Welcome to the final part of Autostraddle’s Sober Series, a four-part candid conversation between members of the Autostraddle team on sobriety.
Dani Janae: I want to get your thoughts on how your life has improved since becoming sober.
Analyssa: I spend so much less energy thinking about mine and other people’s drinking! I used to just have this unending internal monologue about how much I was drinking and how fast and could I get another and was I getting drunk and should I eat more or less and will I blackout and will anyone take another shot.
Dani Janae: Totally! One of my big drinking memories is looking at a half-filled liter of wine and panicking because I was almost out! It’s so much better to not be living drink-to-drink anymore.
Tracy Levesque: The mental energy taken up by drinking (or attempting moderation) is absolutely exhausting. It’s something I love being gone now.
I love my life now. My wife and I have so much fun together (hangover-free sex is way better). I’m a much better parent. I feel generally better and more energetic. I do NOT miss drinking. Thinking about booze makes me think about hangovers and hating myself.
Analyssa: Big huge yes to no hangovers! And yeah, I’m a lot less self-absorbed, which included beating myself up for embarrassing shit I did while drinking (even thinking you’re the biggest loser in the world is very self-absorbed thinking!). I actually try to listen to people, and I care for and about others more. I can show up for people!
I’ve learned so much about my likes and interests and dislikes and boundaries. I’m in love, and it feels real and stable and not just like infatuation but a partnership built on work and understanding and trust. I’m feeling all sorts of feelings I simply ignored or ran from or decided not to feel during the years of my drinking.
And like, it’s not perfect. I’m still a procrastinator, and I still get so irritable or short-tempered, and I still sleep in late any chance I get. And I now just get to know that that’s me and not booze.
I’m feeling all sorts of feelings that I simply ignored or ran from or decided not to feel during the years of my drinking.
Dani Janae: I love that sober sex is so much better for me. Even masturbating is better. When I do date I’m WAYYY less obsessive, like I’m not waiting by the phone all day and thinking about the other person nonstop. I have more time for stuff I care about, like my brothers, my niece, writing, and reading.
A funny thing I used to do while drinking is think to myself about all the things I deserved while never putting in the work. I do put in work now, and I have a great life because of it. I used to be like “Autostraddle should hire me!” But I’d never apply or even pitch lol — now look at me!
Analyssa: I couldn’t have done the pandemic or this most recent work stress while drinking without running my life into the ground, I know it, and I’m thankful every day I didn’t have to do that.
Or reading something and thinking “I could write that!” But simply never writing…that was me.
Tracy Levesque: Well, I tried to do that for you haha.
Analyssa: I was so scared of sober sex, but yes!! Love it, so much.
Tracy Levesque: So much better!
Dani Janae: Also, I feel so in touch with what I’m feeling for the first time. Like I can actually tell when I’m depressed or angry instead of drinking through any negative emotion.
Analyssa: And I can tell which emotions need tending to versus which will pass? This ties together what Tracy said about alcohol being gasoline, and Dani, what you said about obsessing in dating but when I was drinking any perceived slight could spiral into a HUGE ordeal rather than being able to acknowledge it and meet it at the level it actually required.
Tracy Levesque: When we hit six months, my wife said to me: “That’s a first since you were a teenager.” And she’s right. I haven’t known myself alcohol-free for multiple months in a row since I was essentially a kid. So it’s like getting to know the real you.
Analyssa: Yes!!! I had the same thing at six months. It was the longest I’d not drank since I was 15.
I remember another sober person I met once told me a story of after she stopped drinking, going to the grocery store to buy toilet paper and realizing she had no idea what brand she liked. Because she just hadn’t cared for years about things like that. And I sort of laughed, and she was like yeah, it’s extremely silly but also it’s amazing — now I know all my favorite brands of things. And I love that and think about it all the time.
Tracy Levesque: That’s awesome, I love that.
I love that sober sex is so much better for me. Even masturbating is better.
Dani Janae: When I got diagnosed as bipolar and put on meds, my psychiatrist was like “now you can start getting to know the real you,” and I owe a lot of that to getting sober and realizing there was something happening with me.
Analyssa: It allows so much more honest connection with yourself!
Tracy Levesque: Y’all are making me emotional lol.
Analyssa: This whole thing has truly made my week wow.
Tracy Levesque: Me too, I was really looking forward to it. Besides my wife, I don’t really have anyone else to talk to about it.
Dani Janae: Lol omg me too! It’s just such a better life, at least for me. When I was weeks in, I cried about missing alcohol. Now I feel so free being away from it.
