Saturday, 5 PM. I’m chatting with cousins at a family graduation party in the suburbs, munching on salty tortilla chips and sipping a can of Athletic. The beverage tastes like beer—tangy, hoppy, bubbly—but doesn’t actually have any alcohol.
I have been sober for six months.
December 31, 2023. I drink a cup of chilled champagne while soaking in hotel hot tub.
January 1, 2024. I wake up with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and a migraine—and test positive for coronavirus. Happy New Year!
The surprise sickness leads to an alcohol-free month. Dry January leads to Dry February and Dry March, followed by Dry April, May, and June.
Now, I’m training to swim across the Hudson River in four weeks—and don’t plan to drink until I complete the swim. Maybe longer. Maybe forever.
Ten years ago, I drank a lot. I drank beer, wine, and whiskey. I drank Manhattans and gin and tonics. I drank at home and at parties. I drank at bars and restaurants. I drank on weekdays and weekends. I drank with friends, family, and strangers. I drank in the afternoons and evenings and, occasionally, if I was watching a European soccer game, drank in the morning.
In 2015, Jess got pregnant and stopped drinking. Before becoming a father, I began long-distance running and radically reduced my own drinking. At first, I limited alcohol to Saturday nights. The less I drank, the less I wanted to drink. So I drank less and less, until eventually I barely drank at all.
Recently, I find myself reading addiction memoirs, including:
· Bill Clegg’s Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, about his addiction to crack and alcohol, and the sequel 90 Days, about his struggles in recovery. Clegg is a top literary agent whose superstar clients include Lauren Groff, one of my favorite fiction authors—who is also a serious swimmer.
“If I weren’t a writer, I’d be an open water swimmer,” Groff wrote in Plan B, a 2012 essay. “They are different modes of pushing toward the same purpose: those singular moments of ecstasy, the gorgeous, the ungraspable, the letting go.”
· Julia Wertz’s graphic memoir Drinking at the Movies and the sequel, Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story.
· The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s classic creativity self-help book. The book is divided into 12 chapters, mirroring the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’ve read this book many times. This time I read the Spanish translation El Camino del Artista, to sharpen my language skills.
Recently, I find my new friends and acquaintances are sober people, not by design, but perhaps by unspoken affinity.
And last week’s presidential debate debacle reminds me of one fundamental thing that Joe Biden and Donald Trump actually have in common: neither one drinks.
Adult Swim Camp: Week 2
Monday, 6 A.M. We arrive at the pool. Mist rises from the water, rippling in the wind. My son plops into a deck chair, bundled in a baby blue blanket like a burrito. I shuck off my hoodie and say I’ll be swimming in the outermost lane—a.k.a. the Slow Lane—if he needs anything. He murmurs and buries himself in a book: Artemis Fowl.
“Twelve-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl has discovered a world below ground of armed and dangerous—and extremely high-tech—fairies. He kidnaps one of them, Holly Short, and holds her for ransom in an effort to restore his family’s fortune. But he may have underestimated the fairies’ powers. Is he about to trigger a cross-species war?”
The water is balmy, a respite from the cool morning air. Coach Meg, clad in a pink hoodie, tells us to warm up with 100 kick, 100 pull, and 100 swim. My lane mate zooms ahead, literally leaving me in her wake. She’s an educator who helps kids with learning challenges and attended the camp last year to train for a triathlon. Respect.
As I swim, I feel less anxious than last week. Swimming with strangers at sunrise feels less daunting and more fun. For the next hour, I swim freestyle and breast stroke, eschewing backstroke so I don’t accidentally crash into my lane-mate.
At 7:20, I touch the wall, gasping. My lane mate is gone. So are the 10 other swimmers.
“Your freestyle looks much better,” Meg says, smiling.
Last week, she told me my hips were too low in the water, I scissor kicked sometimes instead of flutter kicking (usually when I breathe to the left), and my left arm hooked, entering the water at an angle instead of perpendicular to my shoulder.
Not anymore. Apparently, I am learning.
“If I don’t say anything, that means there’s nothing to fix,” Meg says, explaining why she hadn’t given me any feedback during this morning’s session. “See you Wednesday.”
While I towel dry on the pool deck, my son looks up from his paperback.
“Dad, you’re five minutes late,” he says. “Why were you the last one in the pool?”
“Because I had to finish the set,” I say. For better and for worse, I am a completist.
I don’t yet feel ready to swim across the Hudson River in four weeks.
But I feel more ready than I felt before swim practice this morning.
One breath, one stroke, one day at a time.