The first sip
Last night I had the first sip of alcohol in nearly five years after I put down the bottle following decades of alcoholism.
Wait. Don’t freak. Everything’s fine. I’m not taking up drinking again. I had one sip.
Are you calm again? I ask semi-humorously because I know for certain that most of you reading this had an instant reaction. You assumed I’d “fallen off the wagon,” and that I was going to treat you to a well-written and amusing but self-destructive justification for taking up my addiction again.
You had that reaction because of what I think of as “alcoholic superstition.” It’s nearly universal, at least in the U.S. Almost everyone thinks the following:
“A true alcoholic can never, ever have even a sip of the stuff. It has magical properties for alcoholics, probably chemical. Just one sip after abstinence will instantly start the drinking all over again. Like Alcoholics Anonymous says, an alcoholic must accept that he is completely powerless over alcohol. It is the only way he can stay sober.”
Bullshit. I do not accept that I am completely powerless over alcohol because I’m not. I don’t accept it because it’s not true.
I have power over alcohol; I proved it last night by taking one sip and stopping.
Now, you, alcoholic reader, may believe that you are powerless over alcohol and that you must never have another sip. If this is your belief, and it has worked for you, I’m very glad and I want you to keep doing what keeps you healthy. I can’t be any more clear than this: I am not telling you what to do, criticizing you, telling you that you personally are a different person than you say you are, and I’m not trying to get you to do or think anything. So, do your part, please, and refrain from personalizing this essay.
Whatever keeps a person from the drug or drink that ruined his life is something I want to see that person keep doing. Here is to your health and sobriety.
But I am me, and more, I don’t believe I’m the only former drunk like me. I think we’re just not socially allowed to challenge AA dogma. Well, I challenge dogmas, and to AA dogma, I point to my one sip last night and say, “I refute you thus.”
Why did I do it? For a few reasons.
I was out celebrating at a fancy restaurant with my friend, and it was her first glass of this particular kind of red wine. I wanted to know what she thought of it, being a non-wine-drinker. I wanted to compare what it tasted like to me to her experience, and to be able to describe to her where that wine sits in the category “red wine of this type.”
I wanted to prove to myself that I am not powerless over alcohol; that when I made the choice to quit cold turkey in 2020 that I really had made that choice out of my full free will. It turns out that I did make that choice out of my own full free will. How do I know that? Because that sip of red wine was all I wanted. I had zero desire to drink a whole glass and it did not occur to me to stop at the liquor store on the way home.
It’s “tomorrow” as I write this. No booze cravings. No desire to go back to my previous two-bottles-of-wine-at-least-per-night.
Like so many addicts, my baseline level of anxiety and insecurity is markedly elevated compared to a “normal” person. The lure of a drug to soothe the emotions is always there for me. And, I’m not entirely sober—I vape marijuana late at night before I go to sleep. I am thus not entirely free of using chemicals to tamp down my anxiety. Yes, it means I haven’t completed all the work and fully self-actualized.
Yes, I’m still weak.
But my marijuana use is neither so heavy as my alcohol use was, nor does it give me a hangover, nor does it compromise me the next day. Great? No, it’s not great. Just as bad? No, and not by a long shot.
When I quit drinking, I did it because I was sitting on the floor having a panic attack on a Wednesday for no reason other than that I’d poisoned myself again the night before with the equivalent of 10 drinks. For some reason, that day was the day. The fear, humiliation, and self-disgust “hit different” that morning, and I said “never again. I don’t want this in my life anymore and it has to go.”
That day, I fully understood the depth of my problem, how it had caused me to behave, the things and relationships I had ruined because of it, and that there was only one way to stop this. And there was only one person who could stop it, and that I was entirely, 100 percent responsible for the choice I’d made to keep drinking. It was all me.
Then I realized that I truly, foundationally, did not want to feel that way ever again. I meant it this time.
So I stopped. Luckily for me, the physical withdrawal was bearable, whereas I know for some others it’s neither bearable nor survivable without help. No, it was not fun at all; it was a wretched week. But it ended.
Since then, I haven’t taken a single drink, and I can count the number of times I white-knuckled it on one hand. No, I haven’t had to battle not drinking. It was much easier than I imagined (though I know that it may not be that way for you).
Why? Because I made that decision all the way down to the root. I was scared acutely, yes, but I wasn’t only scared. If I had been only scared, I would have taken another drink as soon as I rationalized my fear away.
This time, I meant it. I genuinely wanted sobriety from alcohol more than I wanted the comfort from alcohol. That was the difference from before.
So, no, I don’t consider myself having “fallen off the wagon” by taking a sip of red wine last night. Because I didn’t fall off the wagon. I affirmed that I’m snugly in the driver’s seat confidently in the wagon, and I’m in charge of where it goes.
This is going to open a can of worms but it needs to be discussed: the AA model has undoubtedly helped millions, but that particular tenet leaves a lot of unfulfilled potential on the table. People never truly heal. They survive, but don't recover. Identifying as permanently limited flies directly in the face of the idea of humans being a divine creation, capable of infinite possibilities. If a person doesn't believe in divine creation, then fine, but that's another basic tenet of 12-step models: belief in a higher power. That makes the two concepts incompatible.
Experience tells me that 12-step programs, for as useful as they are in symptom treatment, have also deeply damaged our cultural psyche, leading to a societywide embrace of external control locus for almost everything. It may temporarily resolve the symptom (substance use) but it cannot possibly address the root cause - the underlying problem - that begat the symptom.
Admitting powerlessness may be alluring due to popular belief, but in my view it only leads to excuse making and a limiting of one's own potential.
Besides, as you say, it is factually untrue. If someone is powerless over a thing, then they cannot possibly say no to it. The very premise is a fallacy on its face.
I'm glad you wrote this, even though you're going to open a can of worms. The idea of alcoholism as a binary state, total abstinence or unrestrained indulgence, is one of those things that is just accepted as unquestionable received wisdom, but is total bullshit. For anyone who doubts him -- I was the friend, and we have a very strong and healthy friendship, complete with permission to confront each other and say hard things. We don't have to always agree (and we don't) but we absolutely always hear each other out until the other feels fully heard. If there was a shadow of a doubt in my mind, I'd have played that card and really questioned him. Not only did I not, it didn't even occur to me to do so. Josh is simply not a drinker anymore, period.