Safety Was What I Needed. I Just Didn't Know How to Get It.
A story about what happens when your nervous system mistakes wine for safety.
February of 2021, a day after my birthday, the city of Austin woke up to a white winter wonderland and no power. My 17-year-old daughter was with me downtown. My 20-year-old son was with my ex across town. Within hours, we learned the power wouldn’t return for up to a week.
I hadn’t had a drink in 90 days. I was going for six months, maybe never again. But as soon as it occurred to me that we were in a disaster, my defenses collapsed. The only solution - besides getting everyone to safety and stocking food - was wine.
I didn’t question this. It literally felt obvious. Necessary. I specifically remember saying to my friend, “Shouldn’t I be able to have something to help me get through this? I just feel like I make everything harder.”
Of course you drink. What else keeps you standing when everything else collapses?
Sitting here today, five years later, as the country unravels in ways that have everyone’s nervous systems on high alert for different reasons during an arctic blast, I watch my former patterns play out across social media: “This is going to require several bottles,” “I don’t know how to get through this without drinking,” “This is too stressful,” “If there was ever a time...” I know exactly what they’re thinking.
When Austin shut down that week, my nervous system went with it. I shut down completely. All I could do each day was check in with my family, cook, and drink wine. By the end of the week, I was riddled with anxiety, picking a fight with my friend for only grabbing 3 onions when my recipe called for 5 and unable to sleep the night we got our power back.
My friend that I was staying with picked up on my edgy energy and insisted I follow a guided meditation. Reluctant, I laid down in a quiet room and as the narrator explained that anxiety comes from extreme apprehension and worry, I started crying.
Yes. All of us in this world right now, yes.
Then he asked me to breathe. I thought,
No, I don’t want to.
He asked me to start with a body scan, to just bring awareness into my body. That was definitely a no.
Because as soon as I tuned in, I could feel just how icky and uncomfortable my insides felt. It was like a cauldron of boiling liquid releasing static, frantic energy throughout my body. I felt sick. My body was pumping and dripping cortisol head to toe.
This was the moment I realized how completely in my head I was. Survivor mode. Freaked out. My body was screaming, and I’d been doing everything I could not to hear it.
I did the meditation twice. The second time, something shifted. Labeling the anxiety, narrating it, describing it out loud - that moved me out of my primitive brain and into my prefrontal cortex. I could think again. I could feel my body without it feeling like a threat.
And from what felt like a faraway place, I heard the word: safety. Safety was what I needed. I just didn’t know how to get it.
What I didn’t understand then was wine wasn’t helping me relax. Wine was the only thing my nervous system recognized as safety. When the power grid collapsed, my internal system collapsed too. My body, flooded with cortisol and pumping adrenaline, did what it had been trained to do: reach for wine.
I hadn’t learned how to be in my body when everything felt like it was falling apart.
That was then.
Unlike today.
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