Cheers to a (California) sober 2025

I know I recently focused this newsletter in on gender and politics. It’s been an amazing move for me. And yet, this newsletter is also my personal diary (example). Some entries relate more closely to gender and politics than others.

This one really isn’t very gendered. I could try to make it moreso, but instead I’ll just give the people who only want gender a heads up so y’all have more time for

Celeste Davis

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Ruth Whippman

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Alice Evans

or

Rose Hackman

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Ossiana Tepfenhart

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I recently discovered Feed Me and am enjoying more than I expected, based on the subject-matter. Writing is important, as it turns out.

It’s how I learned about gift guides. It’s also where I discovered that Gen Z women are increasingly sober curious.

Well, it’s not just Gen Z women. This elder Millennial woman is also going (California) sober for 2025 (weed and psychedelics are still okay). My booze break is supposed to last a year. It might last longer.

I told my mom about my New Year’s Resolution. She, very mom-like, asked if something had happened. Like my decision to divorce, there was no one moment when I knew it was time. Nor is there one, simple reason.

However, I regret to inform you, mom, that there’s more to the story than I conveyed over FaceTime. And it involves pegging and cocaine. I’m sorry.

The last pivotal moment that I can remember clearly happened after a very enjoyable evening drinking and doing lines with friends.

It was time for bed but I couldn’t sleep. I was scared to take my sleeping pill. I’ve been scared to mix uppers and downers since a friend told me chasing cocaine with Xanax had killed some of his friends.

Noticing my dilated pupils, I held off until they went back to normal.

I was very much still awake 45 minutes later. Then my heart started racing. Freaked out, I checked my watch app. My heart rate hit 103.

With nothing to do but breathe out longer than I breathed in and try not to have a heart attack and die — or, worse, inconvenience everyone — I had time to think.

I thought about how my friend kept buying shots and how I didn’t really want to be any drunker. Live music and people-watching on the Nashville strip were plenty entertaining.

I remembered my post-girls’ trip hangover. I dragged so much ass while everyone else happily packed up and enjoyed brunch.

I remembered catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. He reminded me that I was the first person to peg him. He told me how meaningful it was that I gave him the strap we’d used so he could use it with local partners.

I must have looked confused. He asked if I remembered.

Hazily, I admitted. What I didn’t say was that I felt embarrassed about a previous conversation where this man’s name wasn’t on the mental list I’d used to count how many men I’d pegged. Until he brought it up, I’d memory-holed the entire beautiful experience.

I grew up understanding that people quit drinking after they admitted their lives had become unmanageable and that they had a disease called alcoholism.

In my case, at this time, it’s more a matter of me suspecting that, on net, alcohol takes more from my life than it gives. I believe that a year without booze is very likely to be more interesting than a year with it.

I grew up understanding that people quit drinking after they deeply regretted the things they’d done when they were drunk.

Women who drink too much are supposed to have a lot of one-night stands they regret. That’s half right, in my case. They’re supposed to get themselves into dangerous situations. I’ve been very lucky.

For me, it’s less that I regret my choices. As far as I can remember, alcohol wasn’t a big factor in my only real regrets, which involve hurting other people. I mostly just wish I could remember more of my choices more clearly.

I don’t think I’ve ever blacked out. (I’ve always gotten the spins way before that.) I’ve browned out.

To be fair to booze (and weed), my memory wasn’t good before. But the pleasant numbness and distance that I enjoy from alcohol probably have made my memories even fuzzier and less accessible.

I’d love to write a real memoir. How much of my history will never see the light of day unless someone or something jogs my memory?

I remember far, far more nights of going drink-for-drink with a man than not drinking or drinking less. I felt proud of myself for being able to handle myself and keep up. It just hit me recently how insane that is. One drink has literally double the impact on the average woman than the average man. And I’m small for a woman! What was I trying to prove? And to whom?

Talking it through with my therapist, he asked if I drank more for the taste or the effects.

I told him I love being a little bit drunk.

I’ve periodically thought about quitting alcohol for many years. I’d always talk myself out of it. Doesn’t it make more sense to just cut back?

Explaining helped me understand why cutting back wasn’t cutting it.

Alcohol tastes the same no matter how much or how frequently I drink. Drunkenness changes. Every time I try to drink “moderately” I end up ramping up in response to my tolerance. I have to drink well past the point of moderation just to get the same effect.

This is basically how I lived in D.C. and, to a lesser extent, SF. It’s honestly more sustainable than you might think. I (usually) knew how much I needed to drink to get a little bit drunk, but avoid a hangover. I’d stop drinking for a bit periodically to reset my tolerance and then restart the cycle. I had systems in place. I had my friends, my spots. I mean hell, one (small) reason I quit driving was to drink safely.

Things really changed when I moved back to Alabama.

I knew alcohol was expensive, obviously. But when I was making decent money it wasn’t that hard to justify a bar tab, especially after a few drinks.

In Alabama I bought alcohol on Instacart, sober as a judge, living on my savings. I noticed how much a little beer increased my total.

I didn’t go out and I’m not really big on drinking at home alone. The only person who came over wasn’t a big drinker. I had cigarettes for emotional support. And the guy I was dating only drank vodka redbulls, which did not tempt me.

