Category: sober lifestyle

“Don’t you know what everyone else is doing?”

The boy who asked me that, in a parked car outside my parents’ house during my junior year in high school, meant to coerce me. He wanted me to do that thing “everyone else was doing,” with him, and thought resorting to peer pressure would help seal the deal.

😂

Obviously, he didn’t really know Jenni Wielgus or that she had, like, a severe allergy to groupthink, and furthermore didn’t give a 🤬 about being cool. He clearly didn’t know his attempt at persuasion would actually have the opposite effect, and the teenage girl in that car would take such offense to his question that she’d hold onto the memory for decades and eventually write about it (with gusto!) in her blog at age 42.

In fairness, none of us really knows ourselves — much less each other — when we’re 17. For all my cluelessness regarding the birds/bees/“facts of life,” I was absolutely sure of one thing: I was not a follower. And no amount of coaxing was going to sway me toward something I didn’t think was right.

It was 4-something in the morning on a Wednesday when I officially re-discovered the love.

I had trudged down to the basement for a workout, and instead of hitting the podcast app on my phone and filling the cold, dimly lit space with the familiar voices of Rick Wilson & Molly Jong-Fast, or Chip Somers & Veronica Valli, something drew me to the old stereo system in the corner, where my husband had hooked up my ancient iPod.

I reached out and toggled the wheel to my most sentimental playlist.

It’s called “JUKEBOX,” because once upon a time in a basement far away, my dad installed one and filled it with an eclectic selection of ’45 records. I used to spend hours down there, punching keys and singing along to Bruce Springsteen, Starship, The Spinners, The Zombies, The Hooters, this amazing Britpop band called Breathe…

I won’t give you a full nostalgic discography. The point is that at some point in my 20s, I rounded up a few digital renderings of those old jukebox tracks and preserved them on the iPod, and earlier this week, I made the monumental decision to bring them — to bring music, in general — back into my life.

I’m a bit of a problem child in the 12-Step support group I’ve attended on a weekly basis since I got sober in July of 2019. Or at least that’s how I feel.

I know, I know. It’s wrong to focus on how I feel. That’s what got me wrapped up in addiction in the first place, right?

See, I’m at that part in the steps where you dig into all your “character defects” and learn how self-centered and self-pitying you are, and realize that the fierce, strong-willed, independent spirit you’ve prided yourself on your entire life was less an asset than a liability, and even though you probably never would’ve made it through school or kept a job — or quit drinking — without it, it has also helped to make you a maladjusted adult who struggles to have faith, practice humility, find peace and balance, and carve out a truly productive place in society.

The hyper-sensitivity that fuels your creativity and makes you good at writing also gets you hopelessly stuck up in your own head, tangled in a web of doubt and fear — which are all forms of self-absorption, BTW, and self-absorption happens to be the root of your addiction and the thing keeping you from living a fulfilling life.

Also, the only way out of the web is more meetings, prayers explicitly written out in the official 12-step literature, and service commitments within “the fellowship.”

This makes sense to me intellectually, but something in me just won’t accept it all as gospel. That damn individuality, that self-will, just won’t go away and let me grow like I’m supposed to!

Not to be flip, but if you want to stay on the path of recovery, sidestepping the inevitable landmines of temptation lying in wait here, there, anywhere…might I suggest heading in the direction of higher education?

I can think of no better way to keep yourself accountable than to air your dirty laundry in front of a grad school admissions board, presenting your own battle with alcoholism as a reason you’d be a great fit for their program, and discussing with great passion and emotion your goal of taking your Masters degree and using it to help other addicts change their lives.

No offense to you internet friends — all three of you — to whom I pour out my sober heart and soul every week on this blog, but I could easily just ghost you and “go back out” without much of a brouhaha. It’s a lot more difficult to say “🤬 it” to Doctors and Professors who just heard your story and thought it warranted acceptance into their university’s Class of…(hamster wheel in head turning)…2024?