I’m continuing my COVID supplement to The Book of Waking Up. If you’d like to support this project, signup for my Substack. Special thanks today to Sealy who signed up as a yearly $65 subscriber!

8. Sobriety is a Sucker’s Game in the Pandemic

“Sobriety doesn’t make sense anymore.”

Amber said this over morning coffee, and it was not meant as some declarative statement, some shifting-sand thought on remaining undrunk. Instead, it was a rhetorical outworking of justification, a shorthand for the more nuanced truth: “I don’t blame anyone who falls off the wagon during this pandemic.” I didn’t object. In fact, I nodded along. A good and proper pandemic changes the way you think about things.

Sobriety is a tall order these days, and I’ll stand by that statement until this season is in the history books. That written, I stand by the corollary truth: Sobriety (from any old vice) is a tall order worth contemplating, hard as it may be to stomach. Sobriety, after all, is a simple act of resistance these days.

The New Demon came to choke the life from us, and in that choking, a great number of us turned to the things of comfort. As I wrote last week, we’re ordering up all the old vices: liquor, love toys, and live-streams. These, though, are only the leading indicators that addiction is taking hold. We’ll see the lagging indicators months from now. As David Brooks, author of the now-prescient The Second Mountain, wrote last week,

“Every one-percentage-point increase in unemployment leads eventually to a 3.5 percent increase in opioid addiction, so the pandemic’s economic effects alone will exacerbate our drug and mental health problems down the road.”

Down the road. In other words, Baby you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Yes, a second pandemic is well on its way, and this one might be sneakier, the consequences more long-lasting. This next-wave pandemic is a pandemic of emotional pain, one born from the isolation, fear, and anxiety of this very dark season. The experts all agree: It’s coming. And as the reality sets in, we can either turn to comfort consumption, to the habits, addictions, and coping mechanisms that bring numb relief, or we can turn to some higher thing, perhaps to Divine Love.

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, though. In fact, let’s pause. Ask yourself, do you feel the next-wave pandemic setting in in your own life? Are you afraid, anxious, depressed, or isolated? Do you feel the emotional pain? If so, take a few minutes today and talk with a trusted friend. A spouse. A partner. A priest. A rabbi. Call a therapist. Get ahead of the hurt. If you don’t, you might find yourself sliding into those old lesser loves (booze, boobs, binging and purging). You might find the old addictions have come knocking.

To Be Continued…

Join me tomorrow (and for the foreseeable future) as I continue my Pandemic Supplement to The Book of Waking Up. And if you haven’t grabbed a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life, grab a copy. And yes, Amazon has slowed down book shipments, so considering purchasing it from Bookish, Fort Smith or grabbing a digital copy for Kindle or Nook.