Our limbic systems leap to attention when we’re making tough decisions. It’s one of the reasons why some people can’t seem to make up their minds (outside the Libras among us, they’re excused), and why making that decision gets harder and harder the more you agonize over it. But if you make that decision with a degree of certainty, the paleomammalian cortex is relieved of its duties and can relax.
This may be why the notion of “moderation” when it comes to drinking alcohol can be so incredibly hard. I’ve come to believe that if you think you have a problem with alcohol and want to get to a place where putting it down is better/healthier/imperative than keeping it flowing, your brain will one hundred percent support that decision. It prefers that you put your foot down.
The brain likes boundaries.
(Here’s an interesting article exploring this from a business perspective.)
Granted, I’m highly resentful of boundaries imposed by my own lack of control, or my ability to manage the intensity of a highly-reactive central nervous system. I’m prone to failure in the self-soothing department. Those things combined can make me feel weak and stupid.
This process, this finding my way to a new way of being in the world, is teaching me that I’m spending too much time thinking about moderation instead of shutting down the indecisiveness altogether. Of all the sober lit I’ve read thus far, this same theme pops up, and feels like a universal fact. Holly Whitaker, who wrote the bestselling “Quit Like A Woman” about her own unorthodox journey to sobriety, recognized this too – enough to tattoo it on her arm: Never Doubt the Decision (NDTD).
It’s incredibly hard, this change. It challenges my sense of self and my feelings of belonging to a special group of folx whom I love dearly. It threatens to break apart relationships, and though I hear this is not uncommon, it pains me to think about it. As a person who gets so much energy and inspiration from my fellow earthbound compadres, the idea of losing some of them just because I don’t drink is a hard one to – excuse the pun – swallow.
Then again, if I lose them because I don’t join them in their inebriation, are they truly my friends?
Which brings me to another aspect of being sober-curious: Your friends who are sober may become invested in your sobriety. They may believe that the path they took is the only path, that the only way to sobriety is complete abstention from every little thing. Or else.
You should know, dear reader, that I do not believe there is a separation between alcohol and drugs. It’s all a drug. Caffeine is as much of a drug as cannabis. Nicotine is harder (so I’ve heard) to get off of than heroin. Creating hierarchies of what drugs are “less bad” is pointless. It sets up an opportunity for someone to be morally superior, i.e. I don’t drink anything except coffee. I don’t smoke weed, just cigarettes. It’s an odd game, that.
Recently this manifested in my own life with a close friend who is sober, and a therapist. She and I shared many a beer in our day.
I called her after a 1.5 hour massage, the last thirty minutes of it spent thinking about what brewery I might hit after. I was swimming in depths of grief at that point – my latest diagnosis and its life implications gnawing on my spirit. Reaching for the old familiars, I was seeking a way to ramp down my central nervous system to a dull roar. But that little voice inside that yearned to carve new neural pathways said, No, call your friend, talk to her as you drive home. She’ll get it.
And so I did.
Spinning, hard, I was. Getting to that place where my despair blocks out the sun and no one can reach me. I was feeling abandoned by my family in the wake of my AS diagnosis, and given the general COVID insularity that’s rocking the general population, I was extending my frustration to my friends, which was unfair. Even as I told my friend, from the beginning, that my bitching was NOT about her, she did say at one point, “It’s interesting that you said this isn’t about me…” and I should have known then that we were entering dangerous territory.
I meant what I said. This was not about her or our friendship. But sometimes even therapists get caught in negative dynamics, and they react as humans do.
We went round and round: me saying things like “Watch – I won’t call or text anyone for two week and we’ll see what happens.”
“Great,” said my friend. “So you’ll set these expectations for your friends that they don’t know about and then they’ll disappoint you, just like you thought they would.” I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. And me, spinning like the Tazmanian Devil in a Warner Bros cartoon, spit back, “Okay, then let’s make it a month, would that be better?”
No one could reach me then, all the way in there, darkness falling. This hadn’t happened in quite a while, and it took me by surprise.
My friend’s tolerance had reached the point of extreme exasperation. “I think we should hang up now,” I said, my voice weary and reedy. “I…I just don’t think you understand.”
Lesson #387: Do not engage in a conversation about sobriety with a sober person/therapist and then tell them they don’t understand. Things can break apart.
What we all have to remember is that yes, there are universal “truths” when it comes to conquering addictive behaviors. Those commonalities are how organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous can make such an impact. But sometimes we forget that every person is different. My friend, though well meaning, doesn’t walk in my shoes. She does not deal with bipolar process/cyclothymia, has not experienced the myriad health problems I have, doesn’t know what it’s like to be a fat person in a culture obsessed with thinness. I was born with a birth defect, and it set off a series of health issues that plague me still. I’m not a heterosexual woman; I married a woman, I’ve been out since I was 21. This has its own set of challenges.
These are not excuses — they are my reality. I’m highly aware of my behaviors, and why I’ve often reached for alcohol to tamp down a jangly central nervous system. Having awareness is one thing; acting on it is another. But I do not fool myself. My journey is transparent, documented on that calendar that hangs on the fridge. I’ve paid my dues and then some.
My path is my own.
And when my friend suggested (yelled) that I was going to have to sit in my discomfort and “do the work and stop expecting your friends to do it for you,” as if I hadn’t already spent 20+ years working my ass off in therapy while also holding down a high-profile, very intense job, I couldn’t stay any longer. I thanked her. Then I hung up.
Meeting people where they are can be difficult, especially when they’re out of their heads and not listening to sense. All we can do is hold on. If it becomes too much, we have every right to excuse ourselves. We can do this with love. It’s not abandonment, but self-preservation.
Time has a way of softening experiences that once stung and ushered in all manner of negative thoughts. Because I was hurt to my core and felt very misunderstood, I wasn’t sure that I could come back from this intense conversation. I feel differently about it now. It was a blip – big, but not irrevocable — in a friendship of two decades. We both got carried away, and let our emotions get the best of us. My friend has apologized to me, and I have apologized to her.
No one has a right to tell you how to walk your path. What works for some may not work for you. In my estimation, radical self-inventory is critical, and self-deception will mess you up, every time. The body won’t lie forever. Those lies are corrosive, and will rust your spirit until the holes in your self-esteem and self-honesty are so huge, you fall out of your own life.
Everything is Always Over 