The Drunken Gardener

One plant is never enough.

My husband has never seen me drunk. For that matter, he’s never seen me take a drink. In fact, I haven’t had a drink of alcohol – not a cold beer, a glass of red wine, a neat Scotch, a frozen daiquiri, a gin and tonic, a Chardonnay, a rosé, a Mt. Gay or an IPA – in 17 and a half years.

But don’t worry – I don’t feel cheated. I drank my share, your share, and the dog’s share in the first 44 years of my life. By the way, if you’re looking to get sober and you’re not yet 44, my suggestion is not to wait until you’re in perimenopause, you’re on the Atkins diet, your husband (or wife) is very sick, your job as editor in chief of a magazine (or chief of anything) is very stressful, and the annual taxes on your house are more than your salary. Just sayin’ – makes things pretty tricky.

The fact that I managed to wash ashore on this Island a year sober and hang on to the rocks for dear life is nothing short of a miracle. Most of my marbles were still missing. In other words, though I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t yet on an even keel emotionally or spiritually. I left my husband and my marriage of 17 years behind in Connecticut. Divorced, I promptly got myself into a bad relationship on the Island that I didn’t have enough sense to get out of before it really blew up. After that it was just me and Farmer (and a lot of spiritual growth) for a while.

When my (current and forever) husband first came along, I was still so gun-shy that I crafted all kinds of excuses not to go out with him. I’m washing my hair! I’m weeding! I’m writing a book! (All true.)

But one day he sent this, via email: “If you are seeing someone else or not interested in dating, I understand, and will just fade back into the mists.”

Fade back into the mists? So poetic! Suddenly I realized this lawyer dude had a romantic side to him. I signed up for a coffee date – with a time limit. I had an event at the Ag Hall I absolutely had to be present for at noon, so I had an escape hatch.

Right about now you’re wondering how he ever put up with this nonsense. Well, you’d have to ask him. But somehow he just knew. Plus, he and Farmer were in cahoots. They met in the parking lot the day of that very first coffee and became fast friends. Together they worked on me, convincing me that a pack of three was much preferable to a pack of two.

From the outset, my husband accepted and respected my concerns and limitations as a recovering alcoholic. It is nearly impossible for a non-alcoholic to fully understand the necessity of being vigilant; I think you need to have endured the excruciatingly painful experience of not being able to stop or control your drinking – and then to have finally found relief and healing – to know in your heart why everything else must take a backseat to maintaining sobriety. But a spouse or partner doesn’t have to understand; all he or she has to do is support you.

It's also hard for friends or lovers who come into a sober person’s life to imagine that their person was ever an active alcoholic. How could that be? The person they know seems so…normal (well, except for a few idiosyncrasies!). My husband doesn’t dwell on it, but he has said from time to time that he can’t imagine me drinking the way I have described it to him.

At least he used to say that.

That was before the chocolate chips. And the plants.

This winter I went on a chocolate-eating spree that culminated with a five-pound weight gain in one month. I was particularly stressed out and feeling up against a wall that I needed to break through. I finally recognized that I had a strong hand in a self-defeating situation that was feeling eerily like 2006 – only fortunately this time I was in a very happy marriage and I had done enough work in recovery to recognize what was going on. But while it was happening, I ate chocolate like I was drinking alcohol. There were even some nights when we didn’t have chocolate in the house that I asked my husband if he would get in the car and go get me some! Aside from the obvious disservice of making him an enabler (he just wants me to be happy), I was trying to sooth myself with an addictive (yes, addictive) substance instead of dealing with the problem.

Eventually I asked him for help in figuring out how to handle what I was wrestling with, but not before he had the opportunity to see how easily I could self-medicate, given the right circumstances. In one way, that was a good thing, as he could better understand how for me, one drink was never enough.

And then: the case of the 300 plant seedlings.

“Honey, do you think – as my mother always used to say – your eyes are bigger than your stomach?” This was his question when he looked in the hoop house the other day.

“What are we going to do with all these? This is way more than we can fit in the garden,” he pointed out.

If one plant is good, 300 is even better.

My defense was that I was going to sell some of them, just like I did last year. Only I’m a few weeks behind last year, and everyone already has their tomato and zinnia and dahlia plants. So that’s a problem. Then I tried this excuse, “I’m sort of practicing for when we finish the big garden, figuring out how I’ll grow all the starts we need.” Huh? Practicing? That was really lame.  

Truthfully, the whole planting and plant-nurturing and plant-ogling thing is a huge endorphin-booster for me. (Not for nothing – I’ve seen a lot of recovered or recovering alcoholics become obsessive gardeners.) So again, if one plant or one flower makes me feel good, 300 should make me feel even better. More is better, right?

Not necessarily. Well actually, almost never.

It’s true that a lot of alcoholics (though we’re not the only ones) suffer from the disease of more – more will finally fill up the hole, more will mean true happiness, more will drown out the noise and self-doubts. Whether it is more chocolate or more plants or more books (at least in my case, it’s not luxury cars, vacations, and clothes), it’s a distraction from being present and accepting the gifts right in front of us.

The thing is, I get plenty of joy – so much joy, joy as in an actual mood lift – just by going down to the warm hoop house in the morning and discovering that a single rose has bloomed or one dahlia has sprouted or a ranunculus bud has opened. Yes, it’s satisfying to see the 300 seedlings I’ve potted up, but really I’m just happy to be down there and experiencing the wonder of how things grow against all odds.

And really, I would argue (to my husband, of course) that plants are a much healthier obsession than chocolate chips since they have a less dramatic effect on serotonin levels and a more positive effect on physical well-being. He would probably point out, however, that a bag of chocolate chips is much less expensive than a bag of potting soil.   

The best thing about plants, though, is that you can share them with people. I sometimes share my chocolate with my husband, but only if he doesn’t remind me that I said I was going to stop eating chocolate forever yesterday.

Some of us are more sober than others, I guess. 🌱