It makes sense in hindsight, but I didn’t expect drinking less to make me want to give up drinking more.

Being out of my habits and systems, and being older, my hangovers are both worse and less-predictable.

Laying in bed, trying not to die, I thought about a night not too long ago where I went out drinking with an old friend in D.C. The next day I was too destroyed to hang out with my sister and her wife.

Did drinking alcohol make that night more fun than it made the next day worse?

Alcohol makes me poorer. It’s ruined many of my days. It’s pretty easy for me to maintain my weight when I can manage to exercise most days and avoid alcohol and excessive sugar.

Alcohol makes me tired. I remembered a wedding reception when I couldn’t drink due to an antibiotic. I had so much energy at the end of the night. Since then, I’ve noticed that drinking less equals more energy. It’s true when I’m drinking and the next day. Even when I’m not hungover, my sleep is better on sober nights,

Weighing the pros and cons of alcohol in my head, it occurred to me that alcohol doesn’t give me anything today that it didn’t give me at 21. I just value the money, memories, calories, and energy it takes away more today, at 39, than I did then.

I told my therapist that I often drink to deal with my social anxiety. “Does it work?” he asked. “Yes!” I said quickly. Then I thought more about it. “It gives me something to do about it,” I said.

He suggested that being sober might give me a chance to just sit with my social anxiety, or whatever discomfort I’m feeling.

Sometimes the person I’m talking to is boring. Sometimes I get activated. I’m afraid of, and excited about, doing something besides throwing drinks at those emotions.

I mean, I’ve been writing that I want to become more embodied and feel my feelings. I’ve started to practice.

For example, one of my exes recently told me about a new, once-in-a-lifetime connection. As I listened, I started to feel jealous and insecure.

I fell into a longstanding pattern. I worried that my ex feels differently about her because there’s something ugly or unattractive about me.

The rational part of my brain knows this is nonsense. First, how two people feel about each other has absolutely nothing to do with me 99.999% of the time (much like most other things in life). Let’s say some man has managed to find something ugly or unattractive about me. Kudos to him. That’s not easy. I know that not everyone is attracted to hilarious Autistic girlies with manageable anxiety and ongoing butt problems. Their loss (and neurotypical mascs with unmanageable anxiety and zero butt problems’ gain). No one, except Dolly Parton, is for everyone.

It would be cool if knowing that my emotions are unhinged made them less scary. Unfortunately, knowing that I’m being irrational on top of being needy and insecure is the opposite of comforting. I hate how I feel and worry that it makes me even less attractive.

Luckily for me, alcohol tolerance and ability to recover from a night of drinking aren’t the only things that have gone down in my late 30s. I’m also losing patience for my own self-hatred.

At 39, I sure hope I’m done trying to be any man’s manic pixie dream girl.

I just said to my ex, basically, “I’m feeling jealous and insecure about your new connection.” Our history was sufficient that I could give the short version of “But I’m so glad you found her and I genuinely want the best for you and her.” Which I meant. I meant both.

What I wanted to convey, first to myself and then to him, was that I’m a grown woman who feels anxious sometimes and who really only wants to spend time with people who can hang with my emotions.

I appreciated his reassuring response. But what I really needed, and got, was the ability to feel something unpleasant and then say out loud what I was feeling.

Here’s something relevant I just read:

“Emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, typically last seconds to minutes, says Emily Willroth, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. But when we judge uncomfortable emotions negatively, that leads to more negative emotions — shame, worry, rumination, she says, generating “a spiral of ‘meta emotions.’”

An emotion is a signal, like a horn. Sadness may indicate that more support is needed. Anger: an injustice. But negatively judging the emotion — essentially bemoaning the horn — extends it, according to Willroth.

In her research, Willroth has found that those who accept negative emotions like sadness and anger have better psychological health, less depression and greater life satisfaction. Accepting unpleasant emotions doesn’t mean inaction, she says. It means interpreting them as a normal response to what’s happening in your life, rather than prolonging them with negative judgment.

In that exchange with my ex I was able to embrace parts of myself I’ve had trouble loving. I was brave. I shared parts I’ve been too afraid and ashamed of to let people see and love. I don’t remember his exact words. What I remember, what I hope I never forget, is how accepted and loved I felt.

Drinking booze, for me, has operated kinda like a blanket. A slanket, if you will. It’s a nice warm layer between myself and the world. It’s also a protective layer between the different parts of myself. It’s blunted feelings of rejection. But it’s also blunted softness and warmth. It’s made it harder to grapple with the acceptance.

In the past, being sober sounded really boring. Like, yeah it’s probably healthier. But I’m here for an interesting time, not a long time. What’s changed is that when I project into the future, it seems really unlikely that a year with alcohol will be much more interesting than one without it.

What feels scary and exciting and novel is the thought of going out without my liquid puffer coat. I want to more fully and immediately feel my feelings. I want to notice when I’m uncomfortable early enough that I still have the agency to take action before my feelings get so intense that I mindlessly react. I want to be able to decide whether to leave, practice telling people, or just notice and acknowledge what’s happening when I’m uncomfortable, afraid, or otherwise having a hard time and decide what to do about it, if anything, later.

Then again, I might only get better skin and a clearer memory for who I’ve pegged. It’ll still probably be worth the effort. But we’ll just have to live it and see.