so much less about somehow making it perfect.

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