The almost alcoholic. Booze my oldest frenemy.

Alcohol colours my entire life and has done from an early age.

The first time I ever got drunk I was 14. I lived in Saudi Arabia and on a sleepover at a friend’s house we snuck out to meet some friends at the compound squash courts. We brought ‘Sadiki’, that noxious home-brewed spirit that all Saudi expats drank like water. At 50% proof, I took three sips, and that’s all I remember until I woke up on the floor of the squash court. It was my first drink. It was my first blackout. It was my first taste of shame and regret.

Can’t live with, can’t live without

Nearly 30 years on alcohol and I are unhappy lovers. Like every sodden, broken love affair we find it hard to imagine life without each other, but our relationship invariably causes pain.

The lost decades

My life with booze has been a roller coaster. My 20”s and 30’s were a staggering blur of partying and hangovers. I’m a terrible drinker. Back in the day, I had no stop button. I was an unhappy person in my 20’s and many nights ended up in drunken tears. I did 100 things I regret. 1000 things I don’t remember. And I lost friends for no reason other than I was a pain in the ass to hang out with when I was drunk… and I was drunk a lot. I never fell into alcoholism. I rarely drank in the day. I had lots of sober days each week. I never fell sick. But I was messy. Darkly horribly messy.

Realising some things are more important than partying

Then I fell pregnant. Two pregnancies, one after another, and so for two years I didn’t drink. I didn’t miss it at all. And I didn’t miss the hangovers. When the kids were young, I rarely drank too much. Suffering from postnatal depression, the couple of times that I did invariably ended up in tears and felt dreadful. It’s one thing to be roaring drunk and needily sobbing when you are in your 20’s but quite another when you are a mother to three children. Drinking to excess was no longer acceptable.

In many ways, my children saved me from what would have ended in alcoholism or certainly serious mental illness. My children are what gave me a ‘stop button’. A ‘don’t drink today’ button. Potential hangovers need to be managed because there is no way I’m that mother that lies in bed all day nursing a sore head when I have kids to look after.

It was a lie. You don’t make me dance better !

Yep, children got my boozing is under control, but that’s not to say that booze and I have become friends. Anything but. The façade has been peeled back, and I see alcohol for what it is. It doesn’t make me funnier, prettier or dance better. It makes me loud-mouthed and boorish.

And who wants to see a middle-aged drunken woman? No one. No one.

However, despite the realisation that I am not the best version of myself when I drink, I still drink.

For the love of drink

The truth is, I love alcohol.

I love the way wine tastes. Sometimes I have a glass to taste the rubied tannins of a glass of good red. The sour bite of a margarita. The sublime fizz of champagne on a hot summer’s day.

I drink because I get nervous in large groups. And I’m nervous about hosting people, which we do all the time. I’m insecure and I care too much. I want people to like me or to like my food/house/party and so I drink away the nerves. And I drink until I don’t care anymore.

I drink because of stress. Because of having 3 kids. Because I don’t want to be a shouty mummy or mean mummy and sometimes having a glass of wine is all I need to get the kids calmly into bed rather than losing my shit with them.

I drink because alcohol feels like it’s part of my makeup. My parents drank, my friends drank. The English national sport is drinking. The expat crowd in Kenya drink like fish. It is a part of my culture. My childhood. My adolescence. It’s an itch that has to be scratched, a yen that has to sated.

The morning after

But invariably I feel shame when I drink. Every. Single. Time. Shame that I didn’t have a dry week. Shame that my run the next day won’t go as well because I had a couple of glasses. Shame that I didn’t stay more sober at the party. Shame that I said something stupid. Shame that the end of the night is hazy.

But everyone drinks. Right? Ok, of course, not EVERYONE. But here in Kenya many people drink A LOT.

The only difference between us I those that feel shame and those that don’t.

My husband never regrets anything that he has done drunk, and he’s in good company. Equally, I’m not alone in the morning after anxiety. THE FEAR. Many friends of mine feel the same. Even if we have done nothing wrong. The anxiety is there. We try to bat it away but it buzzes around all day. Undermining confidence. Draining and blaming until we can go to bed.

 

To drink or not to drink, that is the question

So is my boozing is under control? Just because wild parties are a thing of the past, I have 4 sober days a week and I never drink and drive. Just because I’m not a grumbling, stumbling state every weekend. Does this mean my boozing under control? Am I an almost-alcoholic? Should I be headed to AA or should be adopting the fuck ’em philosophy? Part of me says that it’s my anxiety that is the issue. That I’ve always cared too much…maybe its time to care a little less.

Is it time to quit or is it time to quit worrying? And who would I be without my champagne crutch anyway?

It’s a dilemma.

I’ll mull it over with a glass of wine tonight.

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