The Search for Permission to Quit Drinking

You can always start drinking again.

We are the Luckiest. How can that be true? To me, the luckiest ones have their champagne brunch and maintain a demeanor as though they had only been sipping on Earl Grey. I’m always the one who knocks something over or drops something, laughs at something stupid, or goes dead in the eyes in the second hour.

YET, I can’t say that I don’t have an off switch. I could drink a beer right now and not wake up in a gutter.

You want so badly for me to have woken up in a gutter. You search through the lines for the place where I am worse than you. If you’ve never done this horrible thing, you don’t need to quit.

I know people though, who have done worse than me but still drink.

Who see that I’ve quit and congratulate me for overcoming my addiction, but it was never an addiction.

But if it was never an addiction, what is the big deal? If I never needed it, am I stealing the valor of the real addicts—the ones who couldn’t get through a day without it? The ones who say they fight the demon every day.

I had been seeing the title advertised on Amazon for months before I bought Laura McKowan’s book We Are the Luckiest. When I read about McKowan leaving her child alone in the hotel room, I said, "This book is not for me." I would never do that.

There was something about that title though. All the worst things I did happened when alcohol was at the wheel, and those worst things are what the people want to read about. Laura gave one of hers to them. It’s there forever for others to see, interpret, and judge. And if they’ve never done that specific thing, they can know without a doubt that she is the one with the problem and not them.

What if we forget about putting vulnerable children in danger for a moment? What if the vulnerable child we put in danger is not our own but our mother’s? What if those vulnerable children are us? Why do we think that if we hurt ourselves it is a victimless crime? I justified the pain I put myself in for years because it was only me who got hurt. Think about that for a minute. That is sooo fucking sad. I don’t know if your mom loved you, but mine loved the shit out of me. Somewhere around twelve I spit in the face of my mother’s love and decided it was okay and moral to hate myself. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times that I saw self-loathing as a sign of superiority.

But we are the luckiest. That sentence, man, it frames quitting in a way I never heard. I spent some years of my life feeling like any kind of struggle with alcohol was a curse. I didn’t feel like I was the luckiest, and the community of normal people who appeared to be able to drink without questioning whether it was a good idea or not were all right there alongside me ready to confirm it.

My aunt pulls me aside at a party to tell me how proud she is that I quit drinking. She wants to know what made me decide to stop. I used to think this question was about me, but now I know it’s about them. They want to know if they’ve done that thing. They want to find out if they must stop or if they’re allowed to keep going. It feels like talking to someone through the blurry plexi-glass divider in jail and describing why they should want to get out.

My daughter asks me if she should grow her bangs out, and I’m like, “Sure, start right now.”

You ask me if you should quit drinking, and I’ll say the same. I’m not a guru or an oracle, but I know you knew the answer to the question before you even asked it. Yes. Yes you should grow your bangs out and stop drinking.

When I was in my early thirties I lived through a different version of sobriety. I had quit drinking but was still trying to quit smoking. I had this boyfriend who didn’t know I smoked, so sometimes I would crawl out of my skin with a craving for a cigarette by the end of a night with him. I would cut it short so I could get in my car and light up an American Spirit, flick my embers out the window as I flew down the 101. Oh I have to work so hard to get anything that even slightly resembles that relief anymore.

I would do the same thing when with my daughter-try to think of excuses for sneaking away. Sneak around a corner and come back, the scent of shame clinging to my clothes. When she was ten, I got a call from her dad that she was in the hospital with a broken arm, but I was at the bar. I wasn’t going to go to the hospital drunk, so I didn’t. I thought, ‘what use would I be?’ So I stayed at the bar and ordered another. I didn’t let my kid get in the way of my drinking.

In We Are The Luckiest, Laura writes about a party at her mom’s house where her mom is not drinking alcohol, showing solidarity with Laura, as moms are wont to do to support their daughters. Throughout the night, she notices her mom not drinking, and then when she leaves and comes back because she forgot her keys. Her mom has a freshly poured wine glass in her hand.

On the other side of her mom abstaining at the party, there is this anticipation for the moment when Laura leaves, the moment when she can finally pour herself a glass of wine. I never ask anyone to quit in solidarity with me. I never ask the world to change because I am changing because I know what it’s like to be on the other side of that. I don’t want the people who I love wishing I would leave so they can have their pacifiers.

Perhaps it was because I had quit so many times before this last one that I knew it had to be different. I had to see what it was like to have two glasses of wine with dinner, not spill a drink or have sex with a stranger, and then decide to quit from the voice inside that knew there had to be more to life than this.

My story is not about coveting the drinks in other people’s hands. It’s about what happened when I couldn’t blame my problems on drinking. It’s about discovering the kind of person I’ve been, the one I am, and the one I will be.

I think I might not like parties. I know I love bangs. I have a habit of becoming passionate about a thing for a while and then forgetting about it forever. I’ve always loved books and cats, laughing till I cry, and crying till I laugh. I think that is the luckiest part—knowing and loving who I am. I know that the worst things happened while I was drunk. I know because of the women who were brave enough to write their worst things down that there is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no morning wish for death. I did not abuse alcohol. Alcohol abused me. Fucker.

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