Just the other day, I was walking our local nature preserve’s usually serene dirt road when I heard Vanessa Carlton’s 2002 smash hit A Thousand Miles.
At first, the music was a whisper. But the famous piano riff grew louder and louder, along with the revving of an engine, tires crunching rocks, and the cheers of teenagers. Then I was stepping aside, making way for a speeding SUV and its trailing dust cloud. Sticking out of the sunroof were three young women. The one in the middle had her hands in the air. A fourth young woman was tentatively emerging from the back window, like the head of an excited but shy turtle.
The old man in me began thinking about the blind curves ahead. I couldn’t help forecasting a head-on collision and body parts flying everywhere. I felt a strong urge to yell, Slow down! And put on your seatbelts!
But then the young woman poking most prominently through the sunroof, the only one with absolutely no fear—she turned and faced me. We locked eyes. I could almost feel the elation pulsing through her veins as she smiled and yelled, “Enjoy your walk!”
“Thanks!” I yelled back and then realized I was grinning.
Somehow it didn’t feel like she was mocking me; I imagined she was just high on the experience and wanted to lift me up a little too.
As Vanessa Carlton’s voice began to fade, the young women disappeared around the bend, which is when I started thinking about why I needed to get drunk every night for most of my adult life.
The confident young woman’s face was lit up with abandon and blissful ignorance. Her gaze was sincere and kind and generous. But her behavior was also inflated and reckless and oblivious to risk and consequence. Her conduct seemed to naively say, “I’m going to live forever! I’m a goddess! I can fly!” I imagine that she had complete trust in the young inexperienced driver of the SUV, in any motorist who might be approaching from the opposite direction, and in fate. That she was convinced the more inconvenient laws of physics did not apply to her. The three other young women protruding from the car were less bold. Their muscles were flexed, ready to retreat back into the safety of the vehicle at the slightest hint of danger. They were excitement-seeking amateurs, but the young woman in the center was a pro. She was high on the thrill, committed to taking it to its maximal effect. I worried for her, even as part of me felt crippled with envy. Did she need the high more than the others? Was she willing to take things further to get that fix?
There’s always a price for that.
I obviously don’t know these young women.
They were probably just celebrating the end of the school year, doing what teenagers have and always will do.
Our interaction lasted no more than twenty seconds and I’m certainly bringing a lot of my own baggage to the table here.
But, also—if you know, you know.
I’m writing this on June 8, 2023 and I’ve been sober for exactly five years. For most of my adult life, I ended every day with enough scotch, beer, and wine to make me feel like I was a teenager hanging out of a moving car’s sunroof while Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles was blasting. I’m actually a fan of VC. Back during the Silver Linings movie days, we once passed each other on a red carpet, after which she kindly sent me a signed copy of her album Rabbits On The Run.
“Pour the vodka. Dull sharp eyes,” Ms. Carlton sings on her song Fairweather Friend.
Her full body of work suggests that she knows the great highs and lows very well—the intense swings between these opposites are beautifully captured by many of her songs. It’s why teens are still blasting A Thousand Miles, even though it was released before they were born.
Back when I was metaphorically flying down my own alcoholic version of a dirt road, standing up proud through the sunroof of my nightly obliterations, I wasn’t worried about my obesity or overtaxed liver or killing brain cells or the increased risk of various cancers or getting gout or my shockingly high blood pressure. I just wanted to escape the prison of my mind. And that momentary freedom was worth risking just about anything.
On a long-ago book tour—after a particularly intense hotel drinking session—I jumped up out of a dead sleep gasping for air. I was convinced that my heart and lungs had temporarily stopped and I had died for a minute. As I clutched my pounding chest, I swore I’d never drink again. I drank the very next night.
Sometimes friends and family members got into the metaphorical car with me and we’d all fly and sing together. There were always strangers willing and ready to drink to excess and soar. Maybe it’s even healthy to occasionally take that kind of joyride, to indulge in the thrill seeking, where a little danger is the point. There are, of course, occasions when society tolerates and even encourages such things. Everyone is allowed to get ugly hammered at a wedding or on your birthday or when you are on vacation or it’s Friday or the weekend or a holiday or whenever you luck into a designated driver or are attending a sporting event or it’s hump day or Thirsty Thursday or Taco Tuesday or Manic Monday or someone else’s birthday or it happens to be five o’clock somewhere or …
I wonder how many people had seen me flying high and were tempted to tell me to slow down and put on a seatbelt. I don’t remember anyone ever saying I had a drinking problem. Alicia hinted at it. She used to get grouchy whenever we left a bar and I’d declare, “No man left behind!” before finishing everyone’s abandoned drinks. At the time, I imagined she simply found it uncouth, while I imagined I was somehow being thrifty. But I now know I was an alcoholic and some good part of her was very worried about me. Why didn’t she or anyone else say I had a drinking problem? Why didn’t I tell those young women to slow down and put on seatbelts? Maybe we’re not supposed to be each other’s cops. I wouldn’t have stopped drinking anyway and those teenaged girls were going to leave me in a cloud of dust regardless.
