I was staying sober for my wife. Now that she has passed away, what's the point?

I don’t think alcohol will make you feel better—I think that’s the fantasy of a person who loves alcohol too much.

Edvard Munch Melancholy

Quick note: I’ve been alternating advice weeks with mini-essay weeks, but I wanted to address this letter as soon as possible, so you’re getting two advice weeks in a row.

Hi Katie,

I have been sober since 2012. I have never been offended by, or even bothered by, alcohol; I just haven't gone back.  I even keep alcohol in the house, which is always a hot topic for guests at our house when they find the alcohol on a high shelf in a cabinet.  

In complete candor, I became sober not because I felt that I needed to be sober for me—I was such a drunk I would have just drank myself into the grave—before I go on, what kind of person watches Leaving Las Vegas and says, "yeah, I totally get it, and I'm not particularly bothered." Anyway, I became sober because of my wife.  I wanted to stop hurting her and doing some really stupid shit to her when I was really drunk, which was every day.  As they say in AA, I didn't always get into trouble when I was drunk, but I was always drunk when I was in trouble.

Luckily, it worked.  She found a way to forgive me for my transgressions, due in part to my commitment to sobriety.  Unfortunately, she passed away a little over a week ago, after an extended fight against breast cancer, on her 55th birthday and a few months before our 28th anniversary.  I am not trying to garner sympathy, but over the past few days, I keep toying with the decision of whether to remain sober.  I mean, I was a functioning drunk, working and whatever, and I only really hurt the one I loved the most, but since she is no longer here, why shouldn't I just say f*ck it and go back to my other love—a very dry Gibson martini.  And by "a martini," I mean vodka, ice, and pickled onions—repeat, repeat, repeat, pass out in public or miss the ending of every television show or movie after 9:00 PM.  

Jeeze, this is a long question, but do you have any advice on how to shift from not drinking for her to not drinking for me? I don't think I can be persuaded by the ever-constant refrain that "she wouldn't want you to" or "it would disappoint her so much."  

I welcome any advice that you can provide. I have only read a few of your posts, but they are delightful.

Sincerely,

What Now

Hi, What Now,

I am so sorry for your loss. I can only imagine the pain you’re going through right now, and it makes perfect sense to me that your instinct would be anesthetization. Perhaps because I, too, can identify with the kind of furious propulsion toward self-destruction Ben has in Leaving Las Vegas. I often fantasized about escaping somewhere to drink myself into extinction. Sadly, a few loved ones in my life have done precisely that, and the view from the other side never looks like the freedom I imagined when I was drinking. It looks like a corpse found alone in a shitty motel room in a pool of vomit and blood. It looks lonely and painful. So, while I truly understand the impulse—especially when you are going through this massive loss—I wouldn’t wish that on you or anyone. 

I’m glad you raise the issue of getting sober “for” someone because I know a lot of people in recovery will say you can never get sober for another person, only yourself. Most of the time, I think it’s an oversimplification or semantics. 

When you got sober, you did so because you didn’t want to lose your wife. You had to pick between her and booze. Over the last 12 years, you made that choice repeatedly just by staying sober. You chose what you wanted for your life—to keep her in it. That wasn’t just for her; it was for you too. 

Now that she’s passed, you’re reeling from the grief, and it doesn’t feel like there’s any reason to make that choice. It’s understandable, but I don’t think it’s accurate. Your decision to get sober was fundamentally about what you wanted to be possible in your life. You wanted the richness of a loving partnership. You wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t repeatedly hurt the person you love. 

I know right now you may not care what happens in your future—grief does that—but someday you will. If you think I’m being overly optimistic, let’s say someday you might. If and when that day comes, do you want loved ones in your life? Do you want to be the kind of person who repeatedly hurts those loved ones—even if it’s “only the person you love the most?” The way you outlined your drinking and cravings makes me think that starting up again—especially right now and for this reason—means repeating that behavior, even if it takes a slightly different shape. 

I also don’t think alcohol will make you feel better—I think that’s the fantasy of a person who loves alcohol too much (again, I’m with you there). I haven’t gone through the kind of loss you have, but when I was in college, two people I loved very much died in a car accident. One was a good friend; the other was someone I had been in a relationship with until just weeks before the accident.   

Drinking didn’t make me feel better. Or if it did, it lasted roughly an hour, soon after which I would be blacked out, sitting in a mud puddle, sobbing to whoever was unlucky enough to pick up the phone. Or sitting in front of what used to be his dorm room, crying and asking random passersby why he wasn’t there. I could deal with the embarrassment if any of that made me feel better, but it didn’t. It made everything more confusing and terrible and infuriating and sad. Whatever thread of sanity I had after the accident was cut free any time I drank. 

I’d wake up hungover, still grieving, and to the low hiss of whispers about just how badly I’d gone off the rails. Those breakdowns did many things, but not one of them helped me process what I was feeling.

You may have been functional enough to keep a job the first time you drank, but do you really think you’d be able to once you toss this messy and unpredictable grief into the mix? Do you really—in your heart of hearts—think it would make you feel better in any significant or lasting way? 

It’s so easy to romanticize drinking when we’ve been away from it for a while. And it’s easy to forget how much hard work was involved in getting sober. From the way you talk about drinking, it seems likely that you’ll end up in one of two places—going out, Leaving Las Vegas style, or needing to get sober again. I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but I believe that if you stay sober for now, you’ll be happy you did.

Recovering from this kind of grief doesn’t need to be any harder than it already is. Don’t add cravings, hangovers, passing out, and blackouts into the mix.  

“She wouldn’t want you to drink again” may not be enough on its own to keep you sober, but I don’t think we should overlook it, either. You both fought to stay alive and in each other's lives. You with alcohol, she with cancer. That is really fucking beautiful, even if it ended far too soon. While there are plenty of other good reasons to stay sober,  one of them is honoring what you two had. What she wanted for you and what you accomplished for her. 

Finally (well, almost), I think you already want to stay sober for yourself because you reached out to me. You wanted me to help you find a way to stay sober for yourself. Not to be all the answer was inside you the whole time, but a person doesn’t do that unless that desire already exists somewhere. It may be hard to find—hopefully, I’ve helped tease it out a bit—but trust that it’s there. Think of it as a seed she planted—a gift she left behind for you. It’s up to you what you do with it.

I have two last pieces of advice: 

1) Get rid of whatever alcohol is in your house. It may not bother you right now, but there’s no reason it has to be so accessible when you’re going through this. Give it to a neighbor, a friend, or just toss it down the sink. Keeping it around invites disaster—at best, it’s a faulty time bomb that never goes off. At worst…well, you know. 

2) Consider a grief support group. There are online groups, but in my opinion, in-person groups are ideal. If the options I’ve linked to (which I can’t vouch for; I just found them courtesy of Google), plenty of others are out there. I know it can feel like you’re alone in your grief, but you’re not. Give a couple of the groups a try; if they’re terrible, you never have to go back. But no one can understand what you’re going through better than people who have gone through it themselves.  

You’re dealing with something incredibly hard, but you’re not in it alone. Even strangers on the internet are here for you. 

Thank you for writing, and please stay in touch.

-Katie

Send questions and feedback to askasoberlady@gmail.com. By sending a question, you agree to let me reprint it in the newsletter with your name redacted or changed. Emails may be edited for length or clarity.

I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic advice. You are free to take or leave it.