As in: why I needed to quit drinking, forever. And why I needed to choose life. For the first time, I was terrified my drinking might snuff me out. And for the first time, I was determined to fight back. I spent an hour filling the board with images and words I loved: photos of my son Nicholas, of Jake, of my dog. I added the names of friends, pinning them carefully beside favourite pieces of prose and poetry. Then I got on my knees and said the only prayer I could believe in, words from T.S.Eliot’s East Coker, "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith. But the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing." Within weeks, Jake and I would find our way to a recovery meeting in a dark church basement. He held my hand while tears rivered down my cheeks. For an hour, I listened to men and women share their stories, their faith, and their gratitude. As they started to stack the chairs, a tall black man in a funky hat walked over to comfort me. Darlin’,” he drawled, “believe me, whatever you did wrong, I did way, way worse.”
Little did I understand, as I stood up from that meeting, that it would take me more than a year to piece together any meaningful sobriety, to put alcohol solidly in my rearview mirror. And it would take all my journalistic skills to put what was killing me—and, as it turns out, a growing number of women —into some profound and meaningful context with my book Drink. But for me, the revolution began on that sunny Montreal morning in 2007, when I created my magnificent Wall of Why, and in doing so, chose a remarkably better life
Ann Dowsett Johnston is the bestselling author DRINK and the creator of Writing Your Recovery
memoir-writing workshops. anndowsettjohnston.com
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