Today I have been sober in AA for an entire year. My last drink was a year ago last night, with my mom. Tomorrow I am celebrating with my home group. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I cannot even possibly believe how much my life has changed -- for the better. Entirely, indubitably, for the better. In fairly miraculous ways. I have tools to cope with life now. I am honest, connected, and supported. I am not insane. I am more OK than I have ever been, and am opening to big beautiful dreams of what I can do with my life, and they seem possible, and bunches of them are actually coming true in the present. It has been such an incredibly hard year, the onion-like peeling away of layers upon layers of denial, the releasing of so much shame, the asking for so much help. 3 months into my sobriety my mom was comatose on a respirator in the hospital, and 5 months into it she died -- from gruesome side-effects of long-term alcoholism. 7 months in I got engaged, and 2 months later he left. Somehow, after all of that, I came out of it stronger, saner, and more committed to my spiritual practice, my activism, my art, my community, and my life. I really, really want to live. I do not want to toy with self-destruction, rage, and insanity. It hurts too much.

I spent a chunk of time today writing about my alcoholism... here is the beginning of what I think will be a much longer piece, or perhaps a zine:

I don't want to be an alcoholic. I want to be able to drink "like everyone else," which is some myth that I and most alcoholics carry around in our heads. For years I wanted to believe that if I just controlled my drinking long enough - a few months, a few years - then a magical day would arrive when suddenly that "one glass of wine with dinner" would not be loaded, a huge question mark, a foray into Russian roulette, a potential doorway to bottomless despair, blatant psychosis, heartbreaking catastrophes, or the overwhelming impulse to dismantle my entire life. I wanted to believe that at some point drinking would not have to come with conditions: maybe it will be safe as long as I don't drink when I'm depressed; maybe it will be safe if I never have more than 3 shots; maybe it will be safe if I don't buy the alcohol anymore; maybe it will be safe if I drink whiskey instead of tequila, wine instead of whiskey, beer instead of wine. Beer must be safe because I don't even like it - and that will make drinking cheaper.

I have been told that normal drinkers don't have these thoughts. Apparently they don't congratulate themselves when they learn how to consume large amounts of something they don't enjoy. Apparently entering a bar does not cause everyone a paradoxical combination of devilish anticipation combined with stomach-turning dread because they don't know what will happen by the end of the night, which piece of themselves will get unleashed, or who they will take home. Apparently they don't repeatedly wake up miserable and say "I have got to start drinking less" and find themselves with a glass in hand by the end of the day. Apparently they can take a course of antibiotics and make it through the week without binging on whiskey and making themselves sicker. Apparently they don't suffer from the mysterious disappearance of their money in foreign countries only to realize they spent it all on drugs. Apparently keeping the decision to stay sober for an evening around folks who are drinking does not elicit obsessive fixation or require massive amounts of willpower and fear. Apparently they do not entertain periodic fantasies like "I cannot drink now, because on Sunday I am celebrating my first year of sobriety, and people would be disappointed if I did not show up, but in 6 or 12 months, if I am traveling in Italy with someone beautiful, and if no one I know can see me, then I should be able to drink wine for a month and stop when I come home."

Apparently people who are not alcoholics do not find that being sober for the first year since they went through puberty has drastically improved everything in their entire lives. Apparently I am an alcoholic.

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A year ago last night I had my last drink. It was a glass of champagne with my mother. It was preceded by the usual litany of conditions that accompanied every decision to drink near the end: "do I, don't I? Will it be ok if I do? Will it be a disaster? She'll think it's strange if I don't. I don't want someone to think I'm strange, or uptight, or straightedge, or have a problem. I like champagne, I should have some. I deserve it. It will probably be bad if I have more than one. I am sure I can manage just one. It won't be a disaster if I just have one. " I did have one, and only one. Because she was the real alcoholic, and I was trying to prove to myself that I was not. Because I knew I couldn't be civil or sane if I had more. Because I was broken and terrified and exhausted and in pain. Because the gamble was too risky. Because I wanted to be right.

At first getting sober was a secret experiment between me and the devil on my shoulder. I had tried everything else I could think of to help me stay sane. I'd been on psych meds, in hospitals, seen therapists, taken up meditation, moved, not moved, traveled, stayed home, lived in cities, lived on farms, practiced yoga, immersed myself in activism, written zines, painted pictures, gone for walks, had sex, climbed mountains, taken herbs, gone to acupuncture, worked with a homeopath, read spiritual books, seen an energy healer, spent time in AlAnon, had revelations, and on and on and on. All of these things had helped, to varying degrees, but something under the surface was still wildly out of control and trying to hijack my brain. I had stopped using street drugs and had tried, for the preceding 4 years, to control the amount that I drank and smoked - but I had never even considered stopping altogether. That seemed far too drastic, unnecessary, and impossible.

But last winter the demons moved back into my head, and they were taking prisoners.

And this is the part I do not want to write about, the part I do not want to remember. The black and desperate agitation, the hallucinations, the delusional certainty that all my friends hated me, the utter mistrust of other human beings, the suicidal impulses, the visions of swinging a 2 by 4 through my skull, the hiding in my room, the feelings of being unreal, the instances of not recognizing myself in the mirror, the rages, the smashing of plates, the loss of memory, the loss of self. How the summer before, without noticing it, I had started drinking more frequently than I had in years; within a month or two I had sabotaged my relationships, become unable to work, packed everything I owned into my truck, and disappeared to move across America alone, stopping in vacant towns like Halfway, Oregon and Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, to get drunk with strangers, make disturbing phone calls to friends, and pass out in public parks. How I consciously decided, one day, that I was not yet ready to commit to awakening, and dove back into the darkness of abandoned habits and encroaching despair. How I stopped meditating, stopped making art, stopped calling friends, and moved into the middle of the woods with a stranger. How I told myself that the drinking did not matter if things were this bad, that what I ate did not matter, that nothing much mattered, and I was just crazy and doomed. How on my first date with the girl who worked at the wine shop I cracked a rib coughing, downed a shot of whiskey, let her kiss me when I was terrified, and could not say no. How a month later every time I saw her I would swear not to drink, and every evening I would fail, and soon I would end up humiliated and ashamed, watching her hands melt on the living room couch, or screaming under her kitchen table about the end of the world. As far as I was concerned this was all proof that I was just too crazy and incapable of being in a relationship. Everywhere I turned provided corroborating evidence. I could see no way out.

It was in this state that a friend took me to an AA meeting. She was not even suggesting that I had a drinking problem; we both went to AlAnon, where we learned about how trying to fix other people's problems had made us sick, and she suggested it might be helpful for me to observe an AA meeting. When people talked about their addictions to drugs and alcohol I was supposed to substitute my addiction to anger, or control, or obsession, or something like that. I did not need to substitute a damn thing. Everyone in the room was telling my life story with far more clarity and humor than I had ever possessed. They had all been just as sick and insane as I was, and now they seemed well. They had clear eyes, relationships, laughter, and jobs. They could cope with life. They could experience joy. They said the way to get there was to stay sober, and follow some simple steps. At this point the alternative, in my head, was to throw myself in front of the train down by the river. So I decided to try it. I would not drink anything at all for 90 days. I would go to meetings. I would take suggestions. I would see if anything changed. I had nothing left to lose.

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It is a strange thing to grieve a substance, to find yourself mourning the loss of something you once trusted and loved. It is incredibly hard to admit that you have abused something to the point that you've lost the privilege: not only has it stopped working like it used to, but your medicine has become your poison, and you have been making yourself sick.

It is incredibly hard to surrender. And there is nothing else to do.

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