É«É«À²

In her 2008 autobiography “Annie Leibovitz at Work,” the critically acclaimed photographer explained how she avoided getting consumed by the chaos that surrounded the 1975 Rolling Stones tour.

Her camera, she wrote, was her shield, a barrier that protected her from the rest of the world. A reminder of who she was, and more importantly, why she was there.

Her words have helped me navigate the past two years of my sobriety. Whenever I felt out of place, like when my friends would invite me out for drinks, I’d bring my camera along. Whether I had a lens or a pen with me, I could naturally slip into the role of group documentarian. 

I started drinking during my first week at university, after discovering beer helped to take the edge off meeting new people. About a week later, I ended up in the ER after discovering whiskey and white wine on the same night.

In hindsight, red flags like those feel embarrassingly obvious. But at the time, I just thought it was part of the college experience — behaviour our culture normalized as part of a rite of passage.

It was not long before alcohol became my crutch, what I turned to in order to cope with the growing pressure of never-ending deadlines, professional uncertainty, and relationship drama.

It wasn’t until the spring of 2023 that I finally admitted I had a drinking problem. With no one in my life that I could turn to for help, I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Sitting in those sharing circles, staring down a room full of strangers, I learned for the first time what I had been asking of my sources for years as a reporter: the courage it takes to overcome the fear of social judgment.

As it happened, this period of my life also coincided with a preplanned trip to Greece for a media conference. 

My evolution into the group documentarian began there, with the positive reinforcement I got from the photos I took of my friends I made along my travels, the first I’d received without alcohol in a very long time.

To get why that was so important, you must first understand that having a drinking problem is more nuanced than you would originally think. If it were all bad, I wouldn’t have started drinking, but if it were all good, then it wouldn’t have become a problem.

The dilemma comes the moment you realize that you can’t have the good without the bad and you have to decide whether to take it all or leave it all behind.

For me, that moment came watching the sunset along the Aegean coast, when I saw how much more there was to life, and to myself, than alcohol.

After I got home, I told one of my mentors that I was in AA. He told me the problem was a lot more common than I thought. The only difference was that I was willing to talk about it.

I do not blame anyone for being too afraid to speak up about self-medication given how stigmatized it is in our society.

I have to admit that, even as I’m writing this, I still have that fear: how might this impact my professional image?

But I have also made a career out of telling people that their stories can give others who are going through the same thing hope. 

I talked the talk. So now it is time to walk the walk.

Whenever I see someone slipping into my old habits, I make sure to tell them my story.

The last thing I want is to come across like a firebrand preacher. But I just want them to know that there is another way.

I don’t carry my camera everywhere I go anymore. It’s no longer my shield, but it is the lens through which I can share myself with the world.