I hate being sober.
Everybody talks about how great it is being sober, how clear they feel. How “It’s a struggle, but life is so much better now” and on and on. Blah, blah, blah.
I’ve been sober for 30 years and it fucking sucks. I think about alcohol every day. I think about all the drinks I didn’t get to drink.
I’ve never had a daiquiri with a little umbrella in it. I’ve never had a margarita or a mimosa or a mojito. In high school and college, I drank whatever was put in front of me or was on sale, and then I graduated to vodka tonics (twist of lime, never lemon).
Drinking made me feel sophisticated. Drinking was a prop in the little movie in my mind that played day and night. Drinking was what people did—people with careers and futures that they actually looked forward to. People with plans and dreams.
They planned these plans and dreamed these dreams while joyously gathered around food-laden tables where a jewel-like glass of wine stood attentively beside each plate.
And then I discovered that, somewhere along the way, I had contracted hepatitis C. Probably from my then-husband, who was a former addict and a dialysis patient, but maybe from that summer in Europe where I ate too much and drank too much and did other things where “too much” really means “at all.”
I stopped drinking, cold turkey. Done, over, finito.
There’s something about jabbing yourself in the thigh with a syringe for several years that makes you want to protect your liver, if for no other reason than to make the stabbing stop.
But I remember the last drink I had. It was a Zima, and I was on the back deck of the little house I lived in with my first husband who probably gave me the hepatitis C, which he picked up from either a dirty coke straw, or a tattoo, or dialysis.
It was summer and I loved Zima. Cold and crisp and fizzy.
I remember the drinks before that too: the amaretto and cream I had at a high school party in a field at night; the Fuzzy Navels I drank at my best friend Amy’s house that turned me off peach schnapps for life; the Long Island iced teas we drank at Miami that were16 ounces of oblivion; and the endless rounds of 50-cent beers in flimsy plastic cups that I downed throughout grad school and then drove home to puke outside my parents’ garage.
My dad told me to eat an orange to settle my stomach and it worked. As a young man, he’d almost died when he drove in front of a train. That’s when he tapered back to the occasional beer and a ritualistic Tom Collins every Saturday night. My mom would join him in a Tom Collins, but I never saw her drink anything else, which is probably for the best since I once found a bottle of Stelazine stashed in a kitchen cabinet. (Of course I took one.)
My uncle Jimmy, my dad’s brother, carried a little Igloo cooler around with him that was full of beer everywhere he went. He was the funniest human being I ever met. He died of pancreatic cancer, because that’s what gets you just as surely as liver. One day out of the blue you’re diabetic, and the next, you’re dead from pancreatic cancer.
I wouldn’t mind being sober so much if it wasn’t for every single other human being around me. My co-worker is baked 24/7, my boss starts drinking at 4:00, and my ex-boyfriend spends more evenings than not at a bar.
And I resent it. Why does everybody have an escape hatch except me? How is it fair that I can never have a drink and just relax for five fucking minutes? Why can’t I just have something to dampen the rage that is bubbling in me all the time, like cooked pudding that’s about to boil. Those big, gelatinous bubbles just gurgling away in my chest.
But I can’t because of emergencies that might happen. Fires, tornados, war. Stairs I might fall down with no one to miss me for days.
My dog needs me, anyway, if no one else does.
I can’t because one drink a day would become two, would become three, would become mixing alcohol with whatever pills I can find, and the next thing you know you’re Heath Ledger.
And no, I don’t want a virgin daiquiri. It’s not the same. It can go live on an island with decaf coffee and anything sugar-free.
I want a real daiquiri with chunks of fruit on a skewer and a little umbrella that I can keep as a souvenir. I want to sleep for more than two hours at a time. I want to be able to concentrate on a book or a movie again. I want to stop forgetting the names of things. I want the world to not be so weird and scary.
I want to be happy. I want to be happy. I want to be happy.
Thanks for sharing this powerful, personal writing.
I realize I'm just an internet guy, and you've almost certainly heard this before, so please forgive me if this is too forward or overly familiar, but have you considered edible cannabis?
If "sober" = no mind altering substances due to past dependency, then point decidedly taken. Sobriety all the way.
But if "sober" = no ethanol due to a hep. C diagnosis, cannabis has helped people in my life.
Several folks I know personally and professionally who have given up alcohol have far fewer contraindications with edible cannabis, while still enjoying the psychological, therapeutic benefits.
viz. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4144456/
Well said.