Benjamin Ashford|Getting sober saved my life. And helped me understand my identity as a transgender woman.

I’m a sober transgender woman. How are Benjamin Ashfordthose two attributes connected? For me, they are intertwined like the strands of the double helix. I don’t believe I could have discovered who I am without getting sober first.

And it works the other way. Being a woman is now one of the central facts of my existence and has, in turn, become one of a number of miraculous developments in my life that motivates me to stay sober each day. 

We observed on Thursday the annual National Sober Day, which aims to promote sobriety and celebrate people who have chosen to lead sober lives. It’s a good time for alcoholics like me to reflect on the nature of our sobriety.

Alcoholism is insidious and deadly. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 10% of Americans over the age of 12 abuse alcohol and in a typical year about 140,000 Americans die from the effects of alcohol. 

Alcoholics rationalize their drinking. For me, every day must be National Sober Day.

While these are harrowing statistics, take it from an alcoholic: When you are in the throes of excessive usage, these numbers mean nothing. Like everything else that argues against excessive booze usage – damaged health, broken relationships and lackluster work performance – alcoholics simply rationalize it all away, telling themselves that they are different. 

Once an alcoholic gets and stays sober, the opposite becomes true and startling revelations and self-discovery can occur. That’s what happened to me, which has convinced me alcoholics can only know their true selves once they stop poisoning themselves with a steady diet of drugs or alcohol. 

I was an active alcoholic for most of my life and drank excessively on and off for nearly 40 years. In a not uncommon pattern, my drinking career was characterized by escalation, starting with beer in high school, binge drinking in college and shifting to everyday drinking in my 30s. 

Then the real damage began in my 40s, when I sometimes devolved into a morning and daytime drinker, which eventually led to an arrest for drunken driving and a protective order.

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My drinking career was capped by a suicide attempt, which in retrospect was the deep bottom I needed to finally decide to live and get sober. 

For me, every day must be National Sober Day because if I put alcohol in my body, my pattern of escalation will lead to only one place: death. That reality is certainly a great motivator for me to stay sober, but alcoholics in recovery can do with as many incentives as possible to keep drinks away from their mouths. 

Alcohol suppresses who we are. Getting sober helped me understand my gender identity.

I believe it is no coincidence that I had my first conscious conception that I was transgender nine months after I got sober in January 2018. When I look back at my life through the lens of sobriety and my gender identity, there were certainly signs that I might have been transgender, chief among them being the fact I detested everything male about myself.

But I never had a chance and I believe nobody has a chance to know who they are at a deep level while they are pouring drugs and alcohol into their bodies. There is no Maeve without sobriety. I’d either be dead or a ruined miserable drunk trapped in the dark, fearful ring of Dante’s hell from which there is no escape. 

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Alcohol and drugs suppress who we are as human beings. For many of us, there are initial benefits to using. In my case, I heard voices for much of my life telling me I was a rotten human being, and in my early drinking days, booze made those voices fainter. 

Of course, it’s ultimately a mirage and as long as we are drinking excessively, we remain in the desert fruitlessly searching for the oasis that will save us. I drank immoderately because I’m an alcoholic, but I also think booze helped keep at bay this gnawing sense that I wasn’t who I thought I was, which must have, on some level, been repugnant to me. 

To get sober, you have to want to do it for yourself, and there are many benefits. Physical and mental health, clear-headedness, happiness and fullness of life are just a few that come to mind. Add to that the potential of jump-starting a process of self-discovery and self-actualization, and the calculus becomes even more compelling. 

Sober is so cool. 

Maeve DuVally, an LGBTQ+ advocate and communications and diversity & inclusion consultant, is author of the book "MAEVE RISING: Coming Out Trans in Corporate America."