Alcohol Was My Worst Best Friend
Yesterday was the four year anniversary of my sobriety from alcohol. Like getting free from a bad relationship, I can look back now and see that alcohol was my worst best friend. But back then, I thought she was my best best friend.
By the time I quit when I was 32 years old I had been drinking alcohol for 18 years. I remember the first time I got tipsy and my new best friend whispered in my ear, “You are soooo magical, Cindy.” And I believed her, because it was (and still is!) true. That’s how she hooked me, but it was the last true thing she ever said.
Over the next decade we developed quite a relationship. My ‘best’ best friend - alcohol - told me all kinds of things I wanted to hear. She told me that I was attractive, that my style was cool, that I was funny, that people wherever I went were looking at me, admiring me, maybe even a little obsessed with me. She told me I could be friends with anyone I wanted to in the bar. She told me I could date all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, especially the unavailable ones. She showed me how gregarious and loving and generous I could be. But the one thing she didn’t show me was the true cost of these ego-boosts.
You see, they don’t call alcohol ‘spirits’ for nothing. Alcohol is indeed the distillation of plants, and therefore has a plant spirit within her. This spirit, however, happens to be very tricky, very deceptive, and very very expensive for the services she provides.
For every time I was ‘funny’ at a party, the knife edge of my joke would cut someone to the core. For every time I was indiscriminately ‘generous’, I would get a little resentment parasite alerting me to how ungrateful people are. For every time alcohol told me I was cool, my iciness would push away someone’s friendship, usually the kind nerds whose friendship I desperately needed. For every time I bathed in the imagined light of someone supposedly obsessing over me, I missed a chance to actually see them, to see a friendly person standing in front of me offering their own authentic presence. For every friendship and relationship that I thought was mine for the taking, serious personal boundaries were breached and it cost me my reputation as a respectful and thoughtful person.
The greatest trick alcohol ever played on me, however, was to introduce me to The Blame Game. I could feel the cost of these things coming out of my emotional bank account. I could see the self-worth balance being drawn down to zero and then going into the red. But when I brought these ledgers to alcohol she cleverly showed me how the other people had done this to me.
She’d say, “Cindy if you look at it from this angle, you’re hilarious and they can’t take a joke. You’re so cool they’ll never get to your level so how could they understand why you have a better party to go to? And Cindy, they’re just too insecure to admit how much they obsess over you and think about you every minute of the day and how you’re actually the center of their universe. I promise you Cindy, they owe you the apology. And the truth is you’ve been wronged.”
The last few years of my relationship with alcohol were bad. I hung on those two belief systems - that I was owed something and that I had been grievously wronged - like they were gonna save my life when actually they were cinderblocks on a chain attached to my foot while I was trying to swim the river. I clung to these stories, and to alcohol, like they were my only friends, like they were the capital-t Truth, like they were my Gods, like they would actually save me from my misery, totally ignoring the fact that they were creating my misery.
In other words, I became what they call spiritually bankrupt. I was an idolator, worshipping false idols and wondering why the crops wouldn’t grow.
But one day in 2016 I was introduced to plants in a new way. I learned about plant spirits and began taking classes at Apothecary Tinctura on 6th Ave in Denver. The living God - who today I call Spirit - opened the door to a new spirituality and showed me that while I personally was at a dead end, that didn’t mean Spirit ever was.
I was introduced to the language of plant spirits, of working with plants through various books like Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm and podcasts like The Plant Path of Evolutionary Herbalism, of communing with plants using my heart and body. I read Holly Whitaker’s blog Hip Sobriety start to finish and the one thing I remember is her AMAZING tea collection. I began to see that there were hundreds - thousands! - of plants on this planet that, rather than deceive me, wanted to actually help me. These plants I now work with - yarrow, cacao, roses, lavender, lobelia, homegrown sage and sweetgrass, licorice, and more - would only tell me the truth about myself.
And so, I ended my relationship with alcohol, with the most deceptive plant spirit I have ever known. Slowly but surely, my sanity returned and I was able to see the strange castle of deceit I was living in. With the loving support of many people and plants and one sweet kitty, I began to soften, to grow patient, to learn kindness, to clean up my own messes, to bless instead of curse, to honor, to begin things slowly and to end them gently. To love, to live life on life’s terms, to let relationships come to me and land easily in my heart insted of grasping them with desperation.
Today I have a wonderful loving partnership, a warm home filled with plants and flowers, and I eat at least a few vegetables every day. All my friendships are peaceful and supportive and we prioritize supporting each other’s lives. I pay my bills on time, I go see childrens movies for fun, I laugh at dad jokes. And I talk to the plants all the time.
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So many people I know still have such a complicated and painful relationship with alcohol. The pandemic only exacerbated this, as multiple studies have shown. If this is you, or if this email touched you in some way, know that you are not alone. Know that you can reach out to me without fear of judgment, reprisal, exposure, or condemnation. Many of my clients and I talk about our relationships with alcohol and other deceptive substances. We also talk about how to bring in more support from plants and animals who love us and who serve Spirit through supporting us on our journey. No matter where you are on your journey with alcohol, I’m proud of you, I love you, and you’re doing an amazing job.
