“This is it; this is the end.”
The warning was sudden and clear. It wasn’t a bellow nor a whisper, just a matter-of-fact voice in my head. I’d say that it startled me, but I’m not sure I even registered it until after I reflexively countered. “No way, I’m not ready yet!”
Though I had no idea where the voice came from, I knew it referred to my drinking.
It was 1 AM in Moab, Utah, the first night of a 10-day trip through the southwest. I’d had one beer at dinner—a low-alcohol beer, at that—and yet I’d woken up in an adrenaline-fueled panic, my mind and heart racing. It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up with my systems in overdrive, trying to metabolize a day’s worth of drinking. It was the first time it happened after a single beer.
It didn’t make sense. I was acting responsibly, like a normal person who could have just one beer with dinner. My boyfriend, lying next to me, was exactly that—a normie who could, infuriatingly, take or leave alcohol. In my dream trip, we’d stick to a single drink at dinner (responsible!) but have the hotel room stocked with nightcaps (fun!). And yet, this was my dream trip, with my dream man. If I just held it together, maybe I could become more like him and less like me. And then I wouldn’t need to drink.
I was 40 years old and had been drinking for 25 years. “I’d drink every day if I could,” I often thought, usually with bemusement, sometimes with disgust. I did drink most days—¾ of a bottle of wine usually, give or take. My peers were busy with marriage and kids. I was still forever single, so found plenty of time to nurture the thing that—pun intended—filled my cup.
As a young person, I didn’t need peer pressure. I idolized the “cool kids” in John Hughes movies and after-school specials, in which alcohol played a large part. I chased the lifestyle alcohol teased and believed it made me a better version of myself.
By the end of high school, I drank most weekends, while college fostered five nights per week. I learned how to day drink and how to last from happy hour to after hours, and I continued that cadence well into my 20s in New York City.
By the time I moved to Los Angeles, I knew I had a problem. I wanted to move in part because I had a problem, and thought that the healthier lifestyle, plus being forced to drive everywhere, would fix it.
Instead, LA brought my drinking inside. As my social circle aged, the parties became less fun and desirable, and I felt less fun and desirable. So, I’d drink alone in my living room most nights. TV assured me that’s what single successful women did.
By my late 30s, I (slowly) started thinking differently. I discovered podcasts and was drawn to Marc Maron. He had decades of sobriety that he talked about openly, and I hung on every word. I admired the depth of his self-awareness, the way he talked about his weaknesses and adaptive patterns. He made sobriety sound aspirational, like an enlightened state. Not the white-knuckled punishment I’d always imagined.
And then I began this relationship with the normie. We’d get up every weekend at 6 AM and spend the days adventuring outdoors. Post-hike beers or margaritas happened, mostly at my request. While I prided myself on being present with him, I’d race back to the bottle after each date. My social life no longer revolved around drinking, but my nervous system sure did.
Clearly, my nervous system was speaking now through this midnight anxiety. But what was this voice? What did it know? I let my mind race until it eventually crashed, as it always did, and fell back asleep.
On day three, at Canyonlands National Park, my boyfriend started feeling sick. He rallied through the rest of the week, but we spent hours in silence. Frustrated, I longed to hole up in a cozy hotel bar with a warm glass of red. Hell, I’d settle for a crappy hotel room with a glass of anything. But I couldn’t leave my sick man to drink by myself (could I?), and I certainly wasn’t going to drink alone in his company.
My anxiety—and resentment—started to build.
By the time we made it to Sedona on New Year’s Eve, I was wound tight, and I could feel a tension between us. He’d been extraordinarily quiet, supposedly because he was sick, but my insecurities feared he was just sick of me.
We killed time walking around the small tourist town. After nine days of non-stop travel and being a “responsible” drinker, I longed to plop down at a bar and just. tune. out. We passed a small winery offering a flight tasting. “Oh, let’s do that!” I said, hopefully.
But the normie, still under the weather, was not up for it. I just want a boyfriend I can drink with, I thought, before I caught myself. It was a shameful truth that added to my encyclopedia of self-loathing.
Chagrined, I walked ahead. He complained that I was walking too fast, but I thought he was walking intentionally slow. I’ve never been good at articulating my feelings or needs. I didn’t trust myself enough to recognize them. Instead, I’d hash things out silently and stew.
Back at the hotel, the dam burst.
“I don’t like the way you speak to me,” I cried after something he said hit a nerve.
“I was just trying to lighten the mood since we weren’t connecting,” he explained.
“We haven’t connected all week,” I spat back. “Maybe we should just break up.”
“Maybe we should.” He agreed.
My heart broke. Clearly, I was right about him tiring of me. I silently indexed all the things I’d done wrong.
Breaking up relieved the worst of the tension, at least. We still went to dinner together—it was preferable to sitting in our tiny hotel room. After nine days, I could finally drink the way I wanted to, and I wanted to.
That night, I lay in bed, disgusted with myself. I was 40 years old and still blowing up relationships. I’d been to therapy, read the books, had all the tools. The only thing I hadn’t tried was to stop drinking.
I’d had a brain niggle once before that that drinking could be the thing keeping me from a serious relationship. After all, how could I have intimacy with someone when I’ve spent my life disconnecting from myself? Starting in my teens, I used alcohol to escape, to regulate my emotions. For over two decades, I drank to enhance my fun, ward off boredom, relieve stress, and distract from despairs. I was constantly operating under a protective shell. If I couldn’t break the shield for myself, how could I expect it from anyone else?
These thoughts reappeared in Sedona, but I was in too much pain to act. When I came home, I booked an appointment with a new therapist and spent the next 11 nights drowning myself in Chardonnay.
My new therapist specialized in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is meant to treat trauma and PTSD, which I assumed I had, given my brokenness. Her fee was high, and I did not have the mental capacity to price shop.
So, after the first appointment, I had another moment of clarity: I was not going to pay this woman a significant weekly sum to untangle all the cobwebbed patterns in my brain, only to keep drinking and let them knot again. Suddenly, I clearly saw the role alcohol played: it was not the thing that brought me happiness and light—it was the very thing keeping me in the dark.
With that epiphany, my mind shifted: I didn’t want to drink. I finished the bottle of Chardonnay I’d bought to get me through the first appointment, cherishing it like an old friend. But something deep within me knew I was done with the relationship.
It didn’t make a lot of sense—that I would become a Person That Doesn’t Drink™ literally overnight. I’d never gone a week without drinking before. But I felt the shift as plain and clear as I heard the voice in the hotel room. I didn’t need to know any “why”. I just needed to listen.
By Contributor: By Lori MacGregor – She has been sober since January 12, 2017.
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