"Hi my name is Mercedes and I'm an alcoholic...
And I’m a woman. And I’m a scientist and an atheist and a painter and a lover of coffee and music. I’m a type A personality and I have an intrinsic desire to compete and be the best at everything. I also am an over-thinker and an internalizer and I love to stay up late staring at the ceiling guilt tripping myself over my past mistakes. For all the things that I am, I am sober. And for all the things that I do, my sobriety is something that teaches me daily how to be a better person. Through my sobriety, my type A personality doesn’t compete with others, only myself. Through my sobriety my over-thinking has been quelled with the ability to rationalize my decisions and move forward with a clear conscious. Through my sobriety I no longer internalize my depressive state and I reach out for help when I need it because I know that I actually do need it.
I never became sober just because. I didn’t join AA or look to a divine being for my answers. I became sober for myself because I’ve only had myself to rely on. If I couldn’t rely on myself, I do not know where I would be today. Luckily, I also can rely on the few good friends I have, if I need to, but that’s beside the point. The point I’m trying to make here is that I cannot attest my sobriety to “God” or any likeness. But I can attest my sobriety to my humanity.
I think it’s very important that you know straight away I am a woman. I’m an American white-bred Midwestern woman in my late twenties with many given privileges that allowed for me to take advantage of education, relationships, and money. I think it’s also important you know that just because I had an immense amount of privilege with my given name, it does not mean that I didn’t face obstacles or diminished the obstacles that under privileged people face in a daily basis. Again, coming back to my sobriety, my eyes and ears (and social media pages) are even more open to these privileges.
Like I mentioned before, AA had nothing to do with my sobriety. I’ve been sober for a year and a half and I am very open about my decision to live a lucid life. I believe the 1950s stigma of alcoholism and addiction belongs in the trash and only by being forward about my lifestyle do I perpetuate sound reasoning for people to see it as normal and commonplace (But until then, this blog post continues…). Recently though, in support of a friend, I decided to visit an open meeting and observe the words and stories of people of all walks of life. Although I felt like I had very little in common with their anecdotes, I understood for the most part and began piecing the puzzle together. Just like me, many of these people were caught between a rock and a hard place; the rock being the sober, social, real human being they know they can be and the society that wreaks havoc on the minds and bodies of said “real humans”. And in that “between” they internalized their ability to be free from anxiety by finding solace in drugs or alcohol. Wow. For in every way that these people were not like me, they were just like me. The beauty of it all is that in the meeting, I realize where my sobriety stood. Over the course of that year and a half I really didn’t have a “reason” as to why I was sober… I just was..? “It’s cheaper. I save a lot of money!” “I always know I can drive home!” “Well my boyfriend is sober too, so, you know…” “My dad was an alcoholic, so, you know…” No. As much as all of that is true, it wasn’t MY reasoning.
My reasoning stems from a long list of very common social constructs that we like to put in to one term: feminism. Many alcoholics can name the point in which they began hitting it hard, a break up, a DUI, a recent death, an existential crisis, etc. For me, there was no "moment" in particular. For me it was just being 21 and in college and having friends I wanted to impress. And then I impressed those friends, and then I wanted to impress those friends more, and then I wanted to party harder and I wanted to forget about my upbringing and my childhood and my dad's liquid abuse and my ex-boyfriends cheating on me and me cheating on them, and that quiz I had in calculus on Tuesday, and the lab report I still had to write and graduating cum laude and impressing my mentors and getting straight A's...and what the actual fuck was I doing? Responsibility, then whiskey, then whiskey, then responsibility. I couldn't bear that heavy weight. It had to come with whiskey and High Life (how ironic). That made everything....eeeeasier. And then to add insult to injury, I began a long term relationship. And within the scope of that long term relationship, I graduated college, my dad died, I dealt with a severe depression, my brother joined the Army and I moved across the country to a place where I had no family and no connections. I was unemployed and was 100% co-dependent on my now-ex. I was a fresh graduate in a STEM field and could now live in the world that was my oyster!!! I was free from the binds of university and could travel and live and breathe the fresh air! I was scientist! And I was completely unemployed. With no connections, I barely made my way. I took up part time positions as a substitute teacher and bartender to make about $100 a day over the course of 14 hours. And that's when my drinking became habitual. That's when my drinking became an escape. That's when instead of going on medication that I probably really needed, I heard "are you always going to be this unhappy? What's wrong with you?" Instead of realizing his gaslighting was an abuse tactic, I internalized that misogyny and apologized for my behavior. But never changed it. And suddenly I was spending $100 a week on expensive bottles of whiskey just to down them in Waterford tumblers because if it was going to be my habit under his roof, the resentment and anger was going to have a dollar sign attached to it. I allowed this cycle to eat me alive for five years. My early twenties were lost to a person who represented everything I hated about society and myself. And then, when the break up happened and I had one last night of binging on hard liquor and margaritas, I woke up, puked up all the hate and resentment and mistrust and self-disgust and devoted my life to being sober. With special thanks to one of the most admirable humans I've ever met, I was able to make a very easy transition and I've only looked back once, to write this post. So enough about me, let's talk about feminism and why it's important to me.
