Getting sober helped me stop running from something. Going public helped me feel safe from the stigma.
I first “went public” with my recovery in May 2024, when I launched my Substack newsletter, Recoverettes. I had been working on a piece for many years about my recovery, about how I felt I was an unlikely “alcoholic” because I didn’t look it on paper: I had a master’s degree, I had taken progressively advancing jobs, I owned a house, I had three children who I loved more than anything in the world.
I went public when I was about a year and a half sober—I had remarried and had just given birth to my baby girl—and I was very confident in my sobriety.
I had faltered many times in private before, but this was it. I wasn’t going to drink again. I am not going to drink again. And so, I wrote, and with the encouragement of my husband, I published my Substack.
My Family
In this regard, I was fortunate because I was able to keep my recovery somewhat private. I did stop drinking beer with my dad, but I was 33 years old and getting divorced, and so I was able to keep it under wraps for quite a while.
My children were too young to understand, and my ex-husband and I had separated. We were still living together, separately, but I worked quietly on my recovery, listening to my meetings in my earbuds, playing with my tarot cards, asking them in the morning, What do I need to know about my recovery today?
I met my current husband in sobriety. Sometimes I feel a pang of guilt, as though I have tricked him, because he never knew a drinking Kristen. But then I just have endless gratitude, because a drinking Kristen would have run this tender, gentle, wants-to-give-me-the-whole-world and only-wants-me-to-be-happy man right over.
My “new” stepkids were old enough to understand, though. I’d have my earbuds in, and the 13-year-old would say, “Are you listening to a meeting?”
“Yes,” I’d reply, and step out to the garage to share.
At first I was ashamed. I didn’t like them to know what I was doing. But then I realized, it’s good for them to see this. This is what it takes. This is what I need. They are witnessing their stepmom taking care of herself.
I can also explain to them that attending a meeting or tending to my sobriety isn’t because I’m hanging on by my fingernails or about to just fucking snap and drive to the gas station and slam a 6-pack. It’s maintenance. It’s building and maintaining the muscle. My recovery took time to get in shape and to stay in shape.
And I try to explain the nuance to them. I don’t drink because my body doesn’t respond well to alcohol, I say. I don’t drink because my life is better served without it. Alcohol is not necessarily bad, I say. But it isn’t for me.
But in short, it was just how they say it goes—in the sense that when you’re at a party and someone offers you a drink and you decline, no one cared. No one knew the extent of the problem, and my children were too young to have articulated it in any kind of meaningful way.
My family watched from afar, like: good for her. And if someone didn’t like it, I just ignored it.
Does this serve my recovery was the only question I had to answer.
My Friends
Everyone I partied with was not surprised that this was something I had chosen. Everyone who managed to get me home on those late stumbling nights in grad school, everyone who reassured me everything was okay over Bloody Marys and mimosas and chicken fried steak, everyone who had seen, with certainty, the moments of sadness when I would on occasion think, Maybe this is a real problem—they were not surprised.
In the decade that I was thinking about getting sober, though, I knew a few people who were sober, and I would reach out to them. One friend in particular I had met at a writers’ conference. She had told me she was sober and had been for a few years. “How,” I would ask. “How do you get through the day without a drink?”
I didn’t know what she knew then, and as I filled and refilled and refilled my glass of white wine that was ever-present at the conference, as I ambled my way into the kitchen and took a few shots and chased it with a PBR, then resumed my wine, she just sat patiently with us, talking writers and writing and graduate schools.
So, I would message her every few years. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” I would say. “What do I do?” She would suggest the things she had suggested back then—and she would gently reassure me that if I wanted it, I could have it.
And now, in my bizarre Facebook world that intertwines people who I would never have kept in touch with any other way, sometimes people reach out to me.
Someone I used to know—a few states and lifetimes ago, to put it into context, we worked together at Blockbuster Video—reached out to me to say, “How can I fix this thing? How can I stop? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
And I say, “You can.”
That’s the impact that going public is having: I get to be that person for someone else. “What’s it like?” they might ask. “How are you doing it?”
And I get to say, “This is what I did. These are the struggles I had. What you are experiencing is perfectly normal.”
And as I did with my sober Facebook friend who I would DM every few years in an absolute nightmarish hangover, following a particularly bad bender or blackout or whatever, these people can pop up and ask, “How did you do this?”
And I can say gently, “You never have to feel this way again, you really don’t. Take my hand and I’ll show you the way.”
My Work
This was a nonissue for me. I am subtle when I talk about my recovery. “Well, you know I don’t drink anymore,” I’ll joke.
But I don’t work in a high-profile position. I don’t even work with many people. I work for a small business, and I am mostly independent in what I do (we don’t have an office or office parties or even all that much office politics, for that matter).
This is the one place that people in my recovery circles warn: you could lose your license (a nursing license, perhaps). The board may retract something.
I don’t know what to do with this one. The stigma is there. Can we move the needle on it? Protect what is yours, they say.
My Inner Recovery Circle
Within my inner recovery circles, most of my friends were thrilled. “Your story will help others,” they said.
Others were offended, particularly those in a particular recovery circle who prefer to remain anonymous.
A dear friend within that group was very conflicted. “What you’re doing is against the rules,” she warned. But then she took another breath. “I’m supposed to tell you that. I love what you’re doing. You’re going to help people.”
There was a general sense that people were talking about me. And to walk within my integrity, I would not want to compromise the anonymity of others who helped me learn to walk this walk.
But in large part, it was a celebration. My work is a celebration of what is possible. I am still a baby in sobriety—coming up on three years this winter—and I am proud that what I’m doing in my newsletter will serve as a roadmap for others.
No Longer Carrying a “Secret”
The most important thing that “going public” did for me, though, was allow me to live an authentic life. I don’t feel like something is chasing me, or that I’ll “be found out.”
Getting sober helped me stop running from something. Going public helped me feel safe from the stigma.
But it has not been all sunshine and rainbows. Some people have tried to use my recovery against me, namely in a child custody case with my stepkids. Because I was “an alcoholic” or a “person in recovery” made me a threat, this person asserted. I could relapse at any time, they said.
I sobbed hysterically when I learned this information.
But, as I have written before, then I gathered myself up, remembered who the fuck I am, and I stood tall and proud and I said, No. I will not relapse, because, as mentioned above, I tend to my sobriety and I work the muscle and I strengthen it.
“A judge will laugh at them,” a good friend told me. “You are a light for others on a recovery journey.”
And so I carry on. I have revealed this thing, my Achilles tendon, my darkest struggle. I have overcome this thing, and I overcome it every fucking day, and there is nuance and work and there are things to do to tend to this recovery every single day—part of which is sharing my story here, is being part of this vibrant community, is saying, Hey, this is what sobriety looks like for me, coming up on three years.
You never have to feel this way again, they told me. And today, I choose not to feel that way again because I have tools in my toolbox that I know how and when to use.
How about you?
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