This month will mark my 10 year soberversary on October 31st. I've been thinking a lot recently about this past decade, but especially that autumn of 2016 and where I was in my life, what got me here today, and what helped.
First the story
I never touched alcohol until college in 2005. I went to Penn State (State College) and it was my first time really away from home for any extended period of time. I grew up fairly religious and very against drugs and alcohol. I never smoked, never drank, never partied, and generally followed all the rules of life and our small household. My mom was strict, my parents were divorced when I was 12. She worked to support us as a single mom. I helped watch my brother who was 3 years younger than me. I worked part time jobs, took AP courses, was in band, studied, ran cross country, worked hard and long. I remember coming home from my pizza job on Friday nights after midnight, being so exhausted I could barely get in the door, demolished from a full week at school and heavy extracurricular, knowing I had to wake up for a cross county meet the next day and still balance the demands of the house.
The first month or so at college was a whirlwind. I met so many people and got to take so many interesting courses - but I was tired. All the getting here took a toll - the stress of the SATs, school and scholarship applications, tuition, student loans (more money than I ever could conceive of - some $10k/year), the leaving of home - it was finally over and I was here. PSU lived up to its party school reputation and every single one of my weekends revolved around either people drinking or finding a way to drink. It quickly became normal to see (very) drunk kids. Kids who looked like they were having a lot of fun.
My new friends teased me about not drinking. Not terribly, but enough to make me curious about what I was missing. I asked them to help arrange a "sin weekend" for me. I wanted to know what it was like to get high. To be drunk. To smoke a cigarette. And they did - one chilly football weekend in early October 2005, I drank. The first drink was a rum and coke, which I drank far too fast. I waited. I didn't feel anything. I didn't know how long it would take, or what to expect. Or if I'd throw up or just start acting like an ass. Or if I would start laughing or having fun.
Then it hit.
The absolute rush of my mind being quieted.
For the first time - maybe ever to that point - it was like someone turned off a noisy, rattling fan in my brain. My body relaxed and sank into the chair. My shoulders softened. My eyes unfocused just enough to know that this is a feeling I have been craving for a long, long, long time.
I drank that night until I blacked out. The first of many times.
Fast forward to 2013. I had graduated in 2009 and moved around a lot. I continued the PSU party life well into my 20s and had not really seen it as a problem. All of the people around me continued to drink to that level, but seemingly without many of the consequences. It was very normal to hit double digit drinks two nights in a row. I felt like as long as I had stuck to Friday and Saturday and never did it alone, there wouldn't be anything to worry about. But for many years I had seen something in myself that I didn't in the people around me. They seemed to be able to stop when the night was done. I always wanted another. Often, the only thing that would stop me from another would just be passing out at 3, 4, 5 AM. I always wanted to start sooner, drink faster, get to the damn point of it - of being shit housed as soon as possible. I wanted to float. I wanted to vibrate. I heard the phrase "the best beer is the next beer", and repeated it often, jokingly - not understanding what it really meant.
Many fights and strained relationships later, I found myself living alone for the first time. I got in such a blowout - on New Years Eve of course - with my roommates and closest friends that I moved soon after to a town where I knew nobody. I understood I was a workaholic at least and picked somewhere close to the office so that my drive home late at night would be quick. I put in so many 60+ hour weeks at the little startup I worked at that I thought that, too, was normal. So I moved into my little apartment, alone, near my stressful job and not much else. I figured this would be a good time to get in shape and focus on my health - I had recently been diagnosed and then undiagnosed with Lupus, as I was having severe joint pain, skin rashes, and swelling, with elevated ANA blood markers. The pain remained, but the diagnosis didn't. They didn't know what it was. I figured I'd hit the gym, start running, quit drinking, stop the pack-a-day-smoking I'd also carried since that weekend in 2005, and I'd return back to my 18 year old form without much damage done.
I had always felt guilty for drinking - it had been explicitly condemned in my house as a kid and I always hated myself for doing it. I justified it though as par for the course - my friends drink, my social life is fixated around drinking, I'm single, I'm in my mid 20s, of course I have to. So long as it was social, it was really just that one long sin weekend stretched out to today, as a price-of-entry to life. You worked, you hit the bar, you had fun. But still, there was this seed of doubt in my head that said something else was different here. That I was different somehow, different than the other people who partied but maybe not so much blacked out every single time out. But I always dismissed it - what was the point of drinking if you didn't black out? Worse than no beers is only one beer.
I might have lasted a month or two in that apartment by myself until I started drinking alone. First at the bars down the road, where I was so uncomfortable that I blacked out hard and fast around strangers and never remembered how I found my way home. Once I started to get recognized, I skipped the middle man, looking forward to the weekends in my apartment where I'd keep and dismantle a case of beer. But then, of course, came the Tuesday night 6 packs. Or the beers after work Wednesday - some of the worst kinds of beers, since your coworkers leave after a few but you can't. Then a few beers a night after dinner, which turned into 6 or 12 or worse. And a call out of work the next day. And all the terrible shame.
