Today I celebrate 10 years. A decade since I stopped doing drugs.

In recovery they always say it gets easier over time - but this year challenged that. Not surprisingly, it was not easier. But I made it.

In the spring, when covid started ramping up and lockdowns looked likely, I - like a lot of people - was in a really dark place. And, like a lot of people with addiction & mental health issues, I knew how destructive my dark place could be. (TW: Dark shit ahead.)

I kept telling myself that I had it easier than so many other people in this pandemic - incl. all the people I write about every day who are living and working in prisons. But knowing that didn’t actually make it easier. If anything I felt worse that I wasn’t handling it better.

But I wasn’t. I know that a lot of people who did time say that prison prepared them for this year’s isolation. For some of us, that baggage actually made it harder.

I still have nightmares about prison, and the whole thought of lockdown made that terror seem so real, even when I was awake. I wrote about it in the spring, but to be honest I kind of held back. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-quarantine-prison.html

What I didn’t say was that I was deeply struggling with staying sober, or alive. At one point when talking about the seemingly endless isolation, I made an off-hand comment to someone that I didn’t get off dope for this shit.

What I meant was I wasn’t sure it mattered if I stayed off it in a pandemic. I meant I’d been struggling w/the calculations of who could I call, where could I get it, & whether I should just overdose. If someone had just put a drug in front of me, I think I would have done it.

There were days that it felt like the only thing holding me together was that I was on deadline and because I wanted to stay alive and sober long enough to finish whatever story I was working on.

(Shout-out to the crimnal justice system for being so fucked up.)

There were days I felt like it was only because I’d promised the friend I quarantined with that I wouldn’t do anything bad in her house.

There were days it was because I promised my friend in Austin that I would drive there before doing anything dumb and ugh that’s like a three hour drive.

There were days it was just because I knew I had a book to finish, and I can’t stand leaving things unfinished. (Please nobody ask what chapter I’m on.)

There were days it was just because I wanted to get in a run first.

There were days it was because I am a stubborn bitch and I just did not want to let the people who thought I’d never make it be right. (The power of spite!!!)

In the end, I just kept promising myself I would reevaluate tomorrow before doing anything rash. This is such a shitty trick. You WANT the answer to be better than this. But sometimes it is not.

I think there’s a conventional thought in recovery that your sobriety - however you define that - shouldn’t be based on an external thing. I.e., you have to get sober for yourself, not for your job or your friend or your kid or whatever.

But I think that’s only partly right. Because sometimes when things get really dark, YOU might not always be enough for yourself.

And in those times, it might be that one external thing that makes the difference. The trick, I think, is to pack enough of those into your life to make it through.

Or at least, that is what worked for me in this dark year. I can't speak for anyone else.

And in case anyone is wondering, I am doing better than I was in the spring. There are still days where shit feels iffy. But I have found a wonderful, loving pod to hunker down with, and I am absolutely not where I was - either a few months ago, or 10 years ago.