Early sobriety can be a weird time. I made it weirder by holding onto my remaining bottle of Jack Daniels for nearly a year. While newfound sobriety helped me think clearly for the first time since I began self-medicating at age 16, it was still a brand new, scary territory. It was 2015 when I made the decision to stop drinking and start this blog (Click here to read my very first blog post!). I was a new New Yorker trying to make friends and make sense of this crazy new city. Feelings that I drank to avoid were finally bubbling out of me like lava. So it made sense that I still found comfort in a bottle of whiskey – even if I was no longer drinking it.

I kept the 1/3 full bottle in my room, yet unhidden. I didn’t hide it from my roommate or from FaceTime calls. I was truly unashamed of my decision to keep the whiskey around. I even bragged about it. Sometimes the bottle would be on the nightstand. Another time it would be by the record player. Though I was fully committed to not drinking, I simply couldn’t pour that golden goodness down the drain. I had several nonsensical reasons for holding onto it. Here’s a few of them:

I Liked Testing Myself

In my mind, keeping whiskey in the house and choosing not to drink it meant that I was truly committed to my sobriety. I had a similar trick up my sleeve when I stopped abusing pain killers in my late teen years. I kept some pills around just to prove something to myself. In hindsight, I should have just flushed them all, but as I said, early sobriety is a confusing time. The mental gymnastics involved with substance abuse are truly marveling.

Bottles of Jack Daniels Are Rock N Roll, Man!

I often mention that my dad was and is a heavy metal musician. This had a profound impact on me since before I was even born. I grew up idolizing those long-haired, leather-clad, tattooed rock stars so much that I naturally emulated their partying behavior once I reached an “appropriate” age to do so. My mom would (and still does!) quiz me with music trivia. We’d spend hours watching MTV music videos and VH1 Classic throwbacks. Jack Daniels and rock n roll quite literally go hand in hand for me. In a sense, getting rid of the bottle felt like getting rid of a piece of my fundamental culture.

Arts & Crafts

I convinced myself that there must be crafty uses for Jack Daniels bottles. I scrolled through Pinterest and Google images, desperate to find validation for my insane reasons to keep the whiskey around. I found photos of repurposed Jack Daniels bottles used as floral arrangements at weddings. I told myself I’d do the wrapping-the-bottle-with-yarn trend that was soooo 2011. Needless to say, these arts & crafts projects hadn’t commenced.

It took me nine months to finally get rid of that bottle. My goal in starting this blog in 2015 was to document a year without booze. So I asked my friend/photographer, Courtney, to take pictures of my final pour. It felt somewhat silly to have a photographer’s presence for what was a deeply personal moment, but I’m so glad I did this. I look at these photos with a strong sense of pride. I really did it. I really quit drinking, y’all! Courtney used her artistic eye to capture the way it felt to finally pour the liquor out…and smash the bottle. (BTS secret: She happened to have a few other empty Jack Daniels bottles, so we filled them with tea and incorporated them into the shoot, too)

I’m now 4.5 years sober, yet iconic photos of Keith Richards or Slash turning up a bottle of Jack Daniels still spark joy for me. I can’t “Marie Kondo” Jack Daniels out of my long list of Things I Think Are Cool just yet. I romanticize the imagery more than the actual booze. To me, it represents how I was raised by my rock n roll family more than it represents getting wasted. Maybe one day I’ll outgrow it. Until then, I’m OK with keeping the memories alive while ditching the actual bottle..