Why I stopped drinking (I think)
Why I stopped drinking. I think.
Almost 11 months later, I still can’t figure out what made me put down that last drink on a Tuesday night in October. I had not gotten a DUI, woken up naked in a weird place or recently emerged from a stint in rehab.
I’d spent the evening celebrating my oldest child’s 28th birthday with a few of his siblings and their dad, where we ate homemade pasta and meaty Bolognese for dinner and a chocolate peanut butter cake my daughter and I had whipped up from scratch for dessert. I washed it all down with plenty of Italian red wine and at some point in the evening, I set my stemless glass down on a small table next to the couch where I was sitting with intention. I thought to myself, “That’s it,” and did not take another sip for the rest of the night.
For normal drinkers, the act of not finishing whatever is in your wineglass is a non-event. But when you are a member of the clean wineglass club, it’s indeed a thing. Usually, I’d not only finish whatever I was drinking, but I’d bring just one more glass upstairs to bed with me. I can’t tell you how many mornings I woke up to see some wine-stained glass on my nightstand with a purple puddle drying at the bottom. It would be there to greet me, along with my daily headache when I opened my eyes and believe me, that is not a great way to start your day.
But for me, putting my drink down that night was pretty unusual, and it didn’t take much effort. And then for some reason the next day, I decided not to pour myself a drink at 5:00. And then the following day, too. And then suddenly, I’m checking out recovery meetings, meditating and thinking a lot about Future Amy, someone I wasn't really kind to in the past and who was often left to pick up the pieces of my life. She followed in my wake, sweeping the detritus of bad decisions into a big dustpan and trying to make the best of things.
Right before the pandemic, I’d gone with a couple of girlfriends to hear the mindfulness teacher Tara Brach speak at a big stone church in midtown Manhattan. She spoke of loving-kindness and looking past the masks we all wear on the outside and as an exercise, had us pair up and stare into each other's eyes for three minutes. It doesn't sound like a lot but it was really intense and intimate to really see someone.
In those early days of sobriety, I turned to Brach’s online guided meditations to settle my thoughts and bring inspiration to those first clear mornings. I’d go downstairs in the dark and sit on the couch in my tv room and listen as Brach helped me bring focus to my breath, letting go of unnecessary thoughts and allowing my mind to clear and settle. Some mornings she’d focus just on the awareness of my presence, my feet flat on the floor and my back pressed to the couch cushion. Other mornings she’d zero in on my heart, which I could feel expand in my rib cage as I placed my hands over my chest.
As I was sitting on the couch with my eyes closed on my 18th sober morning, I heard a thud on the sliding glass door next to me and as I opened my eyes I saw something drop to the ground. The brown ball thrashed about, tipping to one side and then the other. I’d deduced it was a bird of some sort, but as it rolled about I could not separate its head from its tail. Eventually, the bird flipped to its belly so that its tailfeathers stuck straight up in the air and it stopped moving long enough that I assumed it was dead so I took a picture and sent it to my sister.
Suddenly it launched into a flurry of flapping and flipped so that its beak was directed skywards and then stopped again and I wondered if that was it. It seemed like a goner. Then I watched as the sides of the bird began to move in and out and its head began to turn side to side as if to get its bearings. It must have been stunned and was starting to come to.
Finally, I went to put my Airpods back in to continue the meditation and saw movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see the bird lifting off the patio in flight and heading right back towards the glass door. At the last minute, it veered to the right and flew up over the fence. It wobbled over the top, just barely clearing the wooden post, and seemed to be heading right for the neighbors’ house before adjusting course and dropping out of view.
Months now into my recovery, I’ve heard so many stories of what people have had to overcome to get sober. People who were so addicted that they drank all day long, even going so far as to keep a bottle with a straw tucked in a drawer in their nightstand to help get them through the night. I'm lucky that I got off the proverbial drinking elevator when I did because I was starting to feel it going lower than usual and it scared me.
All winter I faithfully attended a 7 a.m. recovery meeting a few towns over in the parish hall behind a Catholic church. We sat around tables in a classroom where a chipped statue of the Blessed Virgin stood in the corner, her arms spread to welcome us all each morning. Blessing every last drunk in the room. There were people there with over 30 years of sobriety under their belt and others who shared their day counts. But we’d come together because we’d hit the glass door at some point. I know I did. I kept thinking I could get my drinking under control. All I had to do was reset the button. But every time I took a break and then returned to drinking, I wobbled. I finally came to believe that my button was broken.
The further I get into my sobriety, the more clues I’m finding in my journal about what led me to quit. In the few months preceding that last drink, I’d been canned by two of my bigger freelance clients. And then in the early days of recovery, I went to CVS and ran into a woman I used to run through the woods with all the time and who I hadn’t seen because of the pandemic, and she shared she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and was starting treatment. And then there was this TikTok video of a woman in her mid-30s who began by introducing herself and saying she was an alcoholic and then explaining why. Finally, there was my therapist who was always there whenever I stopped drinking to ask me what I was going to do about it and suggesting a recovery meeting (or two).
Or maybe it was waking up last spring to find a post-it note on the frig from my daughter reminding me we had planned the night before to go to Home Depot the next day. I just didn’t want to be that mom anymore.
One of my favorite Tara Brach mediations asked me to call forth my inner Bodhisattva, my most enlightened inner being. “The love and wisdom of your most evolved being lives in you, right here and always,” I heard her say through my headphones. She told me to imagine meeting myself 20 years from now – what I looked like, my surroundings.
I imagined myself standing in a fabulous Nancy Meyers-esque kitchen, all open shelves, and hanging pots and maybe something I’ve baked under a glass cloche on the soapstone counter. My hair is gray and styled in a chic bob and I’m wearing the Eileen Fisher ensemble of my dreams -- swathed in neutral linens. There are happy dogs milling about and a loving partner reading nearby.
I see newly-sober Amy come in and I’m so happy to see her. I open my arms and take her in, thanking her for all that she’s given me. For doing the hard, hard work of recovery. “Keep it up,” I tell her, and we both cry.
SUNDAY SHARES: Read, watch, cook, buy
Not to brag, but my kids are the most thoughtful and generous gift-givers. For my recent birthday, my older daughter gave me the same Nespresso machine she and her roommates have that I was loving when I visited last month. It is a lovely upgrade to plain old coffee.
I've discovered these Starbucks coffee capsules for the Nespresso that I just picked up at Bed Bath & Beyond but even Target and Wegman's carries them. It's a fancy way to start the day and way more flavorful than the Kcups I've been doing for years.
My lovely and talented friend, Susan, has created a beautiful line of custom stationery, watercolors, and oil paintings launched under the Goldfinch + Willow label. You can find her here on Instagram.
Do you know what is bringing me so much joy? Record albums. I went back to Barnes & Noble on Saturday and bought three more. I put those records on at full blast and go about being a busybody listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland and The Beatles Abbey Road. The singer Sara Watkins who I first saw when I went to see a live recording of A Prairie Home Companion in New York years ago. For so long, we only listened to the kids' music around here, and while I like knowing what youngsters are into these days, and I've recently developed a weird affinity for Frank Ocean, I also like remembering what I like to listen to (and it helps that there are no troubling misogynistic lyrics).
Here’s that sober woman’s video I saw on TikTok that really spoke to me.