Juggling My Children, Their Alcoholic Sitter and My Own Sobriety

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says she should stay. Being of use is important, it says. The fellowship of another alcoholic is crucial, it says. Still, I wish she hadn’t confessed. I wish she hadn’t told me over the kitchen island, in front of the children as they were eating spaghetti, as they were eating her every word, saving their questions for the morning when I know they will ask me, What is drinking? What is sober? Why is her face so fluffy?

They do not know what it is to be bloated. They do not understand edema or addiction. They have never seen me drink alcohol, not once, not ever. I will have to explain it to them. They share my blood, so it’s possible that this thing, this alcoholic affliction may be metastasizing in them, even now, as they lie in their beds, chattering back and forth. I will have to explain at least part of it to them in the morning.

Someday they will want to know all of it. How I stopped drinking. How I writhed as the alcohol and dope leached out of my system. How I was dry. For years I was dry, like a desert, like the air in winter, like a pile of ash. Angry. Pimpled. Thirsty. That first year, I locked myself away in a halfway house where I learned how to shower, how to clean a toilet, how to cook spaghetti, how to wash a dish, how to make a bed, why you should care about making your bed. And AA meetings every day. For three years, every day. I had the Big Book nearly memorized — the acceptance passage, the serenity prayer, How It Works, the steps and traditions. I remember so little now.

I’ve been sober 18 years, so long I don’t even think about drinking and drugs anymore. Not really, anyway. Not often. Definitely not every day. But once in a while, maybe out at dinner with friends, when someone orders a red wine, or a beer, or a vodka tonic.

Vodka. I’d like seven vodka tonics. I’d like to slip inside a bottle of vodka, to bathe in it, to slosh, just for the night, just for a little while.

That’s how I know my addiction is still there, still lurking, still hungry. After 18 years it’s probably ravenous, but it’s not starving. Starvation is something you die of, and addiction cannot be killed. You can’t excise or eradicate it. You have to contain it. Dam it. Barricade it. Even then, it whispers. Through whatever levees you erect, it gurgles. It splashes out a Morse code of desire. You become a certain kind of deaf, a certain level of numb, all the time, every day. That’s the work. That is how you progress from drunk, to dry drunk, to sober human. You’ll never be just human. You’ll always be a sober human — a person almost, but not quite.

My babysitter has nine days sober. When she tells me, she says how proud she is. I have given her my children for the night. When I go downstairs, they will be asleep, or will be in bed contemplating going to sleep. She and I will talk. I will tell her what it was like, what happened, what it’s like today. I will tell her half-truths — not even. She will tell me what it is like for her right now, today, with her nine days sober. I will believe half of what she says — not even.