The difficulty with giving up

by Clover Stroud

At the end of the summer, I decided to stop drinking. Just for a bit, to dilute the late nights of high summer, when the whirligig of parties made me question whether July wasn’t, in fact, the new Christmas. There’s always a reason for drinking, of course. Over the summer, my friends and I were drinking because there’d been so many days of rain, or because there was an afternoon of sun, or because it was summer, or because summer was passing. Actually, I can’t remember why we were drinking so much, and that’s probably why I decided to stop for a bit.

I love drinking, but I can also take it or leave it. I rarely drink alone, but I’m always happy to stay up until dawn if there’s a bottle to finish and friends to share it with. Physically, easing off hasn’t been a problem; the speedy buzz of weeks of sobriety is not without its own thrills. No, the problem has arisen from the sense that, as a non-drinker, I’ve become a social disappointment. “Thanks, but I’ll just have a Coke,” is a downer, especially when the person you’re with wants the reassuring camaraderie of the pop of another cork over a particularly fine bit of gossip, or the smash of shot glasses on a bar as a good night graduates into a great one. No matter that I still want to stay up, still want the gossip and late-night laughs, even when sober. It’s as if alcohol is so embedded within the way we socialise, that stating, ‘No, I don’t want to drink,’ is construed as, ‘No, I don’t want to engage, talk, play, or celebrate.’

There’s a national discomfort at the state of “binge Britain” right now, but individually we’re all worried about the line between having a really good time and the abject misery of a life blighted by alcoholism. Since alcohol-related deaths for British women aged 35 to 54 have doubled between 1991 and 2006, this worry is becoming increasingly justified. Where women used to be the informal social controllers of drinking — the barmaids and chastising wives who screwed the lid firmly back on the bottle when the old man had had one too many — they have now become the ringleaders. Now we women earn as much as our male contemporaries, buy our own houses and raise our own children, why shouldn’t we punch at the same weight as them when it comes to drinking, too? But emulating men’s drinking habits is a big mistake, as women’s bodies can’t metabolise alcohol as efficiently as men’s. Government ministers have now weighed in, drawing up a code of conduct that requires restaurants and bars to serve wine in glasses clearly marked with measures, and scrutinising the practice of handing out free or cheap drinks to girls in the hope they will attract more men into a bar. (The loss of Ladies Night, a condescending and oddly predatory custom, is no biggie, surely.) But rather than telling us how much we should drink, perhaps the government should be asking why we need to drink so much in the first place.

By Christmas, I’ll be drinking again. What would the festive season be without it? After all, you don’t need an excuse in this country, at any time of the day or night. Stop for a while though, and you’ll find that you need a bloody good excuse to refuse a drink.

In praise of life's lubricator

by Kate Spicer

There was once a time when the feeling of drunkenness, as well as the hangover, was becoming tiresome. My issue was not with ethyl alcohol, that specific structure of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen that has such queer effects on the human cerebral cortex and limbic system. It was with me. Fretting, I bought a book that I thought would scare my intellect into stopping my arm from lifting so much booze to my mouth. It was called Women and Alcohol: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.

It did, indeed, contain frightening statistics and depressing facts. But largely, it served to remind me how alcohol is stitched into the tapestry of not just my life, but populations through the ages.

It was a fascinating insight into the intrinsic and ritualistic attachment we, northern hemispherical, Caucasian humans in particular, have to our booze. Archeological evidence in Iran suggests we’ve been drinking wine since 5000BC. Through the unimaginable horrors of the plague, people drank alcohol as an emotional anaesthetic, as they “tried desperately to celebrate life and laugh at death”.

When something is this fun, this catalytic, and this hard-won, then I’d not do away with it lightly. Of course, I tick many of the “alcoholic” boxes that our nanny state tries to twist us into paroxysms of paranoia about. Nearly every adult in this country who enjoys more than a thimbleful of wine in one sitting “drinks too much”, they say. But if alcohol is used at appropriate times — and not merely to celebrate the launch of a new box of corn flakes, or to toast the passing of every hour between six and midnight, every day of the year — then why should this often delicious agent for relaxation and conversation be so demonised? Alcohol isn’t bad; it doesn’t have the devil in it — people do.

