When I squint I’m a spitting image of my father. My grandma has always said I make facial expressions just like him, and it’s true. He shared about the time he woke up in his college dorm bed and had no recollection of how he’d gotten there, and that he never let it happen again. I remember wishing I were more like him in that way. We talked on the phone the week before last and for the first time I expressed to him what it means for me to be sober and free from alcohol. So much of my shame died that day.

Matt Haig wrote, “Language gives us the power to voice our experience, to reconnect with the world, and to change our own and other people’s lives.” In The Comfort Book, he went on to share Maya Angelou’s words, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” He said, “Silence is pain. But it is pain with an exit route. When we can’t speak, we can write. When we can’t write, we can read. When we can’t read, we can listen. Words are seeds. Language is a way back to life.”

I’ve never felt more alive.

To not acknowledge the suffering alcohol created for me would be a massive waste. To be honest about the life I was living is freedom in every sense of the word. The thing about me and alcohol is that I didn’t want to quit, I just wanted the consequences of my drinking to stop so I could live like everyone else.

Shortly after the last time I drank, I wrote the following in my journal:

Having people in my life I feel safe to fully be myself with and who I can open up to about my struggles is everything to me. I don’t think I’ve ever had to lean on others as much as I have the last few weeks. But I know I will be able to pay it forward for someone else someday. And I will do it with a grateful heart.

The pages surrounding that entry are a mixed bag of self-hatred, anxiety, frustration, worry, sadness, anger, resentment, over-thinking, disappointment, low self-worth, overwhelm, grief–obsessive thoughts that consumed me.

Buried in there, though, was the tiniest sliver of compassion for parts of myself I didn’t know much about. There was a desire to change, and a determination to take responsibility for my life and get to know myself on a deep level.

Alcohol quickly became the answer for everything that ailed me, even if I wasn’t aware of it on a conscious level. I spent 17 years of my life in a pattern of self-destructive behavior, recreating the same chaotic, often unstable environment for myself that I grew up in. It served as an escape to my reality.

Over the years my baseline became a state of crippling hangxiety (hangover anxiety), and when it didn’t render me completely debilitated, I was doing everything I could to prolong the onset of that feeling by binge drinking more. I hated being alone so I’d spend money I didn’t have on another round of drinks for everyone. I would often go out Friday and Saturday night, and then do it all again in the name of “Sunday Funday,” bouncing from friend group to friend group. My boundaries were weak, my blackouts were frequent, and I felt embarrassed by my lack of control when it seemed so much easier for others.

I felt so much shame around alcohol and the way it controlled me. And yet, I couldn’t imagine living my life without it. I tried to moderate my intake or “prove it” to myself that I could have just a few drinks. I created rules for my drinking: only on the weekends, only when I was out with friends, and so on. I did the whole not mixing different types of alcohol, telling myself I’d be okay if I just stuck to one type. This issue was, I was often successful, but that allowed me to ignore the problem until the next time I overdid it with drinking.

I did my first Dry January in 2022 (the year I got sober) and told myself I’d keep going, but I reminded myself it was by no means forever. After 3.5 months without alcohol a series of celebrations came up and I was excited for them, but I remember feeling so scared to drink though, not knowing how it would effect me (this should have been a sign, but that’s not how my brain worked at the time).

Mixed in there was one of the worst hangovers of my life and I repeated the same empty words to myself: “I’m never drinking again.” I drank one more time after that (one of those “prove it” situations) and then things began to shift within me? I’m still figuring it all out. I never set out to quit completely, I just started taking it day by day (again). I was also working through a slew of health issues that kept me preoccupied (safe from alcohol) and I believe that was a huge contributor to my recovery. I did everything I could to change my habits and played with the neuroplasticity of my brain until abstaining from alcohol became my default and the desire to drink dissipated.

I’ve shared this before, but the actual giving up of the alcohol was the easy part. It’s everything that has come after that has felt like climbing Mount Everest. I’m really grateful I wasn’t privy to the amount of work it would take to get here.

It wasn’t until I started therapy 5 months into my sobriety (and learned about the Internal Family Systems model) that I acknowledged and accepted that my drinking was a protective measure and the addiction was an attempt to escape the suffering and soothe part of me experiencing extreme pain. Gabor Maté’s work around trauma, addiction, and early childhood development helped me piece together some of my story, and with the understanding that people bring different degrees of vulnerability to the process of addiction I began to cultivate compassion and care.

Alcohol was a poor proxy for connection and removing it has been a catalyst for deep connection with myself and with others.

I’m really proud of how I’m navigating my life–wading through the waters of the past and the present. And for the first time in my life I feel excited about my future.

This is by no means all encompassing of my story, but it’s a start, and it’s an opportunity for my voice to continue to grow as I learn to express myself in healthy ways.