Hi, my name is Paula and I’m an alcoholic.

It was a warm Modelo before ten in the morning. I was hiding, drinking it in the basement. The day before, I’d gotten back from a weekend trip to Florida for my friend’s 40th birthday, where I drank day and night straight. I felt so sick. It was the only alcohol in the house and the only thing that eased the pain in my lower back, the nausea, the shaking, the anxiety. And the shame.

That was my last drink.

Before I relapsed 3 months and 17 days later.

That was at least a delicious bottle (or so) of Pinot Noir — really the last drink.

I’ve been sober 4 years now. February 10th is my day.

I try to piece together how I went from the popular, athletic, fun, “everybody loves Paula” girl in high school, to the woman riddled with fear, and guilt on the cold tile floor of my basement, drinking that warm beer. The lowest place in my house, and lowest I’ve ever felt.

It doesn’t happen overnight, I can tell you that, but I felt it inside of my being at a young age, maybe 7 or 8 years old. Not having the words, but it was a feeling of restlessness and a needing to be calmed and soothed. 

I drank my first drink at 14 years old, in my own childhood home with my best friend. We were the “clean-up crew” at my sister’s party. You know, clean up and drink the leftovers or whatever the high schoolers would give you. I was born into popularity, before I understood all that. Those days were free and fun. I couldn’t see beyond the present. 

I remember bringing orange juice and vodka in my lacrosse water bottle for the 8th grade GO Dance. I brought it in the morning, and we picked it up from my locker that Friday night. Clever, right. I got very good at being an alcoholic at a very young age. 

Drinking was normal in my high school — it was praised, in fact. Most of the parents let us hang out in their houses and drink, or there would be huge parties in backyards and the cops would come but do nothing. Par for the course. We’d set up camping trips, binge drink, cook over fire and swim — 15 kids sometimes. We’d drink and smoke weed on the streets. In cars. At Jones Beach, on that guy’s speed boat. We’d drink at the movies. If you’re familiar with Long Island, you know about the sumps. We’d bring kegs in the sumps, over fences and train tracks. We skipped prom and took a bus to a rave. I went to many raves, what a time. 

I knew by my senior year of high school that I liked drinking. A lot. I liked that it calmed me. And I’d feel excited, and social. I liked feeling adult, too. I felt like I was beginning to develop a sense of self and community. I knew nothing else. 

I remember one instance, drinking beer on a school night with my older sister, on the bed just watching TV — our shared room was in the basement. Ironic? We were drinking just because we could, I guess. It felt good.

The next day, though, I didn’t feel great — and I had lacrosse practice. Something that morning registered, but I couldn’t quite place it. The blackouts started around this time, too. I was 17 years old. I was always the one who wanted one more glass. I never wanted the party to end. I was never satisfied. Starting to sound familiar?

College was almost tame compared to my high school years. I felt like a seasoned drinker and a seasoned New Yorker — compared to my out-of-state classmates, already having been to the Limelight and The Tunnel, and to art shows in Williamsburg. I understood the sacrifice my parents made for my Pratt education and dorm (only 30 minutes away from where I grew up). They gave me everything I asked for and more. So there was a sense of responsibility I gained in college — not to say I stopped partying.

In my 20s, post college, I held it together: working in the city, partying at night, and jumping back on the LIRR in the morning, feeling shitty but not too bad. It was a lifestyle for me and many of my friends so it didn’t seem like a big deal.

The shift came in my early 30s. It got harder to drink and get all of the adulting done. But worse, I started to feel this sense of guilt — like I was doing something wrong. Drinking didn’t feel as fun anymore. It became something to manage.

Thinking back, I can’t believe I planned my drinking around my job. “Well, if I get it all done on Friday, I can drink Sunday and not have to worry about anything on Monday.” And by “worry,” I mean I had a day to recover from a weekend of binge drinking — and God knows what else. My addiction became a priority.

I tried a few things at this point. I limited my drinking to weekends only, but that just meant I went harder those two/three days. The one time I actually tried to stop, I managed two weeks. I didn’t really want to stop yet, and I didn’t know how. I did know my drinking was a problem and it wasn’t going to get better.

I just wanted to be normal and drink like everyone else. I didn’t want to be the one who had to be carried home. It was sloppy and embarrassing. Some family and friends tried to bring it up with me at this point. Blackouts were so bad, they caused me terrible anxiety, “OMG, What did I do?” But even still, I could not stop drinking. I was addicted physically and mentally. I couldn’t imagine a life without alcohol in it. “How do you go to a wedding and not drink?”

My addiction resulted in a monumental shift in my life. At 41, everything secure — everything I felt I’d built — my identity, my world, disappeared in one single moment. I felt myself slip away, like a ghost exiting my body. The world calls it divorce.

At first, sobriety was a last-ditch effort to save my marriage. I thought, “If I get sober, everything will go back to normal.” But it was more complex than that.

In 2021, I was sober, living alone, not eating, panic attacks on the bathroom floor, smoking cigarettes, not working, not breathing — the time never seemed to pass. I know what it feels like to be alive and dead at the same time.

I had my sisters, my mother and father, those few friends who are my family and a walk-in recovery clinic in Far Rockaway. That’s how I got through the first few minutes, hours, days, months and finally years of not picking up. 

When I started to emerge, I was petrified to see people and have to interact. One of the first places I had to go was to get food. I still get weird flashbacks when I’m at Key Food. It’s wild. Funny thing, my anxiety was worse at this time than when I was a hungover drunk.

Soon enough, I’m hit with the first baby shower — without a drink. Hell. “How do you do Christmas Eve without red wine? What will my cousins say.” 

Then it was pretending to have a drink in my hand at music shows in Brooklyn, still trying to hold on to a part of the old me. I was embarrassed and scared to tell those friends I was sober, so I didn’t. I thought I would lose them too. I had lost so much already.

The cravings and the crying. Zero self-esteem. Fitting in nowhere because alcohol is everywhere. The “ethical” princesses that swore they loved me and then judged my behaviors and disappeared. The worry of money, losing the house, lawyers, divorcing my world — I was in and out of states of panic attacks that first and second year and I didn’t pick up one, single, drink.

Rockaway didn’t recognize me, 30 pounds lighter (no booze and no appetite). Friends and neighbors commented on how great I looked, but all I saw, naked in the mirror, was a brittle skeleton of my past life. “Thanks, I started surfing. It’s great exercise!”

And somewhere within that mess, I decided I never wanted to drink again — to save me, and nothing else. Things slowly, and nonlinearly, started to pivot. I was healing, working again, and feeling joy. I was re-learning how to be a person in this world without my friend Pinot Noir.

Sobriety, for me, is a rediscovery of who I am — and I am so many things. Sometimes I feel like I have superpowers and a sixth-sense intuition. I feel emotions at hyperforce, for better or worse. I still have cravings sometimes. I feel everything and at times it is very hard.

I feel the relief of not having to depend on a substance, and that’s an indescribable joy. I feel free. I like this version of me. And I thank God, because these past 4 years — with its heartbreak and triumphs — have been a tremendous gift.

I’ve done countless crazy and risky things as a drinker and that will always be a part of who I am. But you know what has been the most outrageous, punk-rock thing I’ve ever done?

Getting sober.

If you feel your relationship with alcohol has become a struggle, it might be time to do the craziest thing you can ever imagine. It’s beautiful on the other side. Reach out if you want to talk: @theglorifiedtomato.