I courted sobriety. I had been flirting with sobriety for a while. I would invite her into my life on one of my yearly cleanses, for four months one year as I prepared for an ayhuaascaa ceremony followed by ten days of silence, meditation and yoga and again to lose weight on an anti-inflammation diet. But she was elusive, always reminding me of the thing I wanted but couldn’t have and I would find myself back in a routine of having cocktails or wine (mostly wine) 3-5 nights a week. Not a raging alcoholic by any means. Highly functional. Deceptively so