#soberqueer

I haven’t been writing here much lately and it’s because I’m in a difficult space right now. I want to share all of the ways in which recovery has made my life better because I want anyone who is on the fence to know that this way of life is deeply worthwhile.

And it is.

But the truth is, it’s also really fucking hard. The first year was a blur of transformation, self-discovery, finding a home in the right recovery program for me. Change happened so quickly I’d have missed it if I blinked. At around nine months, I had an experience that left me with an existential question - do I want this for myself or not? The answer was I did, very much, and I was able to double-down on all of the reasons that made the first three-quarters of a year worthwhile.

And now, three years in… it’s easy to miss the progress. The changes have stopped coming in epiphanies, in those white light moments I had so often early on. I am still required to do all of the work of recovery, yet the rewards are less obvious. Lately, I’ve been saddled with self-centeredness, envy, and resentment. I’ve been disconnected and isolated.

I know the answer is to double-down yet again, but seeking out that connection and fellowship is hardest when I am roadblocked by so much resentment. 

The truth is, I can’t afford self-righteousness and ego even when it seems like everyone else gets to indulge in those feelings. I am not everyone else, and I don’t want to be like everyone else. But, paradoxically, the answer is to lean into the world where I am like everyone else - the one where we identify ourselves by our addictions when we speak not because we are reduced to those addictions but because we are united in our experiences of those addictions and our desire to recover from them. 

“We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap or hide underneath it.”

In a recent episode of crushing self-pity, I reached out to my spiritual advisor, who reminded me to trust that I have something to offer the people around me. And if I don’t, or they don’t want it - they probably aren’t my people. That was a reminder I deeply needed, and it cleared enough of a path for me to remember what my values are and why I have them.

I’m not quite out of the woods yet - all of this progress is slow, and the world at large seems like it’s burning down around me. That’s enough to make me feel like I need to be doing more to make an impact that’s louder than the sound of the fire. But, of course, much like everything else, it’s not about me. Climate change, racism, transphobia, extreme wealth-inequality - these things don’t persist because Junior Knox isn’t doing enough about them. 

The truth is I am most useful doing what I do best. And that looks a lot like the list of qualities that I like about myself that my spiritual advisor gently nudged me to come up with: I’m good at meeting people where they’re at and helping them to feel seen. I provide a nurturing space in a hostile world. I am generous with my money and time and food. I am kind, and I constantly seek to be more so. I am comfortable with silence and letting others take up space. I check in on my people even when they have nothing that I directly want or need.

I forget that humility isn’t being completely disconnected from oneself; it’s simply being right-sized. I am not going to solve everyone’s problems. I do not need to be the center of attention. What I do need to be is a critical link in the chain that’s made up of my community and fellowship. It’s not so important that I stand out as it is that I have the strength and integrity to help support the whole chain. And remembering that I’m completely useless alone.

And, let’s be honest, capitalism demands that we compete. Capitalism demands that we stand out and prove our worthiness in relation to those around us. Capitalism denies us our inherent humanity by demanding that we find something to sell about ourselves. And it’s so fucking insidious. We sell ourselves into the illusion of “enoughness” every time our thinking becomes bogged down by self-centeredness like mine did, touching even those aspects of existing that should feel joyous - compelling us - compelling me - to ask questions like, “Am I in community enough? Do I write enough? Am I trans enough? Have I proven enough wit or passion or pragmatism on social media today?” 

It’s hard not to buy the bullshit, but not impossible. We challenge the system every time we prop up one of our peers or fellows when they have nothing to give in return. We upend the status quo when we love and accept ourselves as we are and resist the judgment and self-criticism for not grinding like we are supposed to, not wasting our energy competing like we are supposed to.

In certain programs of recovery, we’re told to get a Higher Power if we want to get sober.

Lots of people are very resistant to that idea; many, I believe, for good reason. For many folks in my community - especially here in the south - religion has been incompatible with queerness. God has been introduced to us as a figure of judgment and punishment overseeing a rigid framework of morality followed not out of love for one another but fear of the consequences of disobedience.

I am somewhat lucky, I think, in that I had a rather soft relationship with religion by way of my maternal Grandmother, who spoke of God in terms of unconditional love and forgiveness and held to values of service and charity, humility and gratitude. I did declare myself an “atheist” at some point in my adulthood, mostly because I thought it was synonymous with intellectual superiority. Smart people, I thought, believed in science, not God.

