EUPHORIC RECALL RECALL –
Sept. 23, 2024 – I quit drinking two years ago because it got inexcusably bad. What I’ve struggled with is the pressure to deny the intellectual, social, and aesthetic pleasure I got from alcohol.
Dear Drinker, I’ve had the same thoughts about my own drinking career—do all my good ol’ days become bad ones from here on out? Does the fact that I needed to stop drinking, due to how much it began to pollute my life, mean that I must only think about alcohol as something I enjoyed because of the self-destruction it offered?
The short answer is no. The recovery community, or as you call it, “sobriety culture,” has not opened up its own Thought Police wing. You don’t need to reframe every part of your drinking era as something terrible and ruinous. But I do want you to think about whether reminiscing about booze-soaked memories is actually helpful for you.
