Commentary: Fragments of Self (Not Found in the Bottom of a Bottle)

By Robert Dean

When I turned 40, I was so hammered I missed my birthday entirely. I walked out of a comedy show, turned on my car, climbed into the passenger seat, blasted the air conditioning, and passed out for seven hours. Waking up to a flood of “Where are you?” texts felt like a betrayal of myself, even though everyone I’d seen that day poured shot after shot down my throat to celebrate surviving another year. I think before my eyes closed in the passenger seat; I’d had nineteen shots of Jameson. The math is hazy. I’ve pulled into random driveways, and doused my lights when passing a cop, knowing full well I was teetering on the edge of recklessness. I’ve also bought a case of Lone Star at seven a.m. to keep the party going for a few more hours. I’ve made the choice between drinking and food. Ramen won, while places I knew would give me a friendly discount earned what should’ve gone to buying eggs or bread. 

I used to buy into mythos. I believed the Herculean personas we construct for ourselves dictate the cadence of our creative lives, that we must live up to the legends we craft to be truly seen. Hunter Thompson was a wild man who tried to peel the skin off the universe until he put a shotgun to his head. Charles Bukowski devoured the core of life, never letting go of his bottle, even when cancer was devouring him. Sylvia Plath defied the world’s game, refusing to play along until she killed herself, too. And Jack Kerouac? Another casualty of his own fable. The sauce got the best of plenty of people I wanted to be. I thought their demise was my blueprint, their cultural successes were what I had to do to strip the ghosts from inside me and slap them onto the page.

I made plenty of mistakes drunk. I caused damage, let the worst parts of my personality seize the wheel, and accepted whatever wreckage was left in the aftermath. Waking up hungover became so routine it felt normal, to the point where shaking hands and a shot of Jameson with a beer chaser became prerequisites to meet people. Alcohol was my social lubricant, my lifeline to function within humanity.

Every time I cracked open my laptop, I aimed for some real Hemingway magical bullshit: “Write drunk, edit sober.” But the drunk stuff was never good. It was just the incoherent ramblings of someone ensnared in his own mind and plenty of unmedicated mental health traps. So, it goes when anxiety and depression are hardwired into your DNA.

That’s the seductive power of Jameson, of Stoli, of red vs. white—it’s the poison that screams in our blood, even if we’re unaware of the damage it’s doing to our veins, one spilled bottle of Miller Lite at a time. For writers, alcohol is mythologized as the fuel for superpowers, the elixir that lets you harness your demons and shake creativity loose from the marrow in your bones. I believed in the healing powers of Irish whiskey to the point of being able to put down almost an entire bottle, with plenty of beers in between, in a single night. What I didn’t realize was that the tremor in my hands held the keys to the devil’s playground: the dive bar.

I wrote a whole book of essays about my drunken misadventures, Existential Thirst Trap. I’m glad it exists, a snapshot of a time I’ll never be able to craft again. A lot of the people who bought it reached out, telling me what I admitted, what I went through, they’ve felt, too. While I nursed dignity through loss of common sense some nights, more than one person took the work as medicine. I grew accustomed to the tremors, the heart palpitations, the self-loathing, the depression taking me down very small and dark roads. Waking up dreading my phone, fearing what idiotic thing I’d said or done, was normal.

But behind the blurred vision and spiraling regret, there was a voice pleading with me to quit. Quitting wasn’t easy. Every regrettable thing I’d ever done stemmed from not being sober. Sober me is thoughtful, kind, always willing to listen. Drunk me? Chaotic, impulsive, and reckless. Drunk me would drive wasted, oblivious to the existence of Uber. Drunk me would spew unhinged thoughts without care, letting the bullshit fall wherever it may. That was a problem for “Tomorrow Bobby.”

When I finally quit drinking, the sky didn’t split open, and angels didn’t trumpet my redemption. Instead, I found myself sitting in my doctor’s office, being prescribed blood pressure medication. It was a choice—stick around for a few more years by ditching the bottle or keep doing what I was doing, coasting in a destructive gear despite relying on two medications to prevent a heart attack or stroke.