Thank you so much for doing this with me!!
Analyssa: Oh, I was the surliest bitch alive a few weeks in, even a few months in. I felt like there was this huge loss in my life and like the horizon of a life without alcohol was just endlessly stretched before me. And now, I simply could not be happier that that’s the case.
Welcome to part three of Autostraddle’s Sober Series, a four-part candid conversation between members of the Autostraddle team on sobriety.
Dani Janae: What are some challenges you’ve experienced in sobriety/how do you deal with pressure to use drugs/alcohol?
Analyssa: I think getting sober in the pandemmy removed a lot of the most obvious pressures for me at first — there weren’t bars to go to or parties to attend.
I do still feel sometimes outside of a shared experience, moreso in situations that are slightly more laid-back, like a Saturday afternoon hang on a patio or a fancier dinner. At parties, I’ve come to understand that truly no one thinks about you as much as you do, especially if they are drinking, so that feels less stressful to me now than it used to.
Tracy Levesque: The path my wife and I took to stop drinking was gradual. We did a few Dry Januarys in a row. The first one, we drank a couple of times. The second, we made it the entire month, but as soon as February 1 hit, it was game on. Then my wife found this thing called The Alcohol Experiment, and it was 30 days where you stop drinking (or not) and you watch a video every day dispelling myths about alcohol. Like “alcohol relieves stress” — actually, it releases more stress hormones in your system. “Alcohol is fun” — actually, your body’s attempt to get rid of it makes you grumpy. It shows you the cognitive dissonance between wanting to be a generally healthy person and regularly drinking literal poison. It was very non-judgey, logic, and science-based, and it 100% worked for me. So after doing that, we tried moderation. But I have to say, moderation takes so much work! You make up rules for yourself you inevitably break. And it’s such a slippery slope.
Finally, we decided to just stop, and it’s so much easier than moderation.
So “moderation” was the first challenge.
Next is the annoyance of people questioning your choice to not drink. Like, if you quit smoking, people are not like, “good god why?”
Analyssa: Oh! Also! How often people offer to buy you a drink in situations? Like, I just had a very stressful thing happen in my work life, and I had so many people text me like “I owe you a drink for this” or “can’t wait to buy you a drink,” and I still haven’t figured out how to answer those sort of well-meaning but clueless things.
I have a few times said “well, I was just too good at it” when asked why I stopped lmao.
Tracy Levesque: Good one.
Dani Janae: When I got sober, I was still performing poetry pretty regularly, and sometimes I got paid in drink tickets, so I’d either give them away or use them to get a ginger ale or something.
When people offer to take me to a bar for a date, I usually say I prefer coffee. Or I just get a tonic water with lime.
One thing I definitely notice now more than ever is the alcohol ads on social media. They are EVERYWHERE, and sometimes I get like “mannnn, I could have a drink and not spiral.”
Right now, I keep seeing an ad for a peach wine, and my mouth waters every time. I know I’d just drink the whole bottle and get super sick lol.
Tracy Levesque: I saw something somewhere where people said they wouldn’t trust a person who put “sober” on their dating profile. How messed up is that? But to be brutally honest, I would have thought the same way during the height of my drinking career.
Analyssa: I have found that my easiest way of dealing with it, personally, is to just be honest. At first I would try to skirt around it. I’d have a red solo cup full of sparkling water instead of carrying the can or I’d tell people “I just don’t feel like drinking,” and that was always way harder. Now I’m just super firm on “I don’t drink” or “I’ve been sober for 18 months” and let people have their own reactions. That’s their business, not mine!
I have had to block so many companies on Twitter for advertising alcohol for the same reason.
Sorry to Twisted Tea, hope they are well.
Dani Janae: Lol Analyssa.
I saw something somewhere where people said they wouldn’t trust a person who put “sober” on their dating profile. How messed up is that? But to be brutally honest, I would have thought the same way during the height of my drinking career.
Tracy Levesque: I tell people that drinking stopped being fun so I don’t do it anymore. But I always feel the need to say “but I’m cool with other people drinking,” like I need to make other people feel okay with their drinking.
Analyssa: Oh I definitely do that!
Dani Janae: Yes, totally. I feel like I still went to bars in early sobriety so I wouldn’t inconvenience anyone else’s fun.
Analyssa: I’m trying not to do it as much? But I think there’s probably a balance there, because honestly, people DO get really fucking weird when you say you don’t drink, so I like to encourage them not to be weird on my account but also I’m trying to be less “I’m not like a regular sober person, I’m a cool sober person” because….who is that for?