Alicia quit drinking five months before I did, which seems important now. Maybe she was the metaphorical driver of our marriage and I was suddenly left protruding through the sunroof of the parked car of our relationship, age-inappropriately singing Vanessa Carlton at the top of my lungs like an idiot. My wife’s five-year sobriety anniversary was this past January. She never even came close to matching me drink for drink. After all, her nickname in college was Two-Beer Bessette. But we were fiction writers who drank together on a daily basis for a quarter century. We enjoyed getting high on alcohol. Loved it. It seemed perfectly reasonable for most of our marriage. I was always more insistent about the habit than Alicia or most others ever were. When my wife went to bed at night, I’d say I just needed one more night cap—before going on to have two or three or seven.
But that’s all in the past, right?
Five years sober.
Five years.
So what have I learned?
Here’s the first few things that come to mind:
1. It was never the alcohol; it wasn’t other people; it was always me. I was the problem.
2. It’s actually possible to quit drinking. For decades, I didn’t believe I could make it through twenty-four hours without a drink. I’ve now made it through five trips around the sun and my goal is to make it to the grave without having another sip. It’s not easy. Especially at first. Everyone’s road is different. But it can be done. There are people who don’t drink. If you’d like to quit drinking, study sober people, and then find a way to hang out with them.
3. People drink for good reasons, mainly to alleviate emotional and psychological pain. Without a nightly numbing agent, I sure felt a lot of intense and unpleasant things. I was pretty grumpy for a long time after I got sober. Turns out, I needed to be grumpy. Many people drink to escape. If you suspect you might be one of us, figure out what you are escaping from. Learn how to face it. Facing it is not fun, but it is ultimately freeing.
4. You are supposed to feel your feelings. Alcohol prevents you from feeling much of anything. Recently, I’ve been trying to process decades of feelings. This has required professional help. You might need professional help.
5. It’s okay to get (and even pay for) professional help. I spent a small fortune on alcohol and never thought about handing over money for booze. I just wanted the relief. But I had a very hard time justifying the cost of analysis and still struggle with that. I never sit up late at night and worry about all the money I poured down my throat. But I do worry about the money I’ve spent to stay sober. That is a sickness. That is called alcoholism.
6. Alcohol is a poison. Your body is designed to process poison. But it is not good to poison your body. Just like your body is designed to heal cuts, but it is not good to cut yourself. Hangovers are messages from your body. Hungover every morning was my baseline for many years. I had forgotten what it was like to wake up feeling physically well. It’s usually best to listen to and help our bodies whenever we can.
7. There are a lot of calories in alcohol. Drinking often led to binge eating. When I quit drinking and stopped going to bars, I lost sixty pounds. I’ve kept off the weight for five years now. Exercise and healthy eating have also really helped me.
8. Most social events—both business and pleasure—are fueled by alcohol. It is possible to attend these events without drinking. I’ve done it. Unfortunately, in my experience, sobriety usually makes it harder to be social late into the night. But you will get more sleep when you leave early, drinking people won’t remember when you left, and sleep is good for you. I don’t mind now when people drink around me. Being sober around drunk people is almost a super power. But, in early sobriety, it was shocking to observe how much we rely on alcohol to lube social functions. Very few gatherings begin without somebody asking if you’d like an alcoholic beverage. I’ve become curious about that.
9. Being regularly drunk keeps you from getting to know the true you. The true you might not be so bad. As I get to know the true me, I continue to be surprised. The true me doesn’t want to drink at all. I never would have believed that before I got sober. Never.
10. It’s a long journey.
When I reached the end of the nature preserve, the teenagers were gathered around the parked SUV, no music played, and the young women seemed to be debating whether to embark on another sunroof joyride. I was running at this point, trying to get the heartrate up; I didn’t catch everything that was being said, but it seemed like most of the teens were done tempting fate. Seeing them alive and stationary gave me a great sense of relief. The young woman who had told me to enjoy my walk didn’t seem as confident with her feet on the ground. She was no longer a goddess and her friends mostly looked bored and tired. They were just regular teenagers whose brief moment of escape was over. They probably went to parties later that night and did what teenagers do, what I had done back when I was riding around recklessly with my young friends, all of us oblivious to our ephemerality or maybe reveling in it, blasting Jane’s Addiction and pretending to be gods.
If you are currently pondering a move away from regular alcohol consumption, I applaud your instinct, because it’s life-affirming.
Not every drink creates a problem for the drinker. But every bit of alcohol consumed begins to blur reality. Maybe for some, the occasional blur might not be problematic, especially if the drinkers have a healthy relationship with themselves. But for those of us who have struggled with our identities, it takes courage to love ourselves enough to get where we need to go. I’m trying to be courageous and I hope you will be too.
A friend who has benefitted from AA recently told me that attendees promise to love alcoholics until they can love themselves. Beautiful.
I’ve tried to write these words with love as I slowly learn to love myself.
There are many people out there who are successfully fighting the war for sobriety. If you are battling, they want to cheer you on. I’ve met these people. They are remarkably kind and understanding and even enthusiastic. We are never alone, if we don’t want to be.
And there is certainly much beautiful life after you say goodbye to booze.
In some ways, I feel as though my life is only now just beginning.
