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Drinks kept flowing and, as the clock ticked past midnight, elegance descended into disorder. A big-haired glamazonian vomited into the punch bowl and got carried off for a lie-down. A gatecrasher shoved his hand down Aunty Silvi’s diamanté top, and a lady cried in the downstairs toilet.
It seemed to me the more sideways I got … the more people liked me. Funny stories poured from me, and I spoke with confidence and ease. Drinking made me who I wanted to be. Wild, interesting and humorous. Alcohol made me happy and, in turn, I made my mates and cousins happy. A win/win, just by doing what everyone around me was: drinking until I fell over.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my binge drinking and need to be accepted by my peers were going to lead me down a dark path, and it would take a long time to remember who I once was. My youth, drenched in alcohol, drowned out the quirky little girl with the big brown eyes in a sea of chaos. I left her behind in my early teens, alone outside a nightclub in the wrong trainers. But I was a laugh, right? A never-ending drinks cabinet of joy … Until the doors fell off.
They might as well have asked the ocean to stop making waves. The darkness inside my brain was a power much stronger than me. The wall of dread would take more than a paper bag to demolish. Panic had set in, like a heavy rainstorm.
I stayed in bed the next day, mentally punishing myself, and listened on as my life happened without me. I heard George cry. I smelled pumpkin roasting in the oven. I heard plates being slid from cupboards, pans clattering and the mixer whizzing. I heard John get the pram from the garage and the zip of George’s little dinosaur anorak. The front door closed and off they went to the park without me. My phone buzzed.
People with drinking problems didn’t look like me. There were no rock bottoms here; I was fine and dandy. I wasn’t eating out of a dumpster or injecting heroin behind the 7-Eleven. I wasn’t selling my body for a hit of crack or passed out on a park bench with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s clenched to my chest. I was a mum who deserved a break, a binge drinker, a partier who got shitty hangovers. But, secretly, I thought I was fading away, disappearing between the cracks. I felt trapped in a cycle with no way out. I was stuck in a pinot gris purgatory. I was sitting in a place where people couldn’t
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Chasing an attractive man, then him admitting, after five beers, two drags on a spliff and three vodka shots, that he liked me boosted my ego.
Alcohol suppresses all the things I love about you. It sucks the joy and beauty from you. I’m scared.’
I couldn’t imagine our relationship would thrive. Having long, meaningful chats over cups of Earl Grey was about as appealing as inhaling a stranger’s fart. A decade and a half later, she was still going strong. I witnessed her iron will at many family gatherings. She danced and laughed along with the rest of us, without seeming to have a twinge of jealousy or doubt. At the end of a night out on the town, as I was dumped in a taxi home, she ambled up the street with a big smile on her face and a glittery shawl wrapped around her shoulders. How does she do it? I thought. Maybe being sober is
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I wanted to look forward to events like my inspirational sister did. I wanted to tip my hat at passers-by on a Sunday and say, ‘Top of the morning to ya!’ Rather than pull a hood over my eyes to avoid comments from smug wankers. ‘Oh, you looked like you were having a good time last night. I’ve just been for a run!’ (Which translates as ‘Oh, you were a mess last night and I’m better than you.’)
I pretended to hate sober people because I wasn’t strong enough to be one.
But was it brilliant or was I convincing myself it was brilliant because I couldn’t stop doing it? Was that why sober people were so annoying? Because they were achieving something that was out of my grasp?
I was so grateful to have his support. He deserved a healthy, happy wife. Even though I loved him and the kids more than anything in the world, I knew what I was doing was for me. If I could get myself in shipshape, then the rest of the crew would join in.
Like me, my parents found it odd when people refused a drink; they just couldn’t understand why someone would choose to abstain when booze was an option. It was like choosing to eat a brussels sprout when you could have a Lindt ball.
Being pregnant at my wedding gave me a brief insight into what life would be like as a non-drinker. A window into a different lifestyle. I liked it. Not enough to stop, but I liked it. That feeling stayed with me and sat dormant in my brain for a long time. It was proof life could happen without alcohol.
‘I’ve been wanting to drink heavily ever since I can remember. Being a binge drinker was my destiny, Dianne. When I was little, I watched my parents be the life and soul of the party. It looked like a great way to fit in and be liked, so I drank to feel accepted. I think it’s become so ingrained in me that I can’t see a way out. It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s who I am.’