Tracy Levesque: “I’m not like a regular sober person, I’m a cool sober person” omg this!!!
Dani Janae: At my old job, people were so weird about it, and I was like why do you care so much?!
Tracy Levesque: It’s going to be interesting navigating my first tech conference alcohol-free. So many of my tech relationships involved drinking.
Dani Janae: I feel like being the only sober person in a group is so much pressure because people just instinctively start monitoring their own drinking, and it’s like, you don’t have to do that! They think you are judging them when you’re really just trying to get through the night.
Tracy Levesque: YES, Dani, that! I’m afraid my closest tech friends are going to feel that way.
Dani Janae: I hope they don’t! It’s a hard position to be in.
Analyssa: Yes, I don’t know how to tell people like “babe I simply do not care how much you drink.”
How much YOU drink is not capable of ruining my life — that’s me and me alone.
Tracy Levesque: I don’t know how much of it is me being afraid they’ll think that way or the fact I felt that way around a non-drinking person when I was in the height of it.
I feel like being the only sober person in a group is so much pressure because people just instinctively start monitoring their own drinking, and it’s like you don’t have to do that! They think you are judging them when you’re really just trying to get through the night.
Analyssa: But then that’s a whole other thing, too. It’s like, did I feel that way because I already had some work to do on my relationship with alcohol? In my case, yes, and so then I think I hold onto that when people are weird around a sober me. Because it does start to reveal to other people things about their drinking they may not like, even if they don’t get sober, which I know when I was in the height of it was why I felt weird swiping on sober people on the apps or being around sober people at parties.
Not to say everyone who feels strange around a sober person should not be drinking, just that there’s a weird chicken/egg/maybe some third thing there.
Tracy Levesque: Right
Dani Janae: Totally, that makes sense! I feel like, at the height of it, I thought everyone was out to get me or judging me, even the people who were trying to help. When I saw sober people on the apps I was always like “what would we do together if we weren’t drinking?”
Analyssa: I could not have imagined a dating app date without drinking three years ago, I could not have done it.
Dani Janae: Even when I drank too much on dates, I was still like I can’t imagine not living like this.
Tracy Levesque: It’s so messed up how the alcohol industry wants us all to feel this way. And media, everything plays along! Like the “I need a drink” scene happens hundreds of times on TV shows.
Analyssa: Oh, yeah, for a full four years I could never actually tell if a date went well or not because I’d been drunk so I didn’t trust my judgment!
Dani Janae: To use a word that’s already been used it is truly so insidious.
Analyssa: Have either of you watched Single Drunk Female?
Tracy Levesque: Yes
Dani Janae: I haven’t watched yet! Is it good?
Tracy Levesque: I’d give it a B.
Analyssa: I liked it!!
But I thought of it because I think it goes pretty far (as much as a single show can, I guess?) in combatting the media’s “I need a drink” normalization of drinking by showing the sort of routineness of sobriety?
Idk it sort of has an “I need a drink” tone, but instead all the characters are saying “I don’t drink so…”
Dani Janae: Oooo interesting!
Analyssa: Idk if that makes sense lol, and Tracy may disagree! But it was just a refreshing tone to me.
Tracy Levesque: Oh totally, I liked SDF‘s take.
I really liked how …And Just Like That handled Miranda’s sobriety storyline, because you never see Spontaneous Sobriety (going sober without a formal program) on TV. I related to her story so much, because we’re in our fifties and drinking crept up on both of us.
Analyssa: I haven’t seen that!
I loved The Flight Attendant, because it was the first time I saw someone who thought she was a fun party girl realize that actually her life was in shambles and had been for years because of her “fun.”
Tracy Levesque: Oh! I haven’t watched that show.
Analyssa: It’s…a lot, I will say. But the emotional core of Cassie’s sobriety actually really got me. I mean, there’s also like murder and espionage plots lmao so really a lot in every way.
Dani Janae: I saw Feel Good and thought it was pretty accurate.
Analyssa: I loved Feel Good. I just hate the romantic lead in that for some reason. Not the actor — she’s great! That character I cannot get past, idk why. Maybe I just think Mae Martin should be dating me!
Tracy Levesque: I loved that show too lol.
Dani Janae: LOL.
Analyssa: Since we talked about Tracy’s wife and their journey together, Dani, do you make an effort to date other sober people? Or just normies who drink without thinking too much about it.
