124 Days

Columbia Road and 18th Street

I wrote this essay for the Recovery Cafe open mic at the wonderful Potter’s House in Washington, DC. Recovery communities, musicians, artists, supporters, families, and friends are all invited to express themselves at the Recovery Cafe community as they find their way.

One day when I was 16 years old I was playing around on my family’s computer — doing something very dorky probably — when my mom stormed in and put a garbage bag at my feet and said “I think you have something in your closet you need to clean up.”

I knew what she was referring to and unlike most teen boys, it wasn’t porn. Because when I was 16 porn frightened me. What had happened was my mom had found the dozen or so empty bottles of vodka I’d hoarded in my closet because I was too nervous to smuggle them out of the house. After a few seconds I broke the silence between my mom and me and said, quote “Can we please talk about this situation like adults.” I literally said this. A sixteen-year-old. To his mother. My mom said, “Yeah. Sure.”

I said, “I just want you to know, it’s not like I’m having friends over and partying or anything. I just drink the vodka alone.” This is a sentence I actually said to try to comfort my mother. My mom said “That doesn’t make me feel any better.” I said, “I’m just getting all of the drinking out of my system now so when I go to college, I can focus on getting good grades.” My mom said, “It doesn’t work like that.” I’m 33 years old now and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as she was with most things, my mother was correct. You don’t get alcoholism out of your system by drinking a ton of booze when you’re 16 years old. In fact, alcoholism is the kind of thing that follows you everywhere.

My name is Chris. I’m 124 days sober today. In the 17 years since I began abusing alcohol in isolation, this beats my previous streak of sobriety by about 120 days, so it’s something.

The most helpful way I heard addiction explained was in rehab. The brain is hardwired to know that it needs water, air, shelter — basic necessities to survive. Addiction is your brain getting tricked into thinking it needs something more. My brain thinks it needs alcohol just to survive. It thinks it needs an obscene amount of alcohol every night just to be able to fall asleep. I did this for 17 years, with very few reprieves. At some point during that, I forgot how to fall asleep sober. When I began detox, I literally did not know how to fall asleep sober. I had to learn how to do that. And the thing about that? It was hell.

I had a major problem that I hid from literally every single person in my life. I don’t get drunk and out of control in front of other people, I get very drunk alone. And then I hide it very well. I drink to escape myself. To escape the world. My tolerance to alcohol has built up quite a bit over the last 17 years. I drank a lot. At the beginning of this year I began drinking even more than usual and this triggered a severe depressive episode and on a couple especially bad nights, I came close to jumping off the Taft Bridge. That’s what happened. If you live in the area you know the Taft Bridge and the Duke Ellington Bridge form a V-shape over Rock Creek Park and the Duke Ellington Bridge has suicide barriers and the Taft Bridge does not and in January and February I was drinking most of a bottle of wine and a pint of vodka every single night, and I got in the bad habit of walking across the Taft Bridge at night, every single night. I didn’t know how to stop. I hid it from everyone. And it almost killed me.

My brain believes it needs alcohol. Just to survive. Just to interact with people and feel like a normal person when I do it. Just to not be depressed and anxious and scared all the time. Just to be able to fall asleep, even if it means waking up still buzzed and counting down the minutes until my next drink, barely aware I’m even doing it. That’s the disease. My addiction is such that alcohol is where I spent half my life finding my sense of self-worth, my sense of confidence and hope and belonging to the world. And now that’s gone. I was happy living in this state of blissful detachment all of the time and alcohol served me very well, until it very much did not. So now I’m trying to rebuild and find happiness elsewhere.

Today, my 124th day of sobriety, was hot. And I work on a farm. And on days like this my brain gets preoccupied thinking about picking up a cold six-pack on the way home, so much so that I can hardly think of anything else. And my brain plays tricks on me. It says, “You’re not really an alcoholic. You remember how good beer is. It’s just one six-pack.” (Like “just one six-pack” should even be a thing.) So then I have to start an argument with my brain. “No, I AM an alcoholic. No, I CAN’T have just one beer. My brain doesn’t work like that. And I remember how bad things were just a few months ago. And the truth is, the next time I drink might be the last thing I ever do.”

So tomorrow I’ll be 125 days sober. On Monday I’ll be 126 days sober. And so on. I count the days like this, because my life depends on celebrating each day of sobriety and not waking up horribly anxious and scared and hungover. Because thinking about a lifetime of sobriety is overwhelming to the point of being completely counterproductive and harmful. Tuesday, 127 days. Wednesday, 128 days. I celebrate each day. While my brain stabilizes and my emotions find their footing, I cherish each day. Even the very hard days, and there have been plenty of those in the last four months. Thursday, 129 days. Soon, 5 months. Then 6 months. That’s half a year. Then, before I know it I’ll be able to say I’ve been sober for a year. To the universe that’s nothing. To me, it’s an eternity. So I count each day, even the hard days, especially the hard days. And I’m grateful for all of them.