thoughts on sobriety
25-Jul-2019 9:45:39 AM
one of the primary motivations for starting this blog was to speak a little bit about my journey in sobriety. i particularly wanted to share what my experience has been like as a sober performing musician, because i feel like it’s somewhat of a unique position and i haven’t really found any stories out there that i felt like have reflected the truth found in my own experience. the 26th marks 3 years to the day since i quit drinking, which feels like kind of the perfect occasion for attempting to get some of my thoughts down about what sobriety has been like for me up to this point.
i feel like it makes the most sense to attempt to summarize my drinking career to the best of my ability, as much for my own benefit as for anyone who might be reading this.
i started drinking when i was 17. it was the summer time and i will never forget the euphoria and complete lack of coordination i experienced when i drank for the first time. i was with some close friends of mine and we were at a friend’s house. he lived with his dad and sister, and i’m pretty sure they were out of town or something. we drank tequila and it tasted vile (what irony that tequila would become my liquor of choice at the end of my drinking days.) i don’t remember much other than rolling around on the floor and laughing a lot. i couldn’t walk up or down stairs for shit. i might’ve gotten sick at some point, i don’t remember.
when i first started drinking, it was a pretty rare occasion. the hangovers were completely debilitating then and the thought of suffering through one of those more than like once a month was enough to keep me away from the sauce. i was smoking a lot of weed at the time, and occasionally dabbling with pills, psychedelics, and basically whatever else would come along that wasn’t meth or heroin. nothing too heavy, but i was definitely toeing the line. besides my grades starting to slide a little bit in school and my dad finding a dime bag of weed that had fallen out of my pocket in the garage, i managed to keep my shit together pretty well.
over the course of 2006 into 2007, when my dad’s health started to decline rapidly and he eventually passed, my drinking became more frequent. somewhere along the line, it became something i did at least once every weekend, if not more. i did and said a lot of dumb shit (that statement pretty much summarizes my drinking career tbh), a lot of which is just incredibly embarrassing to think about now. from professing my unrequited love to female friends of mine, to stealing shit i didn’t even want or need, a lot of idiotic mistakes were made. i eventually had to kind of train myself to NOT do or say stupid shit while i was drunk so that i could avoid that sinking feeling in my stomach that i would wake up to when i immediately knew i had fucked up. that feeling and the crushing hangover headache still weren’t enough to keep me away, though. and it’s not like i just quit doing and saying dumb shit altogether, it just varied wildly in frequency and severity over the years.
i continued at this pace right up to age 21. i believe wholeheartedly that i was already an alcoholic before i was even of legal drinking age. the primary aspect of the nature of my drinking that leads me to believe this, is the way i would consistently turn to drinking as an escape. eventually the relief it gave me from my problems (the death of my father, struggles of my siblings, watching my mom date and marry, lack of money, the exacerbation of the deterioration of my own mental health, etc.) was significantly more valuable to me than the potency of my hangovers could dissuade.
turning 21 meant bars. bars meant spending money. not having a job meant i exclusively relied upon a credit card that my father had cosigned on with the intention of it being used to help establish some credit. i maxed it out pretty quickly, despite it having a $3500 limit. having no income meant no way to pay my credit card bill. it wasn’t long before it went to collections and i began receiving letters and phone calls. after i graduated college after 5+ years, i moved out and got a job. soon after that, i was served papers and then my wages started to be garnished. this whole ordeal tanked my credit and is something i’m still working to this day to repair.
my drinking became more frequent and dangerous after i had moved out. working at a brewery normalized and encouraged my drinking. being broke and sad fueled my drinking, which kept me broke and sad. i had no energy or motivation to get a different job. the ~5 years that i stayed at that job were the heaviest and most dangerous years of my drinking, and is when i feel like i blew past the point of no return with regards to my alcoholism.
in the summer of 2013, i joined the band stepdad. i wasn’t playing with any bands at that time after my last band, petals rang the bell, fizzled out during 2012. stepdad had a 6 week nationwide tour booked that they needed me to play, so i agreed. what a strange time that was. i drank pretty much every day. i played nearly black out drunk some nights. i think it was during that tour that i first felt the physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. it was an incredibly difficult time for me; being away from home for that long, in all new places, with people i had only just met, was just a really tough, alienating experience. alcohol and drunkenness were very familiar and comfortable to me, so i turned to them for solace during that tour. my mantra during that tour was “there’s nothing 2 beers can’t fix.” it never did stop at just 2, though.
