Eight Years Sober
(Help Many Others Heal Too)
Dear Esteemed Readers,
Every June for the past few years I’ve written about my sobriety here on Substack; this will (probably) be the last June I do that.
Don’t worry. I’m still sober. June 8, 2026 marked eight years for me.
But alcohol isn’t commanding my attention like it once did.
Over the past twelve months, I really haven’t thought much about liquor. It only took more than seven years of teetotalism coupled with more than five years of intense Jungian analysis to knock booze off that pedestal.
Alcohol is no longer the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning. I no longer feel the need to actively avoid places where people are drinking. Alcohol isn’t strongly influencing me anymore, which it did for many years even after I had gotten sober—always whispering in my ear, telling me that I couldn’t survive without it and offering sweet, sweet relief from everything, ensuring that booze would remain paramount in my thoughts.
Here at eight years sober, I’ve been thinking a lot about how alcohol was never the problem, but an effective means of forgetting about the problem.
(You’d never blame Ibuprofen for your recurring headaches, right?)
So what is the addict’s problem?
Mostly shame.
I’ve never met an alcoholic who had a good enough childhood.
What does it mean to have a good enough childhood?
Well, I’d say it means the child gets what he or she needs when it is needed.
What do children need?
Love, respect, affirmation, and safety, of course. Adequate food and shelter. Eventually, they need a sense of autonomy and innate worth. They need to know that they will not be punished for their virtues. They need to be loved for who they are. I’d also argue that they need to know it is possible to become an adult and still be okay. Children need to interact regularly with mentally well adults who are living productive, meaningful, and, ideally, joyful lives.
When such a reality is not possible, the child will find ways to numb away the resulting horror. Wounded children are quite resourceful, but if they don’t figure out an effective way to live with the pain of having been failed early on, a shameful sense of worthlessness will grow until everything feels hopeless. Eventually, even the strongest among them will need to lessen the psychological agony by any means necessary.
If you read my forthcoming memoir, Dad, Love, Me, you’ll see why alcohol was once so necessary for me. As a child, I was overwhelmed by generational trauma—a lot of it fueled by war and poverty. I was not given the means to process that inheritance, let alone combat it. I was quite resourceful and did my best to survive, but the horrors handed down to me during my childhood were ultimately too much for me to endure without numbing myself. Alcohol was pretty much everywhere, while access to mental health resources was remarkably less available. Everywhere I looked, alcohol was being advertised. It was the primary solution offered by the culture in which I came of age. And it was relatively inexpensive—within the financial reach of the roofer/college student I was and the underpaid teacher I later became.
If the healthy well-adjusted person starts his average day off at one or two on a psychological pain scale of one to ten, the untreated person with a trauma history might start off his average day at a six or seven. So if life ups everyone’s psychological pain three levels, the well-adjusted person is still only at the midway point, while the alcoholic might be at a the top of the psychological pain scale, which, of course, makes him more likely to seek relief by drinking. Force someone to endure a high level of psychological pain for long enough and it is nearly impossible for them to resist any type of relief, no matter how great the longterm cost.
Back when I was drinking, I didn’t understand any of the above. I’d ride out most of my days at the six to eight level of psychological pain, always doing my best to hide from others what I was feeling so intensely. Nightly consumption of alcohol brought me back down to a two or three, which was the psychological equivalent of getting a good night’s rest, inasmuch as it made the next day’s suffering more possible. This wasn’t a strategy that I was consciously implementing. It was an unconscious survival mechanism.
Analysis taught me that I do indeed have a trauma history. I hadn’t known before. I knew that I had an unhappy childhood, but I didn’t understand how that was unconsciously driving many of my life choices. As my analyst and I mapped my psychology, I learned more about how the human psyche functions. Knowing made many things less confusing. Since I was less confused, I had more bandwidth to start really studying how I was programmed by my past. This was—at least initially—a terribly humbling series of lessons. But my analyst showed me love and respect and gave me affirmation. He constantly reminded me that I had more autonomy than I formerly believed. He made me believe in my innate sense of worth. He showed me how he and others were living productive, meaningful, and even happy lives. Over time, he proved that it was possible to be an adult and be okay. If you want the specifics regarding all of the above, please read my memoir when it is published next month.
As my analyst slowly reparented me—over many years and hundreds of sessions—I began waking up at lower numbers on the psychological pain scale. I still had bad days—heck, even weeks and months—but I kept trending in the right direction and my desperate need for relief in any form continued to lessen, making alcohol less and less relevant.
(Again, the man with no headache doesn’t think much about Ibuprofen.)
I don’t believe I will ever be able to have a single drink at a social engagement without risking a slip back into old habits. I’m done with alcohol forever. But alcohol no longer has godlike power over me. For many years, I couldn’t walk by an unclaimed glass of booze without compulsively drinking it, much to the horror of my wife. Now, you couldn’t pay me enough to take a single sip of the finest scotch this world has to offer.
So why won’t I be writing and posting Nine Years Sober next June?
I certainly aim to be alive and sober in twelve month’s time, God willing. But I‘m pretty sure I’ve said everything I have to say about my sobriety in my memoir, which will be published on July 21, 2026.
Writing about my trauma history and recovery has been deeply healing for me.
My team and I sincerely hope Dad, Love, Me will help many others heal too.
Maybe I’ll change my mind in a year and actually will write Nine Years Sober. We shall see. But here’s the key takeaway for now: I have made progress and I’m pretty sure what I’ve done is replicable. Heal the wound, lessen the need for numbing agents.
I still believe in the necessity and extraordinary power of zero—as in zero alcoholic beverages for the rest of my life. When it comes to alcohol—and other substances I once used to relieve psychological pain—anything more than zero and the wheels will surely fall off of this here bus, which I finally have moving in the right direction. Hell, the engine would probably explode, engulfing me in flames. I finally—really truly—understand that reality. That has saved my life.
Thanks for reading my words this month.
Your man in the Lowcountry,
Matthew
PS - Am I coming to your part of the world this book tour? Click here to find out. (We’ve added info.)
PPS - New Dad, Love, Me reviews are in. Click here to read.
PPPS - Did you read the May 21st post? How Do We Measure Success? (Putting The Foundations Under Our Sky Castles)
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