Where to begin when you don’t really know where everything began and you aren’t even sure which pronoun to use, I or you? In medias res and see what happens. After all, at some point, you do just have to dive in if you want to do something.

Last year I got sober. I can even say “I” as a result, although I probably begin with “I” far too often.

First, however, I got drunk. Not so that anyone noticed. Only they know what they thought, but no one has been so bold as to say, “girl, thank goodness! We were worried.” Even my husband had not noticed. Perhaps they just chalked it all up to my usual kidding-on-the-square about being a Drunk, or saw it as a response to my father’s death. Whatever. That is not really the point.

The point is that, by August, as we closed in on the anniversary of the Awful Week when I last saw Dad in the ICU and all that flowed from that, Prosecco had become my goddess. After 5:00 pm — Wine O’clock — I maintained a state of comfortably numb. Before 5, I spend the day consumed with anticipation of that moment when I could sink into that marvelous state of Don’t Give a Fuck. Wine O’clock seemed to get earlier and earlier. After all, isn’t 4:55 almost 5? And 4:45 is close enough? 4:30 is practically 4:45, which is nearly 4:55, which is almost 5? And it is summer, too.

Then, the day-drinking. Not like on vacation. If my husband wasn’t home, I would get a bottle of Strongbow maybe mixed with a touch of cassis. If he was, and I spied an open bottle of wine in the refrigerator, I might take a slug. As the semester drew near, I joked with myself that I could get an opaque water bottle and no one would know that I drank at work. Then, I started to see myself split in two, the soberly old superego self taking bets with the Drunk about when I would no longer be joking and actually do that. (The odds were on mid-October.) Then, I knew that I wasn’t joking.

For months after my dad had died, I looked out my window into the snow or muck, and wondered why I was still alive. Then, sometime in the spring, I began to wonder why anyone would want to be alive. This wasn’t suicidal, which would have felt much more energetic or focused. This wasn’t even suicidal ideation. This was just a bleak malaise. Only once did I have a flashing thought, “you could do something about it, you know.” I quashed that gremlin fast. Smash! My husband, my mother, my brothers, their families were not going to go through that. Then, I got drunk. Drown that gremlin’s body to make sure it was gone.

In the end, that was the closest that I came to a dramatic revelation, and it wasn’t even a revelation. I didn’t have any crisis or epiphany or intervention. The thought that I drank too much, if only for caloric reasons, had harried me for several years. I had stopped several times before. “Cut back,” “Dryuary,” “Drytember,” went on a diet, call it what you will. I could manage it. This time, however, I knew that I had gone too far. Honestly, a day or two was too much because I felt so miserable. The deep but insightful misery of grief had become boring, mundane, banal, and the fizzy bubbles of Prosecco made everything not matter. At the same time, I was just too weary to keep waking up feeling not-my-best-self. Not hung over, really, just an overall, unceasing feeling of muck in my blood and weight in the back of my head, just above the spine.

So, one Sunday morning, I woke up and said, “no more.” Well, maybe not quite so final. I had spend the previous sleepless night looking up information on alcohol recovery, starting with liver damage and detox and so forth. “Your liver can repair itself in 30 days?” I read on some Dr. Google site. “Let’s focus on that.” Although forever seemed too long, I did look up meetings. You know what kind.

That week I saw my therapist. We talked yet again about the situation. She doesn’t usually tell me what to do, but she said, “here’s what I think. You do have a problem, and you should stop drinking forever, and you should go to AA.” I think I just needed to hear that outside of my head because, when she said that, a wave of relief swept over me in the same way that one does when someone says something you have been thinking and you sigh, “oh, thank god! I’m not crazy after all!”

That following weekend, I went to a meeting; but that is another story.