Quitting Together, but Getting Sober Alone
The Truth About What to Expect When Putting the Bottle Down Together
I never thought I would dump out a bottle of vodka, let alone a brand new one full of that magic, dizzying juice. It was my lifeblood, my buzzed lift to the wind away from reality far more than three sheets at a time.
He had one beer left in the fridge. Or as far as I know, that’s all he had, there could certainly be have been some hidden somewhere, probably in his car. That’s where he tended to hide it since we moved in together, afraid I would find it somewhere else, but I knew better, he couldn’t even start his day without one. His shakes were debilitating. He couldn’t even eat food anymore because his body only knew how to process alcohol and it was killing him from the inside out. The proof was in the blood he threw up every morning.
His parents and I had been trying to get him to cut back for some time, but only ended in failed attempts because he never actually put honest effort into it, just found different ways to sneak around and hide it from us. I had already witnessed him almost die from blowing a .41 when I had no choice but to call the cops to at least make sure he was okay. This wasn’t his first attempt at getting sober, but we would soon learn that it would be his worst.
We both had our monsters we were drowning, but we were waterlogging everything around us in the process including our opportunity to grow this new love we had both found after our divorces and the blended family we had just begun to nourish. It was beyond time to put the bottle down and we both knew it, so in the midst of another juiced-up, senseless argument, he drank his last beer and I dumped out my bottle of vodka.
We were doing this together, there was no other way.
I am not going to detail the terrifying and sinister detoxification process that he endured in this story. I am working on that story for my first book as it is a story that demands the attention of anyone impacted by alcoholism. The book will tell a story of a mental interruption so menacing and frightening that you may never want to even smell booze ever again. It will tell the story of the reality of it, the things that no one ever talks about. The quiet things that no one knows.
This part of the story too, however, demands attention in the same way because the act of putting the bottle down together is only the beginning of the journey to sobriety. When the bottle is down, the path becomes rather treacherous, and even when walking it side by side, you are forced to wander it alone because it is a personal battle. No one talks about that either.
Now, what they say IS true, that the success rates of quitting alcohol together as a couple are higher compared to quitting alone. That the shared commitment to sobriety fosters mutual understanding, empathy, and a shared sense of purpose that can lead to improved communication, shared activities, and a healthier lifestyle, thereby enhancing overall well-being and happiness, but the journey to get there is long and arduous. No wonder so many relapse, no one tells them the truth about the hell they’re about to walk through.
As the saying goes though, “If you’re going through hell, keep going”.
We’re somewhere in there. It’s been almost 4 years. His hell is different than mine, but the only reason I know that is because we’re finally getting to the improved communication aspect of the presumed “finish line” established above. We’re not stupid, we know there is no finish line. Alcoholism doesn’t go away.
Alcoholism, similar to all addictions, is rooted in mental illness, trauma, and scars on the soul. We consume it to fill the holes that agony left bleeding, to drown the monsters that live inside of us unknowingly feeding them exactly what they want. It produces a smile where there isn’t one, gives us the courage to participate in the normalcies of life, and builds an invisible barrier between our own reality and the reality we live in so that no one knows we’re not okay. We just drink too much. That’s it, right? Just stop drinking.
But what happens to those monsters that have been thriving and evolving inside of us when they are no longer suppressed by alcohol? They start to crawl their way out, one infected, razor-sharp claw at a time.
If you’re going to get sober together, be prepared for your monsters to meet.
It is probably important to keep in mind that I am speaking from my own personal experience and journey to sobriety that my love and I embarked on together. I have not done any research on success rates vs. length of relationship, but I feel like I can safely assume that there is a minute difference in what happens when those monsters finally meet. We generally spend our entire lives trying to hide our monsters from everyone else, especially the ones we love the most.
As our bodies and minds begin to relearn how to live without alcohol, and how to think with a clear mind, there is a process involved with learning how to love yourself again. Maybe I shouldn’t even include the word “again”, a lot of us never loved ourselves in the first place, so I will rephrase that as learning to love your sober self. The hardest part about it is that you’re going to hate your sober self.
