Junior Anonymous
a short essay about sobriety
Last August, at a dinner with my wife and friends in Ketchum, Idaho, I perused the non-alcoholic drinks menu. Ice tea, lemonade, flavored waters, ginger ale, and expensive concoctions that resembled the Orange Julius slushies of shopping mall yesteryears.
I'm an alcoholic who's been sober since 1991 and I like to joke that only the first 17 years of sobriety were difficult to maintain. But it's indeed true that my continuing sobriety is simultaneously conscious and reflexive. I can hang out in places where booze is being served, at bars and parties, without feeling the temptation to drink, but only when I'm in the company of close friends who are just as invested in my sobriety as I am.
On that dinner menu in Ketchum, Idaho, I noticed a non-alcoholic drink made with carbonated water and hops. The service person said it tasted "earthy." I'm not necessarily a fan of any food that can be described as "earthy," but I ordered it out of curiosity. A few minutes later, they brought the drink to the table and I took a sip.
It's impossible for a non-alcoholic to understand what it means to be an alcoholic. Over the decades, I've heard many variations of the same question: "Why can't you stop at one drink?"
And my response is always, "Buster, I can't stop after one dozen."
So it's near impossible for me to describe what I felt—what happened to my body—when I took my first and only sip of that earthy brew—that non-alcoholic drink made with the hops that are also used to make alcoholic beer. Yeah, it hadn't occurred to me, Miller Light's Idiot, that I was going to taste a fraternal twin of beer.
"But, Sherman, can't you drink those non-beers, can’t you drink those near-beers?" asks the sober person. "They don't have alcohol in them."
"Oh," I say. "They have trace amounts of alcohol. There are some drunks who can't even use certain kinds of mouthwash that have the barest hint of alcohol. You see, even the taste of a near-beer can send a booze-hound into euphoric recall."
So, yeah, I sipped that earthy, hoppy drink and experienced what can be best described as sexual arousal. It's an inadequate description but I want to give you non-drunks (and non-addicts in general) a sense of what happened to me. My lungs and heart went pinball. My soul and skin went electric. I took one sip and wanted more, more, more, and more.
To my credit, I immediately cursed and pushed the drink away.
"Fuck no, fuck no, fuck no no no," I said to my wife and friends. "That's how I'll ruin my life again."
I quickly drank a full glass of water and ate a slice of bread—a sober Catholic's Eucharist—to kill the hoppy taste in my mouth.
Later that night, as my wife and I puttered around our hotel room, I told her something that I've often said to myself these last nine months.
I said, "There's no alcoholic more likely to drink than the arrogant one who's positive he'll never drink again."
You wanna stay sober? Well, then, you better stay modest about your sobriety.
Thanks for this. I'm 90 days sober going on forever... ❤️
What an absolute poet you are in your writing . I, too, am a recovering alcoholic and how well you captured those experiences. I also wanted to tell you (hope you get this, Mr Sherman Alexie), my 17 year old son, who has never been a reader says, your “Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is the best book he’s ever read. I introduced him to it in middle achool and his copy is tattered , stretched at the seam - very well read. He’s read it and parts of it a dozen times. Thank you for that .