The Hardest Lesson I Had to Learn to Get Sober
I quit drinking for good after a terrible game of Scrabble. Embarrassing, but true. I kept this story to myself because it was pathetic. What kind of person joins a 12 step fellowship after a game of Scrabble goes wrong? Well, me, it turns out.
Years later I realized that there was a lot more that went wrong besides Scrabble. In fact, encoded in this brief incident was everything that was making life so difficult for me back then. And that included my unwillingness to talk about it. So here I am, telling my not very cool, not at all edgy ‘rock bottom’, story, in case it helps someone else.
My great hope is that nobody else will have a game of Scrabble so unenjoyable as this one. You’re welcome.
Hopeful start (like all games of Scrabble)
So back to that game of Scrabble. I arrived home from therapy (it was my second attempt at it, triggered by increasingly obsessional thinking patterns) to find my boyfriend had set out the Scrabble board and a bottle of wine.
It was an invitation: let’s spend time together.
It was a dismissal: we don’t have a problem with alcohol.
It was a reminder: we used to love this.
For months booze had been making us argue. He was even further along Problem Drinking Avenue than me, and I was desperate to help him and save our relationship.
In the early days of our romance, we had drunk red wine and played Scrabble in our pants, and I had laughed at every single thing he said. I was giddy with love. We hadn’t played together like that for years.
The part of me that saw his action as an invitation won, and I sat down to play.
The interaction went from tentative peace to resentment to no holds barred arguing to both of us acting like an asshole. This time I was the asshole. I logged into his Facebook account to pry, and he caught me.
Disaster!
The loser standing small (yes, that’s an ABBA quote)
The next day, I was so ashamed of myself I went to my second AA meeting. I didn’t tell anyone about Scrabblegate. People there had been drinking Special Brew for breakfast. Social Services had removed their children.
The shame I felt about myself and my experience (beyond Scrabblegate) shrouded me and kept me quiet. I watched and listened, and despite my lesser consequences, I related.
People listened when I said I had a problem with alcohol. People offered to help me. I breathed an enormous sigh of relief.
And then I went home and didn’t tell my partner where I had been.
Are you noticing a pattern?
I will never play Scrabble again
It took weeks for me to open up about what was really going on with me. Gradually, I began to trust people. First one woman, then another. I admitted how things were at home, how my boyfriend talked to me with contempt. How he refused to reassure me. Stayed at the pub instead of coming home. Promised not to drink and then got obliterated.
I admitted how I acted badly in the relationship, too. Snooping through his things. Saying cruel things. Drunk crying. Long periods of The Silent Treatment. Not exactly a dream girlfriend myself.
Finally, I was telling the truth.
I am so unhappy. I feel like we hate each other. I don’t know what to do.
The more I told the truth about what was really going on with me, the harder it was to keep living the lie. I went to meetings and I admitted what a mess my life had become and how I had no idea how to fix it, and somehow that gave me the strength to begin.
Stop playing games (not literally, just psychologically)
Getting sober has taught me to be truthful. With myself and with others. I don’t always find it easy. The truth isn’t always convenient. But I keep working on it because it is essential.
Becoming truthful was a difficult and grueling and extraordinary process, and I would recommend it to anybody, with the disclaimer that transformation can be messy.
Changing from the drinking me to the sober me has been a long and messy process, and the crucial part of it has been learning to be honest. No matter the possible consequences, I kept pushing myself to tell the truth, to let it guide me. It was terrifying and wonderful and miraculous and ugly.
Nobody knew my life was in disorder because I had never lived any other way. But how I live sober is markedly different from the way I lived when I drank. The way I live sober is the evidence that I needed to understand how bad my drinking problem was.
They say the truth will set you free, and they are right. But it will destroy you first. It will destroy the false version of yourself you have become in order to survive all the lies you have been telling.
And it’s painful. And it’s glorious.
How are you getting on with truthfulness? Share your experiences of telling the truth and what happened.
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Chelsey Flood is the author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love, and is working on a non-fiction book about getting sober and a new YA novel.
She also has a fun newsletter about Autism.
If you enjoyed this piece, you might like these:
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The five years since I quit have really changed my perspectivechelseyflood.medium.com
The Real Cost of Your Drinking Isn’t Revealed Until Long After You Quit
The only regret I have about getting sober is that I didn’t do it twenty years sooner.medium.com