August 19th, 2022
When people get comfortable around me and my sobriety, they start to ask more complicated questions about it.
The one they inevitably get to is: “Do you miss anything about drinking?”
I do. Of course I do.
Too much for a single post.
But I want to talk about something that might give you a glimpse inside the mind of an addict and why it’s so hard for us to quit, well, anything.
In the before-days, I was very proud of my beer knowledge. I worked in a beer bar. We did beer things. I loved learning about beer: the process of brewing it, the history behind it, the delightful and sometimes beautiful ways we describe it.
I was so invested in how I felt about beer; I sincerely felt like it was a big part of my personality. In fact, one of my biggest fears when I admitted that I had to stop drinking was that people were not going to like me because I wasn’t going to be about beer anymore.
I honestly thought I was going to have nothing to say without beer. I thought I was going to become boring and lifeless and everyone was going to leave me.
I am not exaggerating. Part of the reason I decided immediately that I had to find a way to be cool around alcohol is because I wanted to keep my bar job, to show people that I was still cool, and please don’t abandon me because I am less of a human being, barely a man, a person who can’t and could never hang.
That’s how it feels when you’re in it.
You will risk losing everything because everything feels like it’s waiting to be lost.
Almost five years on, that turned out not to be the case. I apparently was more than just beer facts. Instead of being less, I am very much so extra, more often too much. I’m still not cool, but I’m not (that) lame, either.
And I miss that culture a little still.
But, being full of honesty now, I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
The Den 