Addiction Is a Negotiation, Not a Vice

Moving beyond the myth of the “clean slate” in recovery.

Photo by Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash

Not a member yet? Read for free **here!**

There is a special sound that a bottle makes when it connects with the lip of a glass. A sharp clink followed by complete silence.

I have craved that sound for many years now. It has always been the signal that the demons and the hardest part of my life were about to be silenced for a little while.

And silenced they were. For as long as the alcoholic haze lasted, I was able to file all that other “stuff” neatly away.

It never lasted, though, and was typically followed by bouts of nausea and a raging headache. Then I would be right back to where I began, slightly worse off than where I started in the first place.

I think a lot of people get it wrong when it comes to alcohol addiction. It is not really a vice; instead, it is more like a negotiation. At least that is how it is for me. Every time I poured myself a drink, I was essentially making a deal with myself.

“We are going to put all of that bad stuff away today, and we can just revisit it tomorrow. I promise this time.”

The problem is, tomorrow just turned into more of the same, and the vicious cycle continued. I spent three decades teaching children how to regulate their emotions and name their feelings instead of swallowing them. Yet I failed to do the very thing I preached.

So many people love the idea of a clean slate. I get that. I really do! It can be pretty special to think of sobriety as a unique type of rebirth where you wake up one morning as a completely different version of yourself. That will never happen for me.

When it comes to my own life, that version is a lie… and a pretty seductive one at that.

The truth is, I have been sober for a little while now, and I am not a new man at all. I am almost exactly the same person I have always been. The only change I have managed to make is that the part of me I have tried to muffle in a bottle no longer has anywhere to hide. It is right out there in the open, and I have no choice but to confront it.

It has now been two months since I put the glass down. That is not a long time, but it is longer than I have gone for a while. The last sober stretch was when I was in the middle of cancer treatment and could not tolerate much of anything, let alone alcohol.

I don’t really see the sense in counting the days, however. That is not really the victory. The cynic in me says that is merely bookkeeping.

Instead, I am learning how to stop counting days and start sitting with that version of myself that I used to drown. That is where the victory is found, and it is also damn hard to do.

Just a few days ago, an uninvited memory resurfaced out of the blue. It was not a pleasant one and the kind of thought that would usually send me straight to the liquor cabinet and begin to numb away the pain.

Not this time, though.

Instead, I sat at my desk and wrote about it and felt the ache of missing a child who has been gone for a very long time now. I did not erase it with alcohol; I just sat in the moment.

I believe this is the key to sobriety for me, and probably many others out there as well. It is the practice of embracing that part of ourselves we are ashamed of and have been avoiding, and saying…

I see you.

No more hiding and trying to bury the thoughts of the past. In essence, I am discovering that at its core, sobriety is the act of turning that light on, and then refusing to turn it back off again.

At least for me. We are all different, and what works for one will not work for all.

It is not easy, and there are triggers all over the place. However, I no longer see this as a battle I am waging as I cross off the “sober days” on a calendar. Instead, I have entirely changed my mindset.

I am no longer actively fighting my addiction to alcohol. Instead, I am just transferring the energy I used to feed it and pouring it elsewhere. For me, that usually takes place in writing articles like this, or working on the novel I am currently writing.

As I sit here and read over my words, it strikes me how simple this all sounds, yet it is something I have struggled with for so very long.

I don’t think I have really “won” anything with my new sobriety. I am just someone who has finally realized that the version of himself he was most ashamed of may be the most interesting part of his whole story.

I just need to let him into the room.

Who is Leonard?

Author of CACHED (Coming Autumn 2026).

Writer| Reader, and most recently… cancer warrior. Retired teacher and school principal.