But my journey through recovery has given me faith, among so many other things - and has taught me the difference between religion and spirituality. Sometimes that can feel like a bit of a throwaway statement - “I’m spiritual, not religious,” - that I do think is worth exploring further, as spirituality can mean so many different things.

The best way I can describe my own spirituality today is the resolute belief that I am not alone. Addiction and alcoholism are isolating - and the conditions I was raised under were often very purposefully isolating - so, intense loneliness has always been a reality that I thought immutable. Talking about my pain was treated as betrayal. Asking for outside help was out of the question.

In recovery, I’m unlearning those self-reliant tendencies and unknotting the shame attached to reaching out and asking for help. That’s one of the core reasons that the program I chose works as it does - connection is the foundation for exposing those feelings that often seem huge and unbearable when carried solo. But so often in recovery we bring experiences with us that we think are one-of-a-kind, only to realize that other folks have been through something very similar. And even if they haven’t, they help us lighten the burden, making big things feel much smaller.

But does that have anything to do with “God?” 

I think it depends on the person. In my case, the sense of connection and that cessation of loneliness have permeated my life even when I’m not around other people. I feel whole in a way that I used to chase with every relationship or drug or emotional meltdown. Faith asks us to believe in something without evidence. Proof of whatever it is would negate the point of “faith.” And for me, this means leaning into the feeling of connection with the world, without question. Whatever I call it is not so important to me - maybe it’s God, maybe it’s the Universe, maybe it’s a bunch of chemicals flooding my brain that I can’t control or explain, anyway - the point is, it’s a Power Greater than Myself, and I have to let it be exactly that - not struggling with my ego by intellectualizing it.

I have found that relaxing into the sense that I can’t fix or control everything has actually led to better outcomes in my recovery. Ultimately, faith is just trusting that to be true time after time, no matter what comes up or how strongly I feel like fighting against it. It’s accepting that sometimes I don’t have the answers - but the good news is, I don’t have to find them by myself.

Some tools that are important to my daily spiritual practice of connecting with a Higher Power:

Prayer - I really like the Prayer of St. Francis to set the intention for the day.

Meditation - Taking at last five minutes of stillness to focus on my breathing or do a body scan.

Connection - For me this can mean going to a meeting or reaching out to someone else in recovery. Often I find that the messages of the universe manifest in the people around me, right when I need them.

Service - Find something good to do for someone else, without expecting praise or reward. Do it anonymously, if possible. If I’m posting it on social media, I’m not doing it right.

Reflection - Reflecting on what I’m grateful for at the end of each day, and noting what I could have done differently. I ask myself if anything from the day left me anxious or afraid, and if so, why? It’s usually worth journaling about or talking through with someone else.

All that depresses you, all that you fear, is really powerless to harm you. These things are but phantoms. So arise from earth's bonds, from depression, distrust, fear, and all that hinders your new life. Arise to beauty, joy, peace, and work inspired by love. Rise from death to life. You do not even need to fear death.

There are two kinds of dreams I have very frequently: In one kind, I relapse. Usually I am sneaking off to a liquor store, picking something out of a cornucopia of colorful bottles, like a kid on Christmas. It’s always late late late or early, because I’ve been up all night and I know I will need this to get me through the next day. It’s always a weird juxtaposition in those dreams: the plentiful choices in front of me and the absence of freedom I’ve succumbed to. Liquor is my master again, and the daylight creeping up around me must be burnt quickly because it shines too bright on my shame. 

When I wake up and find it’s not true, the relief is palpable.

There’s another kind of dream I have frequently. In it, I’m friends with a particular ex. The sense of release is overwhelming - almost like finally taking that first drink after I’d white-knuckle sobriety for a month or two. The relief comes not from the friendship itself (which really doesn’t materialize much in the span of the dreams) but from what the friendship signifies - that I’ve been forgiven. That we’ve somehow squared away the past, and I can let go of the guilt. I can forgive myself and uncoil the thirteen-year tightness wound up around my chest.

When I wake up and find it’s not true, the grief is palpable.

I’ve chosen not to make direct amends to this ex. Instead I opt for living amends.

Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

The truth is, I know I’d be doing far more harm than good if I tried to make amends to this person. I’d made some attempts at apologies a few times before I got sober, but never being satisfied with the results, I always managed to cause harm again. I can look back with the lens of recovery and see my self-seeking motives. I can see the desire to control the perception of me, the narrative about me, rather than a genuine desire to make things right.

But there’s justice out there; the narrative is very much not in my control and she tells it to an audience of many. And, internally, I war with myself; part knowing that this is how I deserve to be remembered and part desperately wanting the world to know that that is no longer who I am.

An abuser. Toxic. A manipulator. A liar, a cheater, a nightmare. I was a nightmare. I am a nightmare.

What choice could I possibly have but living amends? There are none. Anything else would be more self-seeking, self-pitying rumination on the path to self-destruction. I am morally obligated to right-living now. It is a moral imperative that I walk the path of staying sober. 

Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better; do better.

Admitting my own powerlessness over alcohol was the very beginning of my recovery. I had to admit that any control I once had over my drinking was gone. That I could never take just one drink, because one drink would lead to many until chaos and destruction took over my life again. As humbling as it was, it was freeing. I was finally allowed to give up the struggle for control.

And again, later, I’d admit powerlessness over other things that I couldn’t control: The actions of other people. What they thought of me. Their emotions and values. 

I’d have to admit that there were some scenarios that never would have gone the way I wanted, no matter what I did. I had no power over them. No control. This helped me to stop ruminating on things that I could have done differently. In many situations, I found that I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time - and even if I could have done “better,” that still wouldn’t determine the outcome or the responses of the other people involved. Basically this means that, in any dynamic, even if you’re 100% on top of your shit, the dynamic is doomed if the other person isn’t working on their shit, too.

And powerlessness isn’t the same as helplessness, although for me, I think they are related. Because I struggled so much with situations out of my control, I’d feel helpless when things didn’t go the way I wanted or planned. My own helplessness was a learned belief, one reinforced by trauma. What I didn’t understand was that, although I am powerless over other people and their actions, I am not helpless as to how I engage with them. I am not unable to dictate how much access they have to me. I am allowed to advocate for myself and draw real boundaries - even if it pisses people off.

And believe me, it pisses people off.

Especially people that are used to having unlimited access to you. There are people that have essentially told me I’ve failed them by moving away from Buffalo. That I’m not fulfilling some pre-determined responsibility to take care of them and make them happy. That I’ve somehow betrayed them by limiting their access to me and saying, “That is not mine to carry. I can no longer hold unlimited space for your anger, your pain, and your challenges when you refuse to do any real, reflective work on yourself.”

But here’s the thing - you don’t owe anyone anything just because you share blood. You are allowed to say “No” to toxicity and emotional abuse. Even when it’s hard or they shame you for it.

And it doesn’t mean you’re heartless. It means that you a) can’t take care of anyone else if you aren’t taking care of your own physical and mental health first, and b) some people’s problems come down to codependency, their own relationship and attachment trauma, or even mental illness, and NONE of us can be expected to shoulder those burdens. That’s what therapists are for.

And you can’t make someone own their shit and take care of it accordingly. That’s the powerless part of this. You can’t make someone else critically examine their own behaviors and admit their faults and seek long-term, life-altering help and redemption. But you can choose how much you’ll engage with them, while you do your own work and conserve your energy to show up as the best version of yourself in all areas of your life.

I am powerless, but I am not helpless. 

Some critical things I think about when choosing how and when to engage in difficult dynamics/relationships:

What do I get out of this relationship? Is it worth the energy I exhaust on it?

How much space is there for me in this dynamic? Do I feel like the other person takes an active interest in my life and genuinely cares about how I’m doing? (I’ve known people that will talk at me for nearly an hour on the phone before ever asking how I’m doing. And then once they ask, the conversation turns back to them anyway.)

How do I feel after conversations with this person? Do I feel energized? Loved? Supported? Or do I feel anxious, sad, and drained?

Are our values aligned? If they’re not aligned, are we able to navigate those differences without compromising our own values, harming ourselves, others, or each other?

When I express a difficulty in the dynamic is it received without judgement? Can I listen to feedback without becoming judgemental or defensive?

