Starting 2025

This is my view as 2024 ends and a new year begins…

I am starting 2025 with a milestone: one year of sobriety.

I have tried many times to change my relationship with alcohol. I knew early on in my 911 dispatcher days that I was relying heavily on alcohol. A drink to wind down after a long shift. Another to help me to get to sleep. Drinks on my off days to forget about work. Day drinking was ok because I worked nights. Getting drunk was the only time my mind would stop racing.

I didn't think any of this was a problem. Because I wasn't going to work drunk. And I wasn't driving drunk. I was just drinking, alone, on my own time. No kids. Just a couple dogs and passing out at home.

I didn't think I had a problem really until mid 2018. By that point, I had left dispatching to be a full time artist. I was coaching high school girls lacrosse. And my dog was nearing the end of his battle with degenerative myelopathy (basically ALS in dogs). I was drinking a lot. And at the end of the season team party I got blackout drunk. Not before hearing some of my players making jokes about me being a drunk. Apparently I had been a joke to them for quite some time. I had coached for eighteen years thinking I was a role model but in the end, I probably was a good coach half that.

So after Buckner passed, about a month later, I find out I'm pregnant. Which was a miracle and whole side story in itself. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I stopped drinking. And I didn't drink after my son was born and I was nursing. It wasn't a struggle at all either. I just didn't do it. So I didn't have a problem right? If it was so easy to stop then clearly I was in control.

After finishing my time breastfeeding I allowed myself to go back to drinking. Just socially at first and then slowly on the weekends I was back to a couple heavy drinks a night to help sleep and get out of my head.

Drew Barrymore talked about her struggles with alcohol and said, “I'll never be the girl at the party with a glass of wine. I want the whole bottle”. When I heard her say that it struck me. Because that was me. I couldn't just have a drink. I needed the buzz. I needed to finish bottles.

It finally took my son being diagnosed with autism for me to say I need to stop. All together. No drinks. Not even at celebrations or social occasions. Nothing.

I am 44. My son is 5. I need to be here as long as possible to make sure he's ok. That he can take care of himself or something is in place to help take care of him.

It hasn't been easy. Even with that motivator. I still want to look at the drink menu at restaurants. I feel odd going out and having water. People will ask me to drink (just one). My family still offers me alcohol at family events. And that's not even taking into account all the daily stressors of trying to make money to support my family, help my son and his needs, the extreme patience needed raising a special needs child, interacting in a world that is not always inclusive to autistic kids and their families, etc.

Yet here I am. One year and no alcohol.

If you want to know if it's worth it, yes, I feel fantastic. I have lost weight. And all the things that come with sobriety from the physical standpoint. Mostly I'm just proud of accomplishing this on my own. So here I go to try for two years sober. One. Day. At. A. Time.