Getting sober at 21 when everyone around you is just starting to drink

I got sober at twenty-one. Which, in the cultural timeline of young adult drinking, is almost exactly when everyone around me was starting. My friends were celebrating legal drinking age, buying rounds at bars, posting shots of their first legal whiskey. I was walking into my first AA meeting trying to look like I belonged.

Young adult recovery is its own particular experience that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The narrative around addiction tends to run in two directions: either the cautionary tale of someone who started very young, or the middle-aged professional who "finally hit bottom." There's almost nothing about the college-age experience — about what it means to get sober when you're just old enough to drink legally and the entire social infrastructure of your peer group is built around alcohol.