I started my blog Sober Letters to Mom back in June of 2016. It was my two year anniversary of being sober. It wasn’t yet two years since losing my mom. I ended my blog in May of 2019. It took me just about three years to give up. If I’m honest with myself, I stopped writing for two big reasons. One, I had two small children at the time and very little brain energy. Two, which is probably more important, was the criticism I received regarding my writing. I realize looking back now that I wasn’t approaching this project for myself. I needed approval from my family. An approval I should have never longed for. In retrospect, what I should have recognized I had been searching for all along was a connection to my dead mother. I missed her at the time so deeply I could hardly go a week without fully breaking down and sobbing, screaming into the ether about how much I needed her. During the three years I wrote those letters I was pregnant twice and moved from Los Angeles to Chicago and back to Los Angeles. It was a chaotic time to put it mildly.

Only a few years later, I am now in a completely different place. I can look back and see clearly where I made mistakes and how I can now make improvements.

So, I am going to start writing again. Let’s call this Sober Letters to Mom 2.0

I will post some of my favorite letters to my mom from the years before I begin writing new letters. I hope anyone in the world who reads this blog can find some meaning in my words. If I could help just one person get through a difficult time, it will make all the criticism and self doubt worth it.

Below is a copy of the first letter I wrote to my mom. It was titled “Am I an Alcoholic”

Dear Mom,

When I told you I was thinking about going sober you said to me, “Everything in moderation. You don’t have to go from one extreme to another extreme”. In my opinion, that is complete bullshit. Moderations don’t apply to addictions.

I understand your point though. You were always worried about my tendency to have all or nothing. Like going vegan and giving up on things like sugar and junk food, which I always seemed to fail at.

Maybe it was your addiction to dieting that scared you. You probably saw that all or nothing tendency in yourself. After all, you did yo-yo diet for most of my lifetime. And it never worked. You struggled with success constantly and I feel you were trying to keep that failure away from your daughter. I get that. I appreciate that.

But it backfired. The more you told me to focus on moderations, the more I chose to focus on extremes. I had to prove you wrong. What still confuses me is whether I chose to go sober because I had a problem or because I needed to prove to you that I had stronger will power than you thought possible.

Now, I don’t think I can call myself an addict or an alcoholic. I’ve always thought that using that label is disrespectful to people with a true disease. I can’t be an alcoholic because I quit cold turkey. Right? I didn’t need meetings or support. I did it on my own because I felt that it was time.  I always perceived alcoholics as people who had a difficulty giving it up. But what is an alcoholic? What is the definition of an addict? And does it apply to me?

A social drinker is acceptable. These drinkers can have a drink at dinner with friends and then be done with it. Maybe not pick up another for a while. That never worked for me. Sure, I could have one drink one day, but the next day I’d have two and it would continue until I couldn’t remember the last time I was sober.

I used to compare my alcohol abuse to those of others in my life. Other people my age, who had productive lives, drank as much as me. Maybe it was simply a product of my age. Something I would grow out of. But the key is that these “other people” I speak of figured out a way to juggle their drinking with their daily lives. I saw something very different in myself. When I drank, I fell short in every goal. I couldn’t accomplish all that I set out to do. Part of me believes I did it on purpose. To self-sabotage. If my writing wasn’t any good. Or my performance at work was subpar. Or, which happened a lot, my physical fitness levels were abysmal. I could blame it all on my drinking. Of course I didn’t get an A on my essay, I was drunk when I wrote it. Of course I couldn’t run in gym class, I was too hung-over to stand up straight.

I went back recently and read something I wrote two years ago, right before I went sober. It’s a rant about how people, mainly you and Dad, don’t understand my drinking. It’s all about how much you judged me and how much I deserve to drink after working so hard in my daily life. It was full of excuses. Reasons to justify my drinking.

“They don’t understand how I can care so much about what I eat and about working out and taking care of my body and then poison myself with alcohol. Would you rather I ate poorly, never worked out and then drank? I can drink because I take such good care of myself. I reward my good behavior with a drink and I don’t think I need to feel bad about that.

I used to do drugs. I also used to starve myself. I used to drink my meals. I used to treat my body pretty badly. I didn’t care about my health. And back then no one seemed to have any issues with my drinking. Maybe I just hid it better. I don’t know. But now, I get subjected to talks about how much they worry about me. About how they will never stop worrying about me. Something else they’ll never stop doing? Judging me. That’s all they do. Judge. And they don’t even try to hide it.”

When I look at this it makes me realize that my problems with drugs and alcohol are much bigger than I had imagined. And my sober journey will continue to be a struggle.

Today is my two-year anniversary with sobriety. I accomplished something I never thought possible. But it isn’t getting any easier. In fact, as the days go on, it keeps getting more difficult. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I am pregnant (By the way, Mom, I’m pregnant. I’ll talk to you about that more later) and the fact that I can’t drink due to the pregnancy, but lately I’ve been wanting to drink more than ever. I’ve even told multiple people that, when I am no longer pregnant, I will begin drinking again. I’ve justified it by saying that I’m not an alcoholic. I simply once had a bad relationship to alcohol. But the more I think about it, the more I can see the truth. I will forever have a bad relationship with alcohol. I will forever struggle with the idea of being sober. And if I can’t tell whether I miss having a drink every so often, in a healthy way, or I miss the act of being drunk, then maybe this is bigger. Maybe I am actually a real alcoholic.

Alcoholic or not, I accomplished two years of sticking to something. I call that a success. And I think you’d be proud of me.

I love you mom.

Rachel