I find a lot of love and nourishment in the conversations, dancing and tomfoolery evoked by sharing a drink with one, or 20, or 200 friends. I’m bored with government drinking directives that instruct me to drink no more than one small glass of wine a day. I pay no attention to them now, and drink as my body and mind dictate is right to do. It is stupid — and painful — to drink too much, too often. I try never to drink day after day; I try to feel as well as possible, which won’t happen if I drink too much, so I don’t do it. Equally, too little can leave a person a bit uptight, so I don’t do that, either. A surgeon friend of my dad’s used to put a little alcohol in a postoperative drip, “because it relaxed them and made them happy”.

Drinking has left me pretty much unscathed and in the possession of many nice friends. I could regret the hangovers and the diabolical drunken decisions I have sometimes made, or I could learn from them. I’ve tried not drinking, and while it works well on retreats in India, it doesn’t really cut it with the mad pace of modern life. The booze cocktail is an essential relief and pay-off for a population that works damned hard.

It’s not just Friday night. Many of the memory’s trophy moments are accompanied by a glass of intoxicating liquid, like my sister’s wedding last weekend, or my best friend’s father’s funeral the week before. Alcohol makes a celebration; it can even momentarily unlock the vice of pain on a bereaved person’s body. In vino veritas: in wine (there’s) truth. A drunken conversation with a person can lead to a critical shift in one’s relationship.

I love drink for many reasons. I have made choices I mightn’t have dared to without alcohol in my system: ignoring the Rules for a start, giving breakdancing a go when I really should have been knitting booties, and climbing the hills of Rio’s favelas in search of a party. Variously dangerous, but never regretted. Thank God, life is much too short.

Mummy's little helper

by Fran Murphy

Drink was once my accompaniment to any high, low or medium that life had to throw at me. I’ve never woken up and fancied a vodka, or hidden a bottle from the off-licence in a brown paper bag, but even though I don’t seem like a traditional alcoholic, my drinking was out of control. I’d always drunk socially, but it was when I became a mother that it escalated. I couldn’t wait to become a yummy mummy, spending my mornings watching This Morning, and my afternoons happily pushing a pram around in the sunshine.

But the reality was far from the fantasy. I went from being a successful career woman to a full-time mum who spent most of her evenings at home. We’d recently moved to a new area in Leeds, and I didn’t know anyone near me with children. I felt isolated and alone. I spent my days and nights dealing with a colicky baby and getting depressed about my baby weight. Yes, I was watching This Morning, but sitting slumped in front of the television, exhausted, just made me feel more down. I was used to having a PA, a work force, an answer to problems.

Most of all, I was used to being needed and rewarded for my efforts. Now, my only reward would be if the baby slept for longer than three hours at a time. Meanwhile, my partner kept his distance and spent most of his time at work. In the end, I created my own “reward”. My day would begin in earnest at 6.30pm with a glass of wine, when my daughter had gone to bed.

I would creep out of her room, gently close the door, then breathe a sigh of relief — it was wine time. I even had a ritual to make it feel normal. I’d pour a glass while preparing dinner, put dinner in the oven, pour another, then set the table. Sometimes, when I heard my partner’s key in the door, I would even put my glass in the dishwasher and get a clean one out of the cupboard so he would think it was my first. Not that he ever said anything or appeared to notice. By the time he arrived home at 8pm, I could have easily drunk a bottle of wine. I was totally dependent; I couldn’t imagine an evening without drinking.

Even so, my partner never once questioned the lack of bottles in the rack, or the empties in the bin; as long as I didn’t bother him, he was happy. I felt very alone, and instead of tackling my problems, I drowned myself in wine. It became my friend and my comfort, a substitute for my relationship.

