Chinese Food, Serenity and Five Years of Sobriety

Sobriety has been about finding my true self and identifying the false narratives, and then laughing at the ridiculous grandiosity and general overblown-ness of my fears and feelings.

I thought getting sober would feel like a punishment. Instead, I feel like I’ve been given an opportunity to live a meaningful, intentional life—like my world cracked wide open.

I know now I was grieving something , the death of an ambition. I started attending reading events at Green Apple Books, my local bookstore, because it was something I liked in grad school, and I had to get myself out of the house. Going to those events was (is) a way of traveling without moving; they have afforded me an incredibly valuable educati... See more

The goal is not accumulating the longest list of days of no drinking, the goal is to reclaim a potentially mythical, long-lost treasure. We must leave what we have become accustomed to and strike out in search of something we may not find. It’s the commitment to that goal that is heroic, the willingness to face fears with abandon, to stand at the t... See more