Second day of not drinking
I'm 47 this year, single, professional, East Coast, and newly appointed non-drinker. Appointment was made by me. I've flirted with quitting drinking before. Four months here, one month there. But have I mentioned that I am 47? And I've been drinking regularly since my twenties, although I had my first drinks as a teen. My father was an infamous alcoholic. All of my friends drink, of course. I think my story of drinking is probably similar to many other highly sensitive, middle class, cerebral women in their forties, whether married with children or single, like me.
As a child, one is highly perceptive and sensitive and does well in school, is self-conscious and notices everything. One sails through academia if not through the social jungle of adolescence, deals with memories of an imperfect childhood, and begins drinking, smoking and experimenting with average vices while again, doing very well on the outside--school, jobs, advancement. I am very privileged as are the hundreds of thousands of women in the global north for whom this description fits. I am not that different from them. But I am unique--we all are. Double speak, perhaps, but I digress.
I have drunk regularly--everyday, every other day, weekend to weekend for over twenty years and I want to stop. I want to finally grow up and stop being the precocious child juggling the outside success with the inside insecurity and be free. Also, I want to get rid of my wine belly, incubating since circa 2000.
During the quarantine, there's been a lot of press about drinking at home because the bars are closed. Merry articles in the NYT and elsewhere about upper middle class people in cities all over the US becoming their own mixologists--making Negronis, Boulevardiers, and in one internet famous case, a supersized Cosmopolitan made by the Barefoot Contessa, gleefully, if hysterically, slurping out of a joke martini glass the size of a cereal bowl, and emptying it. The internet is there to sell us shit--note to self: my next vice to stop is the internet shopping...
So I, alone in my little house, hunkering down, started to be influenced by these influencers. I usually, used to drink a half bottle of wine every night, taking off a day or two during the week, but now I was moving on from that innocent seeming gateway drug to actual spirits, the hard stuff. I mixed margaritas and cosmopolitans, furtively buying "the smaller bottles" of vodka, tequila, and Cointreau at the neighborhood liquor store, like the lady drinker that I am, and tossed a couple back every night. Except for my two night reprieve to stay "healthy." Who was I kidding? This was quickly increasing my tolerance to alcohol.
The alarming thing is, for the last several months, I've been drinking past the halfway mark on wine bottles, past the self-regulated halfway mark and knowing that I could easily finish the whole bottle but stopping myself. My logical brain was leaving the half bottle in the fridge but my other self was left wanting and still craving more wine. This is not a good sign. And I remember three or four years ago drinking a third of a bottle and here we are, already to the halfway mark, and let's face it, down to emptying an entire bottle. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. And though that word "alcoholic" is loaded and a lot has been critiqued about the culture of AA, it's kind of true.
I recognized that I was also on a self-induced hamster wheel and denying my absolute reliance/addiction to alcohol. I would take two days off per week--four days on and two days off. I was bargaining with myself to be able to have my cake and eat it too. That is, drinking and also trying in vain to stay healthy as I know that increasingly healthy experts are saying that no amount of alcohol is good for you.
I had to stop kidding myself. I, who exercise, eat healthy, drink water, wear sunscreen, don't smoke, am slowly killing myself through my habit of daily wine. I want to be real with myself and I don't want the weight gain, cancer risk, hangovers, anymore. I've been doing the bargaining with drinking thing for years now. But as alcohol is very addictive, I really toughed out those two weekly nondrinking days and felt so relieved and happy to be able to drink again afterwards, to be "on" again. But this was a rollercoaster that defined my life. If I didn't drink at all, I wouldn't have to wait for the alcohol to relieve me.
I know this because of my smoking habit, which I quit in my late twenties through the use of nicotine gum. I am prone, alas, to nonmoderate addictive behavior. I don't want it to control my life anymore. In the same way that it took a while for the nonsmoking life to be my real life, I am determined to make the nondrinking life my REAL LIFE. So this blog is to put my thoughts down, like many in the Soberverse, in this endeavor.
As a child, one is highly perceptive and sensitive and does well in school, is self-conscious and notices everything. One sails through academia if not through the social jungle of adolescence, deals with memories of an imperfect childhood, and begins drinking, smoking and experimenting with average vices while again, doing very well on the outside--school, jobs, advancement. I am very privileged as are the hundreds of thousands of women in the global north for whom this description fits. I am not that different from them. But I am unique--we all are. Double speak, perhaps, but I digress.
I have drunk regularly--everyday, every other day, weekend to weekend for over twenty years and I want to stop. I want to finally grow up and stop being the precocious child juggling the outside success with the inside insecurity and be free. Also, I want to get rid of my wine belly, incubating since circa 2000.
During the quarantine, there's been a lot of press about drinking at home because the bars are closed. Merry articles in the NYT and elsewhere about upper middle class people in cities all over the US becoming their own mixologists--making Negronis, Boulevardiers, and in one internet famous case, a supersized Cosmopolitan made by the Barefoot Contessa, gleefully, if hysterically, slurping out of a joke martini glass the size of a cereal bowl, and emptying it. The internet is there to sell us shit--note to self: my next vice to stop is the internet shopping...
So I, alone in my little house, hunkering down, started to be influenced by these influencers. I usually, used to drink a half bottle of wine every night, taking off a day or two during the week, but now I was moving on from that innocent seeming gateway drug to actual spirits, the hard stuff. I mixed margaritas and cosmopolitans, furtively buying "the smaller bottles" of vodka, tequila, and Cointreau at the neighborhood liquor store, like the lady drinker that I am, and tossed a couple back every night. Except for my two night reprieve to stay "healthy." Who was I kidding? This was quickly increasing my tolerance to alcohol.
The alarming thing is, for the last several months, I've been drinking past the halfway mark on wine bottles, past the self-regulated halfway mark and knowing that I could easily finish the whole bottle but stopping myself. My logical brain was leaving the half bottle in the fridge but my other self was left wanting and still craving more wine. This is not a good sign. And I remember three or four years ago drinking a third of a bottle and here we are, already to the halfway mark, and let's face it, down to emptying an entire bottle. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. And though that word "alcoholic" is loaded and a lot has been critiqued about the culture of AA, it's kind of true.
I recognized that I was also on a self-induced hamster wheel and denying my absolute reliance/addiction to alcohol. I would take two days off per week--four days on and two days off. I was bargaining with myself to be able to have my cake and eat it too. That is, drinking and also trying in vain to stay healthy as I know that increasingly healthy experts are saying that no amount of alcohol is good for you.
I had to stop kidding myself. I, who exercise, eat healthy, drink water, wear sunscreen, don't smoke, am slowly killing myself through my habit of daily wine. I want to be real with myself and I don't want the weight gain, cancer risk, hangovers, anymore. I've been doing the bargaining with drinking thing for years now. But as alcohol is very addictive, I really toughed out those two weekly nondrinking days and felt so relieved and happy to be able to drink again afterwards, to be "on" again. But this was a rollercoaster that defined my life. If I didn't drink at all, I wouldn't have to wait for the alcohol to relieve me.
I know this because of my smoking habit, which I quit in my late twenties through the use of nicotine gum. I am prone, alas, to nonmoderate addictive behavior. I don't want it to control my life anymore. In the same way that it took a while for the nonsmoking life to be my real life, I am determined to make the nondrinking life my REAL LIFE. So this blog is to put my thoughts down, like many in the Soberverse, in this endeavor.
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