What it's like to be four months sober

It's been f*cking awesome. But also hard for reasons related to being a man in this society.

Please don’t take this as me judging your drinking habits. If you do, I’m truly sorry.

I’ve been sober for a little over four months now, and it’s been f*cking awesome. But also hard, for reasons related to being a man in this society.

Back in July, my partner’s childhood friends threw us a party to celebrate our approaching wedding. There was damn good smoked brisket, karaoke, and a cooler full of cheap beer. I downed cans of Milwaukee’s Best in the Connecticut heat. I gulped multiple margaritas. I sang (or rapped?) Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” in front of strangers at a local bar, which I barely remember. Worse, I barely remember driving home. I woke up with the worst hangover I’ve had in at least a decade, which wrecked my Sunday and lingered into Monday.

I got drunk probably because I didn’t know the friends all that well.

I’m pretty introverted. I struggle with small talk and prefer deeper, one-on-one conversations (duh, I’m a therapist). It takes me awhile to feel close to people. Most parties are fun for about a half hour, and then I’m overwhelmed and want to leave. I cherished that they were celebrating us, but I was feeling like I often do in groups: bored, anxious, and alone.

On Sunday, feeling like shit, I decided to take a break from drinking. I’d taken time away from alcohol before. But it was white knuckling it, struggling to hold a part of me back from letting go, relaxing, and having fun. It would last a week or two, and then I’d fall back into my pattern of drinking on weekends and some weeknights. Like there was a fun, wild, drinking part of me that would always break out of the cage I was trying to keep it in—a cage made of shame.

This time felt like being pulled toward not drinking. It was an easy decision—a no-brainer. Something inside me said, that’s enough.

I felt a little worried the next Friday night when my partner and friends were drinking around me. How am I going to keep this up? Do they think I’m boring? Am I going to end up feeling even more alone?

Four months later, the jury is still out on the answers to those questions.

I’ve been feeling more present around other people, even when they’re drinking. I’ve been feeling more connected to my partner, even on our date nights when she’s holding a glass of wine across from me at a sexy restaurant we haven’t been to before. Pro tip: Ordering a “mocktail” or a bottle of sparkling water helps.

The biggest surprise is that I’m actually having more fun. I was sober for my wedding, which was the best weekend of my life. I didn’t know how silly I can be. I thought I needed alcohol (or weed) to loosen up and get weird. But it’s in there. And it wants to come out.

But being sober has also shined a spotlight on my life­. Like those videos of people taking black lights into hotel rooms (don’t Google it). Without drinking, what do I do for fun? Is my life really just work, a little bit of free time, and sleep? Are my days really just the same routine over and over again? Do I really have only a small handful of friends? Is it all downhill from here?

Maybe what I mean by feeling more connected is that I’m more connected with myself. More aware of what I’m feeling on a random Friday night at a bar with friends and a sparkling water with lime juice in my hand. More in touch with the background noise of disappointment and dissatisfaction that’s always sort of been there for me. In the last four months I’ve gotten occasional whiffs of loneliness stronger than any I’ve felt before. At times, I’ve been bored out of my mind. I guess because the alcohol isn’t there to numb it all out.

I know everyone struggles with loneliness in this backwards, individualist, capitalist society.

But it seems to be hard for men in particular ways. We weren’t taught how to be vulnerable with other people. We were taught the opposite: hold it all in, grit your teeth and bear it, don’t complain, don’t ask for help, don’t let anyone in (except maybe—maybe—one woman who you’re also having sex with). This keeps intimacy locked away in the bedroom. And even there we aren’t taught how to open up and truly connect.

A friend told me a stat the other day that nailed me. These types of stats usually go in one ear and out the other. I usually nod and say, “Yep, that sucks.” But this one got in. Almost 80 percent of suicides in the U.S. are committed by men. Eighty f*cking percent. Indigenous men (followed closely by white men), LGBTQ+ men, and men over 75 years old are the most likely to do it.

It’s impossible to know why the vast majority of people who successfully take their lives are men, and why the overall rate has increased 16 percent since 2011. It’s partly because men often use more deadly methods to attempt suicide, like guns. But surely loneliness, boredom, and meaninglessness have something to do with it. Surely, our struggle to make ourselves available to connection, care, and love isn’t helping.

The tragic twist is that I started drinking back in the day in hopes of feeling more connection, less alone.

The socialist-feminist writer Clementine Morrigan nails it in her recent newsletter on addiction:

“Drinking let me out of the cage of myself. It melted away my hyper-vigilant terror of connection, my constant monitoring and suppressing of my authentic expression. It allowed me to say what I was thinking, express what I was feeling, and most terrifying of all, reach out across the void and touch another person.”

I assume there were some drunk moments back in the day when I felt less alone. But I actually can’t remember them. I remember far more moments feeling all by myself. Driving at midnight to meet up with a friend at a mostly empty bar because I couldn’t stand the emptiness of my apartment for one more second. Breaking up fights between friends way drunker than I was. Passing a joint between strangers I’d never see again on a back porch. Trying to have sex with a woman I just met at a party but passing out because I was exhausted and dehydrated.

There’s a quote I heard on a podcast about being sober that I now say to myself every morning: “Create a life you don’t want to escape from.” It doesn’t quite sit with me 100 percent comfortably. We don’t “create” our lives. For the most part, our lives are created for us—by the conditions we’re born into, by our families, by how others treat us because of our gender expression or the color of our skin, by our job, by capitalism.

But something about not wanting to escape gives me hope. It excites some part of me. A part that got locked away deep inside when I was a little boy because I was “too emotional,” or “too sensitive, or too much “like a girl.” A part that’s been starving to be let out to play ever since.

I don’t know what to do with that part of me. Honestly, I’m a little scared when it’s feeling bored. For a long time, I just grabbed another beer to shut it up. Now what do I do? Where do you go when there’s no way to escape?

Now, a question for the comment section below (or email me: jeremy@jeremymohler.blog): How do you feel about alcohol and other substances?

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