It was true that drinking was the only way I knew how to have fun, to be me. I had loved the parties, the preparation, the accolades my family got for being so bloody cheerful. Parties and drinking had given me purpose. I was honoured to be the kid with the outrageous family. It was my pleasure to be the reliable supplier of fun. My family squished me into shape. What popped out the other side of my teens was the perfect cookie-cutter party girl. A disco biscuit; someone who had drugs, one-liners, VIP passes, and the stamina to keep most of Brighton entertained until the sun rose over the West
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‘Vic, fulfilling this role has been detrimental to your health. Your drinking is causing you anxiety and you’re suffering because of alcohol. Can you see that now?’ She was right. After all, I was getting therapy. Perhaps being a party girl wasn’t that cool? Party girls are just addicts with backstage passes, I thought. I realised then I didn’t need loud music and pumping basslines anymore. I just needed a cuddle and a cup of cocoa.
As I sat there, I suddenly felt sad too. Maybe what had happened to me deserved attention, rather than being drowned out by a pint of Stella and a gag.
As I sat there, I realised not drinking had never really been a possibility. ‘Not drinking was never an option for you, Victoria, but stopping drinking is. Your parents didn’t know you were absorbing their behaviours.
I abused alcohol to skip some of the harsh realities of life, and not face the fact I was lonely, unhappy with boyfriends, with my choices, with becoming a parent, and a billion and one other things.
Something simmered in me, though. I turned to Dianne as I stood in the doorway. ‘I feel like I’ve been tricked, conditioned to believe that drinking was okay. I never pressed pause to ask why I needed to make myself “more happy”.’ It was true. I’d latched on to alcohol’s jolly reputation and followed it devotedly, just like I did with that charismatic American cult leader. Brainwashed by booze. Subtly, slowly indoctrinated until I was too soaked to protest. Alcohol had made me believe I wanted more of it. That I couldn’t live without it. That addictive drug did exactly what it was designed to
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I moved to the opposite side of the kitchen and switched on the kettle. I got a mug out from the cupboard and stood waiting for the jug to boil, in a state of utter disbelief. Could it be this un-dramatic? So silent? Don’t I need to be wearing a black dress, like a grieving Greek widow, bent over a casket of wine, wailing to the sky?
I read in one of my sobriety books that people stop maturing from the day they start drinking alcohol and, for me, that rang true. Emotionally, I was still 11 when I started therapy. ‘I feel like I’ve aged twenty-six years in twelve weeks,’ I said to Dianne. ‘Well, luckily, you don’t look like you have!’
At last, never drinking again didn’t seem like a chore, it felt like a total relief. I would never, ever have the booze blues again. There was a cure for hangovers after all – it was me!
My anxiety was my body screaming out for intervention. It was my reason to change and my reason never to go back.
Without thinking, I said, ‘What do you fancy doing tomorrow? Maybe we could go down to the park and cook breakfast on the barbecues?’ John, who was still crawling on his hands and knees collecting toys, turned his head. He looked surprised. ‘Why are you looking at me funny?’ I asked. ‘Why do you think?’ he replied. I kept standing in the middle of the kitchen with wooden spoon in hand, while the wok sizzled behind me. What do you fancy doing tomorrow? It was something I’d never said on a Saturday night. For as long as I could remember, I’d always planned for a headache and a day in bed every
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In all my years of drinking, I wasted over a thousand Sundays in bed hungover.
I embrace the boring now. Boring brings peace, boring brings calm; boring brings tea, crosswords and chocolate. Life’s humble indulgences beat panic-ridden hangovers hands down.
I don’t want them to learn bad habits from me and I don’t want them to think drinking is how all humans have fun.
I realise now that I was subliminally sending the message ‘Mummy needs wine to be a parent’ or ‘Mummy has to drink to deal with your behaviour’. Mummy wine culture means we’re taught to anaesthetise ourselves against our kids when times get tough.
I want to show them how much better it is to be the one who says no, who goes against the societal norm. I will show them that just being themselves is enough, and that life is about facing challenges and not hiding under a big, thick layer of alcohol. Lean into life i...
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Therapy taught me to think beyond these stereotypical habits and change this stunted, dead-end way of thinking.
The main lessons I learned in therapy were that all people are capable of change and that I don’t have to sink to the bottom of the keg to be deserving of healing. Even when habits are lifelong and deeply ingrained, everyone can choose to reframe and rebuild. That house is worthy of a makeover.
If you’re considering going alcohol free, then remember – this is not a journey about booze, it’s a journey about you, of understanding the person who existed before alcohol and learning to love the person who is revealed after you quit.
Whether you’re drinking because you’re socially awkward, masking trauma, numbing out a bad relationship, escaping motherhood, depression, anxiety, addiction, or it’s simply a bad habit, finding out why you drink will be the key to your sober door.
Your positive choices will turn chaos into peace, and self-loathing into contentment.
But, in the end, after many years, a hundred red flags flicking me in the face, I took my power back.
