(Not a relapse. Not a romanticization. Just real. With jokes.)
I don’t miss the hangovers. I don’t miss the shame. I don’t miss waking up at 2:47 a.m. with the spins, a raging thirst, and the creeping suspicion that I may have told someone at the bar that I was fluent in French. (I am not.) But I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss it sometimes. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m in crisis. It means I have a memory. And a nervous system that still thinks vodka is a coping mechanism.
Sobriety is great, don’t get me wrong.
Clarity!
Healing!
Self-respect!
But also… it’s really fucking boring sometimes. Like “Wow, I really just raw dogged a Tuesday evening with my feelings,” boring. And there are parts of drinking I miss that no one really talks about. Like how it made me feel like I belonged, even if I was three seconds away from crying in the bathroom. Or how a glass of wine gave me the illusion that I was effortlessly sexy and French, instead of just overstimulated and holding in a scream.
I miss the rituals. The dopamine of pouring a drink at 5:01 like I earned it by surviving emails and capitalism and my own inner monologue. I miss pretending I was relaxing when I was actually suppressing all human emotion. I miss clinking glasses with other exhausted women and acting like we were celebrating something when really, we were just coping with how much it costs to exist as a person in the world.
Drinking was like emotional Febreze. It didn’t fix anything, but it made the trauma smell seasonal. And I miss that fake, chemically-engineered relief. Because when you’re sober, relief takes work. You have to process feelings instead of drowning them in a hard seltzer. You have to feel things in real-time instead of blacking out and unpacking them three years later in therapy. You have to learn how to sit still with your own chaos like it’s a screaming toddler you’re not allowed to sedate. And sometimes? That sucks.
Especially when everyone else is “just having one,” and I’m over here like, “Cool, I’ll just drink this LaCroix and have an existential crisis, no big deal.” Here’s the kicker, though: I don’t want to drink again. I know how that story ends. But missing it? That’s real. It doesn’t mean I want to go back. It means I’m still healing. It means I’m still grieving.
And grief is a weird bitch. It sneaks in sideways—like a song on the radio you didn’t know you remembered, or the smell of their old shampoo in someone else’s cart at CVS. One minute you’re fine, the next you’re ugly crying in the middle of personal care. Sobriety is not always a spiritual awakening. Sometimes it’s just sitting on your couch at 8:12 p.m. with a water and the overwhelming awareness of your own aliveness.
And I miss drinking sometimes.
And I still choose not to.
Both can be true.
Both are true.
And I think saying that out loud might actually be the most sober thing I’ve ever done.