By I white-knuckled my sobriety for over half a year before I found myself in a meeting. I had managed to stay cannabis-free for two years already, and I saw my abstinence from alcohol as more of a “fun challenge” than an obsession that leaked into every aspect of my life. In fact, I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic until I was months into working the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A month into my sobriety, I met Fleetwood. He was just getting sober as well, but there was something very different about our journeys. Fleetwood worked through challenges that I couldn’t imagine working through such as navigating conflict and relationships, even without substances to numb the frustration. Knowing that it was what I needed, Fleetwood brought me to my first meeting, introduced me to my sponsor, and he was there when I chaired my first meeting (his voice memo telling me how proud he was is saved twice to my phone and once to my computer).
After I celebrated a year of sobriety, and a week before Fleetwood’s one year sober birthday, he was hit and killed by a drunk driver. I’ve written about this death before and the ways it has impacted me as someone involved in death care, but I have had to sit with my grief for some time to recognize both the struggles and the healing that has come from staying sober.
The Twelve Steps of Grief and Sobriety
Step One: Disbelief
When I learned that Fleetwood had died, I searched my mind for every other possibility. Was the person on the phone sure they called the right person? Maybe he fled from the scene? Is he in witness protection now?
Because of the damage done to his body, we were not allowed to view him, which reinforced my disbelief. I didn’t think that I was someone who needed to see a body for closure, but the intrusive thoughts now enter my brain late at night because I never had the resolution of seeing Fleetwood physically dead in front of me.
Sobriety, like death, is filled with mourning.
Drinking and other substances once allowed me to curb my disbelief. Shitty relationships, my gender feelings, trauma from childhood, the overwhelming doom of climate catastrophe, and US imperialism. The numbness was a comfort, the numbness kept a curtain up and I didn’t have to acknowledge all of the hard truths.
Step Two: Sadness
I have often heard people say things like “your grief doesn’t get smaller, you just grow around it” or “just give it time.” I think any comment that relates grief is objectively false. There is no rhyme or reason or timeline to the sadness of my grief. Some days I can drive past the intersection where he died (Freeman Way) and find beauty in the geese that sit on the corner. Other days, it sends me spinning and my sobs are guttural.
There is sadness in my sobriety too. I have had multiple friends in and out of treatment centers. Some relapse and never make it back. After sobriety, I lost other friends, friends who I could only ever be with when we were drinking. I have mourned a past life, filled with people who I can no longer be around. Sobriety, like death, is filled with mourning.
The thing that is different about being sad while sober however, is that I am finally feeling something. Every human emotion I feel, even when it sucks, grounds me back into my body and reminds me that while people I love are dead, I get to be alive right now. Sometimes I look back on the times I was drunk or high and wonder if a part of me was trying to get closer to death than life.
Step Three: Guilt
One of the most uncomfortable feelings I have had to acknowledge in sobriety is guilt. I have caused harm in my past and am slowly and intentionally working toward mending that damage. Guilt is an emotion I have never struggled to feel in my body. I anticipated people being upset with me or rejecting me and would feel guilty for things that hadn’t even happened yet, or that might never happen.
As someone with ADHD, I have a common experience where I feel guilty about something but will forget what it is until a few hours (or days) later when it hits me and I remember what was making me feel so weird all day. Grief feels like this. Like forgetting what happened and continuing on with your life only to remember that your loved one is really gone. It is the same sinking feeling in my gut, and every time I catch myself feeling joyful and happy there is a part of me that feels guilty for feeling anything other than sadness.
Step Four: Anger
Anger sneaks up on me too. I am angry that I didn’t get more time with him. I am angry at the people who did. I am angry when an image of him before his gender transition is posted online. I am angry when others project their own ideas of who he was onto his ghost. Much of the damage I have done in my past has been because of anger, and sobriety taught me how to hold my anger in a new way.
Over the last two years, I have learned to pause before responding. As a triple Sagitarrius, my untamed instinct when someone says something incorrect or offensive to me is to inundate them with every objective fact and get upset when they don’t see the world exactly how I do. I am often angry or annoyed (a smaller form of anger), but now I rarely project that anger onto anyone else (even when I think others are grieving Fleetwood the “wrong” way).
Step Five: Physical Pain
I have lived with physical disabilities and chronic pain for most of my life, and drinking never helped any of that. It’s amazing how I feel grief in my body without even realizing it. The “white-knuckling” I mentioned before was actually me clenching my body so tightly that pain could not escape.
Living means letting every emotion, even the terrifying ones, move through us.
A few months after Fleetwood died, I started going to a chiropractor weekly. One day my chiropractor suggested we try inter-oral jaw massage. I let them put a gloved finger in my mouth and squeeze the inside and outside of my jaw at the same time. It was intense, and when I got in the car I felt so much anger and sadness flood from my body. For years I tried to “self-medicate” this pain away, and now I access body work that is allowing me the release I looked to substances to provide.
Steps Six-Twelve: Fear
Ultimately, what I have learned these past eight months of being sober while grieving the hardest loss of my life, is that fear really is at the root of it all. It took me so long to give up substances because I was afraid of my own mind. I was afraid my friends wouldn’t like me anymore, or that I wouldn’t be charismatic enough to socialize in group settings. The moments when my grief feels clogged are when I’m too afraid to accept the fact that one of the most incredible people I have ever known is really gone, and that it could happen to anyone else I love too.
Death is so scary. Even as someone who writes about death and is committed to reframing how we talk about death, I am still afraid to die and to experience more loss. Sobriety is often a choice of life or death for addicts. Living means letting every emotion, even the terrifying ones, move through us while we finally take the time to watch them transform into moments of joy.
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