May 21, 2022

Dear Reader,

This June 8th will mark four years of complete sobriety for yours truly. And We Are the Light is the first novel I have written 100% sober.

For most of my writing career I went to bed every night at least buzzed. Religiously, I'd wake up around three AM with a demanding and disorienting need to both pee and guzzle water. And as I stumbled through the darkness toward the bathroom—feeling dizzy and dehydrated and slightly nauseated—I'd always think, I have to stop drinking. I could feel my internal organs protesting. I knew that alcohol was slowly killing me.

But then I would get up, caffeinate, and write until my eyes bled—at which point the bottle would send out its siren call once more, singing of instant relief from stress, worry, and self-doubt. Alcohol always wanted to dance with me. It wanted to lift me up to a higher plane before tucking me into bed so sweetly, allowing me to drift off to unconsciousness with no toxic anxiety to keep me tossing and turning.

People drink excessively for logical reasons. Mostly because we can't handle emotional and psychological pain.

Sometimes I would need to leave my fictional worlds and my safe little life with Alicia to interact with people who did not live in our house. As an extreme introvert, I truly enjoy having one-on-one intimate conversations with people I know well and trust. My phone discussions with my closest friends routinely go on for hours. But surface level chitchat with groups of people can often feel intensely uncomfortable to me when I am sober. Drunk or buzzed, absolutely no problem. With a few drinks in me I could listen to anyone say anything; I could manage group settings for heroic amounts of time.

Alcohol was the great equalizer for this introvert.

Being a full-time novelist really helps facilitate the drinking life. Most mornings you don't really have to be anywhere at a specific time. And when you do need to travel out into the world to promote a book or a movie, almost all of the events set up by your publisher or movie producers feature free and unlimited booze. Sometimes there are even people assigned to bring you drinks on a regular basis as you mingle. It is easy to drink in airports and kind people serve you adorable little innocuous-looking bottles on planes. I didn't have four scotches; I only had four itty-bitty bottles! Hotel rooms also stock those same small cute bottles, which are especially hard to resist when someone else is paying the bill.

And what do you do with the other writers you meet in these situations? Well, you drink, of course! Sometimes you also eat and talk, but you always drink, no matter what. Or at least I did for many years. And it was never very hard to find drinking partners.

Over a few decades I maybe became what I've heard the internet call "a high-bottom alcoholic." I never hit what most people think of when they hear the term 'rock bottom.' I showed up at my desk and wrote every day, I kept my business appointments, and I generally—with a few exceptions—did not embarrass myself at social functions. No one ever told me I had a drinking problem.

Well, one person who shall remain nameless routinely used to say I looked "puffy" and—to be fair—I really did.

Also, my father once sent me an article about a writer's self-imposed year of sobriety and how his life had instantly and greatly improved. That bothered me at the time. Who was this man who had quit drinking and was now bragging about it? I didn't like that man. I called him all sorts of ugly names in my head. I labeled him a liar, someone who was trying to unnecessarily shame people living the inebriated lifestyle.

But I also started to think about the sober man when I stumbled to the bathroom in the middle of the night—heart pounding, tongue dry as a bone, brain feeling like it had the water content of beef jerky. I wondered if he was sleeping peacefully. Maybe he didn't hate himself in the wee hours.

Might my life be better without alcohol?

It was a terrifying question. Maybe because I understood with great certainty that my answer was simultaneously yes and no.

I was consuming a tremendous amount of alcohol-related calories, which had rendered me overweight, despite the fact that I rode a stationary bike almost every day and walked regularly. The weight gain started causing health problems like high blood pressure and even gout. I had trouble getting out of my wife's car because it was low to the ground.

One time Alicia and I got caught in a lightning storm at the Wright Brothers Memorial—which, for those of you who have never been there, is basically a lightning rod surrounded by an open field—and when I tried to run to the car, I became too out of breath to continue, which was both shocking and terrifying. (Lightning unfortunately kills people in OBX. Get off the beach immediately when you see it.)

I knew my drinking was making me unhealthy. My medical tests agreed. And I also started to admit that I was avoiding having my picture taken, as I was so embarrassed by how I looked. When I did events and was forced to appear in photos, I was always deeply ashamed by what showed up online. Trapped for all time on the Internet were images of a man I didn't want to be.

When I hit my own private version of rock bottom, I decided to just cut back on drinking and begin running. That was my plan. It took awhile to get in shape, but when I did, I discovered that runner's high was a real thing.

I also found that I could accomplish with exercise what I had been accomplishing with alcohol, meaning I could sweat away anxiety and stress. I could run so many miles that I'd be too tired to worry very much about what was going on internally. I could numb my brain with extreme exhaustion. So that's exactly what I did.

