Learning Herbivore

words by Emma Faesi Hudelson / emmahudelson.com

First, I had to get sober. I thought I wanted to be vegan; but how could I make a commitment that big when I couldn’t stay sober for more than a day?

I drank the way a hummingbird sucks nectar from a redstemmed feeder. Long pulls, then back for more in five minutes. I drank like I needed it to breathe. Like my heart might stop beating without booze.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I’d black out every time. The next morning, I’d wake up with a hangover that started deep in my brain stem and squeezed around my skull like a fist. It made the birdsong filtering through the bedroom window sound like a dentist’s drill. Some days, I’d drag my body to the bathroom cabinet for Excedrin in time to make it to class. Other days, I’d email lies to my professors and go back to sleep. My dog needed surgery. My car blew a head gasket. I’d picked up Giardia from swimming in a lake. A great-uncle from Texas had a heart attack. My best friend slumped into a coma. My Swiss grandmother died.

After a while, I ran out of relatives to sicken or kill off in the name of bourbon. I lost track of the stories I’d told. Once, unable to remember what excuses I’d made last week, I emailed the editor of the paper where I interned and told the truth: I’d gotten too drunk the night before and couldn’t come in because I felt like I’d been hit by an Early Times delivery truck. He gave me a pass for being honest, but I never had the guts to tell the truth about my drinking again.

Like the hangovers, these lies clung to me. I felt like a dishonest piece of shit. I was a dishonest piece of shit. Drunk, I could hide from that truth. Hungover, its glare made me hate myself.

None of this stopped me from getting wasted six nights a week.

Along with a lot of other things—good grades, a working car, a boyfriend with a job—I aspired to be vegan, but alcohol blocked me from realizing any desires except the next drink.

I’d been ovo-lacto-pesca-vegetarian off and on since age twelve—which sounds more like a diagnosis than a lifestyle. It meant that I liked animals, but only enough to make a show of not eating meat. Unless, of course, I was drunk. On my way home from whiskey and cokes poured four fingers high at the Alley Cat, I might swing by a Steak ‘n Shake drive-through for a Double ‘n Cheese Steakburger.

I’d claim to hate the leather industry and animal testing, then lace up my Doc Martens, line my eyes with Maybelline, and meet my friends for drinks and dinner. Over margaritas, I’d tell my friends that I wanted to be vegan—just as soon as I could afford all those fresh fruits and vegetables. “I’m too broke right now,” I’d say, dousing a $9.99 burrito in queso before ordering another $12 pitcher of sticky-sweet green liquid cut with tequila.

Liquor deadened me to anything larger than myself. I couldn’t choose between right and wrong—I could barely choose between tequila and whiskey. My drinking swept me to darker places than eating a cheesy burrito and lying to my professors, but the same root problem stood behind it all, from driving through a Steak ‘n Shake to getting strapped with handcuffs. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—follow a personal resolution. No code, no philosophy, no spirituality. I wasn’t anything but an addict.

Getting into recovery took the blindfold off. Suddenly, I could see myself, and what I saw made me shudder. I had to change everything.

Change came slowly. With a recovery program and a lot of therapy, I began to piece together a sense of morality. Ethics became important. For the first time, I felt like a piece of something bigger, a thread within a tapestry instead of the wobbling center of an out-of-control top.

With my therapist Laura sitting across from me in an earth-toned skirt and sensible shoes, I learned to scan myself for signs of trouble, like anti-virus software. Are my shoulders hunched? Is my brow creased? Does my stomach hurt? Yes to all. Okay. I feel upset. I’d report these findings to Laura, and she’d tell me to probe deeper, ask me what stood behind “upset.”

Usually, I answered “fear” or “shame.” When I was drinking, these two instincts drove me like cattle prods. I feared that I wouldn’t have anything to say at a party, so I got wasted enough to say anything. Then I’d feel ashamed about what I said, and I’d drink the next day to hide from it.

In session, Laura would smile, nod, and prompt me to go on. “So this is what fear feels like for you. Notice it. Where in your body do you feel fear the most? What would you name it? What would it say if you gave it a voice?”

The answers didn’t even matter. The noticing mattered. Holding the fear up long enough to look at it meant I could do something about it. I could make a decision instead of just reacting. Laura called this mindfulness, and urged me to apply it to every area of my life.

A few months into recovery, I took a bite of my dad’s buttery, lemony tilapia and felt sick. Not because of his cooking, but because, clear-headed, I remembered that what squished between my teeth used to be alive. That fillet came from a living, moving being that felt pain and pleasure, that wanted a full belly and a safe place to rest, just like me. I finished my plate, but when I got home, I told my boyfriend that I wanted to give up fish. Three days later, I said I changed my mind. We went to Red Lobster for dinner, but I broke down in the parking lot at the thought of eating popcorn shrimp. We drove home, unfed. I never ate seafood again.

Had I still been drinking, I would have shrugged off the post-fish sickness. Sober and mindful, I didn’t simply feel ill after eating fish, I noticed that I felt ill. There’s a difference. I acknowledged the queasiness and interrogated it. The tilapia’s fleshiness, its former alive-ness, shook my guts up. If I didn’t want to feel that way anymore, I’d have to change my habits.

Later that year, my boyfriend and I went vegan. We finished the gallon of milk and carton of cottage cheese in the fridge and bought Silk soy milk and tofu instead. We ordered pizzas without cheese. We spread avocado instead of cheese on our veggie burgers. In the grocery store, we combed over labels for things like casein, whey powder, and gelatin. Once we got used to eating vegan, it was a piece of (eggless, butterless) cake.

Of course, veganism is much more than a diet. Depending on who you are, it can be a political, ethical, or spiritual statement. Every time I eat a vegan meal, I’m recognizing that humans don’t have the right to enslave, exploit, and kill others. I’m choosing not to support suffering. I’m acknowledging the sanctity of all sentient beings. Being thoughtful about my food choices is a practice. A prayer in action. A nod to the divine.

All this newfound awareness spilled over into other areas of my life, too. Instead of calling in sick to work or faking my

way out of class, I showed up. I couldn’t even use my student I.D. to get a discount at the movies without feeling dirty. Months earlier, I would have gone out for cocktails after the film and drunk the dirtiness away. But sober, I knew it would stick to me.

My behavior was beginning to line up with my beliefs, like folding a chain of paper dolls back into a single shape. Simple. Circle head. Triangle torso. Rectangle legs.

Getting into recovery isn’t a cure-all. It doesn’t mean automatic, perfect self-awareness. Like anything else, it’s a process. Mindfulness doesn’t come easily. I struggled. I made mistakes. I did the wrong, un-mindful thing—like telling the old woman who cut me off in traffic to go fuck herself, canceling concert plans because of anxiety, or giving in to depression and sleeping all day. I feel just as much pain in recovery as I did drunk. More, really, because I don’t anesthetize myself anymore. But I deal with that pain without drinking.

As my friends in recovery say, the paths we walk get firmer and sharper by the day. What used to be a postapocalyptic wasteland, no safe passage in sight, becomes a clearly marked wooded trail, lush and green. The fear that dragged me, ass-first, into that wasteland has weakened. Sobriety lets me fumble forward on my own two feet.

As I write this, I’m more than eight years sober. Every day, I drink a 36-ounce green smoothie instead of Jim Beam. In the communal fridge at work, the sweating mason jar of green slush stands out, almost glowing, prompting jokes. “Is that a science experiment?” “You’re not actually going to drink that, are you?” Or my favorite, which I hear at least once a week, “What is that, anyway?” When I shrug and say it goes down smoothly, eyebrows rise. I take a sip, wipe the green from my lips, and smile.