Remembering Addiction
I can't always remember what it was like to be a daily drinker.
It’s been over nine years since my last drink. Sometimes I can barely remember what my life was like before I got sober.
I started blogging about sobriety about two years after I quit drinking. In the beginning, I could remember my life as a daily drinker all too well. It was easy for me to slip back into my old mindset and bring back the old feelings of struggling with addiction.
Sometimes, in those early years of sobriety, I’d even remember new details about my drinking years. Random people, parties, and conversations that I hadn’t thought of in ages would suddenly pop back into my head.
However, lately, I just seem to remember less and less. And to be clear, it’s not that I have some cognitive problem. It’s simply that most of our memories get weaker with time, and it’s totally natural to have a hard time recalling things after nearly a decade has passed.
I have very mixed feelings about these fading memories. In part, I’m happy to let them go. My addiction defined me for a decade, and there’s something nice about the fact that it no longer plays a big role in my life. In many ways, I’d be happy to just forget about it entirely and move on.
However, another part of me worries that if I don’t have the memories of how bad my addiction was, I’ll eventually end up falling back into it. I don’t ever want to have another drink for the rest of my life, and I think that one of the best ways to avoid a relapse is to regularly remind myself of just how bad my life as a drinker had been.
It truly was awful. I was miserable, lonely, broke, out of shape, and hopeless. I still remember those years well enough to know that. And, as much as those memories still sting, I’d like to hold on to them so that I can continue to appreciate how much better my life is now.
All this naval gazing brings me to a more practical question: How do I actually maintain a good balance of remembering how bad my addiction had been, while also moving on with my life?
For years now, my answer to that question has been to write about my addiction. First in a blog, later in a newsletter. In the earlier years, I used to write almost every day. More recently, I’ve cut down to just writing once a week. In either case, it forces me to take a little time out of my schedule to purposefully look back at my life as an addict.
Lately, I’ve been questioning whether that’s the best strategy. The main problem is that it no longer works nearly as well as it used to. As hard as I try, when I sit down to write, I simply can’t remember my drinking years as well as I used to be able to.
A few months ago, I started thinking about closing down my newsletter. I decided against it for the time being, but I’m not sure that I’ll keep it running for too much longer. 10 years sober might be a good, natural stopping point. Perhaps even sooner.
I’ve always advocated maintaining sobriety strategies that work, but being willing to pivot when those strategies stop feeling helpful. However, as of right now, I have nothing to pivot to.
If I were to stop the newsletter, I don’t think I’d have anything better to take its place. I want something to help me remember my life as an addict, but I’m not sure what.
Perhaps, there simply isn’t a good solution to this. As I mentioned earlier, memories fade with time, and that’s completely natural.
I wonder too if, after nine years sober, I no longer need as much motivation to keep going. The truth is that at this point, avoiding alcohol just feels easy and natural. I’m not convinced that it will always feel this way, but I’m at least hopeful that it might.
No matter what I decide to do with my newsletter, I can tell you one thing with certainty: I’m glad that I started writing it in the first place. When I have days like today, when it’s hard for me to remember what my addiction used to be like, I can go back through seven years of blog posts and newsletters to remind myself.
That’s an incredibly powerful tool at my disposal. No matter how much my memories fade, I will always have them in writing.
When I started blogging about sobriety, I had no idea what a powerful tool writing could be. Now, I’ve come to realize it was one of the strongest ways that I supported my earlier sobriety.
I don’t know if it makes sense to keep writing about sobriety forever, but I think that it’s a great tool for anyone who has recently quit. If you’re reading this and have ever thought about starting your own sobriety blog, I’d just say that it was one of my best decisions.