I never liked the expression “rock bottom.” Maybe because I recognized that believing things couldn’t possibly get worse is a myth. Saying so, saying “this is my rock bottom” feels a bit like tempting fate. Because, trust me, things can always fall further.
When I think about my own story of committing to sobriety and reflect on the stories others have told me, I believe what we’re describing is how we broke free from ambivalence. The true meaning of the word, which is not to feel indifferent but to have deeply contradictory feelings. My drinking problem developed slowly over time, insidiously. Eventually, I couldn’t deny I had a problem, so I tried to control it and hide it, failing at both. I was ambivalent: I wanted to be able to carry on drinking without the consequences of doing so. I tried my best to mitigate the consequences through elaborate rules (e.g., no drinking until the kids were in bed, no driving) and by hiding the evidence (paying cash, switching purchase places, hiding bottles). But slowly over time those rules were bent or thrown out all together. The desire and need to drink outweighed my fear of the repercussions.
You can’t have it both ways when you’ve developed a disordered relationship to alcohol and, in my case, a physical addiction to it. Moderation didn’t work for me because once I had a drink my brain was hijacked and my ability to make choices was impaired.
What tips us out of ambivalence? Maybe, simply put, when the costs finally outweigh the perceived benefits. Once the scale tips in favor of saying no, the real trick becomes ensuring that the scales stay tipped in that direction.
The most dangerous time for me was not the first few days of sobriety, it was about two months in. After two months of not drinking, I had started to feel better, physically, mentally, emotionally. Better enough that I though, “I’ve got this! This time I can control myself. I can have one, maybe two drinks and stop.” And I was able to do that, for a few days. Until two drinks became three and, well, you know how it ends.
My father used to say that the most dangerous time when you are learning to use a chainsaw is not the first few times you are using it. It’s after you’ve been using it for a couple of months. Because the first few times you are vividly aware of its danger, and how fucking up could maim or kill you. But after a few months you get a little cocky and a little too self-assured. You start to pay just a little less attention. That’s when you’re most likely to get hurt.
Sobriety was a little like that for me. For the first couple of months the pain, shame, and humiliation of my drinking was enough to keep me on the straight path. But the desire for a drink was still there, it was just temporarily out weighed. As I got some sober days, the freshness of the cost began to fade, and the scale began to tip.
What helped me was to remind myself as often as necessary just how bad it had actually become, to remember in as much unvarnished detail exactly the cost to my physical health, my relationships, my finances, my freedom. And to accept that choosing to pick up a drink because “I think I can control myself this time” was a risk I would be taking to gain what? That maybe, somehow I could return to a time when I drank socially? I had done so for many, many years. Maybe this time…
But here’s the thing: there is absolutely no guarantee that I wouldn’t find myself right back in that deep hole I’d just spent digging myself out of. Picking up a drink would be like playing Russian roulette, only with more bullets in the chamber. The only thing that was certain was that I would be better off without a drink.
Have you felt and dealt with ambivalence as part of your sober journey? How did you tip the scales out of addiction and into sobriety? And how do you help yourself stay there?
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