"It’s still a miracle to me" (Angela's story)

"I found the grace that I didn’t have to be perfectly alcohol-free to find acceptance and belonging on the path to sobriety."

When my friend Angela speaks, I can feel my nervous system downshift. Not only is her voice calming and grounding, it’s also full of a kindness and generosity that gives me the sense that no matter what, everything is going to be OK. I met her through Tempest and it’s been an inspiration to witness her and her story, and to also get to know her voice in another way—as a creative writer with a rich and meandering history that is captivating to hear.

It’s my honor to share (some of!) her story with you today.

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I finally found freedom from my acquired-over-time addiction to alcohol on November 11th, 2018 at 11am Paris time. On the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, The War to End all Wars, I put down my last drink.

I have always known about Armistice Day. In my family story, my grandfather was on his way to the trenches of WWI when he caught The Spanish Flu. He nearly died, and recovered slowly, at which point the war was all but over. For him, the fear of the trenches was greater than the fear of the flu. In fact, more American soldiers died of disease, largely the pandemic, than died from combat, but the essence of the story I received was that I likely owed my very existence to the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. I never heard the story of my paternal grandfather’s actual participation, only of his pride about being a WWI Vet, a naturalized citizen, and an Air Warden in San Francisco’s Richmond District during WWII.  

I was born into a culture of alcohol. My grandmother, a native to Noe Valley, favored whiskey; my mother wine. My father was an anomaly: a teetotaler, a choice made early in life after a bad reaction to home-brewed alcohol while stationed in Okinawa. The kitchen table in Noe Valley was famous for a constant supply of red wine—unless it was Gallo Wine, forever persona non grata, a boycott always held. On my father’s Italian side, it was a custom for us children to drink water mixed with wine on holidays, and I remember openly drinking “some wine” at 14, no big deal. Later my chosen drink was vodka, to stand out from my mother and grandmother. Although I loved altering my consciousness, and was already a “partier” by the time I was 13, I was the one who rarely got drunk; in those days, I was the sober one that took care of others, kept a cool head, and got us out of jams.

Lyle Galloway, ©1975

I left San Francisco after the arrival of another virus in my life. I had been living briefly in Western Massachusetts, but in the summer of 1982 I returned to the city when my almost fifteen-year-old brother, Dominic, died of accidental drowning. It was the day before my twentieth birthday. I arrived home in shock that turned into a pervasive grief that never really left our home on Elizabeth Street. It was then that the wine at the table changed its tone and temper, becoming boxes, not bottles. On top of this, there was something else I hadn’t heard about until I came home, a possible “gay cancer”. This cancer turned out to be HIV, and with no antiviral treatments, people succumbed quickly of AIDS. It swept like wildfire through our valleys, our city, our lives. So much loss and devastation. In December of 1985, I moved to Humboldt County to seek a different life. About a year later, a kind of irony and kismet met me when I ended up providing care for a person at the end stages of HIV-AIDS. He was so very sick and angry and full of love. Although my time with him was brief, the care I gave him—and him to me—changed my life. It led directly to what became my career in social work.

At the peak of the HIV-AIDS crisis, I had lost too many friends and acquaintances to count. Early in the ’90s on a visit home, I was waiting for the 24 Divisadero bus at 18th Street and Castro when I ran into someone I knew. She had been part of a circle of coworker friends I’d known from 1980-81. I asked after them, and we realized we were the only ones left standing. Instead of catching the bus, we got drunk at the Elephant Walk bar. By then my mother had died of PML, another virus that kills severely immunocompromised people. Often it developed in people with AIDS, but for my mother it was brought on after years of chemo treatments. She thought it was ironic. 

My drinking changed after 1993. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was doing whatever I could to numb and drown out the accumulated grief. I wasn’t necessarily drinking more, but differently, and at home. In 1998 I began to wake up to the havoc of alcohol, and the notion that I should stop. At the time, there was no concept of Gray Area Drinking, and few resources in general. After a bit of searching for help that I could not find, a book half-read and a few weeks being alcohol free, I let go the notion of sobriety. Sixteen years of my life slipped by without any serious attempts toward quitting, plus four more years spent struggling to be free of it. I am now unpacking twenty years of what I now know was a cognitive dissonance around alcohol. 

With newfound time on my hands in 2014 after early semi-retirement in part due to disability, I found myself drinking alone late into the night and wee hours of the morning. I was nursing my grudges and numbing the anguish of years of sustained small “t” trauma and some big T’s lying dormant. My self worth collapsed. On election night 2016, I simply failed to stop drinking until late Wednesday night. I recall having a morning nip to get myself to an appointment on Thursday. Soon, morning drinking crept in, slowly at first, then becoming my insidious secret anytime I could get away with it. A five o’clock start became 3pm, and from there, all kinds of negotiations ensued. 

In November 2017, at the edge of physical dependency and in desperation, I started really stopping. 

With the new year, I started keeping track on a little calendar, noting AF for any days spent “alcohol-free”. A diligent and persistent resource gathering began, and I landed at Hip Sobriety/Tempest in Summer 2018. It was in this community that I found a connection with others who I could confide in and trust. These were peers who understood my struggle with alcohol, shared a common plight, and allowed me the grace that I didn’t have to be perfectly alcohol-free to find acceptance and still belong on the path to sobriety. My heart opened and love and compassion alleviated the shame. Every day of trying brought me closer to a true desire to want sobriety more than my addiction. It’s still a miracle to me as I write this. Before my recovery, I was terrified of taking the leap, but just recently I realized that it was the steady work along the path that made the leap more of a manageable step, rather than an insurmountable jump. With all the pieces in place, I found surrender on election day 2018 and a concrete plan to stop for good—to “never question the decision”—that following Sunday, November 11th: the day to end my war with alcohol. 

And here we are another virus, another election, the world full of so much uncertainty.  I wonder what our trajectory will be?  The one thing I know for certain is that I am so grateful to be free from alcohol. I have found that it is so much better for me to process the pain and the joy in real-time.  

Born and raised in San Francisco, 58-year-old Angela Lee Hunsinger lives in in unceded Wiyot territory in the area known as Humboldt County, CA with her husband Micheal and cat Dew. Angela is an amateur genealogist, a sixth generation Sonoma/Marin County California, and a fourth generation San Franciscan. She is learning to take time to heal and explore creativity, and looks forward to figuring out her new focus for community service in her sixties.

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Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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