SOBER WHY REASON: POWER

One very good reason to get sober is to have real power in your life. You couldn't believe the feeling of power that goes hand in hand with being able NOT to have a drink. Every business meeting that I leave without having had the cocktail is, to this day, the greatest feeling! Knowing how not to drink—God, it's great!!! Never having to have a drink after a long day of negotiation, litigation, and organization is sooooo freeing.

When I pick my kids up after school and know that we've got the afternoon and evening to do whatever it is we want to do and there's no chance in hell that I'll be having a beer at five and be drunk by eight, that's POWER.

Power, freedom, and complete control is exactly what I felt driving home from Rusty's house after my first party without drinking. (Typical, isn't it? As soon as you stop drinking, someone you know throws a damn party and everyone, everyone is drinking!) I'm invited, I go.

I was a little nervous. First party since I'd stopped drinking and all...I mean, for the last couple of years I'd gone everywhere swearing I wasn't going to drink ever again, totally committed a thousand times before, and— bingo. "Before I knew it," I'm reaching for that beer. So? What's gonna make it different this time? All because I'm sober (whatever that" meant so early on) for a week? But off I go to the party, sober and ready.

What a party, what a house, what a beautiful afternoon. That's what's running through my head for the first few minutes. Having a great sober time until about ten minutes in… then, I get mad. Mad at the world because I can't drink. It's the old "Everyone can, but I can't" syndrome. Even the nondrinkers. One woman I'd known for years who'd never picked up a cocktail was sucking down peach something like there was no tomorrow. They were all drinking at this fabulous, poolside, sunny-afternoon-into-the -evening, beautiful-house - in- Beverly-Hills shindig!

My idea of drinking heaven, I might add. California. Sunny. Poolside. And I'm not drinking??? Help me. Could I have picked a more difficult party to go to? (Like there would have been one that would have been easier? What? New England, forty below in the log cabin, and I wouldn't have been hankering for the hot toddy?)

The good-looking bartender, Ed—swear his name is Ed— says, "Hey, Suz, you wanna beer?"

"OH NO, ED. No thanks, really. I'll just have a soda. Peach soda."

THE OTHER HALF OF THE PEACH AND RUM NUMBER THAT EVERYONE ELSE POOLSIDE IS SUCKING DOWN.

THE NONALCOHOLIC HALF.

The peach soda half of the drink.

I hate soda and now I hated peach. Peach everything was on my shit list for life. All peaches forever. The state of Georgia next. Anything that represented peach, off my list of be-nice-tos forever… But peach soda it was in this new, not-drinking-alcohol and no-reason-to-be-at-a-poolside-party-because-I-can't-drink life o' mine, by Susan Powter.

The party is hopping, everyone is drinking up, the exotic drinks are being created and distributed left, right, and from control center, the bar.

Everyone is getting louder by the second, instant best friends are being made all around me, and I'm sober. Not drinking a thing. Sober Sue.

I didn't drink a thing that night. Stayed the whole party, had a great, great, time and an even better time when I got home. Don't even ask about the next morning.

The Sober How I didn't drink is simple and, believe me, something we are going to more than cover, but that's not what I want to tell you about right now.

What happened that night is such a freedom, power, and control issue (sounds like I need a little therapy), so much a "Sober Why you should" thing that we've gotta chat about it here and now.

Not only did I start having a great time, despite my mad-'cause-I-couldn't-drink self; I'm noticing that I'm getting better and better as the night goes on, and everyone else…?

My friends that I love? Getting stupider by the second. It's an amazing thing when you aren't ten sheets to the wind how much easier it is to see—Course 101 for those obnoxious nonalcoholic people who really do only have one or two drinks in a night out, but who cares about them?—how stupid this stuff makes us!

People were getting sloppy, falling in love. (How many times has that happened? Suddenly, six drinks later, you find out that you are sitting across the table from the greatest guy on the planet, only to find the next morning that some gross, half-bald, bad lover has taken his place.) Alcohol can be the hallucinogen without dropping the acid when it comes to love, friendship, commitment, and all the justifications and reasons why allll is soooo right… until the next day.

