Not long ago, I was having dinner with a friend while visiting London. The last time I'd seen her, we were tipsy in seafoam green dresses, two bridesmaids wobbling in silver heels with cocktails in our hands. Now, I no longer drink. A glass of seltzer sat on my side of the table, a glass of red wine on hers.
"Would you say you're an alcoholic?" she asked.
"I would," I said, and her eyes went wide. I could sense her looking around for the next thing to say. I'm sorry? Are you sure? That's okay?
"Alcoholic" can be an uncomfortable word. People's minds go to dark places: they see a woman pulling a secret bottle out from underneath her pillow. Someone lying in the gutter, drinking from a paper bag. The images don't line up with the real alcoholic women I see on a daily basis, with their easy laughs and their gentle hugs. They are mothers and high-achieving professionals and community leaders. Some of them have rough stories, and many of them are like me: the gutter was an internal place, a kind of soul-sickness. From the outside, we looked like we were doing fine - perhaps even great. But a fundamental shift had happened on the inside. Drinking had taken the wheel.
My romance with alcohol started at a young age. I was the first among my group of good little girls to start stealing sips from our parents' stash, but by high school, most of my friends were drinking, too. At university, we all hit the walls - late-night ragers, free-flowing pitchers of beer, jugs of wine. This wasn't a drinking problem; it was freedom.
There were signs that my drinking didn't look like other people's: I had blackouts, periods of temporary amnesia induced by too much alcohol, and though I tried to avoid them, they kept happening. I was also a girl who "held her liquor," which turns out to be a bit of a stretch. But I took pride in drinking men under the table, and many evenings I maintained just fine. While other girls vomited in the toilet and passed out on the couch, I kept going till dawn.
It's this relentless quality, more than anything, that was probably my undoing. I couldn't moderate. I watched friends open a bottle of wine, enjoy two glasses, and then put the cork back in the top. How did they DO that? Even when I was drinking by myself at home, I threw out the cork as soon I had pulled it, because that prop was no longer necessary. Not finish this bottle? But why?
For a long time, this quality masqueraded as normal. I was surrounded by the binge-drinking culture of young adulthood, where drinking to oblivion on occasion is accepted, even encouraged. By my thirties, I was living in New York, and the city lined up to support my bad habits: bars open till 4am; beer sold all night; cab drivers to take you home when you are too sloppy for the subway.
I had a series of near-misses. Falling down stairs, waking up in strange places, passing out on the couch with a pot of water on the stove, which did not end well. Friends started taking a step back. I had to do something about my drinking, but quit? Completely? I took quizzes for alcoholism, and read books, and talked to strong, smart women who had been there. I knew I had the bug. Still, my mind resisted the word itself. I still had my job, my apartment, I had never woken up in jail - how could I be an alcoholic? Then again, I had woken up inside other kinds of prisons, many times.
At first, saying the words "I'm an alcoholic" felt like a death sentence. Every time the phrase left my mouth, I felt an electric zap. I was fallen, tainted, a failure. As time passed, I began to see the words differently. The phrase became less of a noose and more of a rope which I could climb to get out of a hole where I had spent many years. The women I met who were alcoholics were big-hearted, honest, courageous, the kind of women I had always wanted to be. I started wondering why society treated this like a bad thing, a dead-end, when it was really the opposite - a way out.
It's been five years since I had a drink. I no longer flinch when I tell people I'm an alcoholic. It's just part of who I am. I know it startles other people when I say the words, because of their own associations, and I wish I knew how to make that moment a little easier for them. But part of what I try to do now is worry less about other people: am I entertaining them? Do they like me? Am I good enough? That was my drinking brain, always trying to be "on". Now I try to let go, and be whatever I am. An alcoholic, sure, but so many other things, too.
BLACKOUT: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola is published by Two Roads books, priced £12.99, and is also available as an ebook.
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Guest posts
Guest post: "Accepting my alcoholism gave me a way out - so why are we still scared of the term?"
49 replies
MumsnetGuestPosts · 23/06/2015 12:15
OP posts:
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.