Looks Like I Picked the Right Year to Stop Drinking

Sobriety gives you a foundation for handling random difficulty, including the end of the world

Nina Renata Aron
Forge

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Photo: Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images

There was already so much to drink about.

We’ve been in a climate crisis for years. American voters have narrowed the most diverse field of presidential contenders ever down to three elderly white men. And now, here to bring the majority of human activities to a screeching, expensive halt is COVID-19, in all its apocalyptic glory.

Standing in my kitchen, reading the latest disorienting, overwhelming news about the virus, I hit “send” on a tweet asking whether it’s dumb to stay sober now.

I had split a cucumber-flavored seltzer, gussied up with simple syrup and lime slices, with a sober friend who was watching TV on my couch, and I called out to her.

“Do we really have to stay sober in a global pandemic?” I shouted over the television.

“What?” she called back. I came into the living room and sat down. “We got sober…

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Nina Renata Aron
Forge
Writer for

Author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love. Work in NYT, New Republic, the Guardian, Jezebel, and more.