Tracy Levesque: (Holding my comment for your answer.)
Analyssa: No pressure to answer if you’d rather not. I’m just curious about how other people approach dating while sober since I haven’t actually done much of it.
Dani Janae: I actually do! It’s not a major priority, but I find it easier to date other sober people. When I think of my ideal relationship, it’s with someone who is sober! One thing I did notice through dating is what regular drinking looks like, like sitting your glass down between sips and taking more than two minutes to drink a drink lol. But ultimately, I know myself, and I know I’d think “if they can drink, why can’t I?” So I try to date sober people mostly.
When I think of my ideal relationship it’s with someone who is sober!
Tracy Levesque: There were seven years when my wife didn’t drink and I still did (the Trump administration got her drinking again). While it was fine at the time, I enjoy life more with the two of us not drinking.
Analyssa: Omg Dani, noticing those regular drinking behaviors is so funny. I have friends who will…leave a beer unfinished? It’s so unimaginable to me.
Dani Janae: Lol totally! It’s so weird to watch people just moderate like that.
Tracy Levesque: The scary thing is I used to be that person, and you can go from that to drinking lots of bourbon nightly.
Welcome to part two of Autostraddle’s Sober Series, a four-part candid conversation between members of the Autostraddle team on sobriety.
Dani Janae: What was your sober story? Did you have the traditional “rock bottom” moment?
Analyssa: Oh boy well, I wrote that essay about wanting to do Dry January after just being exhausted of my drinking, but yes there is a more definitive story.
In 2019 after a relationship had ended, I kind of was single and unattached for the first time in a long time and I thought, I can finally just let myself drink in the way I want to. And that really quickly (within the span of two months) became untenable. We broke up in October 2019 and alcohol had played a role in that for sure, and in December I had two huge moments that were like….oh I have to stop.
One was that I went to a work holiday party where I got pretty drunk on free wine (just openly taking advantage of executive’s corporate cards and not in a subtle way!), then drove to a bar by myself and continued to drink. I woke up the next day home in my bed, no idea how I’d gotten home or where my car was, an hour late for a job I had started THAT WEEK, and still drunk. I spent the whole day fighting my stomach, and that was when I started thinking about dry January.
But it probably wouldn’t have stuck if it hadn’t been for the week of Christmas when I was home in Kansas City and again still drinking pretty uncontrollably. And I got to the end of three solid days of being like, at minimum tipsy, and my body just shut down. I was so so sick, I couldn’t get off the bathroom floor, I was trembling and couldn’t eat anything. It was horrible and it was sort of one of those “if I survive I’ll never drink again” things, which sounds like a joke but genuinely it just sort of solidified some ideas I’d been kicking around about myself for a year or two at least, which was that my drinking had become unmanageable.
Tracy Levesque: I think it was a series of events vs. one bottom (it can always get worse, right?). I came to realize I am a terrible parent when I’m drunk. I lose my patience in five seconds. Also, alcohol pours gasoline on any bad situation. So something that may have been a small debate which may have lasted two minutes with my wife turned into me dramatically screaming. Then on Halloween night, I passed out, in front of my kid on the bathroom floor of our friend’s house. Like one minute I was standing and the next my wife was putting me in bed. I gave myself a black eye and a concussion. I was a grown-ass, 50-year-old woman and I scared my kid in this way. I could no longer not question it, drinking was not good for us.
There were other events like that. Like, we had a house fire and had to stay in a hotel for a few days and I got into a screaming fight with my wife in the hotel room in front of our kid. I realized, “Wow, I’m an asshole when I’m drunk. I don’t like this person.”
Also, I hated being in a perpetual state of hungoverness.
Analyssa: Yeah, like Tracy, there are so many events that all sort of added up to a bottom, and those two just happened to occur at the right time for me to finally acknowledge them and accept that I might need to change.
Dani Janae: That’s so scary Tracy.
Similar to Analyssa, I had just ended a relationship with a person who wanted me to quit drinking. They had an alcoholic father so they were mostly supportive of me getting sober but would do things like setting a bottle of whiskey in front of me to see if I’d reach for it.
After I ended it I tried being sober but eventually kept begging people to bring me alcohol. I had lost my job and wasn’t paying rent so I relied on other people to feed my addiction.
It’s very dramatic, but one day I just broke down in the shower drunk and crying because I couldn’t stop myself. I was so afraid for my life and also had no hope, so I called a friend and asked for help.
