I’ve always liked a drink, I’ve always drank. Literally always drank. As a baby our Granny weaned us on the champagne from her glass on special occasions, sherry when it was any other day of the week. Cider as a reward for tidying the playroom, Babycham at Christmas, occasional sips from our parent’s beer and wine glasses, shandy on a hot day. By the time I was at secondary school there was no mystery around alcohol. I’d tasted exotic liquors from the drinks cabinet, casually, on school holiday afternoons whilst watching Neighbours on TV, then I’d get rid of the dizzying aftereffects with a Findus crispy pancake or mini pizza and a glass of water.
Teenage years brought the usual ‘getting hammered’ on concoctions from parents drinks cabinets, lethal cocktails ‘disguised’ in a Coca Cola bottle. Then pints of cider or snakebite at friend’s parties, bottles of Diamond White and Hooch in town, bought for us underage girls by nice older local lads or whichever of us had success at the bar. One school afternoon saw myself and the other Further Mathematicians sitting a particularly tough exam, as we came out of the exam room one of the girls casually said ‘I’ve got a bottle of vodka in my bag’ so three of us went off to drink the hard stuff from ceramic mugs in the sixth form common room. We weren’t caught, there was no reprimand other than the night I spent in sickbay with flu like symptoms and no one questioned it.
There were the usual nights out and then University where I didn’t drink any more or less than anyone else I was hanging out with, no blackouts, memory loss or sick nights to report, just the usual sharing a bottle of £5 rancid white wine with my bestie followed by a couple of pints of Fosters in a local pub.
When I started teaching, the job was so pressured, so full on that I wouldn’t drink in the week but boy would we hit the pubs at the weekends. Sundays were totally lost to hangovers and then planning next week’s lessons. Earning money, starting a job, new social circles all made for an easy social life and I was happy, living with friends and with my boyfriend down the road. Though I do have some good memories of social drinking in Bristol pub gardens and cocktail bars or having a few beers and a curry on an evening!
It was when I moved back up North that I lost control again, some heavier nights; young teachers then really knew how to let their hair down. My boyfriend became my fiance and moved up North to be with me, we settled into a good balance of work, sports, social drinking and the occasional bottle of wine in the week to share. But somewhere in this period, my drinking began to have control over me, this is when I mislaid my ‘stop button’ and it’s been missing ever since. I played hockey throughout all these times and that brought more socialising and binge drinking. We didn’t associate keeping fit with keeping off the booze then, there were days when we’d turn up to play a crucial play off and it would be a fight to not have to wear the keepers kit and helmet in case you needed to be sick!
The only thing to moderate my drinking at this time was when we were getting to a point of desperation trying for a baby. It was three years of trying, then a miscarriage and we were another 2 years of waiting when I knew I had to give my body a chance to detox. I moderated, we conceived and happily all went to plan. I didn’t give up alcohol completely through my three pregnancies but during the morning sickness phase I was off it anyway then could only face a small glass of wine every now and again.
As the children have got older, and one glass always leads to another, it’s hard to moderate again. I’ve got post viral fatigue that cannot tolerate alcohol. I’m on antidepressant medication that doesn’t mix well with booze and yet it is ingrained in me to drink. My neural pathways associate drinking with every joyous occasion, social experience or celebration. When I know I’m going out my first thought is ‘Will I be able to drink?’. Then there’s the ‘What will I drink? How many will I have? Will I be able to stop at one or two? Who else will be drinking? What have I got to do the next day? When will my next drinking opportunity be?’ It is actually exhausting. The internal tirade doesn’t even have the courtesy to stop once we’re out and being sociable. I’ll be watching the bottle or the bar to keep an eye on when I can have a refill. So the answer to this? Decide in advance that I am not going to drink.
