I Got Sober by Mistake — Can I Go Back to Drinking?

TO DRINK OR NOT TO DRINK? –

May 18, 2022 –

Dear Accidentally Sober,

In my 20s, I stopped drinking for a while. I’d just survived a particularly brutal breakup, which resurfaced particularly sour memories of my mother’s post-romantic-breakup binges. I didn’t put a timer on it. I also didn’t go to AA or identify as an alcoholic or even as someone who was “sober.”

Up until then, I had been what you might call a “controlled binge drinker” — my consequences were limited to hangovers and one-night stands — but over those dry months I saw that not drinking was clearly better for me. I finally started therapy and psychiatric meds. I was better about deadlines and commitments. I didn’t have either the crushing guilt or crushing headaches that used to come most Monday mornings.

And then, a few months in, I went on a date. He ordered a martini and I changed my order from a seltzer to “I’ll have what he’s having” and proceeded to drink without interruption for over a decade with increasingly grim consequences, and here we are. For you, the idea of deciding anew every day whether or not today is the day you’ll try out drinking again is limbo. For me, it’s freedom. I have never made a decision to stop drinking forever. I just have decided to stay sober for as long as it keeps working for me, for as long as what I get out of being sober is more precious to me than what I may get out of drinking. When I really want to freak someone out, I tell them I’ve only made a commitment to sobriety until the next time someone offers me a glass of something — and at that point, I get to drink or to recommit to recovery again.