Constitutionally Capable

I haven't seen 3:00 AM in years.

There's a particular type of quiet which exists in the early hours of the morning. Some might call that time peaceful - a calming solitude - but I've always known different. 3:00 in the morning is not when you're alone but when you're alone with yourself, and that self might be a scary person.

I've filled those hours with prayers and I've filled them with erotic fiction - with music, with wildness. I've seen so many of those mornings and I've seen the hours pass; in my first year of college I'd wait, shaking and wiped clean, until the grocery store down the street opened at 6:00. I'd gather ingredients for a gourmet dinner to be cooked and served for my then-boyfriend, acting out a particular fantasy of bohemia and housewifery.

I was so young and already so exhausted. I wanted to be myself; I wanted to be someone else.

Later, 3:00 was around the time I'd be watching some tragic or artsy film - usually, "Brokeback Mountain," or, "Henry and June" - and I was alone with deep and enduring heartbreak. Secrets and lovemaking and doomed affairs and me, happily partnered, crying, feeling the after-effects of people and events I could barely remember.

And then came a different sort of 3:00 - the hangover which arrived too soon.

I knew true exhaustion, then. I knew an unquenchable thirst, standing in front of the fridge and sucking down whatever cold liquid existed therein, praying, yet again, to a God which might not be listening or might not be there at all. I promise, I'd mumble, desperate - I promise I won't do this again. 

Just let me live through the night. Tomorrow, I will do better.

I never did.

It's kind of funny, telling people that I'm a recovering alcoholic at my relatively young age. I've actually gotten some incredulous responses - how could you know, I've been asked, young as you are? I'll tell you, 3:00 in the morning let me know for sure. I've been drunk in the early hours since I was sixteen or so, and I was probably seventeen when I knew I had a problem. Then I really was young, staring in the mirror at my wine-blue lips, and I'd think, ah, the hell with it. I flirted with my mortality, bating it like a bear on a chain.

When I first got sober, I was pretty scared to admit publicly that I was an alcoholic. I lived with that secret for such a long time - nobody knew. Fifteen years of steady drinking - my tolerance ridiculously high since splitting pitchers of martinis when I was a teenager - meant that I didn't black out. I rarely got sick. No one was with me at 3:00; that time was my own. It was between me and God.

I never drank before or during work, and I never got in the car if I had been drinking. The idea of being around children while intoxicated was so repulsive to me, for some pretty obvious reasons, so I was sober and effective and safe. I don't say this to brag, or to say I was some sort of "good" alcoholic. Actually, I think it's another layer of this disorder - the rules we make as alcoholics which keep us from the truth.

But 4:30 in the afternoon always came - or whenever I returned home after work - and despite my 3:00 promises I found myself mixing one of my killer cocktails. I hated myself and hated myself and when I looked in the mirror I didn't see wine-blue lips anymore - I saw the person who introduced me to this life, and I hated myself all the more.

The only person who is responsible for taking a drink is me. I know that to be true. I also know that 3:00 in the morning is a shared time of shame, passed down, communicable. It's erotica, and sad movies, and things you can't remember - it's re-enactment.

I haven't seen that time in years, and I am beyond grateful. Sobriety is the best gift I've ever given myself and the people around me. I'm alive. Ha, I am so alive! I don't blur my edges anymore; I've had to learn to live with them. Life can be such a pain in the tush, but it is so, so much easier to heal that pain when I allow it to exist. I don't swallow it, pressing it down in layers of anger and despair and rye whiskey. I don't hide from it, and I don't hide it from others.

It's taken me a while to be okay with saying these words. I do feel a sort of responsibility, now, because I have some sense of what it feels like to be an active alcoholic, secretive and ashamed - I think my honesty might be important for someone else. Even if it's helpful for one person, just one, I've done something good. My honesty is a form of amends, I guess. I hid in the shadows. I've got to let the light in.

I could talk a little bit about the stigma against addicts, but I bet you know all about that already. I'll bet that, even if you're compassionate and open-minded, you have some notions of "weak will" and "self control." I'm not saying that to be mean, but non-addicts will never truly know what this feels like. It's not about taking a drink. It's not about the drink feeling good, because eventually it really doesn't. It's not about parties or happy hours or champagne toasts at weddings. If you are capable of putting a glass down then you just don't have this perspective. Count yourself lucky. I hope you'll be kind to those of us who have to put every glass down forever for the rest of our lives.

Some of us can't be open about this because of the stigma. Some don't want to. And that's okay, it's a personal choice, but maybe, reader, you should think about what you say and how you say it. We hear you.

I don't regret being an alcoholic - I think that's part of how I can speak so openly here - but I do regret the years I spent hiding. I regret feeling like I needed to have a drink in order to live. I regret the dishonesty. I regret the damage I did to my body. But I am so thrilled that I get to experience sobriety and that I get to know what it means. I'm not sad. I rejoice.

At 3:00 in the morning, I am asleep. I'm snuggled up next to my husband - and the next day, dinner will still get made, and I'll be that bohemian housewife. I'll read and write racy stories. I'll watch sad movies at appropriate times. I will be me, and I won't be anyone else. Now, I look at my reflection and marvel at this person in focus - this person un-blurred. I'll be in recovery every single day, and every day will hold this promise, this strength not of will but of love. Self-love. Love for everyone around me.     

I am an alcoholic. I'm in recovery, and that work will never end.

But now, I sleep just fine.