the worst period of my drinking came in the winter of 2013-14. my relationship with my girlfriend of 2 years unraveled, yet i went on living with her for another month or so, sleeping on the couch in the living room of our tiny apartment. during that time, i hit the bottle hard. really hard. at one point, i was so drunk that i fell face first into the sidewalk and scratched my face all up. i did some heinous shit that led to my ex forcing me to leave the apartment and put some of my very close friendships in jeopardy. after she gave me the boot, i stayed in the guest bedroom of one of my coworker’s houses for a month. my drinking stayed at scary dangerous levels during this time. i became close friends with people who were on a similar path of self-destruction. we would go out to different events/bars together and just get completely blotto. i engaged in very impulsive, dangerous behavior that i had never taken part in before. i drove drunk constantly. hell, i got pulled over twice for drunk driving and the police let me go both times, once because their breathalyzer wasn’t working and once just cuz.
my coworker whom was gracious (and patient) enough to let me stay in her guest bedroom kindly asked that i be on my way after staying there for a month. without any other options, i moved back in with my folks. even though i was pretty fucking far gone with my drinking at that point, i was still able to recognize that maybe it would end up being a restorative experience for me, a chance to dry out a little and try to get my shit together. i drank only slightly less often, and i remember my close friends whom were also heavy drinkers actually expressing concern for me with regards to my behavior and the extent to which i drank around the time i moved back in with my folks. day drinking became my favorite. me and some friends would go out every sunday afternoon and end up drinking well into the night. we called it sunday funday and i think i blacked out almost every single time. i remember sitting in my truck in an arby’s parking lot at like 7pm on a beautiful spring day, the sun still shining and people going about their sunday evening business. i sat in my truck, drunk as a damn lord, trying to work up the courage to walk into this arby’s to order some food. i don’t think i will ever forget that time and just how poignantly sad that experience was. i can remember the way the air felt, the way the sun looked, the music i was listening to. it’s like imprinted in my brain as just a real low moment and i remember feeling so pathetic because i think i had drank alone for the majority of that sunday, just barhopping by myself. i was nervous to walk into my house because i knew i probably couldn’t walk straight and it was only like 7 or 8pm, so i knew my mom and stepdad would still be awake. i don’t know how i did it, but i somehow managed to make it to my room without running into them.
it was while i was living with my parents for those few months that i started agreeing to join every single band that asked me to play for them. it made sense in my head: i knew i was miserable partially because i wasn’t playing music, so maybe if i was just playing music all the time i would feel better. while it did undoubtedly give my life much more purpose and ended up being a net positive, it also gave me far more handy excuses to drink.
if you’re not aware of it by now, i’ve gotta tell you something: music and alcohol are inextricable. it’s rare to enjoy one without the other, and attempts made at doing so are awkward at best. i’m sure there are pockets of the diy scene that are able to pull this off with some success, but i feel like the vast majority of live music performances, especially ones that actually fucking pay the musicians, all involve booze. it didn’t really become clear to me until soon after i got sober that being a “performing musician” is synonymous with being an “alcohol salesperson.” your job is to get people to come to the show to pay a cover and to buy drinks so that you can get paid. it’s really that simple. shows that don’t allow drinking but still aim to be lucrative gigs have to charge significantly more for tickets, and even then promoters/venue owners/whatever are missing out on an opportunity to make significantly more money. places that can afford to do this either a.) aren’t trying to make money in the first place and are staffed by volunteers b.) also host shows that are 21+ and serve booze or c.) have dumb amounts of money to throw around. so you’re basically looking at community spaces and colleges/universities as places that consistently host dry shows. the only college in grand rapids that booked good shows was calvin, but they recently cut funding to their student activities office which brought some of the best national talent into the city. so that one’s out. so that leaves us with the house show scene and the daac, which has yet to reopen. i feel like “dry spaces” like the daac are really awesome establishments that provide new talent a chance to perform for people, but my experiences with places like that have been frustrating for several reasons. one being that the pa is (usually) shit. and two, no one comes to the damn shows cuz they can’t drink! and we all know that even if a house show is dry, people will still sneak in booze somehow. like how do you actually police that.