How does conflict manifest? Do we try to navigate it gently and with compassion or are we more concerned with preserving our egos? This is especially relevant for me, because I confuse the two things all the time: Am I protecting a legitimate boundary for my health and safety or am I just protecting my fragile ego?

More on boundaries vs. ego later, as these themes come up for me a lot in interpersonal dynamics, especially as they relate to polyamory.

The above quote, attributed to George Carlin, opened one of my daily readings today. 

It made me think about how I communicate - or how I don’t.

In my recovery, I often talk about “owning my story.” Authoring my own narrative, instead of having one handed to me. Or believing something about myself just because someone else projects it or says it’s true.

For someone like me, that’s a huge challenge. Not only am I just getting to know my sober self for the first time at 36, but I’m also unlearning decades of beliefs about myself and other people that have not served me well. And when your behaviors are and always have been rooted in those beliefs, it’s really hard to separate those actions from your sense of self.

In other words, we’ve all done bad things. But it doesn’t make us bad people. But what if we believe it does? And other people tell us that we’re bad people? Do we even bother examining our behavior, then, critically but with compassion?

Many of us have trouble figuring out our values in early recovery, much less understanding how to best align ourselves with them. More on that later, but a key piece of it for me has been learning that nobody else gets to define those values for me. Nobody else gets to hand me a story and say, “There, that’s you.” 

You’re not a character in someone else’s novel. You’re neither hero nor villain. But you do get to choose your own character arc.

I encountered someone recently that tended to speak to me in terms of how they thought I must feel about something, without really asking me directly how I felt or what I wanted. I don’t think it was intentional or malicious, but it was a communication style that definitely overpowered my own unsteady narrative. Lots of times, they were right on - I felt very seen! But sometimes, they were wrong, presenting me with intentions, motivations, and beliefs that weren’t mine at all, but their own projections. And, for a lot of reasons, I didn’t quite know how to separate the two at first.

I am grateful for the experience, because I learned that someone else can have a narrative about me that might actually have nothing to do with me or how I’m behaving. It can depend on the issues they’re bringing to the table, too.

This is one of the reasons why I think it’s hugely important that addicts in early recovery start to explore their own sense of values and meditate on the narrative they want to build for themselves. 

Do we want to continue the way we always have or change direction? Are there behaviors we engage in that just don’t line up with how we talk about ourselves or what we communicate to the world? Do we believe what we say about ourselves? Can we talk less and say more with our actions?

Recovery can mean a lot of different things. In the way I use it, recovery means the cessation of addictive substances or behaviors. For some people, that requires total abstinence from certain substances. For others, it might mean harm-reduction or behavior change. 

To me, recovery means not only total abstinence from alcohol and mind-altering drugs, but the healing of decades-old trauma, unlearning harmful beliefs about myself and others, and rehabilitating the way I engage in relationships with other people. Each of those things could be a topic that stretches over multiple blogs, so for now I’m just talking about recovery from substance abuse.

I’m going to fast-forward through my childhood for now, but suffice it to say that it was painful and chaotic and I was surrounded by plenty of substance-users. By the time I was an adolescent, I had absolutely debilitating anxiety. I developed a lot of strange obsessions and compulsions in my teens that I think were really just a way to escape to a world that was all my own. I didn’t drink much in high school, but on the few occasions I did, I binge-drank enough to get sick. Alcohol was already another promising way to escape myself. To turn off the noise and quiet the chaos. 

And although I wasn’t a daily drinker until my mid-to-late twenties, I increased the binge drinking in college. Drinking was such part of the culture at my rural liberal arts college that I never really questioned my behavior. Even when I passed out at a party one night and ended up taking an ambulance to the local ER, I chalked it up as a one-time mistake resulting from not enough food.

And in my 20′s, I drank regularly and prolifically, finding a place in Atlanta’s bar culture that felt comfortable, if not very consistent. And the truth is, for a while it was kind of fun, in a twisted way. I had learned how to turn all the way off. I never had to be anybody but the bar friend. I could live in the smoky haze of a dark bar without ever really knowing what was going on inside myself or processing the absolutely devastating events that had surrounded me for most of my life. It was the perfect environment in which to halt all emotional growth for about a decade. 

