The Tiger Keeper: Lessons learned from a 5 year path to sobriety & responsibility.
Meow Monday
Meow Monday
Hi there, if you’re new to the blog, we like to talk about felines every monday. Today, we’re going to talk about tigers. More specifically, we’re going to talk about the tiger of addiction.
Addiction is a tiger
Addiction is a tiger that hunts from the camouflage of a social jungle. It hides in the leaves of champagne flutes at celebrations, lurks behind the tree-trunk steins of reunion, is obscured by the steam of hot mugs on holidays. I could have seen it reflected at the bottom of my glass, if only I’d cared to ponder a second before reaching for another.
You don’t stop to ponder, though. I didn’t. Instead you hide in plain sight. Your fourth drink is another’s second or first. The social jungle ignores individual behaviour in churning crowds. Those that linger long enough to notice eccentricity rarely remark, since revelry is but a tiger in a cage- on display for the occasion.
I was never a “textbook alcoholic”- but that doesn’t mean my drinking was untroubled. As with many young people, especially those in NYC, I regularly binge drank, which is classified by the CDC as 5+ beverages in one occasion for men, and 4+ for women. I was not a person who drank to enhance the experience of a meal or because other people were doing it. I drank to get drunk, and I did it multiple times a week.
I have a general problem with drinking any beverage too fast, especially if it has ice, which I chew compulsively. I make short work of anything put in front of me, expensive or not. This habit fueled my binge drinking, which was out of place in nice bars and restaurants where I was crushing craft beers, $20 cocktails, and natural wines instead of PBR . These are things I did with my brothers, who weren’t grasped by the same beast that had taken our grandmother, and still stalks me.
To speak up and question someone’s habit, someone’s self control, is to question their ability to tame the tiger. Back then, one couldn’t criticize me without undergoing some personal discomfort and backlash for slighting the tiger’s keeper. God forbid you question what my habits were outside the party. What good keeper would let the tiger roam without a crowd to observe it?
Nowadays I play the role of tiger keeper well. I stopped drinking 3 years ago. I spent a good 2 years before that trying to quit before it stuck. It took a long, hungover amount of time to realize what was keeping me from sobriety.
Two years struggling for sobriety
The simple fact of the matter is that some of us are responsible for tigers; feral beasts who will shred any peace and happiness they can lay their claws on. Some of us are responsible for kittens; gentle mewling annoyances that can be silenced with attention or compassion. Some of us are fortunate enough to have no responsibility at all. The danger is in failing to take your charge seriously, or misinterpreting which one you have.
The two years I spent struggling with sobriety were a story about fully realizing and accepting the level of responsibility I needed to have. At first it felt extremely unfair everyone else’s fun was my problem. Over time, that sense of impropriety faded into acceptance and pragmatism. One of the things they tell you in recovery programs is that you have to go through the process of grieving for the person you were before you can truly become the person you want to be. But I’m getting ahead of myself — let’s start at the start.
New York City
At the beginning of this period I was fortunate to be working at a company who consulted for the now-defunct Annum Health. Annum offered their services for free to employees of my organization. It introduced me to harm reduction.
Harm reduction is an approach to addiction treatment that attempts to reduce usage to acceptable levels and mitigate damage. It stands in contrast to abstinence, which is about complete cessation of use.
Annum had a program that involved daily personal check-ins and weekly meetings with a health professional to discuss progress and set goals like “limit drinking to one night a week” or “drink a maximum of two beverages on any occasion.” I gave them these testimonials after completing the program:
"I didn't realize how trapped I felt by drinking until Annum forced some introspection. The tracking and support I received really started a different chapter in my life."
"Following my experience with Annum there are few days I wake up not feeling good. I don't have hangovers, make better decisions, and spend less money. I have more time in the day and greater self-confidence."
Despite the good progress I made over those 6 months, it wasn’t long before I was back to binge drinking again. There are times when the tiger seems a kitten, or not there at all. This is where I think the tiger keeper metaphor is most apt:
A good tiger keeper does not walk past an empty cage and leave the door ajar. Tigers are wily, and a good keeper knows that an unseen tiger is a tiger nonetheless.
After Annum, I was overconfident. I thought I was “cured,” bigger than a problem that has swallowed greater men than me whole. Soon, I began to have realizations as to how dependent on environment my behavior really was. As anyone who’s read a self-help book on habit can tell you, getting rid of the stimuli is the first step to stopping the habit.
I had a problem: the entire city of NYC is a huge bar. If you weren’t just straight up going to bars with your friends, you were going to (boozy) brunch, or a concert (with a bar), or a gallery opening (with an open bar). Heck, the central space of my office was a kitchen with beer on tap. It really didn’t help that my fascination with craft beer had led me to share the role of “kegmaster.”
I tried to shift my activities away from anything involving drinking: spending lots of time at the gym, playing board and card games, but too often a friend would indulge and it would start an internal dialogue for me of “that sounds nice….”, “just one won’t hurt…”, “I already had one…”, leading all the way to a full on binge.
I think harm reduction is a great strategy that helps a lot of people, but it wasn’t for me. It was too tempting to feel that the problem was “solved” or “under control” and allow myself to lose vigilance. Eventually, I made the hard decision that living in New York and being sober were compatible realities for me. There wasn’t space for a tiger in such tiny apartments.
