5 years sober!
reflections on the year(s)
Happy new year! Today I have five years of continuous sobriety. Five years!! I’ve been excited for this milestone for a while. They say five years is when you get your marbles back, so I’m hoping those come any day now…
Somehow the break I decided I’d take from drinking for a few weeks at the start of 2021 has turned into half a decade of recovery. It’s wild how taking a break from something you have a problem with can help you realize you have a problem with it, and it’s kind of annoying to me how right folks are when they say you can stay sober by taking it one day at a time. Like, it’s a classic for a reason. If you do it long enough those days can add up to 1,826, the arbitrary number I’m celebrating today.
This is the fun chip I got myself this year. I thought the flames looked pretty sick, and this bisexual colorway was on sale.
Five years feels a little extra significant to me because that’s about half as long as my drinking career was. I’m thankful every day that I was able to stop when I did, and that I didn’t lose another year or five or ten.
Recently I’ve been thinking back to what it was like when I discovered alcohol and remembering how much of a drunk lesbian mess I was. There were at least four girls I knew who didn’t speak to me again after I got drunk for the first time one of my first weekends at college. I’m still kind of a lesbian mess, but at least now when someone doesn’t want to speak to me again I can actually remember what I did.
Sobriety has gotten much easier over the past two years. For a while now it’s truly been second nature — I don’t think about alcohol or the fact that I’m sober very often. It’s just normal for me these days, it’s just the way I move through a day. The habit and inertia (and spite) keep me going.
Recently, though, I drank a regular cider while out at a bar because I assumed it was the nonalcoholic one I ordered. I did not enjoy the experience! I’m kind of glad I didn’t, but also it isn’t too surprising that it wasn’t a good time. Drinking had stopped being fun months before I took that break five years ago.
With that cider mix-up I got an answer to the quiet question I’ve had of how it would feel to drink or use drugs again after all this time. I’m relieved by the answer: bad! I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything because I don’t drink, and I don’t wish that I could anymore. I’ve just been wishing I could get back any of the time, money, and brain cells I lost to drinking the way I did in my teens and twenties.
A big theme of this past year in recovery was acceptance. Mostly acceptance of, yes, the things I cannot change. Lost time, health issues, this one woman I don’t really like at this AA meeting I go to who always has these long, incoherent shares — things like that.
Folks are right, too, when they say it’s all about trying to accept the things you cannot change, and then doing your best to change the dang things you can. I’m working on taking better care of myself, being a better friend and community member, having more patience when someone I don’t like is sharing, and generally being less of a mess. I don’t take for granted the fact that I’m better able to work on all of these things now that I’m not hungover every morning and drunk every night.
I’m thrilled to have reached five years today, and I’m so grateful for everything and everyone who helped me get here — mostly my friends, my sponsor, AA, and the woo-woo spiritual stuff I believe in. A couple of weeks without drugs or alcohol wouldn’t have turned into months or years without all of the support I’ve had. Thank you all so, so much, and thank you for reading. Happy new year again, and I hope this one is kinder to us all.
Here’s the piece I wrote for my last soberversary:
I! Love! Your! Chip!
I adore you.