Beyond the Bottle: How Embracing Sobriety Unlocked My Creative Potential

I chased escapes at the bottom of a bottle from the sixth grade up to about two years ago.

I turn 50 in two weeks.

It wasn’t the consumption of a casual drinker; I was a seasoned professional.

I used to think, and maybe it’s true, I’ve thrown up, driven drunk, or blacked out more times than the average person has been intoxicated in their entire life.

I’ve experienced the shakes from not drinking, the shakes from drinking, and the occasional blood in my cough, for which I knew more alcohol was the cure.

I’ve experienced feeling like I had holes in my mind and watched helplessly as simple actions and thoughts slipped through them.

But, the positive outweighed the negative by a massive margin. I needed the escape, and I craved it; those shakes told me so.

I needed, if even for a temporary moment, and if even not truly real, to leave my skin behind and be someone, anyone, other than who I was.

I didn’t really like the version of myself I’d created, I pretended I did, but I didn’t, so I ran to the bottom of a bottle.

Those shakes weren’t only physiological; they were mental.