while my drinking career hit a pretty steady, somewhat functional stride in 2014 up until i called it quits in 2016, it was during this period of time that my social life became pretty much completely centered around alcohol, even more so than it had been previously. i had band practices several nights a week, which always involved drinking before and/or during and/or after each practice session. i had shows several times a month, which were always occasions where i got very, very drunk. and then there was all the normal shit: birthdays, weddings, attending shows, house parties, vinyl nights, dance parties, old friends coming into town, bad days, good days, shit even it just being sunny outside was a reason to drink. while i may not have drank every single night of the week during those couple years, i was most definitely wishing that i was drinking on those few off days that i had every week and was quite miserable and subdued when i had to abstain.
there’s one particular time that i can recall that really highlighted to me how much alcohol had consumed me. a girlfriend i had at the time booked us a hotel in chicago for a long weekend during valentine’s day of that year. she had a ton of things planned for us to do, including a beautiful, fancy dinner aboard a large boat that cruised out into lake michigan from navy pier. i remember the entire time we were there, feeling like i had to get drunk every night or else, in my mind, it would’ve been a waste. i drank quickly and sometimes stealthily during that weekend, as my girlfriend was quite a long ways ahead of me in recognizing my alcoholism and wasn’t afraid of calling me on it. how fucking unfortunate that she would go to such great lengths to plan this lovely trip for us to get away and do something special together, only for me to spend the whole time getting as drunk as i possibly could without starting an argument.
thinking back on that trip, as well as several others that we had taken during our relationship where my behavior followed an identical pattern, i am filled with an incredible amount of embarrassment and shame. how unfair and disgusting i acted. how awful that i could treat someone that way after they had tried so hard to provide us with fun, exciting opportunities and adventures together. while that relationship was certainly not without it’s faults even unrelated to my drinking, there was definitely nothing she had done that would justify how selfish and destructive i was during the time that we were together. fortunately for us both, she dumped my sorry alcoholic ass and told it to me straight up: she was leaving because i had consistently prioritized alcohol over her and our relationship. she wasn’t wrong and leaving me was the best possible thing she could’ve done for herself and for me.
the loss of that relationship was what led to me finally reflecting on my life and examining my relationship with alcohol in an honest way. i think that was the first time that it was really crystal clear and impossible to ignore that i was in fact an alcoholic. insanely enough, that /still/ didn’t lead to me stopping right away. i still drank heavily for another month and while i was a little bit smarter about it (i took ubers instead of driving, i didn’t act completely/ impulsively and destructively), i still didn’t really have any intention of stopping for good just yet.
right after that break up, i decided it was time to get myself back into therapy for the first time in 10 years or so. i had e-mailed a local therapist i found on psychology today’s website and told her my financial situation. she put me in touch with another therapist who was just starting out and was willing to work with me on payment (fun fact: that first therapist i e-mailed ended up becoming my therapist later on and i have been seeing her ever since. she is incredible and has been completely instrumental in my recovery!) i started seeing her weekly and basically pouring out everything i possibly could onto this poor woman in hopes that lightening the load i’d carried for so long might offer me some relief. she made it very clear to me from the first appointment that i did have a drinking problem and while she didn’t force me to quit, she definitely encouraged it. after building up a rapport with her, i felt a kind of obligation to at least try giving up alcohol. i remember the night i said was going to be my last time drinking. i told a close friend of mine who worked in the industry and i proceeded to get completely obliterated. he had to drive me home because i kept falling over. i was walking into my house and tripped going up a flight of 3 steps and very nearly landed on my face. what a mess.
after that night, i decided to stick to my word and go as long as i could without drinking. i made it two weeks, which was the longest i had abstained in probably like 10+ years. i relapsed one time on a friend’s birthday, when i basically just said “fuck it” and drank all day with my friends. i remember sitting alone on my front steps, drinking a heineken at like 3 am. i fucking hate heineken. i was drinking it and thinking about the day, how i had drank for over 12 hours and was STILL drinking. i was drinking this gross ass beer all alone after drinking all day. that is not normal. it was at that time that i decided that yeah, i am just completely incapable of having anything even resembling a healthy relationship with alcohol and that i had to just pack it in indefinitely.
i remember feeling terrified by the thought of never drinking again. it just seemed way too extreme. so i gave myself some like bullshit predetermined length of time, i think 6 months, and told myself that when that time was up, i would reassess. i knew alcohol just was not something i could have in my life right then. as time went on and i started to see improvements in virtually every aspect of my life, that set time of 6 months quickly flew out the window and i knew this had to be a forever thing.
