SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT –
May 13, 2026 – I experienced two of the most disorienting experiences in my life when I got sober in 1995 and when I quit social media for the first time in 2022. I use the word disorienting because time slowed to a rhythm that made me feel I was walking through quicksand, slow and sinking. I anticipated that sobriety would transport me from dizzying levels of uncertainty to a stabilizing sense of groundedness, but that wasn’t my experience.
In hindsight, I’m pretty sure that I was moving from the illusion of manufactured certainty, from an image of myself that I had carefully constructed, to recognizing very little about myself without my armor. For a few weeks I had difficulty answering questions about how I felt or even what I wanted for dinner. Mercifully, I quit drinking from a pretty high bottom, so I didn’t have to experience physical symptoms as part of my process. Giving up smoking cigarettes, which I did at the same time, was tougher.
I quit drinking because I wanted something different from my life and my history. While the physical part wasn’t challenging, the mental and emotional experience felt like looking in a wavy mirror. I made these changes as part of a search for solid ground and a more reliable view of myself, and what I got was the distortion of a funhouse reflection.