What will my friends and family think of me? Will they think I’m being a spoil sport? Will they be alarmed at the prospect of going out with someone who isn’t going to be imbibed with wine or beer like I have been in the past? I’ve now got two answers to this: It doesn’t matter what is in my glass, if I have a tea and my friend has a coffee, does it get in between us and in the way of us having a good chat? No. Secondly, it’s me that friends and family want, not just the occasion we are sharing. If I said I’m never going to go to the cinema/theatre/gig/pub/out to dinner with them again then that would affect them, and I’m not saying that.
Then there’s the truth of how having a drink actually makes me feel. The first drink is good. That cold beer on a warm holiday evening, a glass of fizz at the start of a night out, a red wine in front of the fire on a Sunday evening or a carefully chosen glass with a meal when we go out for dinner. But the second glass? I barely notice the taste and that initial buzz isn’t repeated. What about the third? Well, to be honest, nothing is getting any better now, I’ve plateaued and then it’s going to go downhill. So the solution? Just have the one. The problem is, I can’t so let’s go back another step and just have none.
Lastly there is how I feel the next day. I will probably regret something I said or the way a conversation went, it has to be noted that others won’t think the same of me, I know I’m my own harshest critic. I’ll definitely regret how much I drank or ate and the calories consumed. I’ll hate myself for loading my liver with toxins when I know it’s trying hard to help me overcome viral fatigue and medication. Then there’s the depression. The phrase that ‘alcohol steals happiness from the next day’ is totally true for me. The killer for me though is the tiredness, I’ll have to return to bed at some point, maybe for most of the day and that can happen after I’ve had a reasonable amount of alcohol by other people’s standards. So all in all, I will not feel good the next day, at all. I’ll be desperate to not let my children down by struggling to interact with them through a hangover, so I’ll hide or sleep. They probably don’t mind being babysat by a screen or TV but it’s not how I envisaged spending time with my kids, especially on the weekends. So given that I have a history of feeling suicidal, that I’m spending money and time on resources to help with my mental health, what is the point of cancelling it out for the sake of a temporary tipple induced high. The answer here is chase those highs in other ways, once I give up the booze, I think I’ll find them more easily and I think I’ll remember them too so that’s an extra bonus!
How many times have I googled ‘How to avoid a hangover’ and been so disappointed by the results telling me to avoid alcohol that I’ve re- searched until I get an answer that suits me, and no, they never worked!
What have I got to lose? If I can do this, I’ll be happier and healthier. I won’t feel so ashamed of the Christmas Eve with the kids that I can’t remember them shouting up the chimney to Father Christmas, or the time no one could read the names on their presents because I was too drunk to write properly. I won’t worry about repeating the veering walk back from a BBQ when the kids had to ring Daddy to come home and let them into the house because Mummy was too drunk.
I worry about the kids like any parent, and when they start going out with friends and alcohol becomes a thing in their social groups I don’t want them putting themselves in vulnerable situations because we have given them the message that alcohol is safe.
I do know that this could be really hard, alcohol is an addictive drug, and I’m addicted. To be honest, we almost all are. You don’t need to be exhibiting the shakes or drinking in the morning. One drink follows on from the next and it’s not just about will power, it’s because we get addicted to the addictive substance, no surprise there!
I actually just don’t like myself when I drink. I like to think I’m quite a moral person but that all goes out the window when I’ve been drinking. I share in the gossip and I forget about people’s feelings. I often feel poorly and tired and I lose time. I am being harsh but that is where I have got to. Today is our nineteenth wedding anniversary and I’m on day one. The day is good because we are celebrating being married for nineteen years, being together for twenty seven years and having a lovely family. It is not made better by a drink. I can lose the drink and enjoy a meal together, no calories from booze, so maybe some extra pudding! It’s the end of November and we’ve got Christmas parties coming up, dinners out with friends, Christmas celebrations. I’ll take a day at a time, 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 100 days. I really am resolved to do this. I know I might not become a teetotaller, I might get to that place where I find my off switch and that one glass that I really enjoy is enough. I’ll let you know in 100 days.
Thank you to Catherine Gray author of ‘The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober’ her book has been the best support and the best way to order my thoughts, I’m sure I’ll be going back to it again and again and again.
