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It seems that I'm a permanent resident in the pear wiggler, but I've managed one year of sobriety in spite of it all. My sober anniversary was this past October. It's fucking crazy, man. I still can't really believe it. The short of it is, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am immensely greatful.

The long of it... where do I start?

The long of it

Newton's first law of motion comes to mind: An object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest, unless acted upon by outside forces.
Before landing in rehab, I had been at rest for a long, long time. Now that it's been a year, and I've built that sustained momentum, it feels like inertia is helping me coast along. Put more simply, the longer I stay sober, the easier it is to stay that way. But I know better than to rely on inertia alone. While I was in rehab, my mother remarked something along the lines of "I hope you'll get better from this soon", implying that my addiction was an ailment that could be cured like any other, like the common cold. There are those that 'recover' from addiction, in the sense that they can return to a use that is not disordered. But those people are by far the exception, and I know myself well enough to know that I shouldn't try and bet on that. Hence, I've come to accept that my addiction will never leave me; It will stay with me for the rest of my life. "Recovery" is a lifelong commitment. This is why inertia alone is not enough. Complacency is easy, but it will come with great cost.

This kind of commitment was far beyond my scope of thought in early sobriety, but now that I have more time under my belt, it's not as overwhelming. Similar to my addiction, my ADHD will never leave me, my identity as a queer POC will never leave me; I have lived my entire life thus far reconciling with the difficulties that these entail. What's one more to add to the pile? When I frame it this way, it's not as overwhelming. I spent a long time scorning the hand that I was dealt, but now that I know the cards better, I'm not as resentful.

I have no idea how to play poker, or most card games, by the way.

I mentioned it in a previous entry, but it bears repeating - I did not go into rehab with the intention of achieving sobriety. All I wanted was a reprieve from my miserable life, a misery I had partially constructed myself. Unlike a lot of people in "the rooms"¹, I was not under a stay of commitment. I had no hang ups with the law², and I was under no obligation to the court or to my family. I had entered rehab voluntarily, and I was free to leave at any time. But I stayed - it's hard to say no to 3 square meals a day, after living on canned tuna and rice for so long. Ultimately, my reasons for going didn't matter. Going to rehab, even if it was for the "wrong" reason, was enough. I'd known for the longest time that I needed help, I needed to get sober, but it wasn't something I was ready for. More importantly, sobriety was something I couldn't concieve of. Going to rehab and entering the rooms gave me a point of reference, and with that I could start conceptualizing. A picture of a life lived sober started to form in my mind, slowly, piece by piece. Another important piece - rehab put me into contact with a wide variety of people I never would've been in community with otherwise. For the first time in a long time, I was able to get outside of myself, out of my own head, in earnest. At some point during my stay, I thought, "Sobriety is actually kind of cool... I guess I can try it." And here we are, over a year later. Doesn't time fly?

I got a cute handmade chip for my 1 year :^) I also got the official AA chip, but my friend made this one, so I like it better.

It's commonly said that the opposite of addiction is connection; I found that to be the case for me. I was not a social drinker - I went out of my way to drink in isolation. I really only went to bars when the liquor store was closed, and I did so begrudgingly. I have lived much of my life in self-imposed isolation until now. Especially in the year leading up to rehab; I was effectively a hermit, a NEET if you will. Rehab (and by extension recovery at large) was difficult not just because of the obvious sobriety pains, but because I was forced out of a solitary mode of existence. Isolating is not feasible when you are locked in a facility with 30 to 40 other addicts. Nor is it feasible when you live in a sober house, or attend an outpatient program. These changes were difficult for me; after a lifetime as a self-described hermit, I suddenly found myself surrounded by people all the time. It was overhwelming, and immensely tiring. But I stuck it out, and I continue to stick it out, and I'm glad for it. I would not have gotten to a year sober without making such a drastic 180 shift - the seeds of recovery could not have germinated otherwise.

To illustrate the importance of community, a little story: It was November 9th when we got our first snowfall of the season. It was late at night. Fat fluffy snow flakes, the kind you'd find in a snowglobe. I was absolutely miserable and in tears, my morale crushed by the sheer weight of poverty. My lawsuit was weighing on me, as were all the other things. The snowfall punctuated my misery. It was past midnight, so I hesitated to call or text anyone. I opted to go outside for a morose, sad-sap smoke. When I went downstairs, I saw that my housemate had just gotten home from work. She started shooting off about her day and the snow, and gave me a tempting proposition: "Wanna go smash the pumpkins on the backsteps?" Suddenly, I didn't have time to sit with my sadness. I had pumpkins to smash!

Crime club!

This is the gift of sobriety: smashing frozen halloween pumpkins with baseball bats in the parking lot of a church. A crude but joyous ritual to usher in the holiday season. Also, just plain fun.

Our most recent addition to the house is the biggest "gym bro" type I've seen since entering the queer sober community. Loud and personable, used to work in sales and you can tell. He's not at all the type of person I'd choose to befriend, much less live with, but that's the beauty of sobriety. Variety is the spice of life, and all that. When he first moved into the house, he asked me a question: "What's your biggest takeaway from sobriety so far?" (paraphrasing). I paused.
My immediate answer was community. It's the most obvious answer, especially given my history as a depressed loner. Community was the biggest thing that kept me in treatment. It's what keeps me sober today. They say it takes a village, and that doesn't only apply to child rearing. I go to 12 step meetings, and I've personally been half-hearted so far in working the steps, but for me the value of these meetings isn't in the programming - it's in the community. I'm a secretary for my homegroup meeting³, and that commitment keeps me accountable to my sober peers, and they in turn are accountable to me. It keeps me in the rooms, and out of oblivion. Addiction is selfish⁴. It's desparate self-soothing at the cost of everything and everyone else. Community is the antidote to that, and going to meetings, 12 step or not, facilitates that.

