Why I'm Building Alcohol-Free Spaces After Losing My Mom

By Zach Walz

My childhood was shaped by my parents' alcohol addiction. Both of them struggled with alcohol use disorder, and their kind of drunk was angry drunk. It was very common to hear screaming matches or the sound of shattering from a glass being thrown across the room.

I have one particularly strong traumatic memory of sitting by myself in a bathtub, not yet five years old, with the muffled sounds of a particularly nasty fight happening in the living room nearby. I sat quietly, scared and not wanting to draw attention to myself, noticing the water as it slowly changed from warm to cold. It was moments like this, shivering alone and afraid, that reinforced dissociation as my trauma response of choice.

A Glimpse of Hope

My dad entered recovery when I was five. After a separation and reconciliation, two bankruptcies, and periods when food was scarce and the lights were shut off, my mom finally entered recovery when I was in third grade.

She struggled for three or four more years, and finally put down the bottle for good when I was in middle school. Throughout the rest of my childhood and teenager years, my mom showed through her actions that loving her family was her top priority.

My mom and I during "the good times."

The Alano club, where local AA meetings were held, became my stomping ground. Next to the meeting room, there was a kids' room set up where other kids and I could play pretend while our parents shared their demons next door. It was there that I was introduced to AA culture, and there that I learned many in recovery would substitute their addiction for another vice of choice. Sometimes gambling. Sometimes chocolate. Very often cigarettes.

And the AA culture reinforced that almost all social outlets for people in recovery should be with other folks in recovery. You must avoid temptation. It was almost like an isolated, conservative church, in that regard.

The Cost of Recovery: Losing Connection

I remember my mom lamenting the loss of the social life she and my dad had created. She stopped playing poker in the basement of their friends' homes, because they drank whiskey while they played. We started camping as a solo family because my parents' camping buddies liked to drink beer around the fire.

Heaven forbid going out to a bar or nightclub—there was no way she could enjoy herself there. She began to withdraw from the world and turned inward, losing the connections that she had spent decades creating. In her mind, her only choices were to stay home or chain smoke at the Alano club.

My dad passed away from a quick-moving cancer when I was a senior in high school. My mom then began an on-again, off-again phase of her struggle with alcohol. A year or two sober here, a life-threatening binge there. She withdrew even more deeply into herself.

There were times I insisted that she live with my husband and me while she attended rehab, because I was so concerned for her safety. Again, she would lament that she couldn't live a "normal" life because it seemed like everything centered around drinking.

When Boundaries Weren't Enough

After a particularly bad drunken episode, I broke. For my own mental health, I realized I could no longer be around my mom when she was drinking. I began to put up boundaries. I would only call in the morning or afternoons. I would only see her in our home, not hers.

But as the disease progressed, eventually those boundaries meant that I could no longer see my mom at all, since she started drinking in the morning, and visiting us meant she would be driving drunk.

Two years of isolation later, my aunt conducted a wellness check. She discovered my mom, delusional on her bed, living in a pile of her own filth. She was too drunk to understand where she was or what was happening to her.

I held her hand as she passed away from malnutrition two weeks later.

I still have night terrors about the state my mom was in, and the horrific conditions she was living in. I think about the deep sorrow and sadness she must have felt to give up on life and surrender to her addiction. I question why I couldn't have been stronger and given her more of myself to help her recover.

We Need More Sober Social Spaces

Nothing I can do will bring her back. But I can make a change for people moving forward.

An estimated 10% of the population suffers from alcohol use disorder. LGBTQ+ individuals face substance use disorders at nearly twice the rate of the general population, yet queer-friendly sober spaces remain rare. How many of those have the same desire that my mom did? To find spaces outside of the home and outside of meetings that provide genuine connection?

Movements like The Phoenix are striving to create events and activities that build deeper friendships without alcohol. But physical spaces are more limited. You may have a coffee or tea shop that flexes into a community gathering space (like Eli Tea in Andersonville, Chicago), or new non-alcoholic beverage retailers that also try to serve as places to come together (like Solar Intentions in Edgewater, Chicago). But we need more. We need it to be commonplace for folks not to drink when they gather. We need more alcohol-free third spaces.

Don't get me wrong, I sometimes enjoy drinking alcohol. I am not 100% sober. But the bar and club scene, at least in Chicago, often becomes unenjoyable if you aren't drinking a significant amount. You're pressured to drink past the enjoyable phase of alcohol, which occurs below .05% BAC (read more about the biphasic alcohol curve here).

Friends offer to buy rounds and you feel bad about being in the spaces without drinking. I don't struggle with alcohol addiction, but even I find bars difficult to enjoy when I'm not zzwith everyone else. I can't imagine what it's like for someone like my mom, or other folks in recovery.

Introducing EVERYWHERE: A Queer, Alcohol-Free Social Space

I'm creating EVERYWHERE because I want to normalize third spaces without alcohol. We as a society deserve more than alcohol-centered bars and clubs. I'm happy that bars and restaurants are starting to offer more non-alcoholic options to their menus, but we need to do something new if we want new results. We need places that eschew alcohol altogether.

EVERYWHERE will be a queer, non-alcohol social space in Uptown, Chicago where people can build genuine connections without the pressure to drink. A place where being sober—whether you're in recovery, sober curious, or just don't feel like drinking—is completely normal and celebrated. A place where yoga and wellness combine with dancing to hot beats at night. You can be a part of this solution with us.

I'm doing this for my mom. Thank you mom, for loving me the best you could. I'm sorry you had to suffer. I hope EVERYWHERE can be a light for those struggling as you did.

My mom at one her happiest places - on the beach, next to the ocean.