Learning to Show Up for Myself in Sobriety

Early in sobriety, a friend cautioned me about overdoing it. She said that she used to intentionally overdo it so that she would have no other choice: I have to take a drink. That she would push herself to a point where she would say: I can’t do this without a drink.

So I try to be cautious about what is on my plate.

That said, in sobriety, I chose to marry a man with four children of his own (I have three from my first marriage), and we chose to have a baby girl who is the absolute light of our life, but also now nearly 18 months old and an incredibly opinionated, strong-willed child whose scream sometimes makes me wonder if my ears are bleeding.

So, with eight children, there are just days when we overdo it. This last week, we had a series of events that we could not have changed: the day after a much-anticipated court date, our daughter had her first day of daycare, my eleven-year-old stepdaughter had a well-child check (and, as a pubescent girl, preferred that I be there over her dad), my nearly fifteen-year-old stepson had high school orientation, and my seven-year-old twins had a taekwondo graduation.

At the end of that day, I was so beyond frazzled that I went to the gas station and bought cigarettes. This is the top of my pyramid of self-destructive behavior in sobriety: scrolling, eating ice cream, eating chips and popcorn, and, when things are really, really, really bad, smoking cigarettes.

It’s simply a desire to not feel, to do something that provides relief—an external validation. But, coming up on three years sober, I know—I have tested, time and again—that nothing external can solve my emotional struggles.

Bring awareness to the situation.

In sobriety, I have learned how to observe my own behavior. My therapist tells me that when I buy cigarettes, it’s almost a signal: this is how bad it is, this is how desperate I have become.

I almost had the strength to not leave for the gas station that night, but I went anyway. Yet, just as I did when I was struggling to quit drinking, there was a much longer pause. There was the awareness: this is not going to solve the situation.

The other thing that happened, which tipped me off to the fact that I was perhaps incredibly emotionally “off the beam,” was this:

I received an email from the elementary school librarian saying that she noticed I returned the kids’ books in bulk “more than other families.” I read this email with tunnel vision: that we are different from other families. She thinks we are bad. I fired off a terse response, explaining that I was doing the best I goddamn could (I didn’t say the goddamn).

“It was so sad to watch you fall apart like that,” my husband tells me later, given that I had started crying, smoked a cigarette, and hid under my boys’ dino blanket that I have commandeered as my own comfort blanket.

In short, I needed to recognize that an email from a librarian should not have completely destroyed me. I think the giant stack of books being returned might be annoying, but it was not a personal criticism of our large family, nor did I need to take it that way.

But what was important was witnessing myself, like an out-of-body experience, and recognizing that when I behave that way, it means something is not quite right. I need to approach that with curiosity, figure out what is happening, and determine how I can better care for myself.

Get back to basics.

In sobriety circles, I have heard the acronym HALT talked about—recognizing when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. When I fired off that email to the librarian, it was about 2 p.m., and I had only had about 10 cups of coffee that day. I was engaged in a wildly busy work week and a wildly busy personal-life week.

When I was first sober, I used to say, “What do I do if I’m hungry, angry, lonely, and tired all the time?” As a single mom of three back then, that was just my constant state of being. But I ate a snack, drank some water, talked to friends, and got some rest.

I learned to be gentle with myself. I learned to actually care for myself. The only question I needed to ask was, “Is this moving me towards a drink, or away from a drink?”

And to resolve the loneliness, or the feeling of being alone: talk about it in meetings, talk to my sober friends, talk with my husband.

Ask for help.

In the height of this very busy week, it had been lost on me that I had run out of my medication, an antidepressant. My husband had scanned the prescription earlier that week, but I had kind of just ignored it. The pharmacy app kept saying, “Delayed until (tomorrow).”

And so I kept thinking, well, surely it will be ready tomorrow. And five days later, it still wasn’t.

I hadn’t told my husband that I was out of medication. When I did, he made several phone calls (and he was significantly more terse—or perhaps panicked is a better word—than I had been in my email to the librarian), and we were at the pharmacy within an hour getting a three-day emergency supply.

I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him helping me with this. Sometimes, when I’m feeling good, I get big and bad and think, maybe this medication is stupid, maybe I don’t need it. But whenever I miss a few days—which is so very reckless and so cruel to myself—I begin to crumble. And I know, too, that if I were ever to want to come off this medication, I would need to titrate down, so just stopping is far from advisable.

I am so lucky to have this man who helped me. I just couldn’t do it, with everything else I was trying to do—I couldn’t find a way to make this phone call. And I realize, too, that even if I didn’t have him, I could have asked my friends in sobriety, and any one of them would have done this for me.

The help was there; it always will be, in community. I just needed to ask.

Remember: It won’t feel this way forever.

In a meeting, I hear a story of a woman going on a trip to Paris. Everything went smoothly. It felt too good to be true, she says.

I am in tears. My voice cracks when I say this: “I’m not in a good place now.” But hearing that story reminds me: I was. Life was everything. I felt that way, too—everything was flowing perfectly. I remember that feeling. And it will be that way again.

This too shall pass, I have to remind myself, even if it doesn’t feel like it will. That is the lie of depression: it says, this will never, ever end. There is no way out of this. It is only darkness. And then, there was the lie of alcohol: here’s the solution.

Accept, or change.

Even before I ran in recovery circles, I was aware of the Serenity Prayer as part of a cultural touchstone. There was not a damn thing I could do about the fact that all these events fell on the same day. I wanted to be there for all of them. I chose to be there for all of them.

So, it is my life’s work here in sobriety to accept the things I cannot change—from the very basic logistical issues, like that my daughter’s first day of daycare fell on the same day as my oldest stepson’s high school orientation and my twins’ taekwondo graduation, to the big-picture, harder-to-accept things, like that I cannot change other people.

And then, to have the courage to change the things I can—my reaction, for instance, and maybe also to get better at having the strength to pause before firing off a nasty email to a well-meaning elementary school librarian, or before getting in the car to speed off to the gas station to buy cancer sticks that will increase my heart rate, make my mouth feel awful, and make my rest not feel like rest.

And then, of course, finding the wisdom to know the difference between those two things. That one I’ll be working on for the rest of my life.

When I was drinking, I thought the alcohol brought me back to life. That huge, immediate, urgent rush of artificial dopamine brought me back to my center, I thought.

But it didn’t. It was a trick. So, in sobriety, it is my responsibility—my sacred obligation—to take care of myself so I can keep showing up the way I want to show up for myself, for my family, and for my community (elementary school librarian included), in my fullness—as my parenting and life icon Mr. Rogers says, “just the way I am.”

In short: I tossed the cigarettes, drank a bunch of water, and am on the upswing, feeling joy again.

How about you?

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• When life gets overwhelming, what’s your go-to “pause and reset” habit that actually works?
• Has there ever been a moment in sobriety that completely surprised you—when you realized just how strong or resilient you are?

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