Fifteen Years of Sobriety
Yes, it gets better
This past week, I turned fifteen. Not my belly-button birthday: I am 70, as many of you know. But in sobriety. As my son quipped: “fifteen, the sulky teenager.”
It feels good. It feels so much better than I ever expected. When I headed into Day One on Nov. 3, 2008, I was on my knees in the bathroom, wanting to die. I have had so many failed Day Ones. Tears streamed down my face. I also had a serious case of FOMO. How could I get married without drinking champagne with my groom. (I was engaged to be married at the time.) How would I socialize? Relax? Unwind? Celebrate Friday night? Toast the sunset? My birthday, New Year’s? It went on, and on, and on, as I teetered on the edge of abstinence.
My drinking escalated in my early fifties, with peri-menopause and full-blown menopause to boot.
It escalated with the introduction of anti-depressants to my system. While my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol explores many aspects of my story and that of many other women, it failed to fully examine these two truths. Why? I was too shy to share more than the facts. Now, it’s time to connect the dots to those two realities, provocative truths for many women. I called alcohol the “modern women’s steroid, enabling her to do the heavy lifting in a complex world.” Never was my life more complex than in menopause or when I first went on those anti-depressants.
I have written—I hope compellingly—about the woman who saved my life that November 3rd, how a river of alcoholism runs through my family. But only now have I begun to speak about the connection to menopause, to the surge of hormones, the anger and teariness of that time: how a glass or three of white wine would tamp down the feelings, soothe my weary soul.
When I was 50, I was at the apex of my career: at the top of my game in journalism, being courted by two universities for a VP role. I was also adjusting to an empty nest, a fact I found deeply sad. And I was in a 12-year relationship with a beautiful man whom I deeply loved. I was also a mess: triggered easily, weepy, I had lost my firm footing in life. Sleepless, uncharacteristically uncertain. Wine was my consolation, my friend at the end of the day, my companion in crime.
Jake, my true love used to say: “When you drink, you seem to lose that piano on your back.”
When I moved to Montreal to become a vice-principal of McGill University, I knew it was the wrong place for me as I rode in from the airport. Amy Winehouse blared from the front seat: “No, no, no!” And my whole body screamed along: “Turn around, turn around.” Instead, I stayed, in a city where I knew no-one, two provinces away from my Jake, who was having hip surgery, working in a sector so different from the high-octane world of journalism. It was a terrible turn of events for me. I worked around the clock, and soothed my lonely heart with wine, knowing all the while that I was on a runaway freight train to hell.
As many of you know, my change of heart came with the death of my dear cousin Dougie, killed on Father’s Day weekend by a driver under the influence.
His death caused me to pause and realize: I had lost my childhood to alcohol, I had lost Dougie, and now I was losing me.
Which isn’t to say I quit. On the contrary, as I confronted my addiction, my addiction dug in. That was June, 2007. It would take another 17 months for me to stop losing myself down the neck of a wine bottle. Alcohol is a trickster, in the words of my addiction doctor. When I turned and faced it, it morphed into a prize fighter, determine to take me down. Over those 17 months, I was able to string together 10 days of sobriety, or more, but alcohol always won the arm wrestle.
So, what happened on Nov. 3, 2008? Bluntly put, I wanted to die. So defeated, so depleted was I, I had no interest in going on. I knew alcohol was going to kill me: a sad little death of tripping on a coffee table or tumbling down the stairs. When I decided to get off my knees and wander to the noon-hour meeting of my local 12-step group, it was a last-ditch effort to save my life. My spirits were in the basement, but the room was cozy and plush. We sat in a circle, in love seats and chairs, in a welcoming main-floor church reception room.
As the meeting started, so did my tears. They never stopped.
On closing, a woman came to comfort me, and ask me for coffee. I said yes. Over coffee, she asked: another meeting tonight? I said yes. Her only condition: I was to write a daily gratitude list and send it to her. I said yes. And with that, I began to string together days, weeks, months, and years.
Not that the road hasn’t been bumpy. Readers of my book will know that I went through living hell 18 months into my sober life. As well, I was not welcomed back by many after my book was published, some AA members taking offence with my declarative story. I have had to cobble together a different community, first attending online AA meetings in Ireland, where no-one knew me, then hosting meetings on Hola Sober. Finally, I have landed exactly where I belong: The Luckiest Club, where I host a Sunday morning women’s meeting.
Framed on my wall, as I write this newsletter, is the homemade Mother’s Day card my son sent me when I was still drinking. Called “Happy Mother,” it features a drawing of me at a typewriter. The fine print reads: “Perrier, not wine” and “No bloodshot eyes.” It also says: “Writing.” And this is me today: drinking Perrier, not wine; clear-eyed, writing this morning, celebrating 15 years of serenity, happy in my skin, and forever grateful to the many who supported me on this journey, above all Nicholas, my son. Forever, my son.
This has been a busy fall. In October, I gave three keynote addresses on Stigma and Addiction and presented at the She Recovers Chicago conference: a Writing Your Recovery workshop, to a packed room. I dined with the magnificent Elizabeth Gilbert, who gave an extraordinarily personal evening address, and also caught up with the remarkable Stephanie Covington, author of A Woman’s Guide to the Twelve Steps. This week, I appeared on national TV, on The Social (watch here), and in the Globe and Mail (read here). I hope you have a look and a read.
WRITING YOUR RECOVERY: 2024
Thrilled to announce the new dates for the popular Writing Your Recovery course: April 24th to June 19th. My eight-week memoir-writing course for women has graduated more than 100 writers, many of whom go onward to the Writing Your Discovery course.
As always, there are two offerings: 11:00 to 1:00 and 6:30 to 8:30 EST. Please note: there will also be a fall class, starting mid-September.
Stay tuned here, and follow me on social media to learn when registration for Writing Your Recovery opens.
Oh, you make my heart sing! This is absolutely gorgeous, Ann ❤️
Beautiful my brilliant friend!