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An excerpt from We Are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen

Before Laura McKowen got sober, she had a long, successful career in public relations in the Mad Men-esque drinking culture of the advertising industry, where “liquid lunches were frequent and drinking at your desk in the late afternoon was perfectly normal.” In the five years since she stopped drinking, she has become one of the foremost voices in the modern recovery movement.

In her new memoir We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (New World Library, January 7, 2020), McKowen flips the script on how we talk about addiction and encourages readers not to ask, “Is this bad enough that I have to change?” but rather, “Is this good enough for me to stay the same?”

We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

I knew drinking was going to be my thing long before the night of our mom’s sixtieth birthday party, even if I refused to let that knowing arrive fully into my consciousness. I knew it in college when one of my guy friends, while retelling a story from a crazy party we’d been at the night before, joked that I probably wouldn’t remember — because I was always too drunk to remember — and I felt like crawling into a hole and dying.

I knew it in my twenties, living in Boston, when my girlfriends continually joked about whose turn it was to take care of me, before we went out to the bars.

I knew it by the urgency I felt chugging champagne before my wedding, and I knew it later, after my husband and I learned I was pregnant. I drank the occasional glass here and there throughout my pregnancy — sometimes pushing the limit from one to one and a half glasses — but aside from the wine not feeling good physically, I realized how much I relied on it to soften my experience.

It was so incomplete to me, so unsatisfying, to have only one glass. To have a limit.

Often in those pregnant months, I’d be going about my day and suddenly be struck by an overwhelming urge to reach for wine. Something to take the edge off. And not being able to drink sent a surprising jolt of panic through me. Before my pregnancy, my drinking could at least be contextualized. I was having fun, going out after work, hanging out with the girls, Sunday Funday, “relaxing.” But now that I couldn’t have a drink anytime I wanted one, it was alarming how often I wanted one.

It was the first time it had scratched at my consciousness that perhaps drinking had morphed elusively into something I not only liked but also needed. If not physically, then certainly emotionally.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever needed something like this.

Maybe you top off your drink when nobody’s looking, like I used to do. Maybe you’re like my friend Brent and you eat McDonald’s Big Macs and whole Domino’s cheese pizzas in your car on the way home from work, before dinner. Maybe you can’t leave a man who regularly beats the hell out of you, even though when he knocked you unconscious last week, you swore it was the last time. Maybe you’re the one who’s been slicing into your body with razor blades since you were sixteen, because the pain needs a place to go.

Maybe — maybe your thing is less severe or more socially acceptable, like staying at the office past your kids’ bedtime most nights because work is the only place you feel in control, or maybe you wrestle with crippling perfectionism. Maybe it’s the red-hot hatred you feel toward every woman pushing a stroller since you discovered you couldn’t get pregnant last spring, or maybe you keep trying to untangle the knot of rage in your chest that just never leaves.

I don’t know what your thing is, but alcohol was mine.

And here is the thing we must know about our things if we are ever going to survive them: We believe we can bury them, when the truth is, they’re burying us. They will always bury us, eventually.

If you know your thing, that’s good news, although I know it doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t mean it’s fair. It doesn’t mean letting go and moving through will be easy. It doesn’t mean you have any idea what the f@#k to do next — I certainly didn’t. It just means you’re no longer willing or able to fight to keep it in your life.

Laura McKowen is the author of We Are the Luckiest. She is a former public relations executive who has become recognized as a fresh voice in the recovery movement. Beloved for her soulful and irreverent writing, she leads sold-out yoga-based retreats and other courses that teach people how to say yes to a bigger life. Visit her online at www.lauramckowen.com.

Excerpted from the book We Are the Luckiest. Copyright ©2020 by Laura McKowen. Printed with permission from New World Library.

