Six Months Sober

A gesture to the world, myself, and my lineage.

This is about substance abuse and mentions suicide. Please proceed carefully.

One of the last drinks I had was in Edinburgh— a fancy drink that filled a glass topper with a shroud of elderberry scented fog. My friend Claire bought it for me, and we enjoyed our drinks in a dark speakeasy. She was also the last person I hugged, pre-pandemic. I remember wondering if I should hug her. It was only a day or two after Trump’s travel ban, and I was set to fly to Iceland, then home, to Seattle.

In Edinburgh I also stopped in to a pub by myself and had a glass of Lagavulin, my favorite Scotch. I drank it and watched the news as others, mostly in groups, talked around me. I wrote in my journal. They are talking about the U.S. election on BBC, giving it much more airtime than any news outlet in the U.S. would give to U.K. news.

I only had one drink at that pub. Since quitting drinking for five months back in 2015, my relationship to alcohol had slowly been changing, but really it was that alcohol,…