It's not that I'm sober curious

it's that my father had a disease

On this week’s menu: I wrote another personal essay! It’s an extension of my well-received essay from two weeks ago, “IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD.”

Please know it discusses alcohol dependency and drinking. Please know it’s a soft, truthful piece, not solid and steady, but fluid and forgiving.

I hope in it you find something that warms your heart.

It’s not that I’m sober curious

By Maria Giesbrecht

It’s that my father had a disease called alcoholism, and now I do dry January every year (sometimes sober October, too, if the summer has been particularly glittery) to prove I’m not like him.

Or maybe it’s to prove I am just like him. I still don’t know if that difference matters much in the end, but I do know that when you tell people this at a party with a margarita in your hand, they give you funny looks.

The first time I drank alcohol was in the bush, behind an empty farmhouse, with my older sister and her much cooler friends. There was beer and a single bottle of Irish cream. Not exactly top shelf, but it was everything we could get our hands on at fourteen years old. 

I did a shot of Irish cream— if you can call it that, I barely swallowed before spitting out the rest in the tall grass behind me. We had no clue it was for coffee. Lol.

I also sipped from my sister’s Bud Light, almost gagging from the bitterness. It tasted like piss—which, as I am writing this, I want to switch out for a less clichéd adjective—but truthfully I can’t. It really tasted like piss.

When our friend’s Mom picked us up, we were already chewing gum. My jaw opened and closed like an angry door hinge on the whole car ride home.

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Some research indicates that having a parent with an alcohol dependency doubles your chance of marrying someone with one as well. Behavior imitation is the reason, the scientists say. My therapist says our bodies prefer to stay in the comfort zone—even when the comfort zone is a burning building.

We will choose a reliable sear over an unfamiliar warmth.

The age-old tale that you either run from it entirely or you become it may not be totally accurate. It turns out that you can also marry it. I almost did.

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The next time I drank, I was trying to save my first teenage relationship. We were on the outs big time. My boyfriend had stopped going to church altogether. His plaid shirt reeked like cigarettes occasionally, although I kept this discovery to myself. Every week, I saw less of his face when I looked at him. I was losing him.

In the end, it was his Mom’s idea. “Have a beer with him. He’ll be relaxed and open up to you. Then you can tell him about Jesus. You’re his future wife. This is what you’re meant to do.”

Okay, she didn’t say the last part precisely like that. But the rest, I swear, was verbatim.

We got drunk together and did what teenagers do when their skin is boiling, and their hands are spigots of spring water. Sorry, God, but when I said your name, it wasn’t in prayer.

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Fast forward to a year after my inevitable falling out with Jesus, but before I was of legal drinking age. On a very-delayed flight home from France, the attendant asked me with kind eyes, “Red or white?” and I had to do a double take before I realized she was offering me wine. I gladly took the red and got sloppy drunk over the next six hours. It was the best flight of my life.

When I got home, it dawned on me why my father was always chatty on the cab ride to my grandparent’s home in Mexico. And why his Coke on the flight cost money.

I’m laughing as I remember this—as if the laughter can somehow grow into a bridge between my own heart and my father’s. Maybe understanding is the antidote to hate.

Maybe I am just like him is not actually a fear but a howl—a lonely cry for connection.

I reckon if I, too, have “get drunk on an airplane” on my bingo card, maybe we could slowly be moving away from hatred toward understanding.

Perhaps that is a kind of love? A mutually understood destruction.

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When I met my fiancé, things changed. He is not much of a drinker, and unlike the man I was with right before him, he throws one hell of a good time sans tequila. (And he has never taken shots before going to work, for what it’s worth.)

I don’t think it’s right to give someone credit or blame for your decisions, but it’s also inaccurate not to mention that the environment you’re in plays a crucial role in your decision-making. Who you spend your shittiest moments with, you pay a price, for better or worse.

Here’s my last exciting truth, one that I hold proudly: I’m going to marry someone who doesn’t have an addiction to alcohol. I’m going to beat the statistic. And every January, I’ll continue perfecting my mocktails. (Turns out a sober marg isn’t too bad.)

So maybe it’s not that I’m sober curious, but that I’m dancing with alcohol the way a daughter dances with her father—trusting they won’t end up stepping on each other’s toes.

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Thank you so much for all your love and support on last week’s essay. My Substack is free to subscribe to—your shares and restacks mean the world!

xo

Maria

P.S. If you found me through the Substack network, and you like my writing, you can read my poems on Instagram!