the first couple weeks of sobriety were awful. just really, really harrowing. i also started taking zoloft and wellbutrin to treat the underlying depression and anxiety that i had been drinking away for the past god knows how long. the first couple weeks of antidepressants is also really awful. i remember feeling at the time like i had absolutely no control over my emotions. i would be perfectly fine one moment and the next i would be completely suicidal. i also remember feeling this constant undercurrent of anger. if you know me at all, you know that i am not an angry person whatsoever, so it was very strange to be feeling that so strongly. i remember feeling like i was being ripped apart from the inside out.
i think the first big thing i noticed was just the absence of hangovers and how much free time i now had to fill since i wasn’t drinking and nursing hangovers. the free time thing was legitimately really tough at first! weekends were spent alone now and i missed a lot of events because i just did not feel confident enough in my sobriety to make it out to those things. i had started running around that time, and that was like a huge self esteem boost. i was feeling good phsyically and beginning to become more stable emotionally, but i was just really alone. i was the only sober person i knew at the time. and that’s a really lonely place to be.
the biggest hurdle that i had to overcome during those very young days of my sobriety was being able to play shows sober. it was something i had so much anxiety around. i remember talking with my therapist at the time about what i could do at the show instead of drink, and trying to come up with a game plan with her about how i would go without boozing during the first couple shows i played sober. it was seriously hard as hell.
as a musician, you’re expected to arrive at the venue several hours before doors open to load in and soundcheck. after arriving, loading in and getting soundchecked, there is a whole lot of waiting around to play. you will likely be waiting several hours to play if you are not the opener, and only slightly less than that if you are opening. during those hours after soundcheck, i would usually start drinking. i’d keep it somewhat modest so that i could still play competently, but would begin drinking right after soundcheck all the way until the lights came up at the end of the show. then there’d inevitably be an afterparty at someone’s house where we’d drink until 4 or 5 in the morning. it’s just kinda what you do as a musician, or so i told myself, and it was my favorite thing at the time. suddenly i was a person that didn’t do that. i didn’t do any of that. i had to figure something else out. i tried sipping n/a beer, but it was disgusting and frankly quite triggering and also a total waste of empty carbs. i tried drinking tonic water and lime juice. i tried just drinking water. i tried sitting in the green room until we played. i tried a lot of different things and all of them were fucking hard and shitty and just not fun at all. it was actually really miserable! having to sit through bands you don’t care about while you’re stone sober is legitimately irritating. having to make small talk with a bunch of people whom you haven’t seen in awhile that came out to the show while you’re stone sober is fucking rough, especially if you have any kind of anxiety disorder. feeling like you’re just stuck in this loud ass venue while everyone around you is getting progressively more fucked up and you can’t leave because you’re going on stage soon is like…damn near torturous, especially for someone so early in their recovery!
it took lots of trial and error, but the only way i’ve found to play shows and not completely lose my cool is to go to load in and soundcheck, go home right after, do stuff around the house that i would normally do, leave my house late enough that i would arrive within 30 minutes of our slot and bring a bunch of la croix. after playing, immediately break down and pack up all of my gear, load it out into my car, say bye to at least one of my bandmates so they know i’m leaving, and then go home and get ready for bed. there have been times where i have legit made it into bed like 20 minutes after getting off the stage and it’s fucking beautiful. granted, this only works if the shows are here in grand rapids. if they’re out of town shows, things are much more difficult and i still don’t really have a rock solid approach for that. also: major props to team scheme at the pyramid scheme for always stocking some la croix in the green room whenever one of my bands is playing a show there. that is seriously the coolest and most thoughtful thing.
it’s been three years now that i’ve been sober and i think the thing i still struggle with the most is how sobriety has changed my relationship with music and with my friends. playing shows used to be my favorite thing in the world. i would look forward to them for weeks, sometimes months, and would always be so excited to see all my friends at the show, to play for everyone, and then get to just hang and party with everyone after. it was such a blast for me and those were some of the most fun nights of my life. now playing shows feels almost like a chore! it’s really very strange and i have been hoping all of this time that i’ve been sober that it would become fun again but it just isn’t right now. i look forward to the show up until the day of, then suddenly i’m like, “man i’d honestly just rather stay home and play video games” or whatever. it sucks. there are definitely exceptions, and i think the fact that playing shows has become so unpleasant for me has really led me to be more discerning about what types of shows i agree to play. i don’t think i should ever have to play mulligan’s or rocky’s for the rest of my fucking life. same goes for basically any bar like that. i did my time, i don’t have to do it anymore. like…my bands have all outgrown that. i’m done with that shit.