This carried on for six months. Then, one Friday night, when I had started back at work part-time but hadn’t dropped my little “reward”, I picked my daughter up from nursery. She was tired and grumpy and I’d had the day from hell. At home, I put her in the bath and she finally calmed down. My partner rang to say he would be late and we had a huge argument — just once, I told him, I’d have really liked some help. I looked at my little girl sitting happily in the bath and decided to pop downstairs for a nice cold chardonnay. As I sat in the kitchen, sipping on a glass, I suddenly heard frantic splashing. Tearing upstairs, I found my baby under the water and not moving.

Time seemed to slow down. I pulled her out and, after what felt like 100 years, she started breathing. I rushed her to hospital and, thank God, she was fine.

But I wasn’t. Racked with shame and guilt, I told everyone I’d left the room to get a towel.

I went to see my doctor and told her I was drinking every night. Her response was: “So are most people; try and get some exercise.” I had to really push her to refer me to a counsellor, and there, I learnt about how alcohol can be a depressant and could be contributing to my low mood.

Last August, I split up with my partner and met someone else. My new boyfriend doesn’t drink much and has been a big inspiration to me. We talk much more about our emotions, and he’s noticed that I drink to numb my feelings.

Now, when I feel depressed, I try to talk to my friends and family rather than reaching for a drink.

I don’t keep any alcohol in the house, and when I go out, I limit myself to a glass or two. I’ve lost weight, my skin is better and I feel less depressed.

In our culture, drinking is so acceptable, so normal and so available that it just makes it so easy. In my view, the government warnings, billboards and campaigns are completely missing the point: it’s not what we drink but why we drink that is important.

Finding your perfect tipple

by Antonia Quirke

The saddest thing anyone has ever said to me? “Your trouble, sweetheart, is that you haven’t found your drink.” My boyfriend and I were at the pub — one of those long days of drinking, with friends stopping by — and come last orders, there in front of me was a fairground of unfinished drinks: remains of bloody marys and bits of Pimm’s, a barely touched port and lemon, the fag end of a whisky and soda, a suspiciously sipped glass of merlot, segments of lime chewed and dropped back into things with Cinzano. And he was right. Aged 35 and not found my drink. But how lucky he was! Relaxed with his friendly lager (the colour of a nice dog, don’t you think?), safe in the knowledge that soon, he would be on his way home via the smelly shop on Lisson Grove to pick up a six-pack of Stella. Oh, the ease of the purchase, the simplicity and certainty of the gestures — arm into fridge for the beer, followed by the casual stroll home carrying the blue plastic bag with a small packet of Doritos tucked at the bottom. No second thoughts required. His mind at liberty to turn over other matters. Sometimes, watching him in that shop, it was all I could do to hold back my feelings of envy.

For most of my twenties, I eschewed all but cava (who did I think I was?), until my 27th birthday, when a friend bought me a SodaStream on eBay. With its little suitcase of gadgets and bottles I could carbonate Jacob’s Creek into something more glamorous at home, and delicious it was, too. (Remember to carbonate only small amounts, though, or else there are explosions of which one must bear the brunt.) At 29, I went to New York for a wedding and while I was there, I fancied myself a drinker of bourbon. It wasn’t a persona that travelled — bourbon is as American as apple pie. Back home in London, I quickly descended into a mixer of margaritas, producing nothing but crushed salt and detergent-like froth, the freezer compartment in my fridge too small to chill the necessary glasses, oily remains tipped down the sink in the mornings with the tap on full.

At 30, I went out with someone from Suffolk and we drank cider. For a while, I felt at home. Such a simple drink, cider, something from the past, and no trouble at all. Cider’s heart is open. It is a blank page. But then the man moved to Plymouth and I never thought of cider again. Rudderless, there followed my dark years of vodka and Diet Coke, and those pretty fluorescent shots in three-swig glass bottles that look as though they come ready-laced with Rohypnol. Then, earlier this year, something clicked. Turns out I never met a piña colada I didn’t like. What started as a wheeze in Lisbon — alcoholic pineapple, the canary-coloured treat! — ended with me forcing my boyfriend from Baker Street all the way to Camden, seeking a bar that would oblige, ending in a Wetherspoons where the colada comes ready-mixed in a lovely gluey stream with a burger attached. I hugged my jug of crush and set to it, but was it just me, or was this colada withholding its full thrill, like a moonless night? I recognised the familiar sensation of a love bleeding away. I tell you, I was scarcely able to labour the longed-for goo up the straw. It struck me that I should give up booze all together, that it wasn’t anywhere near what it’s cracked up to be, and that my real opinion about the varieties of available alcohol is the same as my opinion about contraception: when the hell is somebody going to come up with something better?