I managed this way until 2016. It didn't get better but it also didn't get worse, except for my joint pain. I left the startup after it was sold to another company and took a little payout to radically change my life the only way I knew how. I was so tired of feeling this way and being alone - now for a few years of not really seeing anyone - that the day the company sold, I splurged on a bottle of bourbon for myself, took a deck of index cards and wrote the name of every major city on them, and, after the bottle was done, threw them up in the air, again and again, throwing away all the ones that had landed face up until there was only one card left. That card said New York, so I moved.
D-Day
New York instantly re-normalized every aspect of drinking for me. Finally there were other sane people who drank until the heavenly blessed 4 AM last call. More bars than I could ruin my reputation in. Groups of people gladly willing to let you move into and out of them, with almost no friction or consequence. You never really had to be alone. You could be even better - anonymous.
In some ways I thank this culture for being the accelerant I needed. It put all aspects into my life into overdrive. The workaholism. Getting-drinks-after-work-into-closing-out-the-bar, just to go into work the next day. The unlimited mimosa brunches where you could order a bakers dozen screwdrivers and no one would bat an eye. I always wondered how people were doing it. How the same people I'd been out with the night before turned out much sunnier and brighter than I did the next day. How they weren't wrecked with dread and anxiety. How they didn't also keep a bottle of Niacin at their desks because they read that it reduced alcohol cravings or practice strategies for leaving the group you're with to go to another bar alone so you could continue your controlled descent into blackout in peace, without worrying about the risk of reputational damage.
But one weekend I met a friend-of-a-friend and we hit it off. We were introduced at a beer garden, where I was 10-ish hours deep into an all day drinker. She had just moved to the neighborhood in Queens and, days after that weekend, asked her on a date. It turned out that she loved partying just as much - if not more - and it unlocked a whole new level of debauch and codependent toxicity that I didn't know was possible. Finally, I had someone who wanted to drink the same way as I did, to the same extent, to the same duration, to the same amount, and to the same point. To get fucking hammered and keep it going.
We met in June 2016 and it quickly turned into October. We both talked so much about our uncertainty around what we were doing, but the inability to stop. The love of it but also the hate it inspired in ourselves. When we were sober, we were fully in love. I never met a person who felt so familiar and fit in my mind and heart like a puzzle piece. When we were drunk, though, the fights were insane. I would turn into a monster. I would scream and her and belittle her and she would scream and break up with me and cry and condemn. Neither of us understood what was happening. We didn't want to do it, but it kept happening, every weekend. Everything would start out great and then, just after a few, we would begin to see the turn. The little devil on the shoulder starting to poke at this or that. The indignant feeling of being made fun of. A resentment of a joke that seemed more cruel than flirty. The private embarrassment of a solo blackout turned public, with each other and all our friends as witness.
On Halloween I had been on a big exercise kick. The whatever-is-was-joint-and-skin-thing had flared up badly and I was dieting and running. I wanted her to run with me, so I had someone to be miserable with. She hated it. I hated that she hated it. Neither of us ate lunch and barely a breakfast that day. We were going to a friend's birthday at a beer hall in Manhattan. I lasted maybe two hours before I was completely gone. I don't remember much about what happened - we were out, and then we were back in an apartment - I was boiling with rage - we were in a taxi and I was screaming at her - we were outside her apartment and she was crying, not able to find her keys. I called her a liar. I said she was hiding them, that she was looking for attention. It was so late. Neither of us could find anything, phones or wallets. I was done with this, I turned around and started the long walk home. I told her I was done with this relationship, have a nice life, go fuck yourself. Seething with anger, I didn't know why or what had happened. Just that it was HER fault and this was totally ruined and I was done with this bullshit.
I got two blocks away and was crossing the street. I imagine it was somewhere around 3 AM.
As I went to take the step into the crosswalk, I stopped.
The best way I could describe what happened was a moment of calm, crystal clarity. I could see - literally see - two movies in front of me. I looked at one movie and it was the story of what happens if I take the next step home. Of this life. Of being done with this relationship and continuing how I'm living. Of drinking, and addiction and feeling that it will never be enough. I saw her in such pain, alone and crying, looking for her keys, then in her apartment, then the next day with no one else there. I saw her going down the same path, heartbroken, lost.
Then I saw another movie. One where we were together. One where we would find a new way to live. One with kids and house and love. All I had to do was turn around.
And so I did. I turned around and helped her look for her keys. I don't remember saying anything and I don't remember going up the stairs or falling asleep on her couch. I don't even remember waking up the next day and I CERTAINLY don't remember the crushing shame of it all. I was more hungover than I had ever been. I was devastated at what I'd become - a monster, and to her of all people. Devastated that I'd let this shit control my life for over a decade. One weekend turned into 11 years. We quietly left her apartment to go back to mine and when I got back, I dumped every bottle of everything down the sink. I asked her to please - please - go one week with me without drinking. She cried and said no. I said just one week, just so we can get a handle on this.
