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sober lifestyle

Protection

jenwielgusjournalism
Caption: 300 days without alcohol and I’m (cough) still alive.

It would be a smidge overdramatic, and not quite accurate, to refer to my sobriety date as “The Day The Music Died,” but it seems I unintentionally gave up more than one of my old favorite things on July 7, 2019.

That was 10 (get it? Ten?) months ago today, by the way. I still vividly remember every moment of no fun I had at a family get-together the first alcohol-free afternoon of my new life, without any substance available to blast through my ironclad inhibitions.

Loosening up used to come naturally to me, back when I was a little kid who spent hours spinning, and spinning, (*Pee Wee Herman voice*) aaaand spinning around the family room carpet singing along to “Steal Away,” “What A Fool Believes” and other 70s pop hits playing on my dad’s reel-to-reel stereo system. My parents have this on video (viewer beware: may cause dizziness). Isn’t it cute how oblivious kids are to embarrassment?

…she says, at age 42, while relating the gory details of a 20-year drunkalog on the World Wide Web…😳

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Discomfort

jenwielgusjournalism

Well, guys, it happened. I lost it.

I almost literally lost it the other day during my weekly virtual recovery meeting, so it’s a good thing we spent so much time messing with technical difficulties that the hour expired before I could go on an unhinged tirade. I’m fed up with Zoom, and staring at computers, and with everyone who tells me that MORE of these meetings full of rustling and background noise are the antidote to my increasing insanity. Or asks me if I’m praying. Or gives any kind of advice at all using the words “you should.”

I’m fed up with the “this does not feel better” mindf*ck of early sobriety in the age of coronavirus.

I’m fed up with myself (you’re like, “That makes two of us!”)

Maybe I should just go back to bed.

My bed has become my favorite place in the world, now that the world’s in crisis, and I no longer drink. Every day I look forward to popping a melatonin gummy, hitting the pillow and shutting off. Sleep: the drug du jour on Day 294.

If it sounds like life might be a lot less….un-lifelike if I relapsed, I’m here to tell you, you’re right. I strenuously agree. In fact, it suddenly struck me one day, earlier this week when the sheer monotony of my (our) Groundhog Day existence and the rabid, feral rage of my 42-year-old hormones combined to drive me as close as I’ve ever come to complete nuclear meltdown, that I totally understand why people relapse. I understand why they say “f*ck it” after months, years, half-lifetimes of living in unaltered reality.

WHO THE F*CK WANTS TO DEAL WITH REALITY?!?!

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sober lifestyle

Progress

jenwielgusjournalism

When I was turning 40, my husband took me on my dream vacation to Mesa, Arizona, for Cubs spring training. It was snowing in Philly, and I packed a suitcase overflowing with short shorts, tank tops, sundresses and a brand new Cubbie-blue bikini.

I was on this strict “Zone” eating plan where I weighed and measured everything I put in my mouth — except, of course, tequila — and I was hitting the CrossFit as hard as I was the bottle. So I was probably as physically lean as I’ve ever been, and let’s be brutally honest, I was feeling myself a little bit. I snapped selfies showing off my rippled abs and shot videos of myself doing strict muscle-ups in the gym, and I posted them on all the usual channels, flexing, “This is 40!” I couldn’t wait to get away to the sunny warmth of my baseball Mecca, strut my svelte stuff down at Sloan Park and celebrate the shit out of the new decade I was clearly about to rock.

I mean, I doubt I was truly THAT confident, but on the great roller coaster of life, I can’t think of a time (other than the early years of our relationship/marriage) that I felt higher. I was pretty sure that being in great shape meant I was at least some semblance of a success, and that as long as my body was a certain size, everything else was A-OK.

(I’m writing this at 42, as of last Tuesday, and 280 days sober, as of today, and significantly less lean, and I’m still fighting the voice inside that tells me that’s true. How far have I come in two years? Hard to judge when you’ve always had a messed-up measuring stick…)

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Perspective

jenwielgusjournalism
Scenes from the final week in my ninth month of sobriety.

Getting sober is supposed to be about fully experiencing reality as your authentic self and resisting the sometimes-powerful pull of oblivion. It’s supposed to be about staying with yourself in the moment, and noticing and feeling everything that moment brings, without grabbing for the ripcord on the escape hatch.

This is who you are. This is where you are. This is what’s happening. And you’re OK, as is, without that mood-altering substance or electronic device or compulsive behavior or codependent relationship. …Or that entire “family size” (😂) bag of roasted almonds with sea salt that’s going to tear your digestive system to shreds overnight and also contains 1,543 grams of fat.

Yeah, man, after nine full months without alcohol, I’ve totally fallen into a rebound romance with food, but we’re not here to talk about my expanding ass.

