California sobriety journal

I enjoyed my last adult beverage on November 24th, 2024. It was a $17 slushie at Miranda Lambert’s Mexican restaurant and bar in Nashville. We went in because the decor looked cool. It was so overpriced and mediocre that I asked the bartender whether the mix was off. It wasn’t.

“It took years for me to feel like I wasn’t losing more than I was gaining by staying sober in all contexts,” Laura McKowen recently wrote.

If I agreed, I doubt I’d still be (California) sober.

The hardest time for me, thus far, was Rob’s work holiday dinner.

As I remember it, I most enjoyed drinking alcohol in three settings, listed in no particular order:

1. When I was also doing cocaine (it’s science!)

2. At a fancy and/or themed cocktail bar in a sexy dress with someone sexy and interesting

3. Before and during a fancy dinner

Between November 24th, 2024 and today, no one has offered me cocaine (come on, Alabama friends. Step it up). I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I have been to a fancy and themed cocktail bar in a sexy dress with someone sexy and interesting sans alcohol. Now I’ve also sat through a fancy dinner.

It was hard watching most of the other diners (could have been just half) receive their beautiful cocktails. I remembered the first sip, citrus oil on the rim. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the Manhattan across the table. When its owner mentioned vodka and I saw the not-cherry at the bottom I realized, with horror, that the perfect Manhattan I’d been eye fucking for half an hour (she still had a glass of wine) was probably some kind of cosmopolitan.

If that ain’t a good-enough analogy for my experience thus far with (California) sobriety, I don’t know what is.