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before i got sober, i could not look myself in the eye.
i once heard my friend Annie Hardy say,
The truth is evil to those living a lie.
and i haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
because i’m a terrible liar, i had a hard time facing myself because of it.
it’s hard to pinpoint why i got sober.
during my penultimate moment of clarity— i was having a nervous breakdown.
rocking on my knees and having a panic attack on a small patch of grass outside of an Alabama gas station— it was clear that i couldn’t keep doing what i was doing.
but what led me up to that moment on my knees, my arms strapped across my chest, holding me together like a straight-jacket?
i’ve been thinking about it— the lead up to this moment.
and honestly? i resent the task, because:
it’s hard. it’s painful to accept that i put myself in that situation, that my rigorous and relentless drug use got me there.
it wasn’t obvious to me that i needed to get sober *which is actually sort of funny*
it’s weird to revisit my own delusional thinking and the life it created.
sure, leading up to that moment of clarity, i had countless nights where i got way too stoned and all i could think about was the dying animal of my body, the endless ache of my muscles strapped to hallow bones. everything hurt and i could hear my heartbeat in my ears and i was worried about chewing off my tongue and the crunch of a potato chip freaked me out because i couldn’t be sure that the chips weren’t my teeth falling out of my head and i was just so tired of being so fucking high all the time but i didn’t know how to not to be so fucking high all the time.
inevitably, i’d wake up the next day and get high again.
addiction’s motor is self-deception
those lost in the depths of addiction are doing a lot of work, laboring to keep up the cardboard walls of their shoddy shack, convinced they have everyone fooled.
which, maybe they do have everyone fooled, maybe everyone does see a mansion.
but once they’re close enough, everyone becomes aware of the paper-thin walls.
when you’re in it, knee-deep in the murky waters of your addiction, you don’t realize how much you’re lying to yourself and to everyone around you. you’re just keeping the walls up, because they’re your walls and you don’t know any different.
and heck, who doesn’t take pride in their home?
truth is: it’s not so much that you have everyone fooled— no one believes you are operating at the height of your capacity.
instead, everyone is left asking themselves:
what the fuck is going on?
everyone is rightfully worried.
it may not even be explicit lies— though, so many addicts are master deceivers. me, i’m a terrible liar. i won’t even commit to a bit that i don’t think will land. it’s more that i was so deep in self-delusion— lying to myself so fiercely that i could not face myself — the lies shown through my eyes.
your suffering is more obvious than you think:
the ways in which your life is tailored around sneaking off to smoke bowls in your car or always sucking on that vape in your hand.
or not going to your best friend’s or cousin’s or co-worker’s birthday party that you promised you to go to because you got too stoned so now you can’t leave the house.
the times you convinced yourself that everyone hates you and has never loved you.
convinced they are the problem. never you.
it’s not explicitly a cognizant choice, but a chokehold on your cognitive capacities. a powerlessness over making any choice but to smoke or drink or vape.
the iPhone that is you is running so fucking slow and keeps shutting down, but you can’t figure out why.
turns out: all your apps are open, but you don’t even remember opening them in the first place.
you keep overheating, even though it’s snowing outside.
you keep forgetting to swipe up and close apps you don’t remember opening.
you keep getting too hot and shutting down.
whether or not you admit it, the chemical or substance or person is draining your battery.
you’re functional— but barely.
you can’t see what you refuse to know.
you don’t have it under control.
truth is: control is an illusion.
when we are most convinced we have it under control, we do not.
but deep down, you know— you know that you have to do everything in your power to protect it because this is your life now.
because how else will you live?
on the first podcast episode of newly sober:
i left you as i was gasping for air, waking up on the living room floor.
addiction is a serial killer who wants us all dead, and a decade before i met my ex-fiancé, it had already killed his best friend.
after i woke up, i made scrambled eggs for the kids and got complaints about them being too wet. Abba came home and showed us pictures of our baby brother. he took an hour long nap, we played Marble Run. after Abba woke up, i rode the subway home.
the 1, to the 2, to the 7, finally to the G.
when i got home, my ex-fiancé was in the mood for mimosas— most certainly not because of the baby, but because it was morning and we were both awake before noon.
he left the house. i took a shower. he came back with a giant bottle of champagne and a jug of orange juice. i have never been an enthusiastic morning drinker— historically unable to hold booze in before noon— but i had something to celebrate: life was a miracle and i had just been paid.
the morning before, i got hit with a $500 car repair in preparation for our three day road trip South. in a moment of synchronicity— i was handed a check with the exact same amount. give a little, get a little: i was no longer in the hole. plus, i was fresh off of my first sleepover since childhood.
i slugged down the bubbly, acidic liquid, searing the mess of my throat. probably took a bong rip, though i do not remember. perhaps i even vomited— at this point, those occurrences were not novel but routine.
