Drinking Games

by Sarah Levy

It never occurred to me that being down for anything wasn’t a particularly interesting or unique personality trait.

On the rare night that my limits were successful, I felt grim and resentful, unbearably aware of every additional drink my friends ordered.

I have a cringeworthy memory of exclaiming, I’ve always wanted to go to Burning Man! to a guy in a cowboy hat.

blacking out at a young age can impact your brain’s future responses to alcohol. Blackouts become the default setting.

My shenanigans were getting old,

In recovery and therapy, I’ve learned that secrets keep us sick. But at the time, I hardly even paused before the lies came spilling out of me. Lying and keeping secrets from people wasn’t something I did to be cruel. It simply felt natural to embellish and alter the truth when my own reality was unsatisfying to me.

I wanted to believe I had control over the way my brain and body processed alcohol, but the truth was I never had any idea what would happen once I started to drink.

I wanted to get drunk, but I wanted to stay skinny. Vodka, my college roommate told me, was one of the least fattening alcoholic beverages, clocking in at a hundred calories per shot. Never mind the fact that I was taking nine shots a night and rounding out the evening with beers and pizza; I fell for vodka’s low caloric appeal.

Talking about a friend breakup is delicate; in some moments it seems trivial, in others it feels like too much.

See? Arielle said proudly to another girl on our team. I told you she was fun. I beamed with pride as my brain connected the dots: I was fun because I was good at drinking.

But I still thought of alcohol as the glue that held our bonds together. Without it, the weight of my thoughts cracked the foundation of our friendships. Did they really like me? Did they think I was cool and smart? Did they like the way I dressed?

My friends didn’t know the full extent of my drinking history because I tried to hide the truth from them. I never told them about waking up in a hospital bed after a bottomless brunch in Chelsea. I didn’t mention how unpredictable my drinking had gotten: the way I sometimes felt perfectly normal after four glasses of wine but could also find myself in tears after half a martini. Still, our friends are our history keepers; they remember the unspoken moments, the expressions on our faces when we think no one else is watching.

It’s not that I didn’t care about my friends’ lives when I was drinking; I was just so consumed with my own inner monologue and hangovers that I couldn’t give them the space they deserved.

The only thing that sounded worse than giving up alcohol altogether was moderation.

Every Sunday night I told myself that I would take a break from drinking during the week, but Bachelor nights didn’t count, right?

Nothing was more frustrating to me than watching half a glass of wine sit, untouched. I imagined myself lurching across the table and grabbing it like the Tasmanian Devil, pouring it down my throat.

Olivia Pope held down a high-powered career on Scandal despite drinking giant glasses of red wine on what seemed like a nightly basis. Younger, Sex and the City, and Grey’s Anatomy all had similar dichotomies. I wanted to be like the protagonists I loved: free to drink, fall in love, and make mistakes without waking up with vomit in their hair.

That is the real madness of my relationship with alcohol: that I remained so committed to fixing something that had never worked in the first place.

The first time I tasted a strawberry, I was three. The fruit was so delicious that I snuck handfuls when my parents weren’t looking, devouring the berries until I made myself sick. One of my earliest memories is from that night: lying on the couch, queasy, with berry stains on my fingers. I couldn’t understand how something that tasted so good had wound up making me feel so bad.

I was saving money on drinks, late night cabs, and greasy hangover food, so I spent it on whatever the Internet told me to. Every time I came home from work and found a new package waiting, I was convinced it would fix me.

My mom made me a wax appointment at the fancy salon in town the day after I came home crying about my mustache. I held my breath as the esthetician slathered hot goo on my lip and told me to relax. The next morning I woke up swollen, the tender skin above my lip angry and inflamed. We had a rule in my house: no fever or vomiting, no sick days. I spent the day at school hiding out in the bathroom, running cold water over brown paper towels, and pressing the makeshift compresses into my face. My brother punched me in the mouth, I offered when classmates shot me inquisitive looks. The truth seemed more embarrassing.

This is horrifying. What kind of parent would refuse to let their kid stay home in this scenario 💀

I heard people in my recovery meetings say that hitting bottom doesn’t have to be catastrophic; it can simply mean that we are ready to stop digging.

I made it to the final interview for an assistant role at a food magazine but missed a typo in a copy-editing test that cost me the job. (The second A in Rachael Ray still haunts me.)

It wasn’t the first time I had woken up in a strange place, but I finally hated myself enough to accept what it meant: I was done drinking.

When you don’t know who you are, your job can be an excellent placeholder.

I had been lying to myself when I said I didn’t want something serious or with strings attached. I wanted the strings that came with sex; without them, sex just felt transactional.

when I was drinking, I liked pretty much everyone. But without the haze of alcohol, I became a more discerning judge of character.

I had tried to moderate my drinking before. Only one glass of wine at dinner, no more than four cocktails at the bar, no tequila shots, etc. But these guidelines never worked. To me, one glass of wine is a waste of calories. I truly don’t understand the point.

the insanity of my drinking was my inability to accept that it wasn’t serving me. Once I fully accepted that I simply couldn’t drink safely, I felt an incredible amount of relief. I didn’t have to work harder to be “better” at drinking. I could just not drink.

You know how people used to think sexual assault was just something that happened between two strangers in an alley but now we’re learning that it’s more nuanced? Maybe drinking is like that. Maybe what we think a drinking problem is versus what it really looks like is changing.

The occasions themselves didn’t matter; every event was an excuse to drink,

In retrospect, I understand that SantaCon is embarrassing and awful. It’s a day New Yorkers dread, a sloppy assault on city sidewalks and subways.

One of the founders at my startup had decided the goal was to get everyone drunk. He was thoughtful in his approach. I think, he explained as we walked to get coffee one winter afternoon, it’s important for me to drink the most so I can lead by example. This way no one will feel uncomfortable letting loose.

The next day, another friend texted to see how the party was. It was objectively not fun, and I hid in the bathroom multiple times. But I am so happy I’m not hungover today. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

My mom is my best friend: we speak multiple times a day and understand each other unlike anyone else can. But there was so much I kept from her. I wondered how many other mothers and daughters did the same, talking constantly without saying anything that might upset the other.

You’re entitled to your feelings. But sometimes, just because we feel something, doesn’t mean we need to share it with that person.