Secret Letters: Writing & Sobriety 🍷
Getting sober changed my relationship to writing. Here's how.
Welcome to Secret Letters, a paid subscriber perk of Letters from the Homestead. These monthly letters are exactly what you think: secret dispatches that feel a little too vulnerable to put in a free newsletter.
Thank you, as always, for reading and being a supporter of my work.
Twenty two months.
I’ve been sober from alcohol for twenty two months. Almost two years. If you told me a decade ago that I would’ve quit drinking and stuck with it, I wouldn’t have believed you. I loved it all too much—the taste, the ambient vibes, the dive bars, the grandpa pubs, the way everyone loosens up after half a glass of wine, the way it seemed to quiet my head. All of it, I loved. All of it, I treasured.
Except for when I didn’t treasure it anymore. That’s another, much longer story.
That’s the thing about alcohol. You can love it, but it has no obligation to love you back.
The beginning of my sobriety surprised me for all kinds of reasons. Eliminating something unhealthy was supposed to make my life generally better, but instead it seemed like a continuously scrolling argument for why my life was better when I was drinking.