Five years ago I stood in this place, about three weeks sober and barely holding my shit together. Why I, as someone newly avoiding alcohol, had agreed to go to Las Vegas is still beyond me.
I remember standing there in front of The Bellagio’s famous fountains, oohing and ahhing as one does, thinking how much better the show would be had it been accompanied by a big glass of Cabernet. Or a refreshing Chardonnay. Or a Citron press. Or even a fucking beer, one that I’d drink straight from the longneck bottle just the way my Dad had. And I don’t even particularly like beer.
But I sure liked drinking.
Every one of those early days dry was shaky. I lived minute-to-minute, using all I had to steer my thoughts (and my body) away from the siren urge to pick up a drink and throw it back as fast as I could. But the part of me that lived even deeper than that primal want knew better. The part of me that was smarter than my habit had resolve. I may have been shaky, but she was strong.
Dinner that night at The Cosmopolitan’s trendy Rose. Rabbit. Lie. was more uncomfortable than I’d imagined a dinner could be. It took everything to avoid even peeking at the drink menu, lest I’d be tempted off course. I didn’t want to undo my twenty-something days, but that didn’t stop me from feeling jealous as hell of the friends who sat at my table sipping on their cocktails “mixed with subtle flair.” I was pissed at myself that I didn’t have enough willpower to join them for just one. I was pissed that they carried on so normally without me; I mean, how could they just keep on laughing and enjoying themselves while I was DYING inside??
I’ll be honest: I was pissed at everything and everyone that day. And I stayed that way for about the first 18 months of recovery, until I got some more perspective and some more support and some more tools — all of which I still use today, and gratefully.
This is all to say that early sobriety plain old sucks. It’s hard and confusing and terrifying. Lonely. Uncertain. Just generally shitty. Until, somehow, it’s not. Something shifts and another day without a drink becomes an achievement. A gift. Something to honor, and cultivate, and share, and then honor some more.
I think this is the way of so many of our personal battles: Breakups suck. They’re hard and confusing and terrifying. Also lonely and uncertain. Same with getting fired. Or ditched by a dear friend. Or cut off financially. Or knocked flat by depression or grief or anger. IT SUCKS. IT’S HARD AND CONFUSING AND TERRIFYING. LONELY AND UNCERTAIN. JUST GENERALLY SHITTY.
And yet.
Something somehow shifts. A new day becomes a gift. We take our experiences and turn them into something we can honor, cultivate, share, and then honor some more — over and over — when the healing kicks in.
Early sobriety plain old sucks. It’s hard and confusing and terrifying. Lonely. Uncertain. Just generally shitty. Until, somehow, it’s not. Something shifts and another day without a drink becomes an achievement. A gift.
And then, before you know it, with time that healing accumulates and we can go to a fancy dinner at a fancy hotel and not want to stab the person across the table simply because they have the drink we want (or the lover or the job or the money or the seemingly pulled-together, anger-free, grief-free life)… because we have learned to recognize that things aren’t always as they appear… that we’re all in various stages of a battle… that life goes on in spite of chaos… that circumstances do improve… and we are good and whole just as we are.
If this is you, and you are in the early part of an inner shift that has you reeling — or an outer one, for that matter — I beg you not to give up. Keep stepping forward, one tiny bit at a time, because things do change —and usually for the better if you work for it.
