Sober People are Losers!

Sober people are losers! Look, I’d like to tell you that my opinion wasn’t this superficial, jaded, prejudiced, narrow, misinformed, misguided, misintellectualized, bigoted, arrogant, and just plain asinine, but it was. I thought people who didn’t drink alcohol, for any reason, were losers.

This included my own mother for quite a while. God, how shallow and despicable was I?

And I’d like to tell you that my opinion changed when I started exploring sobriety, or at least once I was sober myself. Nope! I continued to consider people who didn’t drink alcohol to be losers, I just tucked my tail between my legs and joined their pathetic ranks.

Alcoholism is the disease of shame. So when I got sober, my shame continued. The point from which the shame emanated just shifted. Instead of shame for my drunken antics, I became ashamed that I was the only sad-sack who couldn’t drink at the party. In my writing, I described it as shame for a lack of moderation ability. The truth is, I was ashamed to be a teetotaling loser.

And the stigma wins again! I was raised to revere drinking as a celebration of adulthood, and especially manliness. Everyone with whom I associated was a drinker, and most of them were heavy drinkers. All business, social, community and even religious functions I attended were centered around booze. Two plus two equals…