This is an excerpt from my new recovery memoir, Love Me Sober: How I broke up with booze & came home to myself now available for download at this link. (Paid subscribers get it for free.)
You Never Wanted This (Feb 13, 2022 / day 44)
I woke up very early and I want to write. I don’t want to have sex. I am very clear about both of these things, although neither feels natural at all to me, they both feel shitty in fact, because right off the jump things are irritating. Last night was the seventh Saturday night of my sobriety which should have made me feel like a badass but instead shook me with unexpected feelings of doubt and confusion.
But also, last night was oddly good. Fortifying in a weird way, if a bit nerve biting. Trying, you might say. I kept faithful to my sobriety, which is to say to myself, which is to say I kept the promise I had made forty-four days ago today which was to not drink no matter what. I know very little else but what little I do know seems to be enough. Enough for what? Enough to keep me safe. Safe from what? From the voice of the addict living in my head and my body and my blood. The one that reaches for me. The one that I manage to side step but which clutches way too close.
I want to say it’s been a breeze. I want to say that I made the decision to remain sober and since that decision makes perfectly logical sense given the trajectory I was on (‘down’ would be the trajectory - down and then down and then down some more until the unspeakable, really, because the nature of substance abuse is to get exponentially worse, not suddenly miraculously cure itself like I had secretly hoped it might for so very long a time) but last night was harder than I saw coming.
If you think you don’t have a drinking problem, quit drinking. It’s a great way to prove yourself wrong.
I stopped because I was terrified to stop. Now it turns out I am terrified of both being stopped and of starting up again. I’m feeling a bit fucked either way is what I am trying to say, I guess. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming but perhaps it’s for the best that I didn’t. Seeing it coming would have made it a lot easier to give in to the voice which scoffs at me on relentless repeat: ‘Just wait. You won’t last. You’ll give in. You’re not serious. Actually, wait no, you’re too serious. Lighten up! Get over yourself! What a silly little sad girl making herself miserable for no good reason. It’s just a matter of time,’ and so on and so forth trying to drown me in my own terror so that grabbing a bottle seems like the only cure to the thing which put the bottle in my hand in the first place.
Last night, I nestled in blankets and pillows by the fireplace while we watched a movie about falling in love. The guy and the girl are cute but he’s uptight and she’s got self-esteem issues, the solution to both of these adorable afflictions being, of course, downing a bottle of tequila as they toss off their shoes and dance like two fools before making cinematic love in her perfectly manicured apartment, only to wake in each other’s arms looking glowy and flawless, which would never be actually possible in real life given the stupefying amounts of alcohol they’ve just sucked down while discovering each other’s wide-eyed, life-awakening, gravity-defying, soul-transforming ‘inner magic.’
As the fire in the fireplace dies out to a low smoldering simmer, I am struck by a question I never before considered quite so mindfully before: is it worse that Hollywood is selling us booze as a solution to our busted-up selves, or selling its side-effects as love? The cascading questions this question tips over in me are too many thousand to count or to get a handle on in one sitting. I swallow the last of my chamomile tea and the fire burns out entirely without so much as a sizzle.
Sunday comes and it is the first sober one in a string of seven (seven!) that doesn’t exactly feel sparkling. I have the black coffee and read the sober blogs and the quit lit but all the motivational speak just sounds like top shelf bullshit to me.
I question how I got myself into this mess. I rage quietly at Big Alcohol and teenage angst and all the people who ever wronged me since the day I was born. I water my plants which crowd the glass doors that open up to our deep back yard.
Later in the afternoon, I make tea and pour it in a mug which is painted with beautiful springtime flowers and I am grateful for its warm lavender heat. I watch as the snow continues to fall and blanket the grass and the trees. I never wanted to be one of those sober bloggers telling her story for all to read. I want to write about anything else but nothing else fits inside of me anymore so nothing else can tumble over and out. No matter what I write about, I will be sober anyway, and I will be writing, so the point is rather mute it would seem.
As I realize in no uncertain terms that I have now entered a cringingly real part of recovery for which I am going to have to learn mad amounts of new coping skills in order to survive, crystal clear tears stream hot and wet down my cheeks. Which I say not to invoke pity but to demonstrate that if you are going to tell the truth for once, you might as well tell it to the bitter fucking end.
And therein lies the one simple, arrogant, incredible, ecstatic, impossibly, annoyingly hope-filled truth about sobriety and, if we are being totally honest, about life itself: as long as you are still here to tell your story—whether you want to or not—it isn’t the end.
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Keep reading here: Love Me Sober: How I broke up with booze & came home to myself now available for download at this link. Become a paid subscriber to my substack and receive your copy of my memoir instantly as a free gift.
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Allison Marie Conway is a Certified Professional Life Coach with a specialization in Addiction Recovery Coaching, working primarily with women who want to quit drinking. As a creative and resourceful woman living an intentional life of sobriety, Allison brings her deep compassion for those who struggle with alcohol addiction, and her unique life experience in navigating the ups and downs of sobriety, to her beloved work. She is also a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), wife, mother, mentor, and addiction recovery researcher and advocate. Before opening her private practice in 2023, Allison worked in the professional corporate environment for over twenty years, excelling in supporting C-Suite executives for well over a decade. She earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences from Pennsylvania State University. Allison grew up in and around northeast Philadelphia, and currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years.
Hi Allison, it’s unreal how utterly relatable this is. I’m almost 3 years in and when I read this it all comes flooding back, especially the part about the anger and blame toward society, family etc. one of my favorite parts about recovery is how time provides perspective. While I still feel some anger toward the culture that always tells us we are not good enough, I see that those who love us are products of the culture too. Man those first few months were so raw! Thanks for sharing. ♥️
Hello Allison, so wonderful of you to share with us. 'Terrified of stopping and of starting ' I can totally empathise with this. It's unbelievable to be so free now. ❤️❤️😊