I never thought of myself as someone who needed permission to do anything. Permission felt like a rope around my neck, tightening and leaving me gasping for air. Who was anyone to tell me what I could or could not do, where I could and could not go, or who I could and should have as friends, lovers, or enemies?
No, I had no use for permission—especially when it came to how I drank.
At 10 a.m., the sun was already high in the sky, heating the sand at Paris Landing to a temperature almost too hot for bare feet. The waves of the lake were splashing against the shoreline and my friends were looking for the perfect spot to settle in for the day.
I was not supposed to be there; I was supposed to be in school.
We had a picnic basket and a cooler full of Icehouse. I had never drank before. As soon as Tommy set the cooler down, I grabbed the glass bottle and wrestled to pop the top off. Tommy looked at me like the amateur I was and handed me a bottle opener. I took a swig. It tasted like fresh-cut grass. I felt like I had been holding my breath all day, every muscle in my body clenched together, but with the first sip, I could exhale; I could let go. This was freedom.
Three years after my first taste of freedom, I joined the Air Force in May 2001. I had graduated from high school exactly one year before. There was a zero tolerance policy for underage drinking on base. I was old enough to deploy, yet not old enough to drink. With a level of arrogance and wanton disregard, I became the first person in my squadron to have an alcohol-related incident in three years.
The consequences were steep and my reputation seemed irredeemable. Part of me wishes I could say the guilt and shame I felt for casting a shadow on the 37th Bomb Squadron were enough to keep me from drinking. That journey took another 15 years.
The early days of recovery felt a lot like the military. Everything was structured and regimented. I went to meetings daily. I called someone and checked in. I went to bed at a decent hour and ran my thoughts by another person before I acted on them. Much like turning my will over to the noncommissioned officers above me as a junior airman, I turned my will over to other people who had more experience in getting and staying sober.
As time went by, people suggested I seek outside help for some of the darker parts of my past. I began showing up at my VA therapy appointments on time and sober. I had to start with honesty.
I told my therapist I had not previously taken my medication as prescribed. Perhaps the psychotic break she tried to treat was fueled by incessant drinking and bingeing on medication. During my ups, I would stop taking all my medication, sure that somehow, spontaneously, I was cured. Then I would crash out, fall into the deepest depression, and reach for my medication like a drowning man grasping for a life raft.
I was eager to mend my relationship with my therapist. In previous sessions, I kept her at arm’s length, only letting her see what I wanted her to see. Deep down, I was afraid she would confirm what I always thought about myself: I was FUBAR (fucked up beyond all repair). I was also afraid she would tell me the life I was living was no longer sustainable, a truth I knew but was unwilling to accept. Things were different now. I wanted to get better, I wanted to change. I wanted to heal.
I was given a new medication regimen. A new protocol of mood stabilizers; rescue medication for panic attacks; sleep aids to fall asleep, stay asleep, and eradicate nightmares and night terrors. I attended cognitive behavior therapy, drank protein smoothies and ate salads, and was a regular at Gold’s Gym. I did everything I was asked to do, like a good airman. Good airmen follow the rules. They don’t bring the wrong attention to themselves or their fellows. They get in line and stay in line.
Once I followed orders—meetings, meds, therapy—my body transformed. The glow of my caramel skin, dulled by alcohol, was restored; my hands steadied; and my appetite for real food had returned.
While this alone wowed me, I often heard old timers say, “It gets better.” Like a child who had overheard an inside joke from their aunts and uncles, I kept asking, “What gets better?” The truth was, two years in recovery and, sure, my life wasn’t in chaos. I wasn’t burning everything to the ground and leaving ashes in my wake, but I wasn’t really better.
I had heard people say, “The good thing about getting sober is you get your feelings back; the bad thing about getting sober is you get your feelings back.”
I didn’t get my feelings back. I was numb. Numbness was a familiar feeling, a dangerous feeling. I used to drink to feel numb. For as long as I can remember, the world around me felt too overwhelming. I was always told I was too sensitive, I cared too much, I felt too deeply. Alcohol toughened me up. Whiskey hardened my heart. I could not reconcile feeling numb in sobriety. I knew if I continued not to feel, eventually I would drink. If I was going to stay sober, I would have to find more than this.
By 2020, I had four years in recovery. The numbness sent me spiraling into dark imaginings. For a year, I asked my doctor for permission to wean off my medication. Not only did the medication create a barrier to my feelings, I was having terrible brain zaps—sporadic moments that felt like electrical shocks—coursing through my brain.
I occasionally found myself glitching like a robot midsentence, the words on the edge of my tongue but incapable of escaping my mouth. There was no physical pain, but my body felt unsettled after each episode.
My providers offered higher doses or new medications altogether. I was desperate for change. With complete abandon and without permission, I stopped taking all my medication cold turkey. The withdrawals were worse than detoxing from alcohol.
When I first tried to get sober, close friends had suggested psilocybin as a means to interrupt patterns of drinking. I scoffed at the idea of using a “drug” to get off a substance. Over the years, more friends shared how psychedelics were helping their depression and providing relief from PTSD. I was content in my contempt and my ignorance. At least, until I was once again having withdrawals.
Off medication, I found myself in the darkest corners of my mind. The whispers of “you’re broken” and “it will be like this forever” turned into loud screams, and for the first time since I crawled out of a bottle, I wanted to crawl into a grave.
I reached out to a friend to hear a familiar voice. She was an artist. I hoped the beauty of her work would somehow pull me out of the crevasse I was in. Instead, she shared her experience with psilocybin. She had been in the same place and found a reprieve. She detailed a recent retreat she had been on with an organization specializing in treating veterans with PTSD. “There’s an upcoming retreat for women veterans; I can connect you.”
The initial hope I felt was quickly replaced with fear of how my recovery community would react. I dreaded being ostracized for seeking nontraditional help.
A year before, I published an essay in The New York Times about how easy it was to hide my alcoholism in the military and how I found a new life in the meeting rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. The backlash from AA members across the country shocked me. People felt I had broken the tradition of anonymity.
One of the most egregious comments came from a man in California who had 20 years in recovery. He found my LinkedIn profile and took the time to write; his ending sentiment was an insincere, “I hope you don’t relapse.”
Fear is a powerful emotion. It can awaken my most primal instinct to isolate. In the AA rooms, I learned that, despite what I felt and thought, what truly mattered was what I did next.
My seven-ounce iPhone suddenly felt like a concrete cinderblock. My hand felt like it was moving through quicksand. I mustered the strength to call the person who had spent the past four years teaching me how to live life without alcohol. I explained the treatment I was seeking and the research I had done.
When I finished explaining, I took a deep breath. My voice became soft and childlike. Tears began to well up in my eyes, and I could feel the rope tightening around my neck, as if to prevent me from asking, “Should I do it? Will I still be sober? Will I have to start over?”
I asked anyway. He was silent. I couldn’t even hear his breath. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. An eternity had passed before he took a deep breath and said, “Your path to recovery is your own. You do not need my permission to get well.”
His words ran through my body like the electrical current from a defibrillator, bringing me back to life. The jolt triggered a truth I would soon embrace again: I’ve never been a person who needed permission.
This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
