It’s the Perfect Time to Relapse

Last week, I saw dozens of social media posts from people experiencing their first sober Halloween. As is customary when using the communication tool designed to allow us to compare our lives to the lives of hundreds of others, the posts were cheery and positive, with captions like, “First booze-free Halloween, and I feel great!” or, “I can’t believe what I was missing when I used to drink my way through Halloween.” Two things went through my mind when I saw so many of these posts last week, and in this order. First, I thought, that person is full of shit or trying really hard to convince him or herself. Second, I thought, wait a minute…maybe something is wrong with me because that’s not what my first sober Halloween was like at all.

My first sober Halloween was a form of hell on earth. Not a spooky, festive, haunting experience at all. More like a deeply depressed and severely defeated drudgery I wasn’t sure I’d live through. I remember walking the neighborhood with my kids, for the first time ever without my travel coffee mug full of IPA. I remember one house a few blocks from ours in particular. A retired couple sat at a small bistro table on their front porch. The man was drinking a brown liquid from a tumbler, and I could see the bottle tucked behind the leg of his patio chair. The man smiled and laughed as he filled candy bags and admired the costumes that approached. I remember…