On New Year’s Eve 2017, I put on a sparkly top and some makeup to join my husband and some friends for dinner to celebrate the end and the beginning. 2018 was on the horizon and if there was ever a time I needed fresh energy, it was exactly then.
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I was 15 days sober from alcohol, a secret I carried like a weighted vest. I didn’t know where this was going; in fact the only thing I knew for sure is where it couldn’t go. Alcohol was killing me. Slowly, subtly, but surely. I could plead ignorant for a long time but I wasn’t dumb. If I didn’t do something drastic, I would follow the same path as my father: live and die an alcoholic.
Every day I drank I felt myself becoming smaller. My energy, passions and the ability to make simply choices felt heavy and hard. Things that used to ignite me inside simmered and lately the only thing I looked forward to was my next drink.
So I quit like a cold shower on a body that just rolled out of bed: fierce and piercing. I white-knuckled those early days with just one goal — don’t drink. And I went through the motions of the day to day pretending like I wasn’t breathing out of a straw when inside I asked all the dark questions: am I an alcoholic like dad? Can I live without drinking?
And perhaps hardest of all… who am I without alcohol?
It’s the deconstruction of alcohol on our lives. Peeling the layers off the onion. Years of masks and coping mechanisms. Habits, neuropathways, and physical/mental changes after half a lifetime of ingesting alcohol: distilled poison designed to be addictive. If I started drinking regularly at 18, then I had roughly 20 years of history with this substance and damn if I knew anything about who I was without it.
Do I like parties, or do I just like to drink at parties? Do I like skiing or just après ski?
Beach days
Gala dinners
Boat rides
Certain friends
Superbowl Sunday
Fourth of July
Will any of it be fun without alcohol involved? Scarier still… Will I be fun? Will I be anything, or will I disintegrate into the cracks where the baseboard meets the floor? Will I disappear from existence completely, nary a blip of the Universe’s radar.
A shadow fell over me in early sobriety as I questioned everything and asked the hard stuff I had been avoiding for years but now stared back at me. I left the real Celeste behind about 20 years ago and I’m not sure who was left.
I remember that night on New Years Eve vividly because it was my first night out with friends since quitting drinking. Not just any friends… drinking buddies. I knew it was going to be extremely challenging, and it was. I won’t go into details, as I described the evening in my book, but as I sat in the car after dinner waiting for my husband to say his goodbyes, I pulled out my phone and looked at myself, maybe for the first time. My eyes looked clear and focused. I felt different. I looked different. I didn’t know many things but I did know in that moment, I liked what I saw. I recognized the person looking back at me with a whisper of familiarity. I was doing something right.
My lips curved ever so slightly for the secret I was keeping, and I snapped a selfie in the darkness; a timestamp of this seeming moment of clarity and confidence. It was time to refamiliarize myself with the person looking back at me. If she could get through a really hard night without drinking, maybe she was stronger than I thought.
***
First comes the deconstruction. The unravelling of the cognitive dissonance around alcohol and our own limitations. It’s dismantling years of brain barnacles that have uselessly attached themselves to our thinking patterns. Ideas of sobriety as deprivation, less of a life, and uninteresting. A belief system that we are not strong enough, brave enough, or just plain enough.
Hold on, my deconstructors. If you are currently in this stage, hang tight and ride that wave. Because after the deconstruction comes the reconstruction. A time where you realize you can not only do anything you ever dreamed of when you took alcohol off the table, but your spark somehow reignites along the way. And it no longer feels like you have to do this, but you get to.
Sobriety is an end and a beginning. It’s both a farewell and hello. That stranger looking back at you in your reflection no longer looks unfamiliar. Turns out she’s your best friend, biggest supporter and a total badass. She’s been waiting for you to find her and call her back for a long time. And she’s not only ready, she was born for this.
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