I forgot about my Substack

A meditation on quitting alcohol and a single STEAMIN' career announcement.

I ended my proposed month-long sobriety with two Miller High Lifes on the last day of April to “celebrate” my achievement. I kinda wish I hadn’t. I decided to go ahead with this particular experiment (not drinking alcohol for a month) after a few painful mornings in a row. March is a particularly WET month for me as everyone, their fucking mother and myself have birthdays in March and we all absolutely must throw a get together at a bar that’s juuuust far away enough it’s inconvenience is taken as a veiled slight. Anyway!!! 

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about why I drink, and it has been very clear to me for a long, long time that I only really drink to feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations. It has always been kinda hard for me to talk to other people. I think too much in the moment, I stutter, and I don’t know where to look. I sweat a lot and I talk too much about it. A good way to enter a conversation, to me, is, “Y’all ever take a shit so good that it looks fake?” This is not unique to me, of course, but boy does it feel good to pretend you’re the only one suffering in a world of similar suffering (“No one understands me!”, “Hell is other people!” “I’m not like other bi girls! I love film!!” etc etc). Drinking never makes me feel good, per se. In fact, I don’t think it makes me feel anything at all. If anything, it acts as a wall to keep any sort of feelings from breaking through. A wall? Jesus, I need to read more…

My mom died 14 years ago in October. A week later, I did my first open mic. I distinctly remember drinking two IPAS with the same combined alcohol content as Jagermeister, probably. IPAS, as we all know, taste like shit, but for some reason we feel as though we must drink this particularly thick piss because that’s what we deserve because we are inherently evil, BUT Y’ALL AIN’T READY TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION, HUH?! From that night on, every time I did an open mic I had to have at least two drinks, and so on and so forth. Basically every night for years I got a little wasted. To the average comedienne (😡) this is normal. To a doctor, this is “a problem”. Launching my ass directly into the hot pit of stand up comedy allowed me to avoid grieving all together, but oversharing about the other aspects of my life made me feel more connected to the world than ever. Comedians are “my people” and most of “my people” are so fucked up it’s actually kinda funny to think about. 

So I draaaank and draaaank, and 14 years later here I am, having had at least one drink every week since, with the exception of sick days and some parts of THEE original Covid-19 lockdown. Yeesh, no? Thankfully, I am now in a place where I am ready to start feeling again and the month I took off from drinking illuminated parts of myself I have been actively avoiding for a very long time. Not drinking has given me a kind of energy I can only describe as “outdoor chihuahua” and the newfound clarity is disconcerting, but at this point I think I like that! I’m not getting any younger and—honey?—I’ve never been older. This is also the first thing I’ve written in like, a year. It’s 4pm, and typically at this time I’d be about an hour into my daily 2 hour afternoon nap, but now as an alcohol-less, poison-avoidant, positively-neurodivergo cunt, I’m almost good at writing again! Stay tuned to see if I ever learn where to correctly place a comma. Hang in there if you’re also dealing with seismic shifts in perspective and self-acceptance. Help each other! Help ME! Peace be with you (and also with you). 

In other news…

I have an ALBUM COMING OUT!

Officially dropping loudly and abruptly like a Hydro Flask during a Kundalini yoga class on May 16th from Pretty Good Friends Records, distributed through Sub Pop. It’s called Everything I Know How To Do because it includes not only stand-up, but a SKETCH, a RECIPE and a sincere SONG I wrote over five years ago!! And YES the album art is giving “2006 w0m4n” but I like it (because I designed it) so that’s all that’s supposed to matter, I’ve been told.

We’ll be putting on a very good (not bad) release show for it in Brooklyn, NY at Littlefield on May 21st featuring Eugene Mirman, Brittany Carney, Devon Walker, Nick Naney, Mohanad Elshieky and more probably. Go here for tix.

Hope to see you there, fuckies. Maybe if we all get there early enough we can watch the Pop Tart movie together and weep. 

Thank you for reading my Substack newsletter.

Free Palestine.

- Clare O.