When Not to Tell Someone You're Sober

How I Learned the Hard Way

“Well, you didn’t have to tell me all that,” he said, as he stood up from his chair, visibly troubled. Tim, a sports editor at a good newspaper, probably had a lovely day before I gave my long-winded and undesirable answer to his simple question.

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In 1997, I was 24 years old. I had been sober for more than a year. Determined to get a byline, I walked into the offices of The Palm Beach Post around the end of the lunch hour on a weekday, carrying photocopies of stories I had written for my hometown paper. I asked the receptionist in the lobby of this three-story building if I could see someone in sports. She rang Tim, at the sports desk, told him there was a gentleman here to see about covering high school football, and asked if he had time to see me.

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Photo by Luis Cortés on Unsplash

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It went remarkably well, considering I had no appointment, and I showed up when the entire staff was gone. Tim, who must have brown-bagged it that day, looked for me from the other end of the newsroom as I exited the elevator. He shook my hand. We introduced ourselves. Then, he invited me to join him in the conference room, past all the empty cubicles, where we could talk.

I handed him the stories. He skimmed through them as I told him all about my work as a reporter, a stringer, covering high school football and basketball in central Indiana. He seemed impressed with my experience and excited to meet someone willing (eager, even) to take Friday night assignments.

We had a pleasant conversation. Then he asked the question, and, entirely unprepared for it, I responded with far too much information. I vaguely remember thinking it might not be a great idea to spill all the beans, but I emptied the can anyway.

I told him I was an alcoholic, and I had a sister who lived in Florida, and she was also an alcoholic, and she had hepatitis, and she went to rehab in West Palm Beach, and then, a year later, I went to rehab in West Palm Beach, and that then I lived in a halfway house for 15 months, and then I moved into an apartment with another guy from the halfway house, and here I sat, a guy who could not stop drinking, but who was nonetheless sober for over a year, and, now, I was ready to write for his newspaper.

Man, the look on his face. It was like he took a drink from a cold glass of sour milk. He realized it before he swallowed, and he spit it out in the form of those words. “Well, you didn’t have to tell me all that.”

I can’t quite remember what we said to each other as we quickly brought the conversation to a close. I’m sure he suggested something like don’t call me, I’ll call you.

I walked away knowing I had blown the opportunity, hearing the question repeatedly in my head. So, what brought you to Florida? I could have said I love palm trees, or the beach, or the ocean, or all three. I could have said what everyone always says. I had enough of the cold weather. Why not live in paradise?

I could have told him I came to Florida to murder someone. It would have worked just as well.

I had been living in a bubble of recovery, and I spoke to him as freely as I would have spoken to someone else in that bubble. But he wasn’t in the bubble. He had no interest in knowing about the bubble, let alone visiting me in it.

I didn’t get the sense that he judged me. But he didn’t want to talk about it. I imagined him sitting in a Miami Dolphins press conference later in the afternoon, wondering why in the hell did that kid tell me all that.

I had never considered what to say if someone asked me why I was in Florida. Every job I had in Florida prior to then was with other people in recovery. They all knew the story. It was their story. There had never been a need for me to tell it. So, when this guy posed the question, he caught me completely off guard.

When we first get sober, we feel the need to explain ourselves. What will I say if someone offers me a drink? What will I tell people if I’m at a party? Over time, I’ve learned that, for the most part, nobody cares. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. For anything. It’s only a big deal if I make it a big deal.

What made you decide to move here? I like it here.

Can I buy you a beer? No thank you.

It took me years to feel secure enough to answer these questions simply, confidently, and appropriately. That day, when I walked into the newsroom at The Palm Beach Post, I was still living under the cloud of shame that accompanies active alcoholism. I still wasn’t sure who I was without a drink in my hand. I wasn’t sure I was good enough a writer to have press credentials from a periodical of this caliber. I wasn’t sure I was good enough, in general. In fact, I was sure I was not good enough.

