Staying Sober at the End of the World

Thoughts on raw-dogging the next dystopia

It feels like the end of the world today. Somewhere, there’s someone (more than one, I’d guess) deciding whether the future is bleak enough to justify a drink.

You can find addiction and alcoholism all over speculative fiction, sometimes in slightly metaphorical forms—characters addicted to VR, “jacking in,” or vampires addicted to blood. There are drugs or procedures designed to make you forget or help you revisit the past. Sometimes a new drug, supposedly even more potent and addictive than what’s currently available (the idea of “Tetrameth” in Altered Carbon will never not be funny to me). As an addict/alcoholic, I find these tweaks on the existing pharmacopoeia amusing or, at the very least, unnecessary. None of these fictional drugs or stand-ins are that different from what’s already out there or why people use them today.

So it takes a lot for me to find these diversions especially compelling. An author doesn’t break new ground when presenting revisiting good memories or erasing bad ones as a form of drug-like escapism. Becoming an alcoholic as a reaction to trauma? Sure. Trying to stay sober and failing because the pressure is too much? Been there.

There aren’t many stories from the perspective of the alcoholic themselves. An exception: The Shining’s Jack Torrance, portrayed with poignancy and sensitivity in the book more than the movie. I find more of myself in Jack than in any other character in the novel, which is why it terrifies me. It’s also why I root for him even though he loses every time.

Even rarer are stories about a sober alcoholic facing the apocalypse and deciding whether they will keep their sobriety intact. You know death is coming. You know that “one day at a time” will soon be irrelevant. With no future to look forward to, no job to lose, no loved one to disappoint: Why not drink?

This philosophical puzzle came up a lot in my early sobriety when my friends and I imagined scenarios where we’d have trouble not drinking. The list spiraled from everyday anxieties like “my children’s wedding” or “my parents’ funeral” to more fantastical ones: an asteroid hitting the earth, zombie hordes. I can only think of one story that addresses this situation directly: the mediocre apocalyptic thriller 2012. A cruise ship musician and father of one of the scientist heroes thinks of flushing 25 years of sobriety down the drain when he learns the end is imminent. A tsunami bears down on the ship. He leaves the drink alone.

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On Election Night 2016, someone I worked with told me she was days sober and now headed to a bar. Together, we hit a 12-step meeting instead. I said then, I’ll say today: Don’t let them take yet another thing away from you. It won’t make anything better. It will almost certainly make things worse.

These are the things I told myself over the past few years of career troubles, relationship woes, chaos due to a brain that’s not wired right. A personal apocalypse; I hovered around the belief that the world had no use for me and I had no use for the world. I’ve written about this before and maybe I’ll keep writing about it, because I know in my bones that the experience has given me the tools to face today’s darkness.

I won’t let the darkness take the things I know how to protect. The darkness may claim some things, but I’m not going to give it anything more. Succumbing to hopelessness won’t make anything better. It will almost certainly make things worse.

But my best reason to hold onto recovery is this: the looming darkness, the end of the world, the worst thing imaginable... it might not last. I might survive it. You might. Other people might depend on us to help them survive it.

This actually happens in the alternate ending of 2012! The musician father reunites with his son on a spit of dry land (how they escaped the tsunami isn’t explained, but okay). I like to think I’d resist that turns-out-to-not-be-the-last drink as well. After the not-quite-end of the world, I don’t want sleep through my turn to help build shelters because I found the world’s last crate of Jim Beam. More importantly, I don’t want to miss the joy that comes with rebuilding those shelters and witnessing our survival, day after day.

As a species and as individuals, we’ve gone through a thousand things that felt world-ending. And yet, the world keeps beginning again. Personal worlds, the world of a nation, the world that is your community. A thousand endings accompanied by immense pain then something else happens.

Yes, climate change could end us. It also might not. The chances of civilization being wiped out are relatively low. So what if you survive? What if you can make a difference in who does survive?

I don’t know exactly what I did to begin emerging from my personal darkness. One thought has stayed with me as I’ve moved forward: I could get depressed again. I could walk the edge of ending it all — and that’s okay. It’s okay if I enter that end-of-the-world zone again because I’ve been there before. Every day is the day I might feel like the tsunami is coming and what’s the fucking point. But if I survive that day, every day might also be the day the world begins again.

I’ve had this essay in my head for weeks, hoping I wouldn’t have to write it. But I’m glad I did.

On an even more personal note, the production company supporting my podcast “90 Days” decided not to renew the contract. We’ll be moving to Patreon and you will be hearing more about that later. At the moment, subscriptions to either newsletter or either of my podcasts “Space the Nation” or the newly christened “Another Day” are the best way to support my work.