i am a garbage can addict and alcoholic

it took three years to realize, but that's what sobriety brings!

i found an unpublished draft. i wrote it when i got three years back in December. it’s a thought that felt all-consuming at the time, but i now see clearly ever since the revelation.

and i thought, heck, why keep ‘er in the drafts?

and so, i present to you: at three years, i finally had the realization that i am a garbage-can addict/alcoholic

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DAY 1095ish

thought i probably had while laying on my belly at Elysian Park, December 2024

getting three years sober has felt startling.

it’s like, i have more to lose. more days stacked, more years counted.

but more than that, after three years of abstaining from all drugs, alcohol, and mind-altering substances, i can finally see: i am a garbage can addict and alcoholic.

it was easy to tell myself that i was a moderate user, but… my guy, i was not.

by the end, as we know, i couldn’t go a day without smoking weed. but that was just my drug of choice. if there was booze, i would drink it. if there was a baggie of adderall, i’d take it.

i was not discerning about what substances i was putting in my body because i just wanted to feel something— i wanted to be in control of how i felt.

no thought given to the potential consequences, no second guessing. just: i guess i’ll take this adderall so i can stay awake longer at this party i don’t want to be at.

on my third sober birthday, i took a cake at a meeting in LA. i am truly floating on cloud 9 to be home.

but there has been the awakening void that is difficult to name.

although i feel firm in my sobriety, i understand that my sobriety is precarious— precious. that it isn’t guaranteed. that it is a gift but it is something that i have to tend to to keep. and i think because i came in so desperate, i wasn’t thinking about the fact that i was a drug addict and alcoholic— i was just ready to stop and willing to do anything to stay stopped.

but now, i feel like i am on the tight rope, walking over the wreckage of my past, staring down at hazy memories that are sharpening with time. and i am lightly horrified by how i used to use drugs. i was on drugs all the time. it didn’t matter what day it was or what time, i’d take it.

and now that i don’t have anyone around me to say, “You’re worse than me, I can’t be that bad,” i’m starting to see myself there, sitting there with people i no longer speak to, smoking or drinking or snorting.

21 & WAY too excited to try Heiferweizen

it’s a profound wash of acceptance: i’m a drug addict. bitch, i’m an alcoholic.

i really, really am. and it feels dirty? i’m so public about being sober, but i don’t think that i’ve digested that i’m sober because i have to be in order to function. that i’m lucky that i didn’t lose touch with reality (completely) or die.

i never tested drugs. i never asked people where they got things. i accepted drinks that were opened or mixed far away from me.

the fact that it was not worse— that it didn’t have to get worse… is stunning.

i’m not afraid of going out (losing my sobriety) or anything. it’s just a profound wash of reality— i am a drug addict. i really, really am.

and there’s something so unsettling about that truth.

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DAY 1219

don’t worry. i survived the realization. somehow, arriving to three years sober brought back an influx of realizations that i wasn’t ready to accept. but now, instead of feeling like i am on a tight rope, balancing precariously over my past memories and failures, i feel more like a sassy lil boat pointing towards shore, trying to find the light, trying to find the lighthouse.

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as always, thank you for reading. i’m so thankful you are here. newly sober is a precious project to me, but also a lil funky because i am newly sober (in that i have less than five years), but i am not new new. however, i think it’s important to come to sobriety like a newcomer, because that’s how we all begin. and if we are lucky, that is when we give it our all— or, at least i did.

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xoxox,

PAULINA

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