“When I give myself permission to say yes, no becomes an authentic choice.”
I said that recently on Cat York’s Recovery Catalyst podcast after she asked how grief had affected my recovery. After twenty-five years of struggle, grief forced me to confront the fact that I couldn’t keep treating abstinence as a pass-fail test.
And for the first time, that was OK.
Listening back, I realized my answer was about more than alcohol.
It was about perfectionism and how I saw my mistakes.
I didn’t see them as lessons to learn from. I saw them as proof that I was a failure.
I remember vividly when sobriety lost its priority. After seven years of total abstinence, I had one beer. I told no one—didn’t ask for the same help I’d offered hundreds of others. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had failed.
A few months later, I screwed up again. And it was my own fault.
The judge in me delivered the verdict: guilty.
I was weak.
And that’s when the perfectionist in me finally said, “F-it.”
From the outside, “F-it” looked like freedom: a new job, constant travel, expense accounts, and first-class upgrades. I was the expert arriving with new ideas.
But the verdict never went away.
And living with it was exhausting.
I spent the next eight years serving a sentence of my own making—angry, unhappy, and disconnected—until another round of consequences became impossible to conceal.
Over the next fifteen years, things gradually improved. My perfectionist and I negotiated a truce.
In 2023, grief tested that truce.
When I couldn’t get out of bed, I knew where I was headed. This time, instead of hiding, I admitted I needed help carrying the load.
Psychotherapy showed me that an action can have consequences without becoming a verdict on my character.
Mistakes can be lessons, not evidence.
So when Cat asked how grief had affected my recovery, my answer was about more than drinking. Grief led me to reconsider the rules I had lived by—and to stop letting my inner perfectionist define me.
For me, abstinence is now an active choice.
Saying “yes” today doesn’t have to lead to “F-it” tomorrow.
And that lets me say “no” with a consistency I hadn’t found in decades.
Being imperfect doesn’t mean I’m a failure.
It means I’m human.
If any part of this feels familiar, I’d love to hear your story.
Just hit reply. I read every message.
— Mark
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Essays on transition, reinvention, and what comes next.
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