How do you stay sober when drinking inspires friendships, connections, and even promotions?
heers!” I said, clinking glasses of wine with members of the Communist Party in Vietnam’s National Assembly, the equivalent of the U.S.’s White House. I brought the glass to my mouth and tipped it, as if to drink, stopping just shy of the wine reaching my lips. If anyone noticed the lack of gulping (my acting skills are trash) or the never-empty glass, they made no mention of it. There were more important things to discuss anyway.
I have been clean and sober for seven years. In November, I’ll be 30 years old, followed by my eighth sober birthday in January. I got clean and sober when I was quite young and it was an unexpected turn of events for me at the time. Looking back on my life, however, is like rewatching a TV show or movie again — you see all the clues so clearly, so much so that you think about how blind you must’ve been the first time through. As the old adage goes, hindsight is truly 20/20.
At 21 years old, I went to rehab for bulimia and came out, three months later, still bulimic but freshly sober. It took me eight months to conquer my eating disorder but, other than the lone beer I had post-rehab, my alcoholism has come with fewer setbacks and much more social discomfort. No one asks me why I’m not binging and purging because, thankfully, it’s not a socially acceptable thing to do. However, the sad truth is that we live in a diet-obsessed world where so many women (and men) struggle with disordered eating to some extent. All of that is to say that my own bad eating habits, if they still existed, could largely go unnoticed. Now, thankfully, I eat when my body — rather than my mind — tells me to, something that was only possible after a slow and steady years-long journey toward establishing a healthy relationship between myself and food.
Drinking, on the other hand, is not so easy to escape. It’s ubiquitous, always presenting me with new challenges in a world that’s still learning how to understand and talk about it. In my early days of sobriety, I refused to feel “left out.” I established this need during my first dinner with my friends post-rehab in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. One friend scolded the others for ordering margaritas at our favorite Mexican joint and I, while grateful, explained that I didn’t want their behavior to change because of me. I didn’t want to come to terms with my sobriety in a vacuum, I wanted to do so in the real world where sitting around with people drinking booze would be the first of many challenges to come.
This leads to my assessment of the two types of sober people: the first is like me, the sobriety-is-only-a-facet-of-my-life individual who fully adjusts to the drinking culture. The second is the sobriety-is-everything individual who surrounds themselves with a 100% sober community and life. I’ve witnessed the latter when I worked at an affordable housing nonprofit that was known for its recovery programs for homeless adults. Many program participants who successfully exited the programs (i.e., got clean and sober) were hired by the agency, creating a large pool of sober people who religiously attended 12-step meetings. It was a beautiful thing to feel like sobriety was normal, a feeling that had been so far from my own reality. And it was here that I learned how to take comfort in my sobriety, to feel more confident in my identity as a person in recovery.
Drinking, on the other hand, is not so easy to escape. It’s ubiquitous, always presenting me with new challenges in a world that is still learning how to understand and talk about it.
Telling people that you’re sober can be difficult, especially in the beginning. Sometimes I say, “I don’t drink;” other times I say, “I’m sober,” and — more recently — I’ve just been saying, “No, thank you.” The response depends on the situation, after I’ve assessed the audience’s receptivity to addiction or alcoholism.
Sometimes, people really push. I remember one summer when my ex, who is also in recovery, and I visited his parents in Hartford, Connecticut. His dad Ted is a big fan of sailboats and had us tag along for a race. We met Marcelle there, a retired white man in his sixties who served as part of the sailboat crew.
“Would you all like a beer?”
“No thanks.”
“Oh c’mon. Just one!”
“No really, I’m okay.”
This back-and-forth continued for a little longer until Ted summoned Marcelle over. After a brief exchange with Ted, Marcelle came back over to apologize for his persistence, a clear sign that Ted had said in so many words: “Don’t. They’re in recovery.”
The entire situation was uncomfortable only because I don’t like people standing up for me. I disclose what I wish to disclose, when I wish to disclose it. If I chose to not tell Marcelle about my sobriety in that moment it wasn’t because I couldn’t; rather, it was because I thought the interaction was too fleeting to put effort into. Perhaps some advocates would say that it’s the cowardly thing to do, that we should work to spread and normalize the message of addiction to everyone, everywhere. However, that’s easier said than done. Sharing your story of addiction is exhausting and sometimes I just don’t have the energy for it, especially when I have to defend or explain it.
After two years of sobriety, I moved to Portland, Oregon, ready to build a new life in a city I had never visited. Before hitting rock bottom and coming back to Tennessee as a shell of a human, I had gone to the University of Connecticut as a freshman, transferring to The New School in New York City. In both places I made friends with ease, all thanks to the social lubricant of alcohol and drugs. It’s easy to make friends when you have a passion for getting obliterated and, let’s face it, college is the perfect and most acceptable time to do so. But except for a few cases, the friendships I made during this period were fleeting and superficial, a strong indicator of the lack of bonds I had forged.
This time around in Portland, without booze as an aide, I dove into the journey of making new, lifelong friends. But the crew I fell in with in Portland was the partying kind. Mostly in their late twenties, this group of people haunted bars, threw house parties, and ingested copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. For the first year of my existence in Portland, I hung out for as long as I could. Depending on the situation, I can thrive off of people’s drunkenness. When the mood is right, it’s infectious: their bleary-eyed statements that are simultaneously stupid and funny, and the give-no-shits outlook that they have as their motor skills slowly — or quickly — descend. I can tap into this feeling, remembering that no one will remember what I said or did, and begin to mimic their own drunken behavior in spirit.