I came to realize I am a terrible parent when I’m drunk.
Analyssa: I could list like ten other times just off the top of my head that I could have been like….huh, this is not good for me.
Tracy Levesque: Same.
Analyssa: Oof Dani that partner thing.
Tracy Levesque: Yeah, that is messed up. I’m sorry that happened.
Dani Janae: Yeah they were not a good partner, but I also realize I wasn’t easy to be with in those days.
Analyssa: I mean, that sums up almost the whole of my experience with exes while I was drinking.
And luckily a lot of the work I’ve done in sobriety on myself and my thinking is like, being able to acknowledge that other people may have done things to me, but all I can control is my own behavior and my own reactions to those things.
Dani Janae: Omg yeah. I was just not very good to anyone back then. Like if I had to choose between that relationship or alcohol, I would have chosen booze no doubt. They had a special box of wine waiting for me at their house.
Tracy Levesque: I’ve been with my wife for almost 30 years, so we’ve been in this together for a long time. And she ultimately found the thing that got us to go alcohol-free. We both cut down and stopped at the same time.
Dani Janae: Tracy, that’s so cool.
Analyssa: And so many of my relationships where I thought drinking was just another part of it, were actually structurally built on drinking, either my own or the activity of drinking with that partner.
Tracy Levesque: I have friendships like that.
Analyssa: I mean once I realized I was an alcoholic, I truly realized I’d also always behaved alcoholically in relationships, if that makes sense. Either I felt the same way about a lot of those people as I did about alcohol OR I would have given them up totally for alcohol.
Dani Janae: Omg yes, when I got sober so many relationships just ended because I was like, oh we have nothing in common but we like to do drugs together.
Analyssa: 100% [of] my friendships changed, even with some of my closest friends who still are in my life there is a lot of work and conversation there.
Tracy Levesque: My friends are supportive, like no one pressures us to drink. But I can see the “Why would you do that?” look on their face when I tell them I stopped drinking.
And so many of my relationships where I thought drinking was just another part of it, were actually structurally built on drinking, either my own or the activity of drinking with that partner.
Analyssa: I mean we talked about how corporate and parent culture are built on drinking, like….socializing is so built that way. Going on a date? Drink. Game night? Drink. Movies? They sell beer there.
Dani Janae: Both of my best friends were very supportive. I think because I had taken so much from them when I was drinking. They both were like “okay, good. Finally.”
But yes, especially queer social life. In my city, it’s very heavily based on using drugs and alcohol.
Analyssa: So even with my most supportive friends there’s a layer there, you’re automatically set up to be outside of it.
But yes Dani most of my closest friends were more like “if this means less likelihood of you doing scary shit like disappearing for 12 hours ten miles away from home on a Saturday night, then please yes let’s do it.”
Tracy Levesque: YES! I thought about this a bunch knowing we’d have this conversation. We all think you can’t have fun without alcohol. Like, booze creates the fun. But the truth is, as adults we’ve stopped having the experience of socializing without alcohol. The first few events I attended alcohol-free I thought it would be weird and awkward, but I had a lot of fun. And I had even more fun knowing I’d be waking up fresh as a daisy the next morning.
Analyssa: One of the most fun nights I’ve had in my life to date I think was a wedding I went to totally sober last year, which like four years ago would have sounded like absolute torture to me.
Dani Janae: I remember I went to a birthday party newly sober and within the first five minutes of talking in this group, this woman was like “wow this is awkward, when does the bar open!” And I was like wow! We are so tricked into believing alcohol starts the party and makes us more interesting.
Tracy Levesque: I went to a friend’s karaoke birthday party with a full make-your-own Old Fashioned Bar set up. Sounds like a nightmare for a former Old Fashioned lover, but I had an absolute blast. And I was able to drive the equipment home safely.
Yes, Dani! Exactly
The first few events I attended alcohol-free I thought it would be weird and awkward, but I had a lot of fun. And I had even more fun knowing I’d be waking up fresh as a daisy the next morning.
Analyssa: And also! Something I’ve realized sober is like, sometimes a party or activity just isn’t fun for me! And that’s okay too, and I don’t have to push myself to do it.
But with drinking, I’d be like wow I’m not having fun and then I’d get drunk and never think about whether I was actually having fun, it was just that the feeling of discomfort had been blurred away by being drunk.
