With the light what it was all I wanted to do was sleep. I went back to Stratford-upon-Avon, that sweet English town where I got sober ten years ago. I didn’t really get sober, it was more of a practice run. All month I thought about that first bottle of wine I’d open once we returned to mainland Europe. And then I sometimes dabbled with dry January again and quit for good in the fall of 2020.

On New Year’s Day we sat in a restaurant waiting for the server and I looked at the drink specials, something with prosecco (hardly alcohol even), but when I hinted maybe we could delay dry January by a day my wife said no, it starts today. January is a good month for quitting or starting new things, that two-faced Roman god of doorways and transitions, looking forward and back.

We rented a small, two-bedroom house for two weeks right near the center of town. To get there, the owner said you just cut through the gap in Shakespeare’s garden, and pointed. I loved being surrounded by Shakespeare. Even his face on tourist buses or coffee mugs. The place felt alive with art and drama. The river was the same as it ever was, the mornings streaked with pink and walks to the nearby dog park.

Getting sober in a place like that can be hard if you’re surrounded by old pubs and English beer. So I started drinking non-alcoholic beer and it was awful. It didn’t taste like beer or anything at all, yet it served as a necessary stand-in each afternoon at the same time. I trudged across town to the Tesco and stocked up. It never got easier but I got through it.

When I quit for good I kept to the NA daily routine and micro dosed cannabis a few times a week, and did so for a year. It was a real mental knot I had to undo, the idea I could never drink again. My mind kept bringing me back to this idea I could. Maybe I wasn’t a drunk, maybe this next time it would be different. Maybe just once a year, on my birthday, I could allow myself a drink. How funny would that be, to drink just once a year?

I read a book by Allen Carr, Quit Drinking Without Willpower. My aunt told me about it. The book uses logic, repetition, and an almost hypnotic approach to change your beliefs about alcohol. I think I read it at the right time, after I’d been sober for months but faltering. It was the idea of going back to Europe sober that was impossible for me to imagine and made me reconsider sobriety.

But I had to accept I never could drink again even though a very small part of me held out hope that one day when I was old and it didn’t matter anymore, maybe then I could. I pictured the scene, some old shack in the mountains of France by a valley with a wood fire and some cheese. Then I would open a good bottle of wine.

But actually, I wouldn’t. Over time I had to believe that life could be better sober. It was a binary thing, no mixing. I sometimes felt sorry for myself or resentful. I never wondered again if it would be okay, or doubted my decision to quit. But I felt ashamed going to meetings because I didn’t want to identify as a drunk, or feel like I’d failed. That’s the part I’m still working on and will take up again this January.

I woke to the sound of Paul Simon in my head, still crazy after all these years. Met an old lover and we talked about the old times and we had ourselves some beers, oh…still crazy after all these years.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, dry January, journal writing, Memoir