NEW COLUMN: My Tangled Web of Alcoholism and Creativity

My Dilemma: Sobriety Arrived With Constraints on My Creativity

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

When I stopped drinking five years ago, I knew I was saving my own life. Drinking had become so self-destructive that I considered it a suicidal flirtation. I was drinking myself to death. Either my body would succumb to the consumption, or some tragic set of circumstances my actions produced would conspire in my demise.

I was what is known as a high-functioning alcoholic. The drinking didn’t impede my work. I excel despite it. But after my brother died, I began to reconsider my own life, and I was no pleased with the drinking. So, I stopped, cold turkey. I was lucky: I was a habitual drinker, not a physically addicted one. My body experienced no noticeable withdrawals.

I had always assumed my life was aimed toward tragedy. That it was how my poem was destined to end. My impending ruination was, to me, romantic — until it ceased to be. So, I made the choice to survive, to live. I chose health and freedom.

I have never doubted that quitting was the right decision. It was the only choice left.

What I didn’t anticipate — couldn’t anticipate — was that sobriety arrived, to my astonishment, accompanied by creative stultification. I didn’t know I would miss the bars so desperately — and the creative spark I had attributed to alcohol’s alteration — even though I had no desire to drink again.