The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober

by Catherine Gray

People who don’t understand addiction think it’s self-indulgent. That you inhale that bottle of wine because you are a reckless, selfish, pleasure-chasing lush. It’s not like that. While I undoubtedly chased pleasure at first, there was a point where my use of alcohol mutated from self-indulgent to self-harm. You can see that the person shoving a 15th eclair into their face is no longer having fun. You can tell that the gambler holding their head in their hands at the roulette wheel is not having fun. Why can’t people see that the blackout drunk unable to walk is not having fun? There is, of course, a brief burst of relief in the first glass of wine. Just as a cutter finds pleasure in the pain of the razor, or an anorexic finds satisfaction in a 150-calorie day. But those practices – cutting or anorexia – are undoubtedly viewed by society as self-harm. Addicted drinking is the same. Addiction is all about seeking external relief from mental pain; whether you use cocaine, online poker, shopping, sex, razors, cake or exercise. Addictions are all the same ultimately. You seek to treat an internal pain with an external substance or activity. You pursue a once-pleasurable activity to the point of self-sabotage. Alcoholics often lose their jobs, houses, relationships, friends, everything; how can anyone call that self-indulgent? A self-indulgent person seeks to hang on to the things that make them happy. A self-harming person finds themselves torpedoing them. Addicted drinking i...