Rivkah Reyes

Eight years sober and clean, I'm fine.

You can be a heavy drinker and not be an alcoholic.

I think what makes me an alcoholic personally is that I, in addition to the physical allergy, the mental blank spot, I also have a deep spiritual wound

that people will call the god-sized hole or just like the void or I have this like hungry ghost that lives in me that's like more more more whether that's more money more fame more love more relationships more attention more followers more likes more streams whatever like there is this

ache for more that i have to fill with community and i have to fill it with like god and like god i say because it's one syllable but like i understand that to be just like universal energy love whatever dharma

I don't know.

Whatever you believe.

Whatever you believe.

It's just one syllable.

Great outdoors.

It's three parts.

It's really just like, I just live with this, yeah, this like gargoyle that I wake up every day and this gargoyle is like sitting on my bed and is like, you're going down, bitch.

And I have to do whatever it takes to like keep that gargoyle like quiet and keep it from ruining me.

Yeah, therapy and 12 step programs like, you know, I'm definitely not like here to be the poster child for any 12 step program.

But I spent some time in AA.

I spent some time in a program for relationships and love addiction and, you know, weirdness.

involving people those programs have really quite literally saved my life i am still active in the community i just kind of was ready to stop driving the car of my own life because it had gotten me in trouble i'd wake up with these like little post-it notes you know in my apartment sometimes they'd be cute like oh you left your burrito in claire's car like there's cigarettes on the fireplace like whatever but then sometimes they'd be like you need help go to rehab

And I'd be writing myself these notes while blacked out, and I started keeping tabs too of how much water I drank between drinks, and trying to do the mental gymnastics and math to figure out how I could drink and use like a gentleman, and every experiment failed.

So I was just like, okay, so either I keep doing this and die, or I stop and find help.

And it's not the easiest thing to accept help because sometimes I don't think I deserve it.