I bought into the lie that my creativity would evaporate without wild stories. That without chaos, I’d lose myself and the persona I’d built for others to consume. I wanted to be like my heroes, to leave behind a scarred and bruised legacy for the next generation of writers to mythologize. I truly believed sobriety would rob me of my magic. It didn’t. I’m a lot more boring now, I’m a house cat who spends most of my time alone in my room these days. I write more, think more, probably obsess more, too. 

Surprisingly, quitting hasn’t been a nightmare. I’ve learned that nothing good happens after midnight, that closing down the bar is no longer my job. Few people have offered me a drink, and most have been supportive. Some even whisper their envy, wishing they could take a break too. My creativity didn’t wither—it evolved. The myth of the “drunk writer” no longer defines me, as much as I still admire Shane MacGowan and Oscar Wilde. The new me is quieter, more introspective. I stay home, read more, but once in a while, I wrestle with old habits that howl my name at night. I am not invincible. I got on meds for my anxiety and depression, and despite needing a lot of coffee to stave off the tiredness that comes with better living through chemistry, Lexapro works.

Sobriety didn’t diminish my creativity—it forced me to confront the kind of artist I wanted to be. I stopped chasing Bukowskis and Thompsons, stopped seeking validation in their ghosts. I discovered stories in the quiet: the clarity of a sunrise I didn’t sleep through, the rawness of sitting with my own thoughts instead of drowning them.

I’m not a “stop and smell the roses” kind of person, but I’ve come to realize that creativity doesn’t dwell at the bottom of a bottle of Jameson or a tall boy of PBR. It lives in me. That might sound basic and obvious, but truth isn’t one-size-fits-all. Now, I find inspiration in the everyday challenges of a complex world, rather than the ghosts of hero worship. There are reasons to be in love, to be livid, to be shocked, and amused every day. Just open your phone.

I fell for the romantic fallacy that you had to be broken to truly see humanity’s underbelly, that the “real us” only revealed itself through dive bars, sleepless nights, and bad choices. It’s not like I’m out on morning walks now—I still make bad choices when it comes to Taco Bell. But sobriety has its challenges: investing my time meaningfully, building mental and emotional resilience, and navigating the silence that comes when you leave the bar scene.

Quiet triumphs have replaced chaotic mornings. I don’t wake up apologizing for being an asshole. I don’t scramble to patch up my partner’s heart after unleashing my worst self. I’ve rediscovered the parts of me buried in booze. Am I a better writer? Maybe. What I lack in the punishment of hangovers, I channel into exploring new corners of myself.

Finding creativity beyond the fable of whiskey is like loosening a noose. It’s my task now to discover who I am at the keyboard—no longer the heir to the hangover, but someone shaping a new legacy. One without slurring something I should have kept internal because, when drunk, everything felt hilarious and prophetic. Not me. I’m a house cat these days. I don’t want to hear two people talk about how much they love and respect one another with sour regret in their voices as it’s time to pass out in their beds. Or a stranger’s—I’m not here to judge.

As RuPaul would say, “You go, girl!” It’s 2025, my inner monologue can be inclusive, too. Or as the TikTok influencers say, I’m thriving. I’m not living my best life yet, but that version of myself is under construction, waiting to be unearthed. The self does not live at the bottom of a bottle of Jameson.

Robert Dean is a journalist, raconteur, and enlightened dumbass. His work has been featured in over 50+ publications globally including MIC, Eater, Fatherly, Yahoo, Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, Consequence of Sound, Ozy, USA Today, and Channel Void. He’s appeared on CNN and NPR and serves as features writer for Culture Clash, The Cosmic Clash, and Pepper Magazine and was editor-in-chief for the Texas production company Big Laugh Comedy. He lives in Austin and loves ice cream and koalas. His collection of essays, Existential Thirst Trap is out now.