Soaring on the Updrafts, or Two Years of Sobriety

A year ago today I wrote a piece about being sober for 1 year, where I decided to try and begin to explain how and why I had gone sober. Re-reading it, I am a little embarrassed by its candour. I am aware that I share more of myself than is perhaps professional or healthy – from my relationships to family to my mental health. My embarrassment is tempered by the numerous conversations I have had about sobriety, about substances and about mental health since I wrote it. I have made sober friends but I have also had really informed and generous conversations with people about substances and how we work with and use them. I have been struck by people’s careful negotiation of the subject with me, as well as profoundly moved that people take the time to chat to me about these things in such an open and honest way.

Last year, I made no commitments to write again. I thought I might write again this year, as milestones are usually important for me. I thought marking 2 years of sobriety would be important as well. As this milestone has approached, I’ve said to myself again and again that I would sit down and write something soon. Not right away, but “soon”. For whatever reason, I have been putting off writing this, avoiding putting words on the page. So I’m sitting here today, 22nd August 2022, now 2 years sober, writing this. Writing nothing. Or writing what comes into my head.

Connecting my queerness, my sobriety and my academic practice, last year in the 1 year of sobriety post, I wrote this: “(I’ve always wanted to write a piece called ‘Everything I Know About Queerness, I Learned Through Death’)”. I decided to listen to myself and I finally wrote it and presented it at some conferences over the summer. The piece tracked vulnerability as a concept in academic thinking, but also traced my own pathway through vulnerability via notions of grief and passing and loss. In the piece, as well as academic discussion, I talked about texts and shows that for me were about passing and vulnerability (Nando Messias’s “Death and The Sissy”, Latrice Royale’s “Here’s to Life”, Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”) alongside my personal experiences of passing including reading out an extract from my Mum’s eulogy. In the piece, I didn’t talk directly about sobriety other than as a framing idea. I did end, however, with a discussion of “the importance and vitality of hope, but also its hangovers (a word I chose purposefully in a paper which is almost entirely framed by sobriety).” At that point, connecting queerness, hope and sobriety was important, and it remains so, where having hope is, as ever, an important practice (as in, something I need to practice) much like sobriety. It is, perhaps, a little too neat and tidy, but all academic papers need an ending and this was where this one ended. I digress.

I think the reason I’m struggling to write this post is this: I have nothing to say. No profound statement or learning point from this last year of sobriety. Nothing new about what it means to be sober. No clearer understanding of what sobriety is for me, or a better way of articulating how I do my sobriety. I haven’t made any neat connections between sobriety and queerness (although I keep repeating to people that they are deeply entrenched for me, that I know my queerness better now I am sober). I haven’t found the perfect performance or bit of theory to articulate my ideas (although I keep coming close, most recently in a performance about mushrooms by Charlie Wood and then in a book about mushrooms I was recommended at a conference). Instead, this year has been a year of seconds rather than firsts. Second sober Christmas, second year of difficult anniversaries sober, second birthday sober. Instead of the pride of getting through “firsts” there is the slow (and probably obvious) realisation that it is not about the big moments, but the everyday ones, the small acts of sobriety that indicate a practice of being sober. 

For example, on reflection, I don’t remember the last time I walked through a supermarket and wanted to buy booze. Alternatively, I have said “god i really want a glass of wine” about 10 times this month already. I haven’t felt anxiety about going out without drinking in quite a long time, but I have thought “god this would be easier if I was drinking” a few times whilst out in a bar or at an event. I haven’t had to leave a bar or event early because of over-exposure to booze in a while, but I have absolutely left early because I wanted to go to bed. 

All of this, all of this incoherent ramble of a post, is to say this: I’m thriving. But thriving isn’t some big thing. Instead, it feels small and slow, micro and mini, everyday, quotidian, little. It feels like fresher skin and a greater understanding of my mental health. It feels like learning I never really want a second non-alcoholic beer, but three pints of Coca Cola in one night will ruin me the next day (as will a second cup of coffee in the afternoon, no matter how tired I am). It feels like meeting new people and making new friends and ignoring the part of my brain that says I’m full. It feels sad that I can’t stay out past a certain hour (or not yet anyway) and it feels like climbing into my bed and cuddling my dog when I get home. It feels like anger when the only drink options at an event are wine or water and it feels like a small pang of jealousy when someone orders a Negroni. It feels like a whole other universe in my head that no one will ever even begin to understand, a cacophony of stars and constellations of thought that I couldn’t start to translate, that make up who I am; the good, the bad, the drunk and now the sober. It feels like finding bitter drinks to drink because sweet ones aren’t my thing, and it feels like not having to always have a drink in my hand to be okay (or at least, sometimes not having to). It feels like a richer and deeper connection to myself and those around me. It feels like eating fish now, because I have to have some joy in my life since I stopped drinking (I’m joking… not about eating fish, about the joy thing). It feels like Saturday and Sunday mornings. It feels like sexuality and sexiness and love and a deepening connection to my body and what it needs. 

It feels like getting past the binary of flying or falling, and taking the leap anyway, trusting that I’ll find the updrafts to soar and glide where I need to be (even if I don’t know where that is yet). And, ultimately, it feels like finding joy and pleasure, and remembering to plant my feet, take a deep breath and enjoy it wherever I can.