Dani Janae: Oh absolutely. Being drunk just made me not care about what was going on around me. The party could have sucked, and everyone could have hated me, but as long as I left drunk I did not care
Analyssa: EXACTLY THIS. And honestly, I know it has its faults but AA meetings were the first time I actually realized that. Until I went to a few, I actually genuinely believed that once I had two beers everything DID magically get more fun and everyone DID actually love me and I never paid any mind to whether that was uhhh true.
Hearing other people talk about the exact thing you just said Dani I was like oh, that IS how I behaved, I just didn’t know it.
Dani Janae: Yes totally. Finding a sober community was huge for me in understanding that 1. I definitely had a problem and 2. I was not as charming and fun as I thought I was. Like there is nothing more annoying than showing up to a party, drinking most of the booze, and then leaving without throwing away a cup or recycling a bottle. I was like oh! I was behaving badly!!
Analyssa: The “I’m the most charming person at the party” to “wait did I ever give a shit about a single other person at a party” pipeline lmao.
I used to be so smug about all the friends I could make at a party and then I realized like actually I couldn’t tell you one single thing about all those “friends.”
Tracy Levesque: Another thing that prompted me to change was the fact it was hard to not drink almost every day. Even though I would wake up at 3 am every night, feeling like shit and going over and over anything stupid or embarrassing I did the night before, vowing to never drink, when that feeling eventually faded it was like “Let’s have drinks” all over again. As Ryan O’Connell says, it’s the most boring Groundhog’s Day ever.
Dani Janae: Omg yes to both of those things. I chose my apartment because of its proximity to bars and liquor stores. The cycle of my life was just careening toward the moment I got to drink again after work. It was such a small and messy life.
Analyssa: Wow the repetition of all the dumb embarrassing things.
Just another small mercy of sobriety is that I so rarely am expending mental energy running over and over a night in my head.
It was like worrying a loose tooth! It hurt and was not fun and yet it was all I could do!
Tracy Levesque: Yeah, every regret, every embarrassing thing that has happened in my adult life involved alcohol. How is that fun?
Omg, Analyssa, yes! The freedom from worrying about what you said or did the night before is amazing.
Analyssa: And even when I embarrass myself sober, I have such a better handle on it? Like at least I know where things went left or I can laugh about it or whatever.
When it was drunk, it had this whole extra added layer of shame to it.
Tracy Levesque: Absolutely.
Dani Janae: Agreed.
Especially those moments of like oh no I blacked out last night, what did I say/do? That is just so scary, to be totally not there.
I used to be like “oh I’ve never blacked out!” But I’d wake up with bruises and random pictures on my phone and I was like hmmm.
Analyssa: Leslie Jamison has such a great bit about this in The Recovering, about letting people fill in the gaps of her blackouts for her.
I was really on that wave for a long time, letting people approach it for me instead of ever asking.
I had a general rule which was like “if someone brings it up to me as a joke, then I don’t have to be stressed about it, because they wouldn’t joke about it if they were mad at me or concerned for me.”
Dani Janae: That’s a book I need to read!
Analyssa: Oh I recommend it to everyone!!
Welcome to part one of Autostraddle’s Sober Series, a four-part candid conversation between members of the Autostraddle team on sobriety.
Dani Janae: So my first question is very easy: How long have you been sober?
Analyssa: A little over 18 months! My sobriety date is November 21, 2020.
Tracy Levesque: 6 months alcohol-free, but I’ve had around a dozen drinks since over a year ago.
So I’ve consciously cut down for over a year.
I’m a basic New Year’s Resolution. Jan 1 is my date.
Analyssa: My sobriety counter says 1 year, 7 months and 13 days but I rarely check my day count.
Dani Janae: Totally, that’s so dope, congrats to both of you! I’ve been sober for four years and some change. I don’t remember when my last drink was but I made a decision to stop on February 28, 2018.
Do y’all remember when you had your first drink?
Tracy Levesque: Not clearly, but it must have been in high school.
Analyssa: I love a soft release of drinking tbh, before my official sobriety date I was basically not drinking from Jan 1 2020 but then from Jan to November was still having sips of things? I know that isn’t the common narrative so I like hearing others who have a date that matters to them without the hardness of cold turkey, if that makes sense.
I very much remember my first drink, it was my sophomore year of high school and I was spending the night with my cool friend Melanie.
The whole point of the night was that I was gonna drink for the first time!
I had 8 shots of vodka and smoked weed for the first time that night so needless to say a) not a great experience and b) I had moderation troubles from the jump.
Dani Janae: Ooo love cool Melanie lol.