And that’s how I discovered my new crystal meth — I mean, white wine. Such an untaxing tipple. These days in the pub, I am like Kristin Scott Thomas after she’s been turned down by Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, saying: “Friends isn’t bad, you know. Friends is quite something.” That’s exactly how I feel after about half a bottle of blanc de noirs followed by half a glass of sancerre with an immediate muscat chaser. And it’s a load off, make no mistake. It’s where the pin of my fate has fallen. It’s the kind of innocence that can only be found after a long search. I order, I pick up the paper, and let the real drinkers conduct their business in peace.

Why students get blotto

by Ruth Gilligan

As I sit here to write this article, thumping music pulses from the room next door. The lads in my house have invited round some girls. Most inconvenient. The beat booms, just as their heads will tomorrow, and a shout of “strawpedo” rings out amid the madness. I picture them, bending their straws over the rims of their alcopops, opening their throats and sucking up the entire contents in a matter of seconds. I have a friend whose party trick is to do it with a bottle of wine. Last time I checked, his personal best was nine seconds — impressive stuff. But that’s not drinking — that’s just tilting your head back and, within the blink of a bloodshot eye, inhaling every drop. I exhale a sigh of relief — the music has stopped. The boys and girls are heading out to a club. I can bet that at least three of the females will be back later. There’ll be gossip in the morning.

Such antics are an undeniable part of university life. Especially here, a place like Cambridge, where stress levels are continually sky high. We need a release — we work so bloody hard, we’ve earned those bloody marys. Indeed, to put it in Cambridge terms, today I read some Euripidean tragedy, praising the god of wine, Dionysus, for the gift of alcohol, which lets us “forget the evils of the day”. What’s so tragic about that? But it is the evils of the night that we need to consider, given the undeniable link between young people, alcohol and sex. To my darling mother: read no further. Sadly, I can safely say, I do not know a single girl who hasn’t done something drunk she would not have done sober. Of course, in the morning they feel pretty rubbish, but you know, they had too much to drink, everyone makes mistakes — no big deal.

My friend’s brother recently took home a girl, only to realise that she was too drunk for him to sleep with her without feeling guilty. He told her as much. She replied: “I’ve been drunker.” So maybe being off your face is not only an excuse for the things you regret, but actually, an alibi in itself. Maybe it is that very thing — being off your face, and being someone else. My friends and I joke about how, when we drink, we turn into different people. We’ve even named these alter egos; they have a life of their own. And for some girls, not the classiest of lives.

But it seems they are content just to wake up the following day and utter (the appropriately named) Shaggy’s famous line: “It wasn’t me.”

Thus, we dismiss the regret, take a couple of paracetamol and head off to lectures, knowingly observing the other girls with matted hair and panda eyes, clutching their litres of Volvic. But not everything can be dismissed as swiftly as this. And I’m not talking about the STD, or even the baby — those famous warnings against all things promiscuous. Rather, I refer to something alcohol brings by the hundred, and which, sadly, cannot be prevented. Yes, that’s right — calories. So many girls my age are intoxicated with watching their weight; dieting and obsessing until the cows come home (served as lean steak with steamed vegetables — no potatoes, obviously). But watching the pounds isn’t so easy when filling yourself with sugary-sweet poison all night long: alter egos come at a price. The other day, I whinged to my friend about this, wishing there was a form of alcohol that gave the same buzz, but without the added pounds. She had an answer: drugs. It seems the trend of drug-taking these days isn’t just to do with flashing the cash, but also flashing a super-toned tummy that

would make your average uni beer belly quiver with envy. And is it wrong that I’m jealous? Because I really do hate having to trek to the gym after a big night out, alcohol sweating from my every pore, while the guy on the treadmill next to me looks as if he’s about to pass out from inhaling my fumes.