When We Feel Called to Go to a Certain Place

For the past three years, I've felt an urgent need to go to England. I have the feeling I just "have" to get there. I don't know why or how I will make this happen, but I know I have to go. A couple of nights ago, I even dreamed I was put in a support group for others who were trying to fulfill their urge to go to England. Some had their trips planned out, while others were still in the stage of trying to figure out how to make this happen. Do other people get this type of urging to go some place in particular? Why does this happen? I have a house, husband, child, pets, career, etc., so it's not easy to just take off for Europe, especially when I have no idea why I feel so compelled to. Any thoughts?

- Lori

Dreamchaser:

I do believe that everyone experiences an urge at one point or another to travel to some place that makes no logical sense. I personally have a compulsion to go to Ireland. I am sure that the reason we have these pulls to these various places is because we had past lives there.

I personally have had quite a few lifetimes in what is now Ireland. I have had past life regressions that placed me there quite a bit. I even have Irish blood in me in this lifetime.

You have had many past lives in England, and you are drawn there because you spent so much time there. You have had so many things happen to you (as a soul) in England. You experienced love, happiness, families, work, dramas, deaths, etc., all in that one country. I feel you had at least 22 lifetimes that you spent in England alone. That is a whole lot of living, so it should not surprise you that you are drawn there.

You also have a lot of what we might call unfinished business in England. I find it fascinating that you dreamed that you were running a support group. That is showing you that you need to get there to do some work for your soul. You definitely have some unresolved issues there.

I know it is very hard for you to be in this position at times. You are a normal mother and wife, and you have normal obligations. Yet you feel this intense longing for a place and a time that you are not familiar with in this lifetime. That longing really is your soul wanting to continue with the lessons that you need to learn in England. They started there, and they will be completed there, either in this lifetime or another.

This is more common than you might think. We really do carry stuff from life to life to life with us. Our human, logical minds can't fathom this concept, however; it is hard to conceptualize unfinished work from prior lives needing to be completed in THIS life. I think if you start asking people around you if they are drawn to a certain place or time period, however, you will be surprised at how many say yes. Try it!

There is this wonderful thing called the Law of Attraction. It is one of those indisputable Universal Laws like gravity. If you think about or focus your attention on something, that is what comes to you. Period.

I want you to spend at the very least 15 minutes a day thinking about packing your bags, going to the airport, saying goodbye to your family, getting on the plane, and heading off to England.

I wish you a safe and productive trip to England very soon!

*****

Astrea:

Wanting to explore someplace new is something everyone experiences from time to time, but feeling COMPELLED to go somewhere is almost always something from a prior life. Something in this life triggered this need in you, but it stems from one or more of your past incarnations.

When a person has lived in a different place or even in a different country in a different time and body, sometimes something that person sees in this life will trigger a past life memory or a need to finish some karma they brought into this lifetime. Of course, the location the person is drawn to isn't always the most convenient, nor is the timing.

Don't think you're crazy - I hear about people being drawn to places every day in much the same way you describe. This is a very common experience among souls who have been separated by space but not by time. Someone to whom you owe a karmic debt or who owes you a karmic debt is probably living in England, and that's why you feel the compulsion to go there now.

It's not just romance like you see on television - it could be any kind of a relationship you experienced in the past. The need to repair an old hurt or fix a relationship from long ago will linger from incarnation to incarnation. Whether this person was a partner or a relative doesn't really make any difference.

To discover the reason you're so drawn there NOW, you should go. I actually SEE you going there within the next calendar year, so start saving up and try to go in mid-summer, when the weather is pleasant.

One problem Americans often encounter is the fact that we're living in a relatively new country. Certainly with England being as old as time out of mind, it's been there (and maybe you, too) a whole lot longer than anything in this country.

Since the history if that country is far older and richer, don't get lost in possibilities before you go. Find a time period that appeals to you or an area on a map that jumps out at you. If you tried to go through every museum in the country, it could take years! If you study beforehand, it will save you tons of time and add so much to your trip.

Find someone to keep the kids and the pets, and go visit England this summer with your hubby. The flights are much cheaper from August to October and from April to June.

When you get to the location you need to be, you'll feel it, and you won't have to ask anyone about it. Just like you know you should go there, you'll know why when you arrive.