I also remember mine very clearly. It was thanksgiving and I was 11. I was sneaking into the kitchen to eat the stuffing out of the turkey and I grabbed a cup of what I thought was egg nog and it was Bailey’s lol.
I kept sneaking back in and taking sips after that. I was like oh okay, so this is better than anything I’ve ever had before.
Tracy Levesque: Oops
Dani Janae: Did drinking become regular for y’all after the first time?
Analyssa: Hmmm, that’s complicated! I made a real mess of that first night (texting people I shouldn’t, puking, blacking out, all the messy milestones) and my persona at school and with my friends was always very overachieving. So from the start, I knew those two couldn’t really coexist.
This meant that after that first night I drank more than I had before (I was desperate to drink nearly any chance I got) but because I knew I couldn’t control it, I put myself through long periods of not drinking, to stay in control.
I’d say I drank maybe a handful more times each semester of high school because I knew pretty immediately that it was all or nothing for me, in terms of drunkenness – and all the times in between I was very much Not Drinking.
Tracy Levesque: I was a very take-it-or-leave it drinker for a long time. My mom is allergic and didn’t drink at all and my dad only drank occasionally. It wasn’t a big deal in our family when it came to events. Then in college, everyone around me drank a lot but I only did it on the weekends and not a ton. As an adult, I didn’t keep it in the house or anything, but then my wife’s family had more of a drinking culture and brought that into my life. Not in a to-excess way, but they had a “cocktail hour” every day when they all got together. But then it started to evolve that my wife did not have a good relationship with alcohol. She was the kind of drinker who would reach a certain point and a switch would flip. It took us a long time to realize that was happening. For me, I remained a pretty take-it or leave-it drinker until one day a client stopped by the office and gave us a bottle of bourbon as a gift. I had never been a brown liquor drinker before then. I tried the bourbon and liked it and started my drinking career.
Working in the tech community there is such a culture of drinking and I got absolutely swept up into that.
You’d go to conferences and big tech companies would be buying rounds of drinks for everyone.
I’d estimate this at 12-13 years ago. So I was not the typical story.
Dani Janae: Oh I feel that Analyssa! I also had moderation problems from the jump. I also really liked feeling like an adult, so I would go downstairs when everyone else was sleeping and drink my parents’ alcohol from these collectible Disney glasses. I was going through a lot and was very sad so I let myself get lost in it almost daily.
I’m high school I tried to turn it around because I wanted to be pre-med in college but I’d say I drank all through middle school, stopped for most of high school, then began again in college.
Omg Tracy brown liquor was my favorite haha
Tracy Levesque: :)
Working in the tech community there is such a culture of drinking and I got absolutely swept up into that.
Dani Janae: For me, I found that being in college and turning 21 fast-tracked my drinking. Once I was able to buy it on my own I wasn’t beholden to relying on older friends or fearing getting caught it was over. I remember on my 21st birthday I bought three bottles of wine and was gifted a couple of bottles of liquor and I drank it all alone over the next couple of days. Didn’t share a drop.
Tracy Levesque: Parenthood and the pandemic fast-tracked both my and my wife’s drinking.
Dani Janae: Yeah I always say I’m grateful I got sober before all [the pandemic] happened because I would have been an even bigger mess.
Analyssa: I think mine really accelerated after college in my first job. The entertainment industry is set up so you start working with a cohort of mostly people fresh out of undergrad and the culture is very drinking and drugs heavy.
I also started dating a girl whose friends were big partiers which helped me feel like what I was doing was cool and normal.
Tracy Levesque: I feel society is set up to feel like drinking while anything is cool and normal and that is part of the problem. Like with parenting, there is such a culture of “Mommy needs her special juice” and “I drink because you cry” t-shirts.
Analyssa: In college, I really kept up the same system of like, going way too hard and then taking a long break and then snowballing into going way too hard again. But I think since it wasn’t consistent, no one ever thought it was concerning except for as isolated incidents (including me!). But yknow I was like, taken to the hospital for drinking in college, I got a concussion while drinking, I’d wake up in mysterious beds or with mysterious bruises like I was truly just never a “normal” drinker.
Yes Tracy! And corporate culture too is all of the “we have to have drinks after work to survive the grind.”
Tracy Levesque: Omg I gave myself a black eye and a concussion while drinking.
Analyssa: We had Tequila Thursdays at my first office.
Dani Janae: Oh Jesus.
Tracy Levesque: I could talk for hours about this. Cocktail carts in offices, beer on tap at co-working spaces…
Analyssa: Champagne or wine for people’s birthdays.
