I Am a Camera
The ugly truth behind the pretty drinkstagram.
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. … Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed. — Christopher Isherwood
A month or two ago, I finally decided to make my breakup Instagram-official: It was time to archive all my old posts, all the ones that highlighted my favorite exes with just the right filters. The bottles of expensive French wine, the glasses of rosé on a spring patio, the tumblers of bourbon glinting in dim bar light. The Pappy humblebrag, the perfectly composed still lifes of colorful craft cocktails, the cans of cheap beer. The Champagne and Prosecco and cava and pet-nat — so much bubbly. So many toasts, so many reasons to post. We had all had so much fun, once, and then our relationships soured, all the fizz and flavor gone. There hadn’t been a reason to keep those memories around for a long time.
I rarely post to the grid now, so I had forgotten there were so many posts documenting all the ways in which I attempted to normalize my excessive alcohol consumption. As I laid in bed archiving post after post — an entire decade of prettifying my life — I felt a mix of nostalgia, embarrassment and sadness. That one wine? It was really fucking good. That one pretty cocktail? I was trying to hide the fact that I had spent the day crying over my emotionally abusive boyfriend. That solo champagne toast? I was alone and miserable and wanted to die.
As I scrolled and archived and deleted, I wanted to sink into my mattress, cringing at the sheer quantity of booze-related posts, even as I rationally knew that no one other than me would ever skim back to 2015. When I finally put down my phone, it felt like I had accomplished something monumental. It’s not like my fucked-up past became any less fucked, but at least my idiocy was slightly less visible.
Yet there was one thing I didn’t notice at the time. Something I’ve only realized now, in the past week, is not just how poorly I hid my alcoholism — it’s how poorly I hid my isolation. I posted photos from everywhere, dinners and events and fancy restaurants and dive bars and Preds games and my living room and porch. But most of my posts have no people in them. In fact, most of my photographs for the past decade have no people in them. There are just drinks and food, dogs and cats, pretty skies, funny signs. A chronicle of an empty, hollow life.
This realization dawned last week as I scrolled through old photos to find a shot to post on Instagram. New Orleans photographer extraordinaire Pableaux Johnson had died suddenly, and I wanted to honor him. We weren’t close, but years ago, we had hung out at several conferences and parties, and I had been to his Red Beans Roadshow twice. Surely, I thought, I’d have a picture of him at the dinner in Atlanta, or, if not, a picture of beans. Instead, all I could find was an image of a silver punch bowl and ladled French 75s. No beans, no cornbread, no buttermilk chess pie from Lisa Donovan. No Lisa, either, nor any of the other many food writers I knew who were there that night.
Ok, I thought, maybe there were photos from the International Biscuit Festival in Knoxville. I couldn’t remember if Pableaux was there the years I attended, but I scrolled through 2013 and 2014 archives. I had taken pictures of my dinners at Blackberry Farm, course by course. But I had no pictures of anyone, even as I can remember sitting across from Nicki at dinner and Helen on the bus discussing her wedding dress and Kat looking as fabulous as she always does. I took a picture of the cocktail they served in the garden, but I took no pictures of the people to whom I talked, drink in my hand.
Was it because I was too nervous? Was it because I hated how I looked and didn’t want to be in anyone else’s photos? I had gained a lot of weight by then, and none of my clothes fit right. But everyone else looked gorgeous — why didn’t I want to capture them?
I thought again to another time I had seen Pableaux — the event I had actually wanted to mention on Instagram. It was in Oxford in 2015, after Tom Freeland’s funeral. I had loved Tom a lot — he helped me through those rough years in Mississippi like almost no one else — and I was devastated that he was so suddenly gone.
I was drunk at the funeral, of course. (Four Roses, of course.) At the reception, at Tom’s house, I kept crying as I saw people I hadn’t seen in five years, people who hadn’t always been friendly when I lived in town. They were friendly now; we were all sad, and everyone was a drink or three in. But at some point I just started sobbing uncontrollably. Pableaux gave me a bear hug — that was just the kind of guy he was — and comforted me until I calmed down. It was just a minute, just a brief gesture, but it meant the world to me. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for me in a long time.
There were no pictures of Pableaux at Tom’s funeral reception, nor of anyone else.1 Instead, I found pictures of Tom’s kitchen. Which, now, I’m oddly glad to have — Tom spent so much time there and brought so much joy to others (and himself) in that room. But knives and pots and bottles of vinegar aren’t what I remember from that afternoon. I wished I had more, of Pableaux, of Joyce, of Joe and John T., of everyone celebrating the life of a man who gave so much to so many.
The more I pored through my phone and computer, the more I realized how much of the past decade I’ve lost, even as I documented things daily. Sure, there were the occasional birthdays and weddings, the infrequent meet-ups with old friends out of town. There were all the photos of legislators and press conferences, but almost no images of the colleagues who actually made the work tolerable or fun. And while there were a handful of selfies, there were none of the photos that demarcated my 20s — photos of me with the people I love, arm in arm, laughing, celebrating, living.
Missing pictures are just that — pictures. But the people were missing in my life, too. I didn’t know how to be a friend, how to interact without alcohol, how to be human.
It’s impossible to overstate how much I hated myself during most of this time. I didn’t want a record of how overweight and bloated I looked, how miserable I felt, how drunk I was every night —then, eventually, every day. Much easier to share the perfect meals, the cute animals, the new shoes cropped at an angle that flattered my calves. The drinks that looked glamorous and expensive and fun, and because if you’re only posting a single drink, you definitely don’t have a problem.
The worst of my drinking never made it to Instagram, of course. I never posted the $5 pints of vodka, the 2-for-$3 cans of Clubtails,2 the $5.99 bottles of white wine I bought almost every afternoon at the Handy Andy during the pandemic. The end of my drinking was grim, zero glamour left. You were lucky you didn’t see it.
But, then, I had mostly stopped posting pictures of alcohol on social media years before I quit. I had some deluded notion that pretending like I wasn’t drinking as much as I was would somehow help me stop. If no one could see it, then it couldn’t really be happening, and it couldn’t really be that bad.
You will be shocked to learn that this didn’t help, nor was it by far the dumbest thing I did in my years-long failed attempts to drink like a normal person. Because nothing was going to help until I could admit that I needed help.
Successful sobriety ideally involves living in the present — one day at a time and all that. I’ve been trying to spend less time on social media, less time staring at my phone. Less time taking pictures of what I’m eating. Fewer pictures of what I’m doing and more simply doing it.
I’m not great at any of this.
I still don’t have pictures of most of the people with whom I spend the most time. I only post pictures of myself from the most flattering possible angles, and every time it takes me 20 shots to get one I don’t hate. My images are all still overly curated, with none of the mess — the stack of unopened mail in the corner, the once-worn-but-not-yet-dirty clothes piled on a chair, the bangs frizzy with humidity, the perimenopausal acne, the tears that turn my entire face blotchy and red.
But, still, it’s a start. Or it’s at least no longer a lie. I’m a little more human now, and it feels almost okay.
Pableaux did take pictures that day, I am pretty sure. And I did, more soberly, take pictures of pals Bill and Katie and their kids the next day at breakfast. So there’s that. (More importantly, go buy Bill’s new book!)
Absolutely as disgusting as you’d imagine, but 10% alcohol did what I needed it to do.
So glad I got sober before social media.
It took me a very long time to understand what "you are to hard on yourself " really meant. I had to feel it in my bones before I understood. Not alcohol but other demons. Your pictures are just still lifes. In fact, The kitchen pictures are great. Maybe it's because I like clutter. Congratulations on your journey into sobriety. Can you be kinder to yourself?