Othering Among Alcoholics
Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash Sometimes when I'm newly sober (let's face it, there have been more times than I can count at this point), I don't so much as want to give shelter to a single thought about drinking. This time, I can hardly control my hunger to consume the stories of others who have alcohol use disorder. Every day, I search out the books, the blog posts, the interviews, and the podcasts. I do so to remind me of my why . Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places, but I've had a hard time finding the stories of the people like me. What I need right now are to hear the voices of the women who have consumed alcohol at the levels I did and survived, who were hard drunk 24/7 every day and found lasting sobriety. While scouring the internet resources, I've noticed a disturbing trend. It used to be that folks would engage in othering to avoid being categorized as alcoholics, "Sure I drink a lot, but I've never had vodka in my