and then, we proceeded to have a nice day. probably the last one we ever shared.
we walked through our neighborhood of Greenpoint— tables laid out with handmade wares, artists trying to make extra cash before Christmas. i bought a handmade scarf with a hood; he bought a hand-painted ceramic planter for his sister-in-law. we visited our favorite Japanese stationary store to play with pens we were flirting with buying.
the week before, we had dinner with my dad at a BBQ joint in Williamsburg. i had just gotten back from LA, fresh from promoting the book out west and doing a photoshoot with my childhood ice theater coach. and even though my dad and i had seen each other for the full week preceding, and for most of the month prior, we made a point to get dinner— which, was a shift in our relationship.
the extra effort.
i remember being surprised my dad ordered a beer. i remember being surprised that my ex only ordered one. and i never missed the opportunity to drink when someone else was footing the bill. it was a bitterly cold night, but i was thankful to be seeing my dad and that he had trekked all the way to Brooklyn to see me.
over the course of IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AWKWARD, which for the two years we worked on it, i called it: “The Consent Book I Didn’t Consent To”.
i was ~~~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~deeply*~**~*~*~*~*~*~~~~~~ resentful.
now, i am incredibly thankful for the project— i think that book saved my life.
but up until this dinner, i was not living a life where i practiced ~*~gratitude~*~ nor did i have perspective about what a privilege it was to work with my dad AND publish a book.
the book had been released September 21, 2021, and i had spent the weeks leading up to it re-reading it multiple times, making study guides, and thinking about what i wanted my hair to look like.
i decided to shave my head, so as to differentiate myself from twenty-one year old Paulina who had been interviewed about my eating disorder — far from a bleach blonde senator’s wife.
i felt the compulsive need to prove I WAS UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT AND EDGY AND RADICAL AND DIIIIIFFFFFEREENTNTTT
but the hair didn’t matter.
truth is: i was a worse version of myself.
plus, i didn’t remember what i had written or how we had even defined consent. throughout the course of our collaboration, i had been very, very stoned.
it’s not that the book lacks substance or even reads as if it were written by a stoned person— i was incredibly functional throughout my addiction, until i wasn’t. plus: editors. it’s simply that i was so deep in my addiction, so closely acquainted to the role of victim, that i couldn’t see what a gift it had been to be asked to write a book in the first place.
i pursued my MFA to “do things” on “my own terms”— to move beyond the moniker of Dr. Drew’s [Anorexic & Bulimic] Daughter. but i could not see that my graduate work allowed me to step into this role i was afforded with a sense of credibility and skill— that my dream project, which has always been to write a memoir, is a light at the end of a tunnel, and that this book was very much a stepping stone.
and as a result, all along the way— i was the worst.
but come pub day, i pulled it together. i shaved my head and picked out outfits and preached the gospel of TCB.
The Holy Trinity of Consent: Trust, Compassion, and Boundaries. These are the foundation of any and all thriving relationships— friendships, parental, or otherwise.
i regurgitated this spiel for three months sitting right next to my dad:
in order to practice consent, you have to trust yourself, have compassion for yourself, and know your boundaries in order to trust someone else, offer them compassion, and respect their boundaries.
but i could not hear myself.
but my dad heard me. and i started to hear him.
and over the course of promoting the book together, we learned how to use TCB in our own relationship. and although i was deep in my addiction, i was starting to have a functional relationship with my dad for the first time in years.
i was starting to remember that i had a life outside of the apartment in Greenpoint— that there were people who loved me.
coincidentally, my brother Jordan was in town my final weekend in New York.
the Tuesday before i would get into that car and drive to New Orleans, we had planned that he would come meet me at Torst, a hip Danish beer bar outfitted in bright sand-hued woods in Greenpoint.
when i showed up *stoned* and later than was appropriate, i was excited to see my brother. i ordered a beer on his tab, and i gave him and his good friend from college a hug.
i immediately struck up a conversation with the bartender, shouting: THIS IS MY BROTHER!
and he said, YEAH, PUT MY SISTER ON MY TAB
and the bartender was all, awwwww i miss my brother!
and i said, we’re triplets— but we’re missing one.
and she said, no shit! i’m a twin!
it’s weird how often that happens when we are together.
another synchronicity, hiding in plain sight— an ever intelligent universe nodding that i was heading the right way
(closer to my family)
i hadn’t seen Jordan’s friend since their college graduation— when he was a scrawny kid who played rugby with my brother and had trouble making eye contact with me unless he was drunk. but five years out, he had filled out and was studying to become a Judge at UChicago.
i was blown away by what five years could make— that over the course of that time, he had grown up.
had i?
it’s wild to think about that night— how i had no idea what was coming. but i do remember a sort of frenetic energy— that the world was limitless and that i was happy to be with my brother, that my brother had come to be with me in my neighborhood.