I traded one addiction in for a much healthier one. I also started to eat clean. The benefits were obvious. No more medical problems. Massive weight loss. Fifty-plus pounds! Blood work started producing excellent numbers. I liked the way I looked in pictures for the first time in decades. I felt like I was beginning to look like me again.

But unfortunately you can't exercise at a family gathering. You can't sneak in a wee little five-mile run backstage before you give a speech. And you can't ask people to run ten miles with you when you begin to feel anxious at a dinner party.

My solution was to become somewhat of a hermit who ran a lot in the woods. I got off social media. And I started declining all social and professional invitations. In other words, I attempted to completely eliminate the need for alcohol.

I had also learned that I didn't even like alcohol all that much. I liked the emotional escape that getting drunk offers. One drink with friends wasn't delicious and it didn't get me buzzed, so what was the point? It was just empty calories that I didn't even particularly enjoy. I learned about something called The Power Of Zero and decided that I would drink zero alcoholic beverages. That was my first step toward sobriety.

Immediately, my world got small. When much of your social and professional life revolves around drinking and then you give up alcohol, things get weird. Sober, experiences and people were different than I remembered them being when I was buzzed. One surprising revelation was that I didn't really like watching sports anymore. Gasp! This lifelong Eagles fan didn't exactly bleed green while sober. Or maybe it's more accurate to say alcohol was too entwined with football Sundays. I couldn't really separate the two and I didn't want to drink anymore, so. Friends with whom I mostly drank slowly faded away. It wasn't nefarious. I didn't want to go places where I had previously imbibed. They didn't want to run ten miles in the woods with me.

I had Alicia and a few trusted buddies. I had screenwriting gigs. But I really wanted to write this novel I had been working on for a long time and it just wouldn't come. No matter how hard I tried. I told myself that it would eventually bubble up from the depths of my psyche and I kept running, pushing it to seventy and then eighty-plus miles a week.

I thought I was running to get stronger and healthier. And on one level I was. But I was also running away from that aforementioned emotional and psychological pain.

Then I started getting mysterious joint discomfort that the doctors and specialists couldn't figure out. All of the scans and X-rays and blood tests said I was fine. But the pain intensified enough to sideline me. With long distance running suddenly off the table, all I had was my screenwriting gigs. Then those dried up.

(I've come to believe that my joint pain—which entirely vanished once I entered into Jungian analysis—might have been psychosomatic. Maybe it was psyche's way of sabotaging the running, taking away my coping device, so I'd be forced to start processing the inner, largely repressed conflicts.)

Suddenly, I was facing the blank page again, trying to write a novel that would resurrect my career, make me feel whole again, and distract me from the internal pain that I didn't want to acknowledge. Only this time I didn't have the nightly escape into the bottle. And I no longer had running either.

What do you think happens in the story next?

If you guessed years of writer's block and excruciating emotional pain, you'd be correct!

Will Matthew Quick beat writer's block?

Well, you already know that I have. So this is hardly a proper cliff hanger. But tune in next month anyway and I'll tell you a little bit about what I learned from the experience. It might just have been the most important lesson of my life. And I want to share it with you.

As always, please feel free to tell anyone and everyone about the M.P.L. We are always happy to welcome new subscribers. Our family is growing every day. The more the merrier, says the introvert? Yes, this is an intimate conversation between good like-minded people. This isn't idle chitchat. We are trying to figure out important things here, right? Come one, come all.

Before we sign off for May, let's officially welcome the seventeenth and eighteenth countries to join the M.P.L.: Thailand and Israel!

And give thanks to Mitch Albom for this kind We Are the Light blurb:

"A timely, lovely and sometimes heartbreaking novel of grief and hope, beautifully told through a series of letters that shine light on our capacity to heal, even after tragedy." —Mitch Albom, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger in the Lifeboat

Our local indie bookshops—Duck's Cottage & Downtown Books here in OBX—are already taking preorders for signed copies. Jamie Anderson has done a lot to support Alicia and me over the years. Help us return the favor by preordering your signed copy of WATL from her shops! Signed copies here.

Finally, Alicia and I are recovering nicely from our battle with Covid-19. Our Collingswood, NJ and Holden, MA events have been rescheduled. Hit this link for more info: Alicia Events  Also, did you see the favorable Smile Beach Murder review in The New York Times? Jamie is selling lots of signed copies here in OBX. You can order one here: Signed Smile Beach Murder. We'll be using Inkwood Books at the NJ event and TidePool Bookshop in MA. Please support the booksellers who support us!

Okay, friends.

Until the 21st of June 2022, please remember that wherever you are in the world, whatever your current battle may be, your man in Coastal NC is sending you good vibes. Always.

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MATTHEW

p.s.—If someone forwarded you this letter and you've enjoyed it, we can make it a regular thing. Subscribe here: Monthly Personal Letter.