Dear Sky,
Dear Sky, I've become an unofficial sobriety sponsor for a long-distance friend. The friend is an ex, with whom I am on otherwise very good terms and whose presence I value in my life—but as they've struggled with reducing their dependence on alcohol, that topic has started to envelop all of our conversations. Their recovery journey has taken fits and starts and while I respect and support their journey, our conversations have become singularly focused on them proving their sobriety to me. For instance: shoehorning in that even if a story took place at a bar, they themselves were drinking ice water; confessing "relapses" to me ("I had one cocktail last week. But only one!") totally unprompted. I support their journey, but I miss hearing about other aspects of their life. I'm also uncomfortable with feeling like a 'sobriety cop' and unclear how I got shoehorned into that role in the first place. Is there a way to gently change the topic without sounding dismissive or unsupportive of their recovery? Not a Cop
-what's that you're doing? (this is the name of paul mccartney's newsletter)
Dear Not a Cop, I fricking love quit lit. Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like a Woman, Laura McKowen’s Push Off From Here, everything submitted to The Small Bow Family Orchestra on substack. Quit lit is the purest, realest form of self-help. It is written by people who have done awful things, endured awful things, and then decided to stay alive and try again anyway. Incredible. Ten out of ten. People writing from that place know what it is to be deep in the mud. They have realized no one is coming to save them, and every piece of quit lit is written by someone who faced truth and decided they wanted to save themselves. But your friend isn’t being that kind of honest with you, and what they’re doing instead is boring. Of course you don’t want to hear about every sip of ice water. Nor would you want a precise accounting of meals from someone on a diet, a full list of tasks from someone gunning for promotion, or a rundown of every diaper change from a new parent. Getting down in the weeds on someone else’s specifics is only fun if it’s a keenly shared interest (two dieters can talk for ages) or it’s someone you wholly and unconditionally love (like maybe 4 people in your life, max). So, I hear you. This sounds annoying. And I think you’re having trouble asking your friend about other aspects of their life because this is it. To be friends with this person, right now, is to hear about sobriety. But I do think you can ask to hear about it in a different way. Not: “I want to know every margarita slip up and spare no detail.” But: “Ok my friend, no more accounting. Tell me what this is about for you. Without the numbing of alcohol, what permafrost is melting inside you? What ancient viruses are thawing out? Tell me about the mud.” Their answer will be much more interesting than the “I promise I only had one cocktail” conversation you’re currently having. And it’s a great segue towards a topic that also includes you, because everyone’s got something. Creative ways we numb out and tell ourselves we don’t, fights we get trapped in our own heads re-fighting, problems we lie to ourselves that we’re handling. Your friend is struggling hard to get braver, to be more honest. Let them know you see it. Answer it in kind.