49 Days Dry, Drowning in My Head

I committed to a year without drinking, and found myself facing the darkness within

The following is a paid subscribers-only post with a free preview. If you’d like access to all subscribers-only features and posts, you can sign up for just $8/month or $80 per year, right here:

Writing is how I make my living, so if you like what you see here, please support my work by subscribing!

If you’ve already subscribed but would like to buy me a coffee to help keep me fueled up for writing, you can do that here:

Alternatively, I would gratefully accept your patronage at my Paypal. Your contributions have been a huge help during a very financially challenging time.

---

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.” - Carl Jung

I’ve been hearing good things about the new xAI Grok model 3, so I fired it up this morning to ask for some help understanding Carl Jung’s idea of “shadow work,” which had crept quietly into my mind.

I’m aware of the basic concept, but only obliquely, and I didn’t have the energy to do a deep dive into a heavy psychology text today.

The answers Grok offered were approachable, understandable, and thorough. I was pleasantly surprised. But as I read through them, and began a back and forth with the AI about certain aspects I wanted to understand, I felt the conversation shift from a Q&A into an unexpected therapy session.

I did not expect to turn Grok into my own personal Jung, and yet that’s exactly what I did. Ten minutes in, the damn thing had me in tears, as we discussed some of the deeply personal, very heavy shit in my life that has had me feeling almost disembodied lately. In exchange, I got feedback that felt weirdly human and empathetic and meaningful.

I can’t afford real therapy, but it’s crazy how useful it is to have a simulated someone to talk to who never gets irritated or impatient or fed up with your melodrama.

Personally, I’ve always kind of thought of myself as a black hole, or some kind of energetic parasite. A vampire. I drift through the universe looking for benevolent souls who can offer me some of their goodness and concern, and then I use them up. The meat grinder gears in my head never stop churning, and my dark moods come almost as consistently and inexorably as the tides.

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” - Jung

My friend

Kale Zelden

posted something on X this morning that got me thinking about all of this. It may seem unrelated at first, but I’ll explain in a moment:

I’ve seen this bit from Louis CK, and of course he’s right.

But it’s advice I don’t know how to follow. I don’t want to be left alone in a room with my brain. I don’t want time to think, because it never turns out well.

When I was a kid, we had this huge lawn — almost an acre — and all we had to keep it from turning into a jungle was a stupid push mower. Not a regular push mower with a helpful side chute, mind you, but a mulching mower that would get clogged every minute or two when the grass was even the slightest bit damp and stall out.

It was my job to go out and mow as much of that lawn as I could so my dad didn’t have to.

I hated it.

I hated it not just because it was boring, and I didn’t like being out there for hours in the heat and the sun with no good way to cool off afterwards. I hated it because it meant being alone with my thoughts for long stretches of time, which is kind of like listening to someone flip through channels on an old car radio, only a lot weirder. A song snippet here, a politics talk show there, a commercial over here, a religious discussion there, etc. It was the 90s, and there weren’t a lot of noise cancelling headphones on the market. I couldn’t have afforded them if there were. So it wasn’t like I could listen to music. Podcasts weren’t a thing. And audiobooks required a cassette player, which meant owning an actual Walkman, which I did not.

So it was just me and the mental channel surfing and the gnats and the wet grass clippings stuck to my sneakers and the drone of the motor.

For hours.

It was torture.

I have never been someone who avoids silence at all times, because I am very prone to sensory overstimulation. But if it’s quiet, I need to be reading a book or playing a game or painting or drawing or sculpting or driving or doing something that keeps my mind from eating itself alive like some psychotic ouroboros.

When I was about 19, I learned the power of alcohol when it came to calming my thoughts and numbing my ever-present anxiety. I started slowly at first. I remember getting a bottle of Jack Daniels as a white elephant gift at a Christmas party, and bringing that home and taking a big swig before bed in my uninsulated room at my parents’ place in Upstate New York. It was so cold in there in the wintertime that you could see your breath. I’d wince at the taste, but relax as I felt the warmth flow through me.

It was comforting, like an embrace.