Drunk-ish by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

Author:Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

I ran out after those six and I wondered if I’d even proven my boozing bona fides. It seemed horrific to me to see it right there on paper, but if compared to other people’s stories, would my stuff seem tame?

When it comes to hard-core drunk-a-logues, it can seem like a dick-measuring contest: Oh, you got trashed and fell out of a third-story window? That’s gnarly, dude, but I drank a gallon of Jim Beam and woke up three days later in jail because I burned down my house trying to bake Totino’s pizza rolls in the oven.

For a long time, I could only see the differences in my drinking compared to others’ stories. I was obsessed with the Nevers: I never got a DUI; I never lost custody of a child; I never got arrested; I never broke a bone, went to rehab, got a divorce—the list went on. I teetered on the edge of believing my drinking could be defined as alcoholic, but couldn’t quite get there.

When I was about six months sober, I listened to a guy with unruly white hair share at a meeting about being a “real alcoholic.” He described his years of heroin addiction, sleeping in an abandoned van for months, and his twenty-seven stays in rehab. This was all fascinating—I was here for all the crazy stories! But then he said, “Unless you’ve been to rehab at least a dozen times, you probably aren’t an alcoholic.” The more he talked, the clearer it became that I was in the wrong place. My brain was on fire with the idea that if this guy was a real alcoholic, it was likely that I wasn’t an alcoholic.

Maybe I was just a problem drinker. I wondered if there was a different set of meetings for people like me, people who just drank a little too much.

I called Betsy right when the meeting was over to share my good news: “I think I may have overreacted to my whole drinking-and-driving thing,” I said. She didn’t jump in right away, so I continued. “This guy said that if I haven’t been to rehab a dozen times, I’m not an alcoholic. Well, guess what! I’ve never been to rehab one time.” Personally, I felt this was a mic-drop moment but Betsy was still quiet. Maybe she was realizing she also wasn’t an alcoholic?

Finally she spoke. “Is your life better when you aren’t drinking?” Hmm. I had to think about that. There were times I really missed drinking but, yeah, I was relieved to never worry I was too drunk to drive; I liked waking up without a hangover; I felt proud that I was a sober mom.

“Yes. My life is better,” I said, truthfully.

“Then does it matter?” Point Betsy.

But despite this, for months I still obsessed on the idea that I might not officially be an alcoholic.

I was stuck.

I got asked to lead a meeting when I was about nine months sober, and I shared about how I just wasn’t convinced I was an alcoholic but I knew I didn’t want to drink.

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