I’m not sure what we’re here to talk about, actually, because I’m having a hard time trying to wrap my head around what’s real right now, in general. I’m plowing through each day like…well, like a farm animal attached to a plow — head down, blinders on, feet mechanically lifting and lowering, mind so numbed by the monotony of duty that where I’ve been and where I’m going blur into the same patch of dirt — and when I occasionally snap out of the wake-eat-work-eat-sleep stupor and look around, everything appears to be completely, surreally insane. Like living in a melatonin-fueled dream.

My daily routine still involves swiping a red marker on the whiteboard in my basement to log another 24 hours of sobriety (with #270, I filled up the entire right side and now have 3 hanging out in the top left), but it’s funny how once novelty wears off and a habit is formed, you can lose all sense of perspective. Am I making progress in recovery? I’m too “in it” to see it. The same can be said for the other end of the spectrum: Am I stuck in a downward spiral of addiction that’s destroying my life? (10 years pass) …Holy @#$&, what have I done?

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sober lifestyle

Abundance

jenwielgusjournalism

You want to feel like the world is deserted? Take a walk in the pouring rain. I didn’t see a single soul while out getting my feet soaked in the neighborhood this morning…not that I minded. Hell, at that same time my poor husband was fighting crowds (and the frustration of not being able to find what’s on the list) at our local GIANT, and who wouldn’t rather be out in nature with puddles in their shoes than getting bumped into by oblivious cart-pushers and staring at an empty shelf where the chamomile tea used to be?

Ugh! I just got the whams thinking of being in a grocery store parking lot during a pandemic. I don’t even want to think about going inside the store! And he does this every week! 😱

My husband takes good care of me. He always has. The man even wrote into his wedding vows a promise to always keep me plied with my precious Diet Mountain Dew. No joke, although it’s become our running joke. I used to guzzle that shit back in my 20s when we met, but then again, I’ve always guzzled everything I got my hands on. My hubby knew that about me from the start and grew to love me anyway. He somehow kept loving me — and doing it from the same side of the same bed — when the relatively harmless poison of aspartame and caffeine was supplanted by mood-altering/soul-darkening fermented agave juice — straight, no chaser.

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Isolation

jenwielgusjournalism

HELP!! The Coronavirus is making me drink!!

That was the title of a special podcast one of my favorite authors posted earlier this week, not an actual thought from my head. I sit here at 258 days sober, a good little social distancer (as always!) who has only left the house to walk to the park — alone — in the last 7.

My thoughts are actually much less coherent, and one of the many reasons I’m grateful to have a job where I can work from home during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is that work forces me to focus on something concrete for most of the day.

I mean, inside, I still feel like the Tasmanian Devil from “Looney Tunes” all the time, but when I’m working, I’ve got no choice but to keep that maniac caged.

When left to his own devices, he stands at the mirror in the morning, wondering aloud, “What’s the point of any type of self-betterment when we could all just, you know, die tomorrow, cooped up in our homes while the world outside goes mad/falls apart, like an old dystopian “Twilight Zone” episode?” Continue reading “Isolation” →

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Anxiety

jenwielgusjournalism

This weekend, I was supposed to go to a local addiction treatment center and share my story with a group of women at a recovery meeting, but you’ll never guess what happened.

Yep. It got corona-ed out.

I was totally prepared, and eager, to go, and maybe this is a great example of how f*cked up I am: Neither pandemics nor public speaking engagements give me the slightest pause, but pretty much everything else on the planet scares me to death.

Heights. Crowds. Needles. Enclosed spaces. Awkward silences. Negative vibrations. Hell, the prospect of being even a minute late for something plants a firm knot in my stomach. I could go on, but I’m afraid you’ll stop reading.

See? It’s bad.

Believe it or not, quitting drinking has amplified my anxiety issues exponentially, to the point where I sometimes feel like…let’s see, how can I describe this with one my trademark dated pop culture references?…

Oh! I’ve got it.

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sober lifestyle, Uncategorized

Redemption

jenwielgusjournalism

Warm-and-fuzzy feel-good stories were my bread and butter throughout my career as a journalist (RIP, “The Good in Sports,”) which is funny, because in my personal life, I’ve always been partial to dark subject matter.

My entertainment obsessions include Cormac McCarthy novels, Coen Brothers movies (dark comedies are my absolute jam), true crime docudramas, bleak 90s grunge rock (RIP, Layne Staley), and TV series filled with complicated, conflicted protagonists who both battle and indulge their demons. The Tony Sopranos, Walter Whites, Ser Jaime Lannisters of the world…they’re not purely evil people, and yet they’re not above leaving chaos, devastation and bloodshed in their wake. Somehow, they make you root for them, even though they frequently act like assholes and occasionally scare you to death.

Speaking of which, I’m soooo looking forward to the new season of “Fargo,” which apparently premieres on FX next month, because I’m pretty sure my husband will move out if I spark up one more re-watch of “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad” or “Game of Thrones.”

Sitting here now, looking at things through the lens of eight months of sobriety, I see some clear commonality in the stories I used to tell and the stories I like to follow: namely, the redemption arc.

Continue reading “Redemption” →