The High is in the Ordinary

Andee Scarantino
4 min readJul 24, 2021

“The high is in the ordinary.”

I was once what Erving Goffman called an “action seeker.” I loved to be in bars because they were spaces where the action was happening.

Even working in Times Square for so many years, I stayed there by-in-large because I liked the constant stimulus. I needed my life to be in constant motion in order for me to feel a sense of pride and purpose.

I really didn’t have any purpose in doing that, though. I just had motion. Motion and more motion and more motion. That was what kept me drinking.

I loved grinding until 4:00 a.m. I loved the vagabonds asking me for money while I smoked cigarettes outside of O’Lunney’s on 45th street.

I definitely gave at least two blowjobs in public in my after-work shenanigans. I was always in some sort of flappy-lipped battle of wits with some other drunk. Things were always chaotic. I said good night to taxi drivers sometimes at 7:00 a.m. when I stumbled out of their back seats.

When I stopped drinking, all of that was gone. For once, I had to learn to fall in love with the ordinary.

I had to renegotiate who I was and find value in the ordinary day-to-day.

My friend Andy really helped.

He was the one who told me that my life was in constant motion (unrelated to my drinking,) and sent me a book called Loyalty to Your Soul.

I didn’t read the book to get sober. I read it just because I admired Andy, and I wanted to read everything he had read. The timing couldn’t have been better, however, because a book about unresolved issues disturbing one’s peace was exactly what I needed to read two months into sobriety.

It even had this great Jimmy Breslin quote inside:

“When you stop drinking, you have to deal with the marvelous personality that got you drinking in the first place.”

The book talked about how unless you resolve what’s under the surface, your compulsive behaviors likely will continue. It was the first book that explained weight loss to me in a way that also tied being overweight to unresolved issues.

And yet, this was not a weight-loss book, or a “stop drinking” book.

--

--

Andee Scarantino

I’m an unconventional thinker with quick wit. Coach. Sociologist. Mindset shift guru. Creator of getthefuckoff.com and the Get The F*ck Off Podcast