We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

by Laura McKowen

This is how this book is being written: I type this word, then this one, then this one. The words build sentences. The sentences build a paragraph. A book is impossible, but a word and then another word is not. A lifetime of sobriety was impossible, but a moment of sobriety was not. I was doing it, and I was doing it, and I was doing it again.

Not because I was committed to forever, but because I finally realized the future was built on a bunch of nows, and that was it.

you can drown in “forever” whereas you can wade into “right now.”

I wonder if this is what so many of us need when we think we need to get our shit together — to let it fall apart instead.

Addiction was a learned behavior born of the natural, human impulse to soothe, to connect, to love, to feel good. And if this was true, then I had to let my brain learn a new way.

Drinking, plans for drinking, casual references to drinking, jokes about drinking, memes about drinking, advertisements for drinking were everywhere — are everywhere. We live in a culture that drinks by default, and although not everyone in my life cared about drinking the way I did, most of them cared at least a little. For me, and most others, this is one of the hardest parts about getting sober or even imagining getting sober: the “other people” factor. Because not drinking alcohol isn’t one of those things that generally goes under the radar. People notice. As it goes, alcohol is the only drug you have to explain not using.

Alcohol was a way to create instant distance or intimacy, indifference or bravado, to propel myself into incapacitation or chaos.

This can be incredibly hard and painful at first because it feels like social suicide, but with each no my spirit exhaled a deep, profound, long-awaited thank you. I was giving myself a chance.

can see this so clearly as a screaming indication of my inability to just be with myself. Without constantly being in motion, making plans, finding validation from the outside world, and, of course, drinking, I was thoroughly uncomfortable and on edge.

Montaigne: “Did you think you would never reach the point toward which you were constantly heading?”

watched my parents interact with their friends, the people they dated, and later, their spouses, and alcohol was always just there, like milk in the fridge or soap in the shower. To me, it seemed like an inherent part of the adult picture of social interaction and intimacy.

feeling my body in its sweet numbness. The world was perfectly smooth. Nothing hurt. I wasn’t scared. I thought, If I can just stay like this, everything will be okay.

I truly believed alcohol would carry me and protect me. And I chased this idea for the next twenty years.

I’d gained back all the weight that I had once lost, plus a bunch more. I felt totally out of control all the time, and I hated myself for it, every second of every day. Drinking was the only way I could put some space between me and the crushing shame.

It was inconceivable to stop drinking in college. It was the only rite of passage I knew, the only way to connect with boys, and with my friends. I kept doing it because I didn’t see a way not to and still exist.

This pattern continued throughout my twenties as my relationships with men and drinking became braided even more tightly together. The alcohol was a way to connect, the bridge to intimacy — not only in romantic relationships, but especially in them. I believed it was the way in, a sort of magic trickery.

Our engagement, wedding, holidays, birthdays, vacations. Drinking had punctuated all those moments.

Many of my married friends have wondered if their relationship would survive if they quit, even in the cases where alcohol has caused significant and obvious damage. Others have been told by their partners that they don’t have a problem and just need to chill out, cut back, “stop being so dramatic”; and the subtext they hear is: Don’t change. I won’t like it (and I might not even like you) if you do.

What my friend’s boyfriend was really saying to her was this: I like a version of you that is less . . . you. And I like a version of us that is at least a slight departure from reality.

solace in drinking. It allowed me to see myself as someone who was hurting, instead of someone who was weak.

nothing that requires or causes me to abandon myself is really love.

To me, this was the most painful reality of drinking: the deadness, the flattening of my spirit

Burroughs, in his book This Is How, said that what worked for him in getting sober was to find something he loved more than drinking.

the grief and the sadness are real. When you give up something you’ve relied on as heavily as I relied on alcohol, even when that something is actively destroying your life, it is a true loss.

I had always quashed my pain and cut it off before it could burn all the way through. I drank it away or ate it away or disappeared

You are a human. Not an addict, or an alcoholic, or any of the worst things you’ve ever done. Addiction is just an experience, one of many that can shape a life. It’s not unique. It’s not a flaw. It’s not even that interesting. It’s a natural human instinct — to soothe, to

connect, to experience ourselves differently — gone awry.

One woman wrote me a letter describing how her mood and outlook improved after a month without wine, and — because feeling so much better surprised her — she was concerned she might be an alcoholic. As if only alcoholics feel better when they don’t drink.

Here’s the dirty little truth no one likes to admit — everyone feels better in the long run when they don’t drink. Not just alcoholics — everyone. Because putting alcohol into your body isn’t life giving; it’s life sucking. Nobody’s life actually improves because of alcohol, even though most people I know would scoff at that — That’s what you think [*wink, wink* *clink, clink* ] — and society tells us otherwise ten ways to Sunday.

Most people have no idea what their bodies feel like without it for an extended period of time. Alcohol is so normalized, so everywhere, so much a part of the fabric of mainstream society that most people will never experience life without it unless they’re forced to.