Sobriety as Craft Imperative

On writing oneself into a reckoning with addiction

I’d always heard about hitting “rock bottom.” A bender, a catastrophic loss, a near-death experience. None of these things happened to me. What happened, instead, was a writing problem.

I did notice the references to alcohol stacking up. Excavating the loving yet fraught dynamic I shared with my mother in the form of a memoir in essays, I saw the repetitive allusions to a wine glass here, a favorite bar there, were beginning to compound upon themselves. That the significance was expanding beyond the realm of subtext into a noisy, distracting, uninterrogated theme across the essays in the manuscript wasn’t immediately clear to me when I started the project during pandemic lockdown. It should have been, but it wasn’t (maybe because, like many of us, I was doing even more drinking trapped indoors—but I suspect the real culprit was denial). But I also had this sense, at least subconsciously, that I could still control the narrative. That I could shift attention toward my mother and away from myself in revisions. That, in the end, I was still “handling it.”

This might be one of my most effective personal examples of the well-worn adage to “write first, edit later,” or the even more well-worn, well-lubricated version: “Write drunk, edit sober.” In both cases, the truth, indeed, will out.

I was several essays shy of a finished manuscript draft when, in the early spring of 2022, I traveled from North Idaho to Nebraska for a two-week artist’s residency. Five years earlier, I’d completed a draft of what would go on to become my first book at this same residency and had subsequently granted the place—at least in my imagination—a special power for assisting in the completion of projects as a result. In anticipation of this second trip, I had envisioned spending my writing time alcohol-free. I’d already taken a month off from drinking at the start of the year and found it unpleasant but manageable, enjoying the sensation of control, the efficient de-bloating effect, and the improved sleep quality that came with an extended break from daily booze. The fact that I’d rushed to the grocery store for a bottle of wine the minute my 30-day detox was over hadn’t yet settled into my conscious awareness as a major red flag.

However, it only took about 2.3 seconds after stepping from the airport shuttle onto the heat-cracked streets of Nebraska City for my mind to flood with recollections of my first visit to this town back in 2017—an experience that had validated my artistic aspirations, permitted me to luxuriate in my own sense of creative bohemia, and involved pretty much perpetual daily drinking after 3 or 4 p.m.

Part of the magic of this residency was its isolation from anything distracting outside one’s office or studio, except for a lovely park about a mile away and a couple of grungy dive bars scattered along the main street…and, of course, the liquor store several blocks south along the state highway. It was, in other words, an ideal place to read, write, walk, and drink. That’s exactly how I’d filled my time during my first visit. And almost immediately upon my return, I realized (that is, decided) that a “dry” residency risked ruining the power of the place, of its self-ascribed “finish the book” aura.

I’m not a superstitious person. I invented this necessity out of fear that without the alcohol, I wouldn’t be able, or perhaps even want, to finish writing my book.

So, I walked to the liquor store. I bought a six pack of beer for the fridge and a bottle of Bulleit rye, a bottle I tucked behind the desk in my office. If I knew that the hiding of the rye was a sign of something problematic, I also knew—or thought I knew—I needed it. That the rye (or bourbon, or gin), after years of associating a drink close at hand with the excitement and difficulty, the trying and seeking and ultimate satisfaction of figuring out my ideas on the page, had come to feel necessary to my creative process.