We already have enough numbing without drinking
Photograph ©2010 David Bivins
First: be safe today. We don’t have to drink. We don’t need a last hurrah. I promise to you that we can have a great day without drinking. I can’t promise a great day, but I can attest to the drinking not making a bad day better. Grab a pack of seltzer or AF beer if that’s your thing, smear on the sunscreen, and go have fun.
Second: if you feel burned by the current situation (choose anything going on), drinking only kicks it down the road. The bad shit is still there. A lot of mine is still here and I find it easier and more fulfilling to face it and use other tools to manage or even eliminate it.
I feel very lucky that I quit drinking before the pandemic lockdown. I can imagine how that would have played out had I still been binging regularly, and I’m not going to write out the logistical details. Suffice to say a lot of lying and desperation and high bills for delivery. And a lot of feeling numb. Numb to Black Lives Matter. Numb to the exposure and exacerbation of inequality overall but especially to those who had to continue working grocery, healthcare and other essential jobs across the country. Numb to the growing rifts between people over definitions of what’s true, demonization of science, demonization of our democracy.
I would have also not been fully present for my family during this time. Numb to my child forced to start learning remotely via computer and having to suffer being so close to parents 24/7. Numb to the ups-and-downs of my partner’s business. Also numb to the joy of being together and binging the Marvel universe movies, demonstrating how much we care about each other, and grieving together at the senseless suffering outside our windows where we heard ambulances wailing around the clock through the empty Brookly streets.
I mean, really, it was numbing enough, just living through that shit regardless of alcohol or any other numbing substances.
And now, with the last weeks of SCOTUS rulings and the January 6 hearings and ongoing climate news and violence in my own neighborhood, it’s numbing enough.
I’m glad I learned how to be sober when I did because I’m feeling all this. I’m talking about it with people, and not shit-talking over a pint (or six) but trying to understand it and applying my own faculties to it, not just trying to crawl through it to get to the next night of drinking.
Drinking was a form of procrastination. Shrinkwrap those feelings in a hundred layers and put them in the back of the freezer, never to be seen (or identified) again. Were those organic blueberries from the farmers market? Conflicted feelings about a loved one? Anger about my sister’s untimely death? Hard to tell under the layers of frost (and shrinkwrap).
Drinking just made me older without the wiser part. It was like a fast-forward button that I employed every evening to skip ahead without dealing with anything or letting my brain process each day. I hardly dreamed for all those years.
Honestly I did deal with stuff, but it was with both hands tied behind my back. I’d fight with my partner but my anger was blobby and unfocused, probably usually unjustified and coming from the lizard brain. For the hours each day that I wasn’t drinking, I worked, I got my kid to school, I made dinner, I cared for my family, I checked in with friends. But I got no traction with any of it. Every night I would wipe the slate nearly clean of any progress or learning. Every morning was like trying to start a car that won’t turn over, wishing my brain back to life after an hour wading through fog. On good days I could start putting things together for a few hours before it was time to drink again.
I know a lot of people curious about sobriety wonder if they’ll miss drinking.
I do not miss getting to check out like that. By the last several years of my drinking, I hated it anyway. I was like a zombie kicked into gear at the witching hour, dutifully purchasing and drinking my poison to drop me back into the unfeeling place. I hated knowing that the first sip of beer or wine was the crest of the first hill of the roller coaster and that there was no turning back for the next few hours. I never put on the brakes. I never moderated. And I got nothing out of it.
I don’t miss social drinking either. I mean, I still sit around with friends while some of them drink, but my drink is alcohol-free. When they get sloppy I call it a night. Remember that feeling of “I wish I had stopped that one night before I said ____ or did ____?” I get to stop, and my chances of putting my foot in my mouth, while not entirely absent, are drastically reduced.
I still don’t know how my drinking got so bad, but I think I know how it stayed there for so long. I took my power back from it. Shit’s still shitty, but I’m cracking my knuckles and facing it. Do it with me.
I love you,
David