Euripides should probably have tempered his praise of this wonderful gift of alcohol; diluted it, even. My friend has a T-shirt that reads: “I stop drinking, but only when asleep.” Maybe it’s time for us to wake up, smell the vodka, and wonder, is it really worth it? All of it?

The thumping has just started. The boys must be home. I’ll ask them in the morning.

WOMEN AND ALCOHOL: THE FACTS

“The benefits of alcohol are going to vary by individual, depending on genes and lifestyle,” explains Samir Zakhari, director of metabolic research at the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. “But the risks — which we know much more about — are a lot higher for women.” Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about how alcohol affects the female body:

GENDER BENDERS

If two people, of opposite genders but equal weight, drink the same amount and type of alcohol, the woman will get drunker, and stay that way longer. The reasons come down to basic physiology: alcohol passes through the digestive tract and is dispersed in the body’s water. Because women

always have less water in their bodies, the alcohol is less dilute for them. Women’s bodies also produce less alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) — the molecule responsible for breaking alcohol down so that the body can eliminate it. Less water and less ADH mean more alcohol stays in the body, and for longer.

In the long term, women are more likely than men to develop alcohol-related liver disease and brain damage. And women are just as likely to develop alcohol-related heart disease as men, even though they still tend to drink less over a lifetime.

Intoxicated women are also far more likely to be the victims of date rape or sexual assault than men. And they are more prone to alcohol-induced blackouts, which can make reporting such attacks difficult.

IN VINO VERITAS?

One of the biggest misconceptions that women fall prey to is the idea that wine is a safer, healthier choice than fattening, masculine beer. While wine has some appealing constituents that other alcoholic beverages do not (namely, antioxidants), most experts say it’s a myth that wine is healthier. The alcohol content of wine far outweighs the benefits of these other ingredients.

BREAST CANCER CAVEAT

As for the link between alcohol and breast cancer, studies show that drinking, on average, one unit of alcohol per day can increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer by about 6%. Research has also indicated that women who drink heavily (three glasses a day or more) face a 30% higher risk of breast cancer. “The bottom line is that women who are genetically predisposed to breast cancer should drink less if they want to be on the safe side,” says Zakhari.

BABIES AND THE BOTTLE

It’s no secret that drinking while pregnant can threaten the health of your unborn child. The risk of fetal alcohol syndrome has long been tied to excessive alcohol consumption during the first trimester of pregnancy, when organs and body features are still developing. That said, many women drink a glass of wine or two during their pregnancy, and there is no hard evidence to suggest that moderate consumption is harmful. In May last year, the government changed its advice to recommend that pregnant women abstain from drinking. But as this advice was based on no new research, the picture is still confusing. Indeed, around the same time, the NHS advisory body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, issued draft guidance saying it was okay to drink small amounts, and recent research at UCL suggests that children born to light drinkers during pregnancy were less likely to have behavioural or cognitive problems or be hyperactive.

AN ELIXIR OF YOUTH?

More research is needed before doctors can say whether alcohol does, in fact, reduce your chances of suffering from type 2 diabetes or dementia. But most experts do agree that a drink a day can offer at least some protection against cardiovascular disease, particularly for the over-fifties.

However, ageing reduces our tolerance for alcohol, most likely because it also reduces the amount of water in our bodies. Studies have shown that older adults reach higher blood-alcohol levels than younger people consuming the same amount. So reaching the half-century mark doesn’t necessarily mean you should party like a rock star. Moderation is still key, at any age.

WHAT’S A WISE WOMAN TO DO?

Take a look at the official guidelines and compare them honestly with your own consumption. The department of health’s guidelines state that women can drink between two to three units a day with a standard glass of wine being two units, and one large glass amounting to three units.

In the UK, an estimated 4m women drink more than the recommended level. While the potential benefits of moderate drinking may be equal for both sexes, the risks are higher for women, which means that women need to be more cautious than men.

Jeneen Interlandi

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