Heesun's Table #25: Sober Up

Can I open a tab for my sleepy-girl mocktail?

Content warning: Binge drinking, alcoholism, assault, depression, substance abuse.

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“I drink like a horse” is a phrase I utilize the most when describing my drinking habit, a habit I have long claimed to be in control of.

I’d pull out the good ol’ horse metaphor on dates, at industry events, or coffee appointments before brunch. Most recently, during a post-rehearsal walk with cast mates. (I was eyeing the happy hour down the block - which we could make in time if we went now.)

Needless to say, drinking has followed me everywhere.

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Lucky for me, sobriety has been having something of a moment. Specifically for women around my age, many have turned towards a sober-curious lifestyle. I could go into greater detail, talk about those sleepy-time mocktails, how it all somehow goes back to trad-wife propaganda, but this is not a research paper on the uptick of sober women in their mid-late twenties, or trad wives, or cranberry and collagen sales. Really, this is my attempt at getting honest, painfully honest, about what drinking has looked like for me in the past ten years.

I say ten years because I had my first drink on my sixteenth birthday. Ten and a half years, this past December. Raised in a fairly long leashed household - I believed it only made sense for me to have my first drink when I was able to drive to the store to buy liquor. (Clearly, a sixteen year old’s logic. A dumb sixteen year old’s logic.)

16 year old me at a party. Cup presumably reads, “MY BITCH.”

Most of my friends that year were seniors in high school. On the night of my sixteenth birthday, I still couldn’t drive. The rule, however, remained. In my friend’s basement, I was handed a red solo cup that had Pink Lemonade Svedka mixed with Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I remembered it tasting sweet, and feeling nothing.

This “sixteen year old” rule of drinking also applied to smoking weed.¹ On that same night, my friends and I drunkenly walked up a fairly remote hill, took out our precariously carved apple bong, and smoked. Unlike alcohol, I had an immediate reaction to smoking, which included gagging, then force-feeding Haribo gummy bears down my throat to rid of the skunk weed taste.

This inaugural night of drinking would lead me towards a path of suburban basement parties, several run-ins with the cops, and ultimately doing drugs that I had no business acquiring - let alone taking - all before I turned eighteen. By the time I got to college, I would joke to the other freshmen who were excitedly passing around a communal jug of Barton’s, saying,

“I’m all partied out.”

I still partied. I also blacked out, a lot. A head start in drinking taught me something that would continuously manipulate my perspective on alcohol: I could handle a drink. I could handle many drinks. I drank like a horse.

I really loved posing with that cup.

Drinking became a skill I became very, very proud of. Most of the men in my family are strong drinkers, they can handle their alcohol and avoid the Asian glow. I am the same, meaning I am the only woman in my family that can really drink. It made me proud. It still makes me proud.

In the early months of being a part of a theatre frat house (yes, that) it was my superpower. Being able to be at pace or outdrink my peers, especially older male ones, gave my already inflated ego some unnecessary upliftings. Beer funnel? Elementary. Jungle juice? Let me mix - I’ll make it fun for everyone. Shots went down like water, water rarely made an appearance during a night out. (If anything, don’t drink out of that water bottle - it’s tequila.) When I needed relief, I’d smoke a joint with one of my senior friends. I got sick on a few occasions. I was smart, though. I was a responsible drunk. I’d carry a plastic bag in my party pouch - a fanny pack filled with drugs and other paraphernalia - puke in private, then toss the remains away. Evidence of any sickness disappeared into the piles of pizza boxes and beer cans on the sidewalk, waiting to be whisked away by the forgiving garbage collectors in the morning.

Those around me would comment on how impressive it was that I could party so hard, yet act completely unfazed the next day. The few embarrassing moments of drunken stupidity are what little collateral my closest friends have against me. My self righteousness and ego were at its peak in my early twenties; being able to balance both the rigor of a conservatory program while detesting its many shortcomings, while simultaneously prepping for a weekend full of ragers by sneaking nips of alcohol after dance class, all of it became part of my collegiate routine. What’s painfully upsetting to me, besides the fact that my drink of choice at the time was Captain and Coke, is that this was considered normal. My college life, while cut short because of Miss Saigon, surrounded itself with drinking. Stories of blacking out were all too normal. At the time, I was convinced everyone blacked out at least once in their life, and if they didn’t - they weren’t living a real one.

It bled into everything in my early twenties: my internships, apprenticeships, day jobs, night jobs - all before I could even legally buy a drink at the bar.

My friend and I got hammered on pitcher Sangrias in Florida - we drove through a hurricane after this.

I never considered myself an alcoholic, at least seriously. Once I turned twenty one, and the initial rush of illegal anything started to wear off, I threw myself into more ritualistic habits. I became a smoker. First weed, then tobacco. Still, tobacco. In an effort to seem more refined, I began studying into different types of alcohol. I got super into beer. I considered studying mixology. I learned the basics of wine, but let’s be honest, I’m too cornfield America to actually give a shit about tannins and the legs of wine.

Most surprising of all, I refused to keep alcohol² at home.