on the flip side, and this is only like a very recent development that occured within the past 6 months or so, i feel like my sobriety has led me to further explore music making on my own, particularly with hardware instead of strictly on a computer. in doing so, i have created kind of my own process and really found what things i like and what i don’t like, and have been slowly acquiring more gear to augment my vision. as i’ve been doing that, i’ve been working on incorporating it into all of the bands that i play in. it’s been kind of a slow and tricky process, but it feels like it’s becoming a little more established and like i’ve gotten more proficient with the equipment that i have. i’m now able to make a completely different sonic contribution to these projects that i have been apart of for years now and it feels really cool and rewarding. i love playing drums and i always will; it’s the most fun shit ever. but being able to contribue melodic and purely sonic elements to my bands has been such a cool and weirdly personal experience. each time it’s like i’m exposing this kind of weird, niche thing that i nerd out over all the time when i’m alone, and it still feels pretty vulnerable to share some of the things that i have come up with on my own. however, in opening up this part of myself and working it into the bands i play in, i have felt a slight rejuvination in how i view playing live shows. i’ve made it more interesting and challenging for myself and i think i’ve been slowly putting more on the line, which has made playing with my bands a little more interesting and appealing.
the weird part about sobriety is that you don’t just reach a certain point and it’s fine. it definitely does get easier as time goes on, but it never becomes completely easy per se. cravings still crop up regularly, i still romanticize my days of abuse, friendships that once centered around alcohol are still difficult to navigate, i still wrestle with leftover guilt and regret, i still struggle with social situations and often opt for isolation instead of putting myself in places that might be trigger my anxiety, and i still possess all the same thought patterns that fueled my drinking habits to begin with. after the initial honeymoon phase is over and you’ve really settled into your sobriety as a new way of life is when the real work begins, at least in my experience. that warm glow of pride, new found health and stability eventually fade and you’re presented with the kind of dull reality of your new life. it’s a strange thing. sobriety is just like many other aspects of life: it’s in a constant state of flux. it’s constantly evolving and taking on different shapes and manifesting itself in sometimes strange and uncomfortable ways within your life, ways that you likely never expected when you first vowed to live life in a new way. it’s true that everything becomes brighter, more beautiful and more profound. but it also becomes harder as you’re forced to cope with the harsh realities of everyday life without the aid of this wonderful, terrible substance you’ve come to rely on for so long.
28-Jul-2019 8:06:20 AM
i know this post has really bounced all over the place, and i honestly never intended for it to become as long as it has. but the deeper i plundered into my past, the more i felt like i had to share or uncover. i definitely plan on speaking more on here about my experience as a sober person and in many ways i feel like this post completely failed at doing what i had initially intended for it to do. but i also feel like it has laid the groundwork necessary for future observations i might hope to make on this new outlet i have created.
i don’t anticipate many posts on here being as deeply personal as this one, so thank you for sticking this one out with me if you’ve decided to read this whole post. i’m trying really hard to keep in mind that this is my space to share whatever i want about my life and to not overthink what people’s expectations or reactions may be with regard to what i share on here. feeling like i wasn’t completely able to share of myself in a way that felt true was what led me to creating this blog in the first place, so i’m trying really hard to keep that at the forefront of my mind.
if anything i said especially resonated with you or you would like to speak to me further about sobriety, don’t be scared to give me a shout at the e-mail address i’ve made available by clicking the “contact” link at the top left of this page. i’d be happy to talk with people about sobriety. if sobriety is something you’ve considered and you’re having hangups about committing, definitely reach out and we can bounce ideas off of each other. as difficult as it may be, it is absolutely worth all of the struggle and potential growing pains. it is virtually impossible for me to imagine myself successfully living the life i have created over the past 3 years by any other means. i finally feel like i’m (mostly) on top of everything instead of buried deep underneath it all. if you’re bored of surviving and want to start living, give sobriety a shot. all you really have to lose is missing out on some shit hangovers and some nights at the bar where literally the exact same shit happens every single night.