Vulnerable & Vain
It was around the time I made the call to be a more sober alcoholic (as opposed to being a drunken one) that I came across an experimental art project titled the Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art. Despite its otherworldly founding intentions, I was enamoured by the literal meaning; that I was clearly not alone in finding myself lonely as I put a dead stop to the booze taps.
And it’s lonely because just before you decide to stop being a drunk alcoholic and become a sober one instead, you’re usually at the height of your boozed up (let’s not forget drug-crazed) powers — and literally everyone you’re hanging out with drinks nearly as much as you do and quite a few drink considerably more than even you do, with greater regularity and less side effects than you seem to have. It’s a lovely little surreal merry-go-round; (seemingly) getting off and on at will, with ease and even some grace, given how much booze you’ve got in your system since the first morning call to join a buddy for a regmaker.
Except you’re not getting on and off at all — you’re there, constantly there going around and around endlessly and it’s only when you stop dead; do you realise that you’ve been on and not off all this time. And it’s lonely. And the merry-go-round still looks so good going along — your mates seemingly unaffected and still going for it with callous pleasure. And every support group meeting is that classic South African-ism of telling the taller tale of heights of glories past and woeful rejoinders about how low they’ve sunk to — to this, sitting here with not-White people; being a regular human.
Ja-nee, it’s a bit lonely there, off the rides and outside the funfair, the temptation to pay the ‘ok, just one drink then’ entry fee and get right back into the swing of things. Like the good old days, you’ve got this — look at you — you’ve been without a drink for almost a whole 24 hours already. Let’s not count the five spliffs and two packs of Camel that you’ve alternatively chain-smoked since you’ve been sober. Oh and let’s pause to consider that you’re only really not drunk for much less than one full day and night yet.
But with a bit of luck — ok, a universe of luck, a handful of sane default people, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t even begin to list — you might make it through the first days; the cravings, the deal making with yourself and others, the shame (because you’ve failed at being normal like others — who can drink without your complications) and more cravings; you’ve got half a chance of healing the relationship with booze and making your own deal that works for you and the booze.
I never felt like I had this thing — I still don’t — at least now I generally feel that way with a relatively clear head. I say relatively because, in the end, some of the damage from the time spent on the merry-go-round at the funfair is physical and permanent.
Even now, years after those first few days I find myself with an occasional moment of clarity when the walls I built to hold back the buzzing drunken alcoholic break — and a whole section of light and dark falls into my mind, heart and being. Every smell, sight and sound in crisp HD. Seeing your own (multiple and repeated) follies in 4k is humbling and an experience in deep shame. Which leaves you widely vulnerable in that moment and for days after. Sometimes forever. It’s a gaping wound that only you know is there but you carry it with so much heartache that even if no one else can see you’ve got a chunk of self missing, they can nonetheless sense the incompleteness.
And then there are the rare occasions you luck out; meeting, finding, being gifted a friendship or two that comes at this life gig with deep, open and honest vulnerability and you don’t so much meet, as exist in each other’s gentle embrace — ebbing and flowing to each other’s openness, anchored by your mutual trust. Your very existence affirmed at the molecular and spiritual level with each engagement — there’s nothing for it than to keep this beautiful cadence going for the rest of the days you have left to breathe in this earthly human form.
For when a relationship of whatever normative form can exist with an abiding and mutual vulnerability, mere vanity is starved and Wordsworth’s deathless flower blooms beautifully — covering you both in the rich aroma of a moment stolen from Paradise.
And for a sober alcoholic, that’s about as intoxicating as it gets.
