Several years ago, after one too many Dorothy Parker moments, I stopped drinking. From the high ground of the wagon, I expected to step into a hangover-free nirvana in which life was richer and relationships more meaningful. So how come life, and love, turned out to be as exhilarating as a beige jersey?
We all know the hazards of drink and drug misuse. Health aside, there’s the risk, not to say humiliation, of waking up beside undesirable strangers.
Longer term, alcohol is the death of many a relationship. Vino veritas might be amusing at the fag-end of a party but it’s a short stagger from there to Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? And if one half of a drinking couple quits, what then?
The marriage depicted in Edward Albee’s play is monstrous, yes, but imagine what fresh hell Martha and George would descend into if you whipped the bottle away from one of them.
Like evangelical ex-smokers who faint at a whiff of smoke, your virgin teetotal has the olfactory acuity of a tracker dog, sniffing out suspected drunkenness a mile off. And if that makes maintaining an old relationship tough, starting a new one can prove virtually impossible. To stay sober, you have to change the kind of guys you go out with. But how do you meet someone without a few bevvies inside you? In fact, how do you negotiate any stage of a relationship without a nip or two of Dutch courage?
Why go out for dinner on early dates? It’s not to eat (who wants to be bloated or crippled with indigestion when they get horizontal?), but in order to put away enough wine to lubricate the tongue and ease the awkward passage from table to bed. Leap forward several years and those glasses of Chardonnay can help to rouse passions that have long since nodded off in front of my favourite TV soap.
Without a bucketful of gin to prop up my confidence, the shyness of my youth resurfaced. Once a life-and-soul girl, I now dreaded parties. The wallflower thing didn’t feel right, yet without liquid or chemical enhancement, my flirtation gear was stuck in neutral. I’d lost the nerve to brazen out a spot of steamy eye contact across a crowded room, or saunter up to a fanciable bloke with a witty one-liner. When I did meet men, things fizzled out before they even got going.
What had happened to the heart that used to fall spectacularly in and out of love? Where was all that intoxicating, operatic stuff? All false, according to the therapists. Albee, himself a reformed drinker, would agree. Give up the demon and you’ll achieve greater intimacy and feel more alive, goes the promise. But for years the only emotion I could muster was remorse. It was like having a permanent hangover, without the good times. No doubt those emotional highs were illusory but they were something.
In many ways I’m lucky. I drink moderately now but never without a struggle. Sensible drinking has all the appeal of polite sex and the temptation to get hammered is only ever 175ml away. Life might be more ”real” sober, but in the naked glare of sobriety, I miss the spirited girl who’d snog strangers and fall in love in the time it took to mix a perfect martini. Everything in moderation, they say, but women like me and Mrs Parker don’t really understand half measures; we don’t want a life, or love, that’s moderate. — Â