i finally got to share my world with him.
we sat and drank beers for a long while— pretty certain i drank three. i picked the highest percentage and had smoked a bowl before leaving the house. we ping-ponged from person to person, sharing what we’d done and who we’d become.
my big news was that i was engaged, but i always felt embarrassed when it came up because it always inevitably led to the question, When’s the big day? and i’d reply with something like Maybe 2023! or All interesting women are supposed to be married thrice.
of course, there was the book. but i didn’t really allow myself to feel a sense of accomplishment— i had finished promoting it and that had afforded me some form of attention. but i wasn’t even present enough to recognize its value— i was too busy saying, “Yeaaaah, but it’s not the memoir.” undercutting all of the hard work i had done, failing to see my own legitimacy because my trajectory did not go according to my grandiose plans.
however, the one thing that sticks out to me about that night, aside from the excitement of sitting with my brother and his good friend, was something his friend said to me:
“It seems that you always push your family forward.”
is it self-obsessed that this is what i remember? that someone was affording me credit for something that i had done— most specifically regarding my eating disorder and body image?
or is it that i was surprised that he had noticed me at all? that a potential future Circuit Judge thought that i was capable of facilitating change when— though i could not admit it to myself— i felt so debilitatingly stuck ?
tipsy, we all walked to my local bodega, which happened to be Jordan’s friend’s favorite deli in the city, and ordered chopped cheeses— Jordan’s first.
Jordan walked home with me. i blew up the air mattress in my studio. we fell asleep.
the next morning, my alarm went off every five minutes.
Jordan finally came by my door and said, “Get up.” in a stern tone, as he has done my entire life.
turns out, the walls were thin and the air mattress leaked all night.
we walked and got coffee and grown up pastries. we walked back to my apartment, where i pulled out the tower of a glass bong i had special ordered from California during the pandemic, when my addiction really accelerated, and proceeded to take giant bong rips.
in 2019, two years before, he visited for our birthday. when we went to see an exhibit at the Guggenheim, he brought up the concept of weed addiction— i shut him down so hard, so fast, that it was clear he had struck a nerve. that night, i took bong rips in front of him.
but that day, when we smoked together, something was shifting: i needed someone in my family to know what was really going. i could no longer pretend.
both partaking in bong rips, i was able to let my shoddy cardboard walls down just enough to let him peak inside.
substances can facilitate a shared frequency— this can facilitate connection.
but if you are not on the same frequency, it can be incredibly jarring. if you’re not taking bong rips and everyone else is, you will feel alienated. this is why the idea of calling your new bar friend the next day feels wrong— you don’t even know them at all!
on the same frequency, we had finally stepped onto the same spiritual plane.
he sat on the couch and i started to open up for the first time in three years— i stood at the threshold between my kitchen and living room, and i couldn’t stop telling him the truth:
his drug use is out of control and terrifying
my drug use— i can’t stop
he takes dab rips and monologues at me about how my desire to have children is unethical every day
i don’t feel certainty
i don’t think i can marry him if things continue this way
the sentences unfurled out of my mouth like a clown pulling scarves, and i talked at my brother for probably three hours straight. he just listened. he created a safe container for me to say everything that i had been holding, hiding— protecting the life i had built, the life i knew, the life that i was being suffocated within.
i don’t remember if i told him that every day since my engagement, i thought about death. i wasn’t actively suicidal, but i felt that if i continued, my life would be over.
that the thing that is supposed to make you feel most like you are about to live a long, beautiful life, made me feel like i was marching straight towards my death.
i asked my brother, Do you think I’m an addict?
and without missing a beat he said, Yes.
that was the first time i heard it. entertained it— the thought of it in proximity to myself.
when you’re telling the truth, you don’t have to explain yourself.
when you’re not, all you can do is explain.
by the time truth stopped spilling from my mouth, i was depleted. i laid down on the couch and asked my brother if he could get me a blanket and he said, “No. You can take care of yourself.” And so i did.
by the end of our conversation, we had come to a consensus: over the course of my three day drive to New Orleans, i would pitch the idea of pursuing sobriety— that sobriety was something that we would pursue together in service of our future.
i felt safer knowing that my brother knew the truth: i was so tired of feeling so afraid and alone.
sobriety became my only hope.
as always, thank you for reading. please share it with folks you think it would resonate with and please do remember to subscribe!
thank you to The Blushes for our theme song—TURNS OUT BEING SOBER IS COOL NOW— and thank you to Sydney Herrera for sound editing. feel free to throw Sydney a tip!
next episode: my bottom.
as always, thank you for reading.
please heart, share, subscribe, and comment!
thank you for being here. this shit is hard, but it is worth it.
XOXO,
PAULINA
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