You quit drinking together. Now you hate your sober self, they hate their sober self, and your monsters are getting acquainted with each other. Not only do you have to accept your monsters, but you have to accept theirs too. Acceptance only comes with understanding. Understanding only comes with communication. Good communication.
The thing about these monsters, however, is you’ve suppressed them for so long, that when they begin to emerge, you have no way of explaining their existence inside of you. You haven’t quite figured it out for yourself yet, but your partner now sees your monsters and wants to understand their roots to gain the mutual understanding and shared sense of purpose that was supposed to be formed by hopping on the sobriety train together. There are no words to explain it. You only know how to feel it and now you are feeling it explosively because you’re sober, but the feelings are far too dreadful to share if words to explain them could even be found, so you don’t.
No understanding was formed. You are on a path alone with a damaged heart and soul leading the way. No one will ever understand. That’s just what you keep telling yourself so you don’t even have to try.
You want a drink, but you don’t have one.
You start losing respect for the journey, yourself, and your travel companion.
Your monsters take physical form in your body and suddenly you no longer even control the emotions that you have tried to kill for so long. They take over and show themselves to the very person you love enough to choose to get sober with and the monsters begin to win, seemingly taking everything worth being sober for with them.
You want a drink, but you don’t have one.
The anger, guilt, and shame rupture your tear ducts releasing waves of dejection, sorrow, and confusion of succumbing to being alone on a treacherous path that you thought you were walking together. You surrender to the violence of your emotions allowing them to assault you and begin to conclude that your partner doesn’t care. They don’t love you. They don’t open themselves to you. They’re hiding something. Insecurities form, trust dwindles, and negative energy absorbs all. The monsters are winning.
You want a drink, but you don’t have one.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat again.
Maybe it would be better if you just ended it all.
Time is the ultimate healer. This is true for grief, trauma, and all destructive circumstances of life. Time will bring light to guide you through your darkness in small, dim moments, but your grasp on that light will have to be strong or it flickers out leaving you, once more, alone in those murky shadows of recovery.
You’re like an infant seeing the world for the very first time again. The entire ecosphere of existence is different sober, but you open your eyes to it and gradually realize that you have been fighting your monsters this whole time. Your co-journeyer has too. The unique mental disturbances that materialized when alcohol was no longer present are not and will never be the same or even similar to anyone else’s, not even the one you quit drinking with. A part of you will always be sober alone.
The journey you embarked on together becomes a journey of the true strength of your commitment to each other, as well as the force of the sparked connection that brought you together in the first place. You will be tested as you have never been tested before. There will be arguing, crying, lamenting, and an insatiable need for support from each other through the blood-letting of your own monsters.
You will need to be strong for them on some of your weakest days.
You will become fatigued from willfully holding them up when your own strength is gone.
You will sit in uncomfortable silence together when there are profound things to be said.
You will be scared to speak, explain, or even look them in the eye during times of inner battle.
You will question yourself and your sanity. The true question is, are you willing to be utterly out of your minds together while you walk through hell apart?
The inspiration behind the quote that tells us to keep going through hell is that eventually, we will find our way out. The only reason a soul becomes imprisoned there is because they stop contending, too fearful of the metaphorical bloodshed.
My love, my co-journeyer on this sobriety road, and I have grown tremendously together as we’ve battled our monsters individually. Hell isn’t always hell when you have devotion in your corner. We’re not the same person, so our recoveries are starkly incongruent, but it does not make us incompatible. Quite the opposite, actually.
Even if you don’t always understand each others’ mentalities, judgments, or frames of mind consistently, doesn’t mean you won’t laugh heartily, love fiercely, or live happily, you just have bumps in the road like all couples do. At least you’re not driving drunk over them.
We have progressed immensely along our journey together and alone. We are beginning to communicate more efficiently and finding not only the words to explain our monsters, but the courage to speak them when our raw humanity cannot take the overload any longer. We have learned to let go when necessary and move forward in strides even when tripping over each other.
The truth of it is, we have shared our most vulnerable selves with each other along the way because being sober IS being vulnerable when you’re a recovering addict, and that in itself is a bond that won’t be broken. We love each other broken.
The way we think about it is at least we have each other to go crazy with.
This blew me away so much respect for what u achieved