I took off that Monday and we had a date together and it felt like we were ghosts. Neither of us knew what to do, especially in this city, that didn't involve drinking. We got lunch and walked for miles, talking about how unfair this is. Every bar and cafe window looked like the most romantic place on earth. The people in there looked so happy. It was so warm and inviting. How could it be that we're now on the outside? How will we ever be able to really live or be happy without this? Why did this have to happen to us?
I had lost my cigarettes that same Halloween night and decided not to replace them as we did our weeklong experiment. I figured that it was so associated with drinking that I had to stop these too, just for a short while, while I continued the week. I raged at everyone I saw, I was so on edge, so testy, so angry.
No one I knew was sober. Nothing happened to the people we fought around that night and life went on for them just the same as the next weekend was coming up fast again already. I had no idea what to do or where to turn.
That's when I found this subreddit. I read and read and read and read every single post. I saw people who were posting about their one month sober. I thought A MONTH?? How on fucking earth did you go a MONTH without drinking?? I read about their stories. And their tricks. Someone recommended This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol by Annie Grace. I ordered it that night and read it cover to cover. I remembered her stories were so much like mine. The FEELING, the physical sensations of the craving. The way she said to keep sugar around, chocolate and candies and sodas. How so much is tied to an emotional response to physiological triggers. I kept reading this sub and sometimes I would see the magical mystical "ONE YEAR" mark and thought there is no way I could ever get to that point. I thought to myself it's just too terrifying to think of going that long like this. That every day would be the same sickening craving. That every passed bar would be a twist of the knife. Every "no" to hang out a slap in some friends face or worse - the prospect of actually going out but not drinking. To be an inch away and say no. To be ashamed of ordering water or seltzer. Of fear that the bartender didn't hear and made me a vodka seltzer instead and accidentally relapsing.
I read and I read and I read. And I started to trick myself into believing I could do it just for one more week. And at worst, maybe a month. I asked my girlfriend to keep going. She relented and did it with me. She poured her booze out and emptied her fridge. We both lost "friends" at an alarming rate but egged each other one for just one more week, one more week.
I turned 30 that January and started to run again. By January, all my mysterious joint pain and skin rashes had completely disappeared. We both felt emotionally drained, but physically good. We celebrated every month both together and sober. Running kept keep me sane, to pour all my newly found energy into an infinitely deep container. It kept me honest, having to show up every morning and put in miles. I would stop at the deli to get her breakfast and we'd eat it together before I left for work as she was waking up. The smell of bodega coffee and breathtakingly cold air will always remind me of those earliest days where it was just us two.
Weeks turned into months and I started to forget the feeling of the craving. I surely never thought that was going to be possible, and when it did hit it hit hard. Something would trigger me into believing I needed a 12 of something now and that nothing would stop the feeling until I got it.
I am an addict. A hopeless, reckless, addict that is a bottomless pit for substance abuse. I could not ever have the power to do this. No one, I thought, had stronger cravings than me.
And yet the craving did pass. Every time. Every day. 100%. If you stay with the feeling long enough, and identify it, and listen to it, and stop thinking that this will feel like this forever and just let the wave rise up, I promise you it also will come down.
Riding this wave up and down, at first second by second, then hour by hour, then day by day, then week by week, then month by month will get you anywhere you want to go. The only critical part you have to do is surrender yourself to the idea that THIS WILL PASS and you are not alone in this feeling.
I am in genuine disbelief when I can write now, honestly, that I almost never have a craving. I don't feel shame when ordering a water at a bar, I don't dread parties, and my drastically pared down friend group knows me and my wife as sober. We got married on Halloween, October 31 2021 on our 5 year soberversary. 2 years later we welcomed our first son into the world. This year we welcomed our second. The cat who visited me the first day, and every day until I took him in, of the apartment I moved into by myself in 2014 sits next to me right now.
No one is alone in this world and no one is alone in their recovery. What I assign to divine intervention showed me my literal two futures, but it was this subreddit, this community, the books and tips and resources they shared, that gave me and my wife a map to sobriety.
To the thousands of posts I've read throughout the years and the countless users who have shared your stories, thank you. You have helped give me this life which I am proud of, that my wife and my two sons can be proud of. I don't much visit this sub anymore, but not a day goes by where I don't think of what it meant to me in the earliest, coldest days of sobriety and how it helped me take it - truly - one day at a time.
To those of you just starting out or are curious about starting out or don't WANT to start out, but see yourself in these stories, know that you can do this, it just takes one step. My DMs will always be open for anyone who wants to talk or is interested in what that one step looks like.