A second cousin tracked me down on LinkedIn last week; we are about the same age, share the same last name, and I can even see a smidge of resemblance in the brow (3.34% shared DNA). I’d never heard of him before. It was friendly but non-committal outreach, the kind of thing that 23andMe enables.

I shared this info with another first cousin (13.2% shared DNA) who I’ve never met but with whom I’ve started a rapport on Instagram. We went on to talk generally about the lack of family knowledge or even communication on our fathers’ side. Our own fathers (49.6% shared DNA) were brothers and estranged from each other for as long as I can remember.

K_wen: I wonder what happened. Big fight over inheritance? Grudges? Alcoholism? I love how the News have normalized not talking to each other lol
cat_new: I vote for alcoholism.
K_wen: [thumbs up emoji]

23andMe can tell me that I have inherited sticky ear wax but not an orientation to addiction and alcoholism. Where does this intergenerational story square with these data-rich genetic breakdowns of who you are?

Today, on June 28, I celebrated 13 years of continuous sobriety from drugs and alcohol. Thank you.

A few years ago I found a box of typed letters from my paternal grandmother Dorothy to my mom written in late 1966 and early 1967. My parents were newly wed and living in North Carolina where my father was in medical school. Dorothy’s primary concern was locating a steady supply of gin given that my parents lived in a dry county. Her alcoholism was legendary, at least within the family. Her two sons, estranged from each other over their lifetimes, were battle-scarred by her neglect and worse during their childhood. (That’s my understanding.)

In my Big Book, I keep two photos of her. In one she’s adorable — maybe 22 years old — and waving a rolling pin in a mock domestic dispute, her spark jumping out of the black and white picture. In the coming years, she’d be a mother and a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford in clinical psychology. In the other photo, she’s in her early 70s, dressed in a cigarette-stained housecoat and holding her head in her hands to hide from the camera; there is an open bottle of Beefeaters behind her and a full ashtray on the counter. But for the grace of God go I, I whisper to myself when I get lost staring into these images.

What part of me comes from her? (26% shared DNA) Sometimes I think about her grandfather, Knute Soderberg (6.25% shared DNA), and the ancestors that came from Stockholm, Sweden. He arrived in Boston in the early 1890s. I am not sure why, but I have pinned the dark thread of alcoholism in the family on him. Poor guy, he was just one of 330,000 other arrivals that year from Sweden looking to better his life in the New World.1

We are truly living in a miraculous period of recovery and healing. It’s never been so popular or accessible. We are also living through a period with the highest rates of overdose, deaths of despair, and addiction.

The shoulders on both sides have widened. Recovery today is a giant term, complete with influencers and memberships and a booming non-alcoholic beverage industry. Once “recovery” was exclusively in the domain of people who were “AA sober” but now it covers a lot more ground. A lot of different flavors of recovery have sprung up over the last two decades — a testament to both how many people need it and how useful it is as a design for living.

In the 12-step philosophy, the basis of sobriety is a desire to not use mind- and mood-altering substances and behaviors. Check and check. But after a while, abstinence (hopefully) becomes an essential background actor in the theater of recovery.2 (Abstinence, for me, is an actor in the same way Wile E. Coyote is an actor. It’s the basis of the whole plot. Without it, there’s no beep beep.) But over time, the main stage shifts to emotional sobriety, tackling the black-tar of your motivations, reactions, and feelings.

You can link your micro-rage with your need to eat in front of an open refrigerator; or how a certain street can trigger an unhealthy reverie; or how a cold shoulder of a family member sends you back to a tantrum state circa age nine. In my experience, these things don’t go away — but become rather observable (and even comedic) events. The distance between the past and the present widens and shifts; what was invisible becomes visible.

For me, sobriety continues to be a present-day event, one day at a time. It is, I heard recently, the ministry of presence. The medicine for addiction is to be here now and help others; that’s really all that matters. Addiction is filled with the spooks of the past and fears of the future. It is maudlin, resentful, and self-sabotaging. It’s a tight fit. This is why one of my favorite promises in the literature is that as recovered addicts and alcoholics, we will “wear life like a loose garment.”

So now what? What happens at 13 years of sobriety? Well, if you’re me, you finally decide to move states. I’ll be going back to New Mexico for good on July 14 — to wear lots of loose (linen) garments. (This San Francisco apartment is for rent now.) But there is more.

Not only is today my sober anniversary, but it is also a major turning point in my life arc according to my Vedic astrological chart. On June 28, 2022, I move from one mahadasha to another (in Vedic study, a mahadasha is like a calendar of your life's events.) This ends a 19-year cycle (Saturn), where I have been since age 27, and starts a new 17-year cycle, ruled by Mercury, which represents learning, writing, and education. Already, an outline of what that means is taking shape … but more to be revealed at another time.

Inheritance is a tricky thing — various camps (biological, ancestral, generational, financial, geographical, spiritual, alcoholic, astrological, etc) compete to hold the conch of the story-teller of the unconscious mind. But the gift of my sobriety today is just to rotate through all the lenses, like perusing garments on a clothing rack. Maybe I AM Knute, heading off to seek a new homeland? Maybe I AM Dorothy, waving her rolling pin? Maybe I am an ancient yogi peddling through my mahadashas, which have no beginning nor end, just different bodies?

Maybe I am just another bozo on the bus.

I love you all, keep going.

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1

I am focusing on the Swedish lineage; the British DNA also dialed it in pretty hard on the alcoholism too. The German Lutheran side (mom) was filled with teetotaling ministers.

2

I am using recovery and sobriety inter-changeably though they are not. Also if you need help, call me. No questions asked, no judgments ever.

Homeward Bound

13