Community was my immediate answer to my housemate's question, but I thought about it for a while, and thought of another one. Learning to sit with bad feelings - from trivial annoyance to outright misery. I can't drink those feelings away anymore. I wouldn't want to at any rate - but what does that leave me with? Again, I have community now that I can fall back to, it's what they're there for. And I do take advantage of this. Something as simple as hitting up the group chat, texting a friend, smashing pumpkins, is indespensible when you want nothing more than to explode and paint the walls. But sometimes no one is online, or my friends are busy. There are other ways to cope yes, we learned all about that in treatment, that's like Rehab 101. I do use my coping skills - but more often, I'm opting to just sit and feel it. This is not the wallowing that I've imbibed in for so much of my life. There's comfort in wallowing, but there is no comfort in - whatever it is I've been doing. There is value there.
Forgive me for cheeseballing, but: My humanity is the greatest gift given to me. I believe that sincerely. The good and the bad that inevitably comes with it. The human condition is miserable, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. And so, allowing myself to feel bad - recognizing these emotions and sitting with them instead of dismissing them or exacerbating them - has been invaluable. Miserable, but necessary. And in doing so, I am embracing the gift of my humanity.

I am also a masochist, but that is neither here nor there.

You too can make big life changes by internalizing goofy fucking memes.

That's another thing - I'm sober, and things have largely turned up for me, but life is still miserable. Sorry for the sudden sour turn, but it's true!

The state of my beautiful chungus life

My biggest frustrations now are material, financial in nature. I'm finally able to hold down a job, but it's part time and it doesn't pay well. I live paycheck to paycheck and regularly donate at the plasma center to supplement that. This is a compromise I've accepted - I get to stay at a job that I don't hate, and because it's part time, I have more free time. I was lucky to land my current position - working a desk job that isn't demoralizing, where I'm not seething at the thought of clocking in every morning? That is a luxury to me. But this isn't sustainable in the long run. I have debts I need to pay. I have worldly desires, like cheese and nail polish. I don't want to be in sober housing forever. I really, really miss having my own place, and more importantly, having Katrina with me. Even with all of this, I'm holding off on finding a job elsewhere for as long as I can, because I know the alternative isn't pretty - I would likely just come up with another retail or food service job, and I don't want that. Anything but that. I've done my time in those trenches, and I don't want to go back. I've grown a lot through sobriety, but I don't trust that I'm strong enough to withstand the service industry trenches without going back to drinking. It's not a bet I'm willing to take right now.

Then there's the world outside of me, the world I inhabit. ICE has been active in my area lately. My neighbors are being taken left and right. They tried to take a man on my street, just a few blocks away. I could hear the commotion of it as it was happening, but I didn't realize what had happened until I heard about it later. Thank god for community, that my neighbors fought to keep him safe - ICE left that day without detaining him. I feel fear ever day I step outside of my house, not so much for myself but for my neighbors. Many of them are regulars at my work. I see them everyday, know and greet them by name, have a rapport with them. It terrifies me to think that one day they will no longer be there - not because of regular circumstance, like death or a move, but because they were taken. It terrifies me. It fills me with dread.

It's all so much, it would drive any person to oblivion - to drinking, drug use, any other maladptive practice. But as I've discussed, I've made a commitment - to myself, and to my peers. I have to stay sober. I get to stay sober. Besides, I have other vices now - harm reduction, baybee. It's not ideal, but 4 cups of coffee and ~5 cigarettes a day helps keep the oblivion at bay. We do what we can. Maybe one day I can embrace a life entirely without vice, but I'm not there yet - nowhere near it. And that's okay.

Closing thoughts

I'll leave you with a reading reccommendation. I recently read Impossible People, a comic by Julia Wertz. Its sub-title specifies it as a recovery story, and it's partly that, but it's more Wertz's coming of age story, chronicling her 20's. Still, the recovery aspect is there, and it's nice to read stories from people in recovery who aren't white men. Especially in comics; it's possible that I just haven't looked around enough, but I've read a shit ton of comics, and before reading Impossible People I couldn't recall a single comic about recovery from women, much less queers of color like myself. There's Nagata Kabi's My Alcoholic Escape from Reality, which is a good read, but it's decidedly about addiction, not recovery. The manga even comments on a cultural difference between Japan and the west: Japan does not concieve of alcohol as a drug, as we commonly do in the west. Hence, why Nagata's work, as poignant as it is, is not a recovery story.⁵ Stories about addiction and recovery are both valuable, but it's important to make that distinction, I think.

At any rate, it saddens me that our stories are underrepresented. I cannot fully relate to a white mans recovery story, and I have to imagine I'm not alone in that. This post is long enough without me harping on about the importance of representation, I'm sure you're well aware of that already.

On that note, I should probably get to working on that rehab zine I said I'd do a while ago. "Be the change you wanna see" and all that. In the mean time, if you have recs for stories about recovery, be they comics or not, please hit me up! Thanks for reading along, and I'll see you in the new year.