When Truth and Love Break Through

New sobriety has a unique shine.

The hours I passed at the "sober bar" while relapsing were innumerable. The place was gross — dirty and smelly with a haze of vape mist hanging in the unmoving air. It was a place with a bar that sold lots of expensive drinks, but none with alcohol. Kombucha, kava, Topo-Chico — the champagne of sparkling water. I would order a kombucha and sit on one of the gross couches with crumbs and what looked like toe jam between the cushions. There I would write. At least once during these sessions, I would grab my backpack and head to the bathroom. Already stoned, paranoia would have set in. My eyes would dart around the place anxiously scanning faces for anyone who might suspect me. I was almost certain, always, that people were watching me. They were wondering why I was carrying my backpack into the bathroom again. They were wondering why my eyes were so squinty and red.

In the bathroom, I closed and locked the door, already anticipating what had become ritualized: the taking of the oil. Back then it was marketed CBD oil, a 10,000 mg bottle. Although it didn't contain THC, it did contain "other phytocannabinoids" that were reportedly "non-psychoactive." And maybe that would have been true at the recommended dose, but I took at least six times that amount to feel stoned. But I wasn't telling myself that. I was keeping it a secret from everyone, including myself. Maybe the suspicion I imagined from everyone around me was a projection of my own deep-seated knowing and shame that I was not, in fact, sober.

This had happened to me after seventeen years of continuous sobriety and following a serious motorcycle wreck that crushed my pelvis, severed my right hand, and fractured my spine. While hospitalized, I was given a steady diet of opioid pain medication. But it wasn't those I relapsed on. In fact, I was so careful and vigilant while taking those to protect my sobriety, I insisted on finding a non-narcotic solution to switch to before going home. I didn't want to go home with a prescription for opiates. And I didn't. But the drugs woke something up in my body that had long been dormant. It gave me a taste for intoxication. It re-awakened the phenomenon of craving.

On top of that, I was still in a lot of pain and highly anxious, plagued by frequent panic attacks. I began looking for something, anything, to help me escape the reality of what I was feeling. Eventually, I found CBD oil, which didn't do anything for me at first. But I sought out more and more potent formulations of it until I found the winner — the one that, when I took sufficient amounts — would often, but not always, produce the desired effect. There was some magical formula having to do with what I'd eaten that day, how hydrated I was, and how my organs decided to metabolize the substance within the variables of that equation that would either leave me feeling some level of stoned anywhere from two to four hours after taking it or would do nothing.

I’m reminded of all this now for two reasons: (1) I just celebrated my shiny six years, and (2) I re-read How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz, a novel that really shouldn’t have reminded me of that time in my life but did.

When I got to one year of my new sobriety date I was heartbroken because it should have been nineteen. Then my friend gave me a medallion to mark the occasion, She said, “here, you have one whole shiny new year!” This made me happy, and I have been calling my new sobriety the shiny new sobriety ever since. And, it does have a unique shine, because I walk through the world more honestly in it. In that, I know how skilled I can be at lying to myself, and I am honest with myself about that. It’s a level of humility I couldn’t possibly stay sober without.

The novel by Angie Cruz is a personal favorite about Cara Romero, a woman from the Dominican Republic living in New York who, in her mid-50s, loses her job and is forced to navigate the challenges of unemployment, aging, and discrimination. On the surface, no, it’s not anything like my story. But it’s a story about survival, reinvention, raw and brave honesty, and the power of storytelling to heal.

The title, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, reflects Cara’s struggle to stay afloat in the face of life’s hardships — job loss, financial insecurity, family estrangement, and the challenges of aging as an immigrant woman. The phrase itself is a Spanish idiom, ahogarse en un vaso de agua, which means to feel overwhelmed by problems that may seem small or manageable to others. Cruz also explicitly connects the title to Cara's personal philosophy of survival. At one point in the novel, Cara expresses the idea that allowing herself to feel her emotions fully — crying when she needs to, acknowledging her pain, and letting things out — prevents her from being consumed by them. By facing her struggles head-on she avoids “drowning in a glass of water.”

At the end of my relapse I was in Boston. One morning I woke early and went out in the cold for a run. As my feet hit the ground again and again I resolved silently to myself, for the thousandth time, to stop taking the oil. But instead of believing this repeated lie in my head, I stopped running and felt tears burn my eyes while I said aloud in response, “I can’t stop. I’ve tried. I’m getting stoned every day. I’m not sober.”

I saw the coffee shop I sometimes went to after my run. Moving toward it, I noticed my wallet was missing. Shit. I retraced my steps, going back almost the whole length of the path, nearly doubling my distance. I asked person after person if they found a wallet. The credit cards were bad enough to lose, but they can be replaced. There was cash and my precious eighteen-year medallion in my wallet. I thought of my friend who purchased the eighteen-year medallion for me. I cried openly even as I asked myself why I was so sad about losing a medallion. I can just get another one. Then I heard it. My own voice in my head again, but in the second person.

You’re sad because you lost your sobriety. You never actually made it to eighteen years, my love.

The truth and love in those words that I addressed to myself finally broke through. I went into the bathroom of the coffee shop, closed the door, collapsed to the ground, and wept.

I was not able to stop crying. Every moment on the bathroom floor released more of the winged truth. There was no stopping it from taking to the air and making itself known and I was terrified. I was afraid of the judgment and the rejection. Afraid my girlfriend would leave me, and my friends would abandon me. But even more than that, I was afraid that I would have to stop using. I would have to walk through all of what came next without my medicinal crutch. I would have to go back to the beginning again. I would lose all that consecutive sober time I had, with such effort, put together day by day.

After some time, I pulled my body off the floor and sat on the toilet and felt a pressure build inside my head. I thought about how hard and humiliating it would be. Then, I stood and faced the mirror. “It’s OK,” I said aloud. “You can do this. Just tell the truth, you’re worth it. I’ll be right here with you, and I love you.”

My face, red and puffy, was, I realized only then, so dear. Sincerely, I felt love for my own dear face in the mirror. I realized this was a gift I received after living sober for seventeen years. It was this gift of self-love that conspired with the gift of desperation to deliver me back to my truth. And just like that, without a plan, I was done.

Ever since that day, celebrating my shiny new sobriety anniversary has always been a priority of mine. It’s a date that I hold dear as more important than maybe any other anniversary date. And that is because everything beautiful in my life is a direct byproduct of not only living sober and facing everything without a chemical buffer but also walking the proverbial walk. Living an ethical life by a set of principles that boils down to both being present and being of service. The amazing reality is that I’ve never walked it perfectly, but I have recommitted again and again.

Alcohol is but a symptom, and it takes many forms, as any mind-altering substance will do. The real problem centers in the mind. What is also true, and of course, because life is full of paradoxes, is that the real solution also centers there. Because a mind can be trained. And I have trained mine to live in solutions, so that walking through life awake and alive as an asset to my community no longer takes conscious effort. And I am aware that this is a colossal gift that I can and will lose if I fall back into old, lack-based, fear-driven ways. And so, I am deeply grateful to have spent my most cherished of anniversaries this week with my recovery community and then with my two favorite Libras (my fiancé and my youngest son) by the vast, maternal, comforting energy of the ocean.

Thank you. Thank you. A thousand times, thank you.