Things only got worse in my 30′s. I was drinking pretty much every day, during any free moments I had outside of the workday. I couldn’t just stop. I was well past the point where the people I had been drinking with were no longer drinking like I was. I was past the point of ruining several relationships. My behavior was getting noticed at work. I was thousands of dollars in debt. I had a newly-diagnosed heart condition that made my substance abuse especially dangerous. And still, I couldn’t seem to stop.

I tried to quit for a few years. I even did Intensive Outpatient treatment and stayed sober for about six months. Even then, though, the thought of never drinking again seemed more than I could handle, and I thought obsessively about what conditions would be necessary to allow my drinking again. And I did drink again. Every time I stopped for a while, I convinced myself that a break was all I had needed and I knew better now, circumstances had changed, I’d just be more careful this time…

And of course, that never worked. 

I had my last drink on the night of my 34th birthday. I was alone for most of it. I had just gone through a painful breakup. I left my job partly because I was afraid of being fired. I was making one terrible decision after another. I was supposed to have dinner with the person I was dating but we split up that same day. I felt just... completely unmoored. I opened a bottle of red wine, and I remember thinking:

“This is never going to get any better, is it?”

I drank the whole bottle anyway. And I drank more that night, although I didn’t really even want to. I just couldn’t even fathom anything different. I thought that even if I could stop, life beyond would be so unappealing, I’d rather be dead.

And yet, for some reason, I made a different choice the next morning. Hungover, exhausted, and completely defeated, I surrendered.

I chose a program of recovery and I’m not here to talk about which program that is. But, I will say, I had to let go of the idea that I’d ever be free of alcoholism. I had to quit thinking that if I learned enough or stayed dry enough or just did my time, I could forget about recovery altogether. The program I chose requires a conscious effort to stay sober every single day, and I will need to work it for the rest of my life. But that quickly went from burden to blessing as I realized how much different my life could be on the other side.

And yes, for me, that requires total abstinence from mind-altering drugs. I drink coffee, and I’m on therapeutic doses of a few medications, but none produce any immediate mental or cognitive effects. Other people may be able to handle it, but I know I can’t. Other people may be able to learn how to moderate their drinking, but I can’t. My sobriety means no drinking, at all, ever. 

And maintaining my sobriety also means maintaining emotional sobriety - which is a large part of the reason for this blog. Life didn’t stop being challenging once I quit drinking - in fact, in many ways, it became even more difficult because I am now facing things that I’ve put off for years.

How do I face those things now? What are my values? How do I let people love me? How do I love myself, given some of the things I’ve done? How can I be seen? Be vulnerable? Be authentic? Be brave?

Some questions are answered every day that I continue to recover. But I once had a therapist that said something that rattled me to the core. Because - even as I was asking - I wasn’t looking deep enough. Or far back enough. Or in dark enough places.

“These questions are decades old.”

This blog is meant to document and share the myriad of discoveries I’ve made in Recovery - both the life-altering and the mundane. The subject here is Recovery with a capital “R,” because it encompasses many different types of recovery - that from substance abuse, trauma, domestic violence, toxic ways of relating, and more. I do not advocate for any particular program or method of recovery, and I am not a professional in these fields by any stretch. All I aim to do here is share the insights and discoveries I’ve made on my journey with the hope that someone else will find them useful. This isn’t advice, and shouldn’t be taken as such - but I think my experiences confirm something: If there is hope for the angry, abusive, addicted, emotionally-stunted, chaotic wreck that I once presented to the world as, there’s hope for anyone to find what I found: sobriety, self-love, peace, community, and radical acceptance.

A little about me: I am Junior. I use they/them or he/him pronouns. I claim lots of identities - I am queer, nonbinary, polyamorous, a recovering alcoholic, a trauma survivor, a writer, a tatuś (that’s Polish for “daddy!”) to my fur babies, a gamer, and a passionate fan of all things horror.

I am in recovery from alcoholism and substance abuse. I am familiar with many modalities of recovery and therapy (as a patient, not as a professional!): 12-steps, harm reduction, SMART Recovery, Refuge Recovery, CBT, DBT, EMDR, clinical hypnosis and even medication management. I endorse none of these as I believe everyone has a different path to healing and no one modality works the same for everyone. I’m just here to share my own experiences.