And we turn the page on another year — and though we actually just went from a Tuesday to a Wednesday, there is always much ado about January first. There are the fireworks, the champagne, the kiss at midnight. And then there are resolutions to make, vision boards to create, closets to purge. And for many, challenges to undertake.
A few weeks ago, I responded to a Facebook invitation to join in a “Dry January” challenge. I smiled as I typed my response — “I’m on my 122nd month. Feeling great. I’ll be happily joining you.”
I paused as I hit reply. It is so easy to be happy about that decision I made all those years ago. But to be cavalier about it, even now, is to be less than genuine. Yes, I turned that page and never looked back (my husband and I gave up alcohol on the same day in 2012) but it was by far the heaviest page I have ever lifted. In fact, I had to have help. Lots of it.
Many friends were surprised. It seemed to them that I drank like everyone else — and everyone else was fine. No one had ever had to scrape me up off a barroom floor. I never missed a minute of work. I was rarely the “most buzzed” at any gathering.
That dubious distinction went to my best friend. And she too was not totally convinced that her drinking was a serious problem. She had tried to moderate before and could go for a week or two, even a whole “Sober October” or “Dry January” — ostensibly proving to herself, “I can quit any time.”
At one point, she even attended some Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but after a couple of weeks reported to me, “Sharla, I’m just not like those people. Their stories are so extreme.”
Six months later she died drunk in the back of a taxi. She was 47.
I was shattered. Her girls were devastated. Our friend group, stunned.
How could this have happened?
In my intense grief, I was reminded of the “descending elevator analogy” I had read about. There are so many floors between our first drink and our last — and if alcohol (or any substance really) begins to feel even a little bit problematic, that elevator only goes down.
But the doors do open on every floor on that descent. We just have to walk through them before we bottom out in that dark dank basement, inhabited only by a hooded ghoul brandishing a scythe.
My elevator doors opened to many, many floors between the time I first found myself as a young mom thinking, “It’s been a rough day, I deserve a glass of wine,” to the desperate morning decades later when I woke up and wished I hadn’t. Shame had pinned me to my bed.
Author/researcher Brené Brown talks about this.
“Shame needs three things to grow out of control in our lives: secrecy, silence and judgment.”
So I spoke up. I told one person. Just one, to start. My “secret” was out. My silence was broken. My harsh judgment of myself suspended. The heaviest page had been turned.
It was hard that first year. I solicited help from every source available to me: family, friends, a therapist, my doctor, AA, God …
It is not hard now. In fact, as I write this column, I’ve had to read back over my writings from that time to help me to stay humble and real about it.
At first when people would ask me why I had given up alcohol completely, I would tell them honestly: “I lost the privilege. I was drinking irresponsibly and had to stop.”
Today, when asked why I don’t drink, I smile and tell them an oh-so-miraculous truth.
I’m not thirsty anymore.