Dani Janae: When I started working at a large corporation here I was like “alright where’s everyone hiding the booze!”
Analyssa: I could really get a buzz going from a coworker’s birthday. And then I remember I switched jobs to an office that didn’t do booze for birthdays and I was like….why? What’s the point?
Tracy Levesque: The thing that makes me so angry is I contributed to this. We had a cocktail cart in the office. We’d take the office out to lunch and it was okay to drink. Needless to say, the cart is gone now. But I’m so angry at myself for participating in it.
Analyssa: It’s funny, much like coming out, I always look back on these moments and think “Ah that’s when I should have known I had a problem.”
In the way that I look back on how I used to feel about other girls or whatever and am like “Ohhhh that was queer.”
Dani Janae: Yes I have those moments too Analyssa!
Tracy Levesque: Same.
Analyssa: But also Tracy all that office stuff is framed as like, community and culture building? Even at the boozeless birthday office, I tried to get people to do champagne for birthdays because I was like “this is how we bond!” It’s so insidious that it becomes easy to think you’re contributing positively to the vibe by encouraging a drinking culture.
Tracy Levesque: So true.
Analyssa: I did a lot of that in college too, like in the student groups I was in, pushing a lot of drinking on the group activities. And like, some of that was certainly to mask my own level of drinking but also I genuinely thought I was creating more fun where there hadn’t been before! That’s been a huge awakening for me in the last 18 months like, no maybe it wasn’t actually fun for everyone and I wasn’t just this positive joyous carefree spirit I thought I was being.
Tracy Levesque: Insidious is the perfect word. Drinking permeates everything and behavior or consequences you would normally be alarmed by, is fine because “Omg I’m so sick today and can’t remember what happened last night either, isn’t that hilarious?!”
Analyssa, that is exactly what led me to stop. Realizing drinking is not actually fun.
Dani Janae: One thing I always found with my drinking was I intentionally built community around it. I wouldn’t hang out with “lightweights” or people that would try to get me to slow down. I wanted everyone to be as drunk or drunker than I was, but I also prided myself on being able to drink A LOT and not really get drunk.
Analyssa: Totally Dani! I think that’s where my college community groups and definitely the friend group of the girl I was dating my first year out of undergrad came in.
Tracy Levesque: Totally, a high tolerance is a badge of honor. Looking at this now, that is really messed up.
Analyssa: Being around others who were at my level allowed me to go for a lot longer, and I totally shut down anyone who implied I couldn’t handle my alcohol or that I should consider slowing down.
Hilariously the guy I am dating now, I also dated in college, and he was the first person to ever say to me that I might have a problem and that was kind of the beginning of the end of our college relationship in my head.
I was like well this will never go anywhere if he’s already trying to limit me.
It’s funny, much like coming out, I always look back on these moments and think “Ah that’s when I should have known I had a problem.”
Analyssa: And yes I LOVED showing off how much I could drink. Was slapping the bag (Franzia) a thing in either of your lives? That was my big party trick.
Dani Janae: Lol yes unfortunately.
Tracy Levesque: lol, I didn’t know that was a thing.
Analyssa: At my college you would slap the bag and chug from the spout and people would count (like a keg stand) and when they got to 7, they would just keep repeating 7, 7, 7, 7.
Dani Janae: I believe the last drinks I had were an old bag of Franzia and some leftovers in a flask.
Analyssa: I thank everything in the universe that I can’t remember it now, but I used to know what my record was and try to beat it at truly every party.
Tracy Levesque: My drinking career really ramped up in my forties, so it was more like fancy cocktails at professional events. Going out to have drinks with colleagues. Which may sound more sophisticated, but it’s the same stupid result.
Dani Janae: I had a few friends that worked in the service industry so I would hang at their bars where the cocktails were $20 but then cross the street to my fav bar with $4 cocktails and fill up for the night. I remember thinking I was so sophisticated.
Tracy Levesque: During the pandemic when I was stuck at home alcohol became the working off switch for me. I really need the transition of leaving work and coming home for my brain to get out of work mode, but at home, I would look up and it would be 9 pm and I’d still be working. So drinks became the way to transition. And it was the pandemic everything sucked anyway so it’s okay to drink every day. Then my tolerance started to match my wife’s and we were a drinking pair.
Analyssa: Yeah I had decided at the end of 2019 that I would stop drinking in 2020, and I’m so thankful that I wasn’t drinking in the lockdown portion of the pandemic.