I Hate Being Sober

Photo by Kelsey Knight on Unsplash

I hate being sober.

Everybody talks about how great it is being sober, how clear they feel. How “It’s a struggle, but life is so much better now” and on and on.

I’ve been sober for 30 years and it fucking sucks. I think about alcohol every day. I think about all the drinks I didn’t get to drink.

I’ve never had a daiquiri with a little umbrella in it. I’ve never had a margarita or a mimosa or a mojito. In high school and college, I drank whatever was put in front of me or was on sale, and then I graduated to vodka tonics (twist of lime, never lemon).

And then I got hepatitis C and I stopped drinking, cold turkey. There’s something about jabbing yourself in the thigh with a syringe for several years that makes you want to protect your liver, if for no other reason than to make the stabbing stop.

But I remember the last drink I had. It was a Zima, and I was on the back deck of the little house I lived in with my first husband who probably gave me the hepatitis C, which he picked up from either a dirty coke straw, or a tattoo, or dialysis.

It was summer and I loved Zima. Cold and crisp and fizzy.

I remember the drinks before that too: the amaretto and cream I had at a high school party in a field at night; the Fuzzy Navels I drank at my best friend Amy’s house…