San Francisco
I started over in San Francisco and instantly had an easier time forming groups of friends whose central activity wasn’t drinking. Despite that, I was still constantly surrounded by free liquor for work, and felt I would be “undateable” to the majority of the population if I refused to imbibe on a first date.1 I lapsed into an odd pattern of three-months-on, three-months-off sobriety.
During this time I had an important realization: The strongest predictor of whether I’d be drinking a month from now was whether I’d had a drink today. After I’d had a relapse, I would build back my courage to cutting out alcohol completely. All the while fighting a fear of not fitting in and my own denial around being stuck with a tiger, not a kitten.
I’d spend three months in the sun and then something would happen to break through my record of sobriety. Sometimes, it was a negative event: I’d have a breakup, or break a bone, and be so upset and overwhelmed I’d throw not just sobriety, but responsibility to the wind. Other times, it was good or neutral: things would seem fine and I would thing “I deserve to celebrate with everyone else, I’ve been so good,” or “I haven’t had a craving in forever, surely one time is fine.”
Each time I’d convince myself out of my responsibilities as the tiger keeper for “just this once,” I’d find myself drinking just as recklessly as ever a month later. The tiger is always in the cage. Even when the cage seems empty.
Eventually I had seen the cycle enough times to know what would happen if I drank again, at all. I admitted to myself that this was my burden, whether I wanted it or not. I could live in denial, or I could do something about it. I began shopping around for support & recovery groups, since one of the top tools for forming any habit is accountability, and going to a weekly social gathering whose purpose is sobriety creates a lot of social accountability. At a certain point, you become more concerned about disappointing your recovery friends by relapsing than you are about disappointing your social friends by not drinking.
There is a whole width and breadth of recovery groups out there, but I found there are some pretty simple differentiators. Many programs define themselves in relation to AA, which is a religious 12-step abstinence program.
Groups are either harm reduction or abstinence based.
Abstinence groups tend to be split into 12-step (religious) and non 12-step(secular) programs. There are a few secular 12 step programs, but I haven’t attended them.
I checked out some harm reduction programs but found that they didn’t have oomph I was looking for. 12-step programs are often religious because of step 2: “accepting a higher power.” Most people choose God. I’ve always been a firm agnostic, and wasn’t quite comfortable in 12-step, but found a great community in Lifering, a secular program.
Even after joining group, one problem remained:
The Holidays
During those 2 years, at least three of the “inciting incidents” to begin drinking came during the holidays. I’ve only recently become someone who maintains positive habits through the travel and the holidays.2 As I mentioned when talking about habits earlier, controlling environment lets you control stimuli, and stimuli make or break a habit. When you travel, environmental control goes out the window.
I also mentioned grieving earlier. The hardest thing to do for me was give up enjoying fine liquor and craft beer with my brothers. I’d become a bit of a beer snob over the years, and it was hard to feel like I had to close the book on that chapter of my life. It really did feel like I was grieving for someone I wouldn’t get to be anymore, and the connection that person had back to my family.
Going to group gave me the courage to let go of that person, and I approached closing the door on drinking with my brothers as a funeral for him. My friends at Lifering gave me the great advice to bring my own EANABS, so I bought some NA beer so I could still “drink” with them, even if I wasn’t getting drunk. Being the awesome people that they were, my brothers supported and celebrated my decision. It wasn’t the scary loss of connection I’d made it out to be.
There’s a funny thing everyone tells you about this journey that you never quite believe. When you fall, the world often rushes up to catch you. I thought I wasn’t going to get to be a beer snob anymore, but in NA beer I found a selection so small that I could try all of it. At the beginning of the pandemic, I got to take beer snobbery to a level I thought beyond me by starting a NA beer review channel. I turns out there being few enough of something to realistically try them all really scratched my collector’s itch, as well. Turns out the enjoyment of flavor and nice things is separate from the thirst for an altered state of mind, and the two can and should be separated.
Conclusions, Lessons Learned
Tarot leans really hard on the idea that every death is a rebirth, and this was true of my journey into sobriety. I mourned who I was, and found a much more vibrant person in the grave. There are things that we’re born responsible for, and for a section of the population, addiction is one of them- for some of us it’s a annoying kitten following us, batting at our heels. For others it’s a deadly tiger, stalking our shadows. I didn’t just learn to respect and be responsible for the tiger I’m leashed with: I learned to love it, to view it as a badge of honor. I tamed the tiger, and became its keeper. And this is what I learned:
The strongest predictor of whether I’ll be drinking a month from now is whether I’d had a drink today.
You have to go through the process of grieving for the person you were before you can truly become the person you want to be.
The enjoyment of flavor and nice things is separate from the thirst for an altered state of mind, and the two can and should be separate
Even if the cage looks empty, the tiger is there.
Life deals us all different hands. Though those differences come with different burdens of responsibility, they are nothing to be ashamed of.
If you’re considering sobriety and feeling this way: It’s not true. My dating life got a lot easier after I started being my authentic self and being upfront with dates that I wouldn’t be drinking.
I’m still pretty chuffed that the only day I’ve missed writing on EoSV in the 3 months since I began was my wedding day.
Thanks for this one. I have overdone alcohol in my life. I came to realize the correct amount of alohol for me = 0. A good takeaway: "Turns out the enjoyment of flavor and nice things is separate from the thirst for an altered state of mind, and the two can and should be separated."