What I did consider myself was a workaholic, with “high functioning alcoholic”³ tendencies. Working endlessly through an eight show week, then slamming a few drinks on the day off, felt completely within reason. Reminding myself I was “high functioning", and able to get through a normal work week so long as I had those drinking nights, was okay. Nursing a hangover, chugging the Liquid IV before bed, eating a hearty meal in the morning after a night of heavy drinking, made my drinking habit normal. If anything, it reflected a “self care” that I preached to myself, each and every time I obliterated my body with alcohol. It never was a problem, it was routine. It was what I needed to get through.

What I haven’t yet disclosed are the bad nights out and risky behavior that came with it. Stories where I’d end up in some stranger’s car, forgetting how I got from one side of Manhattan to deep Brooklyn. Losing my phone, several times, to the point where I had gotten less embarrassed about apologizing to the Uber, Lyft, or taxi driver that kept it overnight. Mistakes that ultimately led to endangerment, harassment at best, other instances much, much worse. Predatory behavior trailed throughout my early twenties, and one instance of assault led to years of therapy. The first time I had sex with a long time partner, someone I trusted and ultimately loved, resulted in me shaking and in tears. I’m not saying that every drunken night out leads to such dire situations. Drinking was, however, a common theme among the thread of experiences that have caused immense harm to my physical and mental wellbeing - outside of considering the act of drinking itself.

Binge drinking is considered four or more drinks (female), in about two hours. As a self proclaimed “strong drinker” or how I would sometimes call it, a “human garbage disposal”, I would drink upwards of 10+ drinks within three hours. I befriended bartenders and bouncers, frequently. I slammed complimentary shots, free drinks from friends. If I was drinking alone, I’d make friends with the expectation of getting more drinks. Being someone who could handle a drink meant that I worked that much harder to get where it seemed everyone else was: happy. All I’d end up being was stupid drunk, irresponsible, and carelessly putting my own safety on the line, on a Tuesday night, nonetheless.

Longer stretches of not working in 2025 led to greater inspection on my relationship with drinking. At first, I pointed the problem towards partying, then my work habits. They’re all related, yes, but they all lead to the same culprit: alcohol. I knew it became a problem when I’d find myself bopping around different bars in the city, my iPad in hand, furiously writing while drinking in order to better access a sense of freedom I felt impossible without three G&Ts already in my system. I wanted to live up to the workaholic, high functioning alcoholic aesthetic.

I just ended up an alcoholic.

Last year, I successfully completed a dry January. Dry in multiple senses: I quit sex and alcohol for the entire month. Abstaining from the former didn’t pose much of a challenge as I was led to believe, due to the discovery that my problem with sex was ultimately linked to - you guessed it - alcohol.

I’ve experimented with bouts of sobriety, and each time have enjoyed being sober more often than when I was spinning out of control drunk. This year, I started my reading off with Holly Whitaker’s “Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol”. Within the first three chapters, I immediately resonated and recognized my behavior with Whitaker’s. Obsession over success, money, and ultimately, self control, led to drinking. Looking back at that first red solo cup, I can now see that my reaching for a drink (and then another, and another..) was the only way I knew how to self soothe.

I started drinking at a time in my life where I had difficulty feeling anything. It was only when I drank enough that I started to feel something. Similar to my start in acting, I believed that alcohol was the key towards becoming more honest with myself. One drunken night in high school, I laid on the couch across from my long time crush. Unable to say what I was feeling at the time, he looked me in the eyes and said, “In vino veritas, right?” In wine, there is truth.

I have been on a lifelong search for truth: in myself, the world around me, and with others, especially those I don’t understand. Searching for truth, while also coming to terms with my own chronic major depression, only further ignited my relationship to alcohol.

There hasn’t been a rock bottom that led me towards this idea of starting my sobriety journey. There were several rock bottoms, accumulating over the ten and a half years of drinking. I’ve also witnessed, far too many times, addiction and alcoholism taking over the lives of people I care for and love. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost too many friends, in ways that I wish I hadn’t. I wish I could’ve helped them stop.

So, this is where I stop. Or really, start my journey towards stopping. The last drink I had were some lovely beers from Talea - I may be cornfield America, but I love a damn good craft beer. There are two cans left in the fridge. Maybe I can use them for a beer cheese, or something.

There will be no neat ending because I don’t think there’s a neat ending with alcohol at all. I don’t want a last hurrah, a binge fest, where I end up passing out on the floor of some random person’s house. I want clarity. I want truth, without the wine. I don’t want to call myself a “human garbage disposal” or brag about “drinking like a horse” when I’m neither of those things!

I want to meet myself, my own truth, without the magical elixir that has somehow kept society in a chokehold for thousands of years. In vino veritas, sure. I like to believe I can find my truth in another way, and save eighteen dollars while I’m at it, too.

Is this the part where I get super into coffee?

1. Again, dumb sixteen year old logic. Or is it fifteen year old?

2. For drinking. I would occasionally buy a bottle of wine for cooking, but they would be used within the day it was bought.

3. A controversial phrase in it of itself.