THE FINISH LINE

When Edith Zimmerman became sober, she obsessed over coffee, knitting, drawing and then she found running. Compulsions come in many forms.

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A friend once asked me whether she had a drinking problem. “I have to have three glasses of wine a day!” she said. I laughed. Only three? “But I have to have them.” I told her I drank 10 glasses of wine a day, and then we both laughed.

We were bloggers at the time, living in New York, in our 20s. Drinks after work were standard, nothing to think twice about. But her comment lodged in my mind. Is it the needing and not the number? The itch? Of course you have to have them, I thought at the time. It’s wine. It’s perfect. What else is there to do in this life? I drank wine every day, even as an increasingly loud voice in the back of my head suggested I was maybe a bit out of control. Maybe stop for a little while, it said, but I wouldn’t.

“Do what you love,” the advice goes. “Follow your passion.” I was like, Okay, so am I supposed to be…a sommelier? Sobriety seemed irrelevant. I knew only a few nondrinkers, and almost none of them up close. Quitting alcohol seemed like a boring and extreme way to address what felt like a delicate, private, almost romantic ensnarement. One with barely any downsides (hangovers, weight gain, bad skin, blackouts, vomiting, hand tremors, constant apologizing, nothing too serious). I don’t need to quit drinking, I thought. I just need to figure out a way to keep the part I love and cut the rest.

But then, in my 30s, I did quit drinking. One morning in May of 2016, I woke up and wanted to stop. I sat on the side of the bed in the musty little rental I had found in Cape Cod (where I had fled New York in an effort to supposedly find myself after leaving a beloved blogging job) and thought, I don’t want to do this anymore; I want it to be over.