I’m grateful for my little spot in the world I’m grateful I splurged on those coffee mugs. I’m grateful for kind words. I’m grateful for all of the things that happened in October. I’m grateful for the things I needed to learn. I’m grateful to be sober today.
It’s now been gray, overcast and rainy in New York for an entire month. That month being October. I’ve been listening to this song a lot recently, no particular reason why and it has this line1:
“It’s the middle of October, and we just came to an end.”
And I think, it’s the middle of October? WTF. And, sure enough, next week is the middle of October! This gets me sliding down the what happened to the summer? I didn’t really do anything? I let the whole summer slide by! This takes me down the whole Wasted Time track.2
But then I was browsing through photos looking for one to post with the gratitude list and I realize I had a pretty nice summer. Like, really, really nice and then punctuated by a really lovely trip to Stockholm and Copenhagen. Somehow, my alcoholic brain translates this into “not enough.” For sure, one of the reasons I drank was the sense that roughly everyone was having more fun than me, leading a better life than me, getting more than me. In my view, my life always came up sorely lacking when compared to others and I realize I came to that belief very early in life.
When I start exploring things like that, I can see the seeds of my alcoholism. You often hear people at meetings talk about the “God-Sized Hole,” well, I had a pretty big hole and I’d been digging for a while. I can also see why the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works—because it addresses that hole. The first three Steps show us how to start filling that hole and concepts like gratitude, humility and acceptance are the tools we use.3
I also realize the Pandemic assisted my sobriety. I’m not trying to come up with positives about the Pandemic,4 but it did eliminate FOMO for this alcoholic. I can remember sitting in an IOP in the Fall of 2012 trying to get sober and all I could think about was how nice it would be to spend a Fall weekend at one of the wineries in the area and how I was never going to be able to capture that magic ever again. That was an undeniably tragic thing, except it had absolutely no basis in reality.
Ask me how me many “magical” weekends of drinking there actually were for me. If you think sitting at a bar at 8:30 am on a Saturday morning eating pancakes and drinking glass-and-a-halfs of Sauvignon Blanc to stave off the shakes is magical, well, there was almost always a seat open next to me. I built this whole fantasy around alcohol and drinking and believed that it fueled nothing but romance and success and happiness in everyone else. For me, it created mostly misery. But I was willing to keep trying until it worked like it did for everyone else.
As long as my goal was to stop drinking, well, that God-Sized Hole just yawed a little bigger and looked a lot darker.
Actual picture of black hole.
I realized that stopping drinking made the work of filling the hole possible, but it was doing the work of the first three Steps that started putting dirt where it needed to go. During the Pandemic, we were all doing without and that made it easier for me to stay sober. It’s a lot harder when it looks like everyone else in the world is having the greatest time of their lives with a drink in their hands.
That’s the alcoholic serpent hissing. I know just how empty that life was for me. Sure, that first drink of the evening seemed to pull the curtain on a world of magical excitement where anything could happen: glamorous, mysterious cocktail bars, rooftops, pool parties. Those were the creations of my alcoholic brain. What was really happening is that someone had pulled the drain plug and all of the pool water was soon going to be gone and the party would definitely be over. Everything that every mattered to me would have drained away and I’d be left with a stupid, lost expression on my face and only that drink in my hand. That’s where the road actually led. I’m not missing that much by not taking that particular road trip.
So, yeah, I had a pretty great Summer, come to think of it.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Also, despite the title, this song is really not about sobriety.
Maybe there should be a playlist of songs that aren’t really about addiction, but should be. Also, one for rainy days.
I was going to say something pithy and clever like “pickaxe and spade,” but there were three concepts and I could only really think of two tools. Sorry.
Although it was pretty easy to get around and book tables at highly-sought after restaurants…
I’ve heard of Painting and Pinot, but never Pancakes and Pinot! I’m currently reading a novel where two of the characters are alcoholics, and some of what you write here mimics their plight. But then again, the stories can be different, but they’re still the same, right? In the end there is this warped sense of what alcohol can offer that other things can’t.
I’m glad you learned how to fill the hole with better things. Because, let’s face it, pancakes and Pinot--not a good combo.