“ Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?” -- Annie Dillard in The Writing Life When I gave up drinking more than a decade ago, the first thing I noticed was my lover’s kiss at bedtime, under the full moon which used to stream into my bedroom: I was awake, alert, and present, ready for what came next. The second thing I noticed was I could read again, at bedtime: no more nodding off mid-sentence, forgetting what I had tried to absorb. I was alert and hungry. Since I was a young child, reading before bed has been a favourite pastime. I was back. This was a gift, and remains one of my favourite parts of being sober, a highlight of my 24 hours. In fact, my bedside table is groaning. Richard Wagamese’s Embers—a precious first gift from a lover—sits atop Katherine Schulz’s brilliant memoir Lost & Found—also from the same lover. There too lie works by Annie Dillard, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Joan Didion, plus the most recent addition: poetry by the Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, whose “Life While You Wait” I am committing to memory. I love it so. Beckoning fingers, these books are for me, reminders of long, sweet summer nights spent lost in a book, seduced by word after word after word. All this pleasure began with a one-word sentence—the most complicated one to say: a simple “No.” I said no to alcohol. And with that declaration, made 4,976 days ago , I re- embraced so much that I love about a conscious life. And jettisoned so much that I hate about its alternative: the hangovers, the fuzzy thinking, the loss of control.
Two years after I said no to alcohol, more than 12 years ago, I lost my brilliant father— a pioneering geophysicist who had traveled the world—to Korsakoff’s, extreme alcoholism. He died with an A.A. card on the corner of his desk. I had lost my mother decades earlier to alcoholism as well, and with her drinking, a good chunk of my childhood. I lost my favourite cousin to an impaired driver. And I almost lost myself. Saying no has allowed me to say yes to so much. Yes to writing my book Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol. Yes to going back to school to becoming a psychotherapist. Yes to love. Saying no has meant: I am back. I am reading—not just the books on my nightstand, but the work of the talented members of my Writing Your Recovery courses. Life is full. The British essayist Joseph Addison says there are three grand essentials to happiness: having something to love, something to do, and something to hope for. As a writer and a reader, I have something I love, something to do and something to hope for. I wish the same for you.
To learn more about Writing Workshops with Ann Dowsett Johnston please click on her workshop information HERE
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