So let's get back to me and my party experience, shall we? By midnight I'm just beginning . . . HELLO, can anyone finish a sentence at this party? My party mates were goners. No self-righteousness involved, but I can't sit here and tell you that I wasn't truly amazed! I left the party feeling a tad better-than, free, happy . . . having had a great time. Who could have thought such a good time could be had without a drop of alcohol?

I left knowing that from now on I could be more alert, funnier, stronger, and have a better time because I didn't drink!

But it didn't end there. Never does with the night, there's always a morning after (Maureen McGovern resurrection?). I got home, took a nice long bath, planned the next morning (someone pinch me on this one), got into my jammies, lay down, and read a book AFTER GOING TO A PARTY IN BEVERLY HILLS ON A SUNNY POOLSIDE AFTERNOON???

I was feeling great at one in the morning, ready for sleep? Nothing could have prepared me for such a marvelous sense of control, freedom, and true power in my life simply because I knew the why and how of not drinking, and didn't. It was wonderful, but it didn't touch what happened the next morning. I don't think anything could have beaten what I woke up to.

NO HANGOVER.

NO SOUR STOMACH.

NO HEADACHE.

Lord help me, it was the most exciting thing I think I've ever felt. Much, much, much more fun and definitely more freeing than waking up, for the ten millionth time, sick, head exploding, cotton for saliva, hungover.

That morning I understood what sobriety and freedom have in common. If anyone thought they were free, it was me. Got my own money. My own last name. Can buy my own jewelry. Don't need a ring from you. Can go anywhere I want to, whenever I want.

Hey, I do TV, write books, am raising the greatest children on the planet. I'm independent, in control of my own life! If the world isn't my oyster, I don't know whose it is… Life is grand, but I can tell with everything in me that one of the most freeing, the truly wonderful, most freeing things in my life was and is…

Knowing that I can go to any party and not drink. Knowing that I'm sober and that I'm going to be

sober for the rest of my life. There is nothing

better!

I know that I will never, ever again get behind the wheel of my car and drive drunk again. Never!

No more slurring words! No more hangovers!

Never again will "this thing control my life…

You want freedom, get sober.

You want magic and peace in your life, get sober.

You want control, get sober.

You want power in your own life, get sober.

What's disguising itself as your "right to"—that rising in your chest whenever you think of anyone telling you what to do, finding out about your drinking, or calling you on what you have known is a problem for a long, long time —has nothing to do with our "right to do whatever the hell we want to do." That feeling you get whenever you think of admitting what you've known forever, that you drink differently than other people, isn't denial. It's fear. You are scared like I was scared. Scared of a couple of things.

First, you are scared to death that you can't stay stopped drinking. You know you can stop. We all do.

Every time it "gets worse than you ever thought it would," what have you done?

Every morning you wake up with that horrible fear and the all too familiar "I can't believe I did that" feeling, you (just like me) quit drinking.

That's it. No more. Never again.

How many times have those words come out of our mouths?

We all quit drinking every morning after. But staying stopped?

So it's pretty understandable that you'd be afraid that you can't stay stopped because you haven't been able to yet!

It's one big fear that we all have. And the other?

Saying the words I'm alcoholic. A fear otherwise known as denial? Well, is it?

It wasn't for me. I knew I was alcoholic. There was no question that my drinking was different from other people's. I'd watched my friends leave a glass of wine half full and wondered why anyone would do that. Drinking had certainly "become a problem" in my life.

You've seen the same things I saw? Drinking more and more, progression, progression, progression? Earlier and earlier in the day, not every day, but someday getting that buzz by one or two in the afternoon??? Waking up three or four mornings a week with a headache and not feeling so great? Nobody can tell me that I wasn't acutely aware of the number of times I'd told myself I wasn't going to drink that night and found myself with a beer in my hand!

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Anti-alcoholism