I didn’t want to be ashamed of myself, but I was. I wanted to know who I was, but I didn’t. I wanted to believe I was good enough a writer for an opportunity like that, but, at best, I hoped I was. I wanted to believe I belonged at the other end of that table, in that conference room, with that man, but I didn’t. I went there looking for proof because I wanted to feel good enough. I wanted to be good enough.

I learned three valuable lessons from this experience. First, if you are new in sobriety, know that people out in the world don’t know what to do with us. They don’t get it. They don’t want to hear about it, at least not until they get to know us well enough to be invested. So, whether it’s a first date, or a job interview, or whatever, get some support. Be prepared. Know how you want to answer the questions.

A couple years later, I was reading the classifieds in the Sunday edition of The Palm Beach Post.

There was a display ad for a part-time position, fielding evening phone calls in the sports department. I clipped it. The next day I mailed my resume with the same pile of photocopied stories. The day after that, I got a phone call.

This time it was a different sports editor, not Tim, but Jim. As I talked to Jim, I wondered whether he would tell Tim, and whether Tim would remember Tom, the alcoholic sportswriter from Indiana. I asked about the evening position.

“You’re over-qualified for that,” he said. “But we can give you assignments right away. We can always use another stringer.” Jim didn’t ask any questions.

We set up a time. I went to the office to fill out paperwork. I left there with media credentials and a key to the front door. Thankfully, Tim was nowhere to be seen.

Weeks later, I walked into the newsroom on a Friday evening.

Before taking an assignment on my own, I asked to shadow someone else. It had been years since I kept stats at a football game, and I didn’t know anyone on staff yet. So, Jim arranged for me to sit in the press box at a game at Palm Beach Gardens High School with his beat reporter for prep sports. We would meet in the office and ride together.

I got to the paper and the guy wasn’t there. I waited around for 10 or 15 minutes before calling Jim, who was probably enjoying dinner with his wife and kids. He told me to let him make a phone call, and to wait in front of the building. The guy would meet me there. I took the elevator down, walked outside, and looked around.

Minutes later, I watched a man exit the bar across the street and flick his lit cigarette onto the pavement, a few steps ahead. Traffic cleared and he crossed. Walking to his car, he looked my way.

“I guess you’re Tom,” he said, like a teenager stuck on babysitting duty. I envisioned him rushing to finish his beer, moments before.

I didn’t bother telling him my rehab story. I wondered if, one day, he might have a rehab story of his own to tell, and I imagined him telling Tim.

The brings me to the second lesson from this experience. This one took a little longer to learn. For every one of us, there is one of them, and probably three.

I was so caught up in my own story, I couldn’t see the bigger picture. While I was so ashamed of being an alcoholic who didn’t drink that I wondered whether I belonged in that newsroom, I never imagined that someone who already had the credentials might have to be summoned from the bar to do his job.

This is why, as sober people, we need each other. When I told Tim I was an alcoholic, he didn’t see me. He saw the other guy – the one who was sitting at the bar when he should have been in one of those cubicles.

Had I gotten the support I needed and deserved, I might have avoided all this by walking into that building in 1997 equipped with lesson three. It’s none of their business.

It’s nobody’s business that I’m sober, let alone why I’m sober. There is only one reason for me to tell someone, and it’s the reason you’re reading this. Tim was the last person I told for any other reason.

I tell my story if I think it might help someone.

That is the only way I can make sense of my story. Otherwise, it’s just a story. It doesn't matter.

Sobriety gave me something that drinking never could. I longed for it in my darkest days. I laid in bed, nursing a bottle of whiskey, numbing myself from the misery I suffered because of its absence.

I wanted my life to mean something.

I wanted it to matter.

Now, my life matters. Sobriety is not the only reason it matters, but it only matters the way it matters because I’m sober.

It mattered before, but it didn’t matter much to me.

I don’t need my life, or my story, to matter to Tim. I need it to matter to me.

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