(Click play to hear me read this post)
I have heard some experts say I can never drink again. I have heard some other experts say I can eventually return to drinking in safety after enough time has passed. Last night, I watched the seventh episode of a show on which the women drink wine and/or whiskey every single night and it’s not even a thing I would have noticed in the past. I would have been drinking then, too. My mind went down a strange sort of brain hallway, that I didn’t even know was inside me, that thought I should have a whiskey double in a big chunky glass some time and wouldn’t that be nice. Like the way I might treat myself to a slice of chocolate cake. Except that chocolate cake never tried to kill me, that I can recall.
Answering the question “what happened to me?” is in some ways, I am coming to realize and praying to be able to accept, impossible. Even the experts—the scientists, doctors, recovery teachers, researchers, lawmakers, pharmaceuticals, neurobiologists, therapists, educational institutions— there’s a million opinions and very few categorical conclusions. Maybe AA, maybe not. Maybe spirituality, maybe intellect, maybe your brain heals, maybe it always remembers, maybe it was never quite right to begin with. Maybe we will never know. Maybe I will be able to put some pieces together about my own story (and, of course, I have) but there will always be parts that remain a mystery. I’m much more careful to not judge anyone else’s journey or choices or hang-ups or neuroses.
Not knowing exactly what caused my tangle with addiction; not knowing exactly whether or not I can drink in safety again; not understanding some things yet simply because all of this takes a lot more time (A LOT MORE) than I originally thought or could possibly comprehend. These are all revelations that are new to me. Early sobriety was tough as nails but it was straightforward: don’t drink today. I don’t have to resist drinking anymore. But my mind is still wired in ways that surprise me. In ways that I’m glad I am now alert to so I can learn from and adjust as needed.
But now I’m in this liminal space. Who I was is in the rearview, sort of. And who I want to be is still becoming a tangible reality. I quit corporate over a year ago. I don’t live that life anymore. For over two years I’ve read and listened to everything I can about addiction and recovery. Mostly it’s because I want to understand what happened to me. It’s incredible how you can live through traumas and life, hardships, grief, joy, pain, all of it, and all the while you were being slowly swallowed by the emptiness you could never quite explain to anyone. I knew the bleakness inside of me was real. It was rather maddening to not be able to explain it in a way that the person you were explaining to—it was like people were on the other side of the glass. I was trying to tell them to break through and get to me, but they couldn’t hear me at all. So the glass wall between me and everybody remained.
The thing was, I had to break the glass. I didn’t understand that. My recovery shattered the glass box I lived inside for as long as I could remember. All of a sudden, I told my story and people could hear me. People listened. Now I wonder how much of it is still mine. All of it. But every time I write about it I give a little bit away.
Every morning I sit in a meeting and learn how to listen. Learn how to speak. Learn how to interact with patience, compassion, and care. And then I go back out into the world and realize the sharp difference between my newly forming beliefs and the beliefs of the outside world. I realize I’m forming a new code, a new backbone, a new heart. A new way of understanding myself and, therefore, others. I’m so much more aware of what drives us, motivates us, and how susceptible we are to marketing, culture, social media, peer pressure, and the constant influence of bad actors bent on selling us cures that will only make our problems worse.
The thing about recovery is that you cannot nod your head Yes when you mean No and remain in sober safety. You have to keep a close eye on yourself with the lying, deceit, and disingenuous anything. Integrity is paramount. Learning to be more protective of yourself, instead of so promiscuous with your mind, body, soul, spirit, and energy. I’m learning to keep a lid on some things in front of certain people. I’m learning to keep more things to myself. I’m learning to share more with other people in recovery because in recovery circles we all realized we had to shatter our own glass boxes. We know what it feels like to need something we couldn’t name, and to try to find it in a steady stream of wine and whiskey and false facades. Even if all that ever did was crush us out like cigarettes.
Writing about where I am now feels cumbersome, smokey, fuzzy. And I worry that writing here, to you, isn’t making anything better at all. The thing is, though, I can’t help but think that a big chunk of my “problem” was that I thought if I wasn’t fixing, inspiring, or producing, then what I was thinking about wasn’t worth anything. I think maybe I was trying to be the best at something but truth be told I don’t really know what. I am more confused now than ever about what my motivation for creating is supposed to be. I think we are all so warped by likes, attention, outside validation, competition, and stats that it’s becoming impossible to be real even with ourselves. Or maybe that’s just me.
But I don’t feel like I have to try to convince anyone of my emptiness anymore. That’s the biggest relief, maybe. I don’t feel like there’s a big gaping hole inside me that’s screaming to be filled, or that I have to devote pages and pages of words to to try to depict it in such a way that would enlist affection from anyone else. I feel whole now. I know that the empty hole was the way I fell into addiction because I believed in the black hole inside.
I don’t know if the black hole inside still exists and I might fall back into it. Or if it never existed to begin with and it was just a story that had been building and building in my mind. I once wrote a book of poetry called Luminae, in it there’s a line that reads: You are a universe, all by yourself. Maybe we all have black holes inside. As well as stars, planets, suns, moons, weather patterns and all the rest. Maybe the point of life isn’t to avoid some parts and cling to others, but to learn to navigate all of it, if you can.
Free gifts for you *yay* Free subscribers get a free copy of 30 days of sober exploration journal prompts. Paid subscribers get a free copy of my sobriety memoir ‘Love Me Sober’ and access to my pre-recorded audio sober coaching series on overcoming the 5 biggest obstacles to continuous sobriety. Cool. :)
Allison Marie Conway is a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), addiction recovery coach, mentor, researcher, and advocate. Allison currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years. She is deeply grateful to be recovering during midlife.