It’s easy to make friends when you have a passion for getting obliterated and, let’s face it, college is the perfect and most acceptable time to do so.
However, bars and parties get old after a while. I become tired of yelling at people just to have a conversation about nothing. Watching my friends make eyes at the hotties across the bar gets old. Eventually, I began to realize that I didn’t really know much about my friends, that these conversations we had past 9 p.m. with beers in their hands and a tonic water in mine were void of real meaning or truth. I began seeing these late Friday and Saturday nights as a way for people to socialize but also engage in a fun, forgotten night with the ultimate goal of getting laid. And, speaking of getting laid, as a sober person you realize how creepy it is to go home with drunk people. It made me feel like a predator of sorts, taking advantage of the weak. For these reasons (among many others), I began to find refuge in my relationships, to find companionship without the exhaustion of late nights and Red Bulls.
Since then, my friends have settled down and I’ve made a whole slew of new ones with similar interests as mine. I’ve tapped into my inner self, preferring a 9:30 p.m. bedtime and embracing the homebody I am. As a self-diagnosed introvert with extroverted tendencies, I love being home but need social outlets to keep me sane. I grab coffee and meals with friends and go to various art and community events around town. I prefer dinner parties to house parties and afternoon beach hangs or hikes to late night bar crawls. My days are filled with things that make me happy, things that fulfill me without forcing anything unnatural.
Now, I’m in Hanoi, Vietnam, a totally new context with very different cultural undertones. I’ve been here for two months and have experienced a repeat of my early Portland days — although here, I feel more self-conscious about my sobriety, fearing that people will see me as a lame duck because I don’t partake in the menu of alcohol or drugs offered. My statement of “I don’t drink” is generally not accompanied by the reasons why (largely because of cultural differences). When I’m with most Americans, I can say I’m sober knowing that they will have some general knowledge of the opioid epidemic and will likely understand. However, I’ve met people from all around the world in Vietnam and find that it’s easiest to say, “I don’t drink.”
Recently, I found myself at a bar with a bunch of drunk foreigners, singing and dancing to seminal pop songs from my own childhood. Before the dancing really began, I had been feeling the discomfort of being in a new place, feeling awkward in my own body, and trying to be funny and full of energy. It was 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, a time when I would normally be in bed cuddled next to my partner after eating out somewhere in Portland. I felt like a total wet blanket in that moment, drowning in my own insecurities as a fun sober person.
But that is the cost of pushing yourself into uncomfortable situations. My struggle is that I know my past and present selves: the past Jen that thrived in late-night situations and on being ridiculous, charming, and fun enough for people to want to hang out with; and the current Jen who takes refuge in nature, food, the arts, deep conversations, and early bedtimes.
Since I’ve come into my own, I’ve learned more things about myself. I like large group hangouts but don’t prefer them as a dominant social activity. My preference is one-on-ones or small, intimate gatherings where we can share our thoughts, secrets, interests, passions, or pet peeves with one another. It’s about connecting in a way that I was never able to as an alcoholic, feeling the humanity of others’ lives and building unbreakable bonds.
Being in Hanoi has reminded me of all of this. At times it’s hard to accept that I’ll never be that fun party girl. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still funny as hell in the same brash way I have always been. But now my energy levels are lower and I feel the awkwardness of meeting strangers more acutely without the social lubricant of alcohol.
The woman who had invited me told me that they used alcohol as a means of getting closer together and that, because I didn’t drink, I would not be able to become as close to them.
On top of that, there’s the juggling act of how to say no in a different culture. I’ve eaten in people’s homes on several occasions now, declining alcohol on each occasion. I feel so bad when I say no, like the conversation of addiction isn’t something the Vietnamese would want to talk about. I was recently invited to join a group of Koreans for dinner, where copious amounts of booze was passed around. This group was comprised of people who had just met only a few weeks prior, convening in Vietnam for a startup program. The woman who had invited me told me that they used alcohol as a means of getting closer together and that, because I didn’t drink, I would not be able to become as close to them.
Her words, while very blunt, speak the truth of alcohol for cultures everywhere. Vietnamese men gather at a bia hoi (street-side joints that serve beer and food) after work to drink together and build relationships, a gateway for promotions in this highly relational culture. Alcohol is the glue that binds them together, evoking laughter and “happiness.”
Being confronted with my sobriety in a different country has jolted me out of the comfortable nest I had created in Portland, reminding me that the path to sobriety — or anything in life really — is never linear. I’ve been put back in the spaces I sought in early sobriety, when I tried to prove to myself that I could fit in even if I was different. Being in Vietnam has made me realize how much I have grown since then, how different I am from six, eight, 10 years ago, and how much room is left for growth. Vietnam has even provided me with a first: fake drinking. Eating at the National Assembly in Vietnam is a once-in-a-lifetime experience which is why I decided to fake drink that glass of wine. Maybe I should’ve taken the time to announce my sobriety to these members of the Party, maybe they would have been understanding of addiction, and maybe they would have cheers-ed to my successes. I’ll never know the answers to these what-ifs but I do know that, regardless of context, my sobriety feels steadfast and unwavering even as I lift the bold red in my glass and take a sniff. Now that is something I can fake cheers to.