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| Water never tasted so good...honestly |
Welcome to month four of sobriety. If you had asked me back
in January I would have told you that I’d stopped drinking alcohol – which in
my case amounted to red wine as I didn’t really drink anything else - for a year to see how it felt because…well
just to see if I could.
If you had asked me if I had a drink problem I would have
said no. I regularly had a month off. I occasionally didn’t drink every day. I
only drank red wine because I loved the taste. I didn’t drink in the morning. I
didn’t often have a hangover. I hardly ever embarrassed myself because I was
drunk. I couldn’t remember the last time I drank to oblivion. I didn’t put myself
in dangerous drunken situations. I have never been at the wheel of a car after
a drink. I hadn’t angrily thrown stuff after a bottle of wine for years.
I didn’t find it difficult to give up daily red wine
drinking in January, with so many others doing dry January it is almost
expected. I have done it before and always been disappointed not to feel any
great improvements; no weight-loss; no better sleep; no more bounce. I have
always noticed that without wine I crave sugar so it was no surprise that I substituted
wine with chocolate, cakes and biscuits.
By February most friends were having after-work-drinks whilst
I was still on a pint of lime and soda. I noticed that I was irritable, snappy
and negative. I couldn’t bring myself to socialise, wanted to go to bed at 8 pm
and was seriously annoyed that I wasn’t feeling fabulous. What on earth was the
point of abstaining if I couldn’t find any positive benefits?
In March I was at the base of the stress-dip that accompanies
the rhythm of publishing a quarterly magazine. I had got through the January
deadline but this was tougher. At the end of particularly difficult days I really
wanted a bottle of wine; I wasn’t sure I had the willpower, how else was I
going to deal with the pressure? And I still hadn’t lost any weight, was still waking
up at 3 am, hated going out at night; what on earth was the point? But I am the
kind of person that when I say I am going to do something I stick to it. I had
said I was doing this for a year and so I would.
Last night - a Friday - I went to a Yoga class at 7pm. It
has been another long work week, in the past a Friday would most certainly have
involved wine. As I left the yoga studio I walked past bars full of happy Friday
evening drinkers: Friends, colleagues, lovers, families, chatting, enjoying each
other’s company, sharing gossip and news over wine, beer or cocktails. I
started to cry. I can’t ever recall feeling so lonely.
Not drinking has forced me to look hard at myself and my
relationship not only to alcohol but to other people in my life, to my past, my
other habits; to how drinking has shaped the person I am at 54 after 40 years
of loving to drink. I have started to question what it would take to label myself
an alcoholic. In the past my definition of that would have been to do with the amount of alcohol consumed, the inability to control one’s drinking and the behavioural
changes that being addicted to alcohol induced. I tell myself that I don’t have
a drink problem and yet I have problems that alcohol seems to be the only solution
to; without the soothing effect a drink brings about I feel as if I have been stripped
of my protective armour. And facing up
to this isn’t easy; giving up wine has meant that I have had to give up parts of my identity.
On that journey home last night I wondered how different my
life would have been if I had discovered that I could tolerate uncomfortable
situations without a drink. Or even, take myself out of those situations rather than drinking to survive them. At fourteen I had learnt that the fear of
being in dangerous places – hanging out with older cool types who took drugs
and thought nothing of having sex in front of me – could be eased with Lambrusco.
By sixteen I was brave enough to sleep with anyone who gave me a modicum of
attention as long as I had already imbibed a couple of glasses of wine. Like many
girls I didn’t consider I could use the term rape because I had bought it on
myself by being drunk; a night out involving wine but ending with me saying no
and locking my door didn’t stop him shimmying a drainpipe and climbing into my
bedroom window, but hey that couldn’t be rape could it because, although I was
bruised from him holding me down, I had been drinking and flirting with him all
night in a club?
And then there were the times when wine enabled me to confidently
dance on tables, fall in love and tolerate idiots. And how wine had subdued my opinions
so I didn’t stand out: “have a drink and shut up.” And the family occasions where drink enabled
me to feel loved. Or were wine smoothed the way to connections….the list goes on.
Good and Bad.
I wish that I hadn’t drunk so much in front of my daughters.
I wish that I had realised that drinking was a choice. I wish that I had said “fuck
off” to those telling me that without wine I was boring, or that I was an
outsider who was even weirder without a drink. I wish I had been stronger
younger. I wish I could go back and provide protection to that child who
started drinking because she wanted to be accepted, loved and didn’t want to be
scared anymore.
These are all thoughts I wish I wasn’t having and I can’t
have a glass of wine to push them away. I tell myself that I am proud to have got
to month four, that I have more energy, my brain is sharper, I am a better person
for facing my demons. It doesn’t erase the painful emotions that bubble just
below the surface and threaten to spill over as once more I am on the outside
looking in.
In some respects the child I was at fourteen had merely been
numbed with alcohol for the past forty years. She was waiting for sobriety to
re-emerge; vulnerable, uncertain, insecure; a bundle of troubled emotions. So
how can I support her? I don’t want or need to drink, so I need a new way to
be. I had no idea that the prop was actually scaffolding.
I don’t want to come across as negative; I know that this
was – is – a good idea. I know that I will come through this year with greater
self-knowledge. The current mental space, where I regret my past reliance on alcohol,
I am upset with the choices I made and am cross that I probably could have been an unbelievably successful woman if I hadn’t let wine take away my personal power, will pass. Nonetheless, I am excited that it isn’t too late to
change – it never is – and I’m not too old to take on the world stone-cold-sober. So bring on the next four months, I am ready for anything as long as I have a stash of chocolate biscuits.
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