Sometimes I miss doing bad things

Whether it's alcohol, cigarettes, or secret rebellious stuff, being a "good kid" has never come easily to me.

Honestly, I just wanted to look as cool as Parker Posey does with a cigarette; turns out she looks cool doing absolutely anything.

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When I was in rehab in early 2008, I was one of the very few residents who didn’t smoke. I’d smoked a bit in college but had kicked the habit by the time I landed in treatment. The other recovering misfits and I would get out of one of our “learn/draw/write/talk about your addiction” groups, and most would scurry off to the smokers’ corner; I would go to capitalize on the queue-free pay phone or read the outdated US Weeklys former residents had left behind.

Even people who didn’t smoke much before rehab smoked pretty heavily once admitted. It’s understandable; rehab can be spectacularly boring, and pretty much everyone is looking to take the newly sober edge off with whatever substances are allowed. (Ever mixed instant coffee into your regular coffee for an extra kick? I have.) So if I were going to pick up smoking again, you’d think I would have done it in rehab.

I did start smoking again, but at a far less logical time. I was a few months out of rehab, settled into a sober living house, going to AA meetings, and, miracle of miracles, gainfully employed. I wasn’t craving cigarettes, I wasn’t stressed by work or early sobriety—I was a gold star recovering alcoholic.

I felt boring as hell. I was a 23-year-old sober children’s librarian. I was so far from the image of the cool party girl I once pretended I was.

I missed breaking rules. I missed having a secret. I missed doing something bad.

So I picked up smoking again in the hopes that it would make me feel edgy and rebellious. It worked for about five minutes until a guy I was dating told me I tasted like an ashtray, and that was fortunately the end of that.

But I’ve always had the itch to do something I’m not supposed to. When I was maybe six or seven, I liked the taste of cherry Tylenol and hid a bottle in my room so that I could have a slug or two before bed. When I didn’t want to do the homework my afterschool math program gave me, I would hide the pages so deeply in every nook and cranny of my parents’ house that they continue to find them more than 30 years later.

While these actions were fundamentally about getting something I wanted (or avoiding something I didn’t), the thrill came from doing the thing I wasn’t supposed to do and getting away with it.

I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t also part of the appeal of my illustrious career in Secret Drinking. Drinking itself was something I took to right away—it drowned my insecurities and immediately replaced them with comfort and confidence; secret drinking added an extra element that appealed to the kid who hid her long division homework inside the couch covers on the fancy and rarely used sofa: I wanted to know how far I could push the line. Inch by inch, I pushed the line further, and the longer I went undiscovered, the more thrilling it was.

Predictably, by the time I realized the thrill had disappeared, secret drinking was more survival than recreation, hence rehab and all the rest of it. But it took longer for the urge to keep secrets and push lines to dissipate than the cravings for alcohol did. These impulses don’t affect everyone in recovery, nor do they exclusively appear in people with substance use issues, but for some of us, there’s an overlap.

I know I’m not the only person in recovery who has experienced this. I’ve seen people in recovery throw themselves into affairs, engage in petty theft, and drive so recklessly that it ends in tragedy. I’ve also seen people channel this impulse into something constructive, or at least not destructive. The newly sober guy who gets really into free climbing? There might be a bit of line-pushing at play. If I’m reporting a story and the investigation uncovers abuse or corruption? Thrilling.

But I also know that’s a kind of simulacrum of line pushing. It’s nicotine gum when you want a cigarette. It’s the safe (or at least safer) option.

Now that I’m much older than 23 and have been sober much longer than four months, the Katie who wants to jump out of a plane just to see if the parachute opens or wants to hide something just to see if it’s discovered rarely surfaces. If anything, I’ve gone too far the other way; I’m exceedingly comfortable being boring with my goats in my rural patch of the Pacific Northwest.

But every so often, the urge rears its head and I remember what it was like to have those impulses. I remember not wanting to share those instincts with others in recovery lest it seem like I was on the verge of a relapse, not “emotionally sober,” or otherwise doing recovery incorrectly.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. I was learning the difference between craving and compulsion. Cravings present an option; compulsion does not. Cravings like to dress up as compulsion, but it’s an illusion. Whether or not you smoke the cigarette you’re craving, the craving for it will eventually pass.

There is nothing shameful about craving—whether it’s the desire to do something bad, keep a terrible secret, or drink a fifth of vodka. Not infrequently, I want to do all three things! The key is not to get tricked into thinking craving is compulsion. The most effective way I’ve found to do that is simply...talk about it. Don’t keep it inside and let it ferment—that way lies madness.

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