Eight Years Sober

Tomorrow (July 4th) I celebrate more than our country’s independence. I admire more than fireworks. It has been a year since I was last hospitalized. It has been eight years since I (knowingly) consumed alcohol. I add the “knowingly” because once a bar did accidentally serve me alcohol. 

The last time I knowingly consumed alcohol was Fourth of July 2016.  Usually alcohol destroyed  my inhibitions and I would do something stupid. But I was self-medicating my as yet undiagnosed bipolar disorder and when I drank I wasn’t in my usual emotional pain. At least it was that way until March 2016. I woke up hungover, vomiting blood the morning after Parade Day. I was rushed to the hospital where I had a tube jammed down my nose. So yet a little bit of a wake up call. I was in the hospital for three days.

My drinking had been exposed to my therapist and to my parents who told me I could only return to college if I didn’t drink. I valued my school and my relationships so I figured I could give up alcohol until I turned 21 (I was nineteen). Nobody told me at the time it would be forever. I’m glad they didn’t. That’s a rather daunting prospect.

It might not have been forever if a) I wasn’t diagnosed with a substance abuse problem as well as bipolar type one. Alcohol only enhances the depression aspect of bipolar and can trigger the manic side of it too. Another reason I cannot drink is my long litany of medications. When the bar served me alcohol (two and a half beers and yes I’m an idiot for not realizing they weren’t my usual nonalcoholic beers I prefer to sip on), I became very sick. I threw up in the bar. Then I threw up in several sewers as my friend walked me to her house. 

I don’t mind the fact that it makes me physically sick when I drink. It’s like insurance that I won’t break my sobriety. I admit it was a bit strange to not drink at my own twenty-first birthday when people were literally puking on the couch and playing drinking games at the kitchen table. But I had fun anyway. Sobriety is all about finding the fun in activities and situations without alcohol. Some people say that makes things harder. I say that it only makes things better. Plus I’m not waking up with hangovers (or seizures. I would have hard core withdrawal). And I’m waking up with all my memories from the night before. You can’t beat that. So this year I will remember every detail of this lovely Fourth of July and my friends, my family and my boyfriend. Who’d want to forget that?