I wonder sometimes how the idea of celebration became confused with the idea of getting drunk. In childhood, celebration was getting presents, eating cake, going to an amusement park, lining the roof with candles flickering in sand-filled paper lunch sacks, or even singing aloud. In adolescence, celebration became annoying - something to get through, something to endure before being able to return to my room and blast music from my absurdly powerful sound system. In college, celebration became something to fear, marked by occasions where I felt excluded and unwelcome. I avoided things like Winter Carnival, became adept at declining invitations, and successfully alienated myself from the rituals that demarcated the year and brought structure and, apparently, joy to so many of my classmates.
But finally, one night in 1998, when I was 22 years old and a senior in college, I agreed to go to a party with the friendly people who lived upstairs, and drank vodka mixed with cranberry juice from a big plastic cup. And then suddenly I was celebrating. I often think of that introduction to alcohol as the moment I found the missing link, or the day I realized why everyone else seemed so much happier than me, or the night I learned how to have fun. And from then on, celebrating anything became a time to drink. And suddenly there were so many more reasons to celebrate. Things like Friday, or five o’clock. The act of drinking itself became grounds for celebration, requiring no additional occasion. Perhaps the celebration was for the temporary escape from feelings that inebriation so generously provided.
This worked well for quite a long time. The idea of celebrating anything without alcohol grew to seem absurd. Anything that was fun included alcohol, and anything that didn’t include alcohol was by definition not fun. Work was not fun. Happy hour with coworkers was fun. In grad school, night class was not fun, until we started going to the bar before class, and then it was ridiculously fun. Alcohol was something to look forward to, it was a reward for even the most minor accomplishments, it was the fuel of celebrations, it was the thing that made the rest of the time bearable.
No matter how often I drank, or the fact that I turned to alcohol to process any kind of emotion (happiness, yes, but also sadness, boredom, excitement, frustration, joy), the idea of celebration was inextricably tied not just to drinking but to getting drunk. Celebration meant being able to drink without counting my drinks, without worrying about driving home, without regard for what I had to do the next day, and without feeling guilty that I was over indulging. It was impossible to over indulge at a celebration. The risk was far higher of under-consumption, and thus paradoxically being seen as not fully present, or not fully enjoying the occasion (despite the fact that sobriety generally makes one more present not less).
As someone inherently uncomfortable in social situations, especially large and unstructured ones (like any kind of party), alcohol was a vital part of my ability to participate in society. I could never forget the feeling of awkwardness, of discomfort, of not-belonging that followed me everywhere in life before I discovered alcohol. The most reassuring thing that I could remind myself of on a daily basis was that I could handle any situation I might encounter as long as there was alcohol. Any kind of gathering that purported to be a celebration but that I suspected would not include alcohol (do they serve wine at a bris that starts at 10:00 AM? Yes, it turns out, they do) would have to be either artfully avoided, or bounded by alcohol on either end. A couple of beers at brunch before the mid-morning baptism service of a second cousin, perhaps, or a bottle of wine to be enjoyed as a picnic before the late afternoon performance of The Tempest at Shakespeare in the Park.
When I first stopped drinking, the idea of celebration had become irrelevant because we were in the middle of COVID and the only celebrations anybody was doing were on Zoom and nobody could blame you for not showing up. But now that COVID is no longer a thing of concern for most people, I’m re-experiencing the strained unpleasantness of celebration without alcohol that I recall so painfully from my tense, anxiety-wracked pre-drinking youth. Gatherings of extended family no longer represent a perfect excuse to drink with abandon, and instead are occasions to think about how to abandon without causing too much offense or seeming too uncaring or cold. The rituals of celebration in the social arena remind me I am autistic and make me want to say aloud, “I need a drink.”
My wife and I went to the holiday party of my AA group this week. It was one of my only experiences going to a party as an adult where no alcohol would be present and where everyone in the room would be deliberately not drinking (it’s funny how rare that is in adulthood). I was nervous about it. Intentionally going to an event that I would normally require alcohol to endure, with the knowledge that alcohol would not be part of the experience, felt risky. Not risky in the sense that I might drink, but risky in the sense that I might feel incredibly awkward, overly self conscious, embarrassed, and uncertain. Perhaps the better word is fear - the risk was that my fear would overcome me and I wouldn’t have the primary tool I used to employ to get through it.
The gathering lacked the comforting and predictable structure of an AA meeting that I find so appealing, but it had the same feeling of connectedness, of joy, of happiness that seems to radiate every time these people are in a room together. Everyone was happy, it was loud, people were laughing. It was indistinguishable to me from a “normal” party, but for the fact that I was sober. There was no temptation to drink in the sense that nobody else was drinking and there was no alcohol to be tempted by. But, even though not drinking at this gathering was the norm, and the social pressure to drink was completely absent, I still felt that urge, that tingling, that sense of need for a drink that I depended on for so many years to cope with the noise, the conversation, the unstructured time, the unpredictability of spontaneous human interaction. It made me wonder what distinguished a celebration from any other gathering of people. What were these people celebrating? Some people were celebrating the holidays. Some people were celebrating their sobriety. Some were celebrating the fellowship that they have found with this particular group of people. Some were celebrating the fact that they were alive, still, despite the odds.
I realized that I am inherently uncomfortable with the idea of celebration. I don’t fully understand it, I don’t know when I should do it, and I don’t feel any intuitive sense of how to celebrate. I don’t know what I was celebrating at the holiday party or if the word “celebration” has meaning for me. I know that when I drank, it didn’t matter, because when I was drinking everything was easy and I didn’t have to think as much. Perhaps what I am celebrating is the fact that I am making an effort to connect with other people without alcohol, despite the discomfort, fear, and doubts that persist. I’m celebrating the unlikely actuality that I like other people, I enjoy the company of other people, and I feel connected to other people, even if I can only take it in small doses, am not able to follow all the conversation, and head for the door at the earliest opportunity.
Title excerpted from the definition of “celebration” from the New Oxford American Dictionary
I relate to so much of this. I also recently went to a party where no alcohol was served, and it was weird and painful. Weird because without the veil of alcohol, I felt awkward and deeply uncomfortable every single minute and kept fighting the urge to bolt. (Ultimately it got the better of me, and I did bolt.) Is part of sobriety learning to sit with those feelings and socialize anyway?
Thanks, this resonates. Not the alcohol part. I suffered through many parties without alcohol, as I'm a control freak, and refuse to be out of control in public. But the celebrations? I'm low key on all of it.