PINK CLOUDS AND SCARE STORIES
HOW I EMBRACED DRY JANUARY IN THE MIDST OF A FLOOD: A RETROSPECTIVE INTO MY JOURNEY PART 2 : DIGGING IN, BAILING OUT
I GUESS I’M WHAT SOME WOULD CALL A GREY AREA DRINKER : I DON’T SIP FROM A BOTTLE IN A PAPER BAG ON A PARK BENCH (THOUGH I HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO SMUGGLE WINE INTO A CONCERT IN A WATER BOTTLE) BUT I DO DRINK EVERY NIGHT “TO RELAX”, “TO DE-STRESS” , “TO SOCIALISE” .
MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY WOULD SOMETIMES SUGGEST I MODERATE MY DRINKING BUT I NEVER THOUGHT I HAD A PROBLEM: I HAVE WILLPOWER I CAN STOP ANYTIME! WELL HERE WE GO -TIME TO PUT THAT STATEMENT INTO PRACTICE - JANUARY 2023 AND I’M GOING TO DO DRY JANUARY! DOES IT GO ACCORDING TO PLAN: WELL NOT REALLY ON SO MANY DIFFERENT LEVELS! HERE IS PART 2 OF MY JOURNEY TO DETOX AND RESET
TRENCH WARFARE
DAY 8 starts early, 3AM to be precise. Having gone to bed at midnight I get up at a 3AM alarm to check water levels …and there’s a lot so I just stay up. The carpet is definitely ruined (still, it had a few moth holes!), even so I do the best I can to stem the flow but it’s a lost cause. Desperate times require desperate measures so we hire a jack-hammer and make a very large trench in the dining room floor and stick a pump in it .. Shazam! We have a solution!
And do I want just one teeny tiny drink to celebrate? No way ! My amazing therapy group talk is on moderating our drinking as opposed to stopping, a timely discussion on the dangers of “just one drink” . I consider. Am I someone who is able to moderate my drinking? To be honest I’ve tried this numerous times in the past and for the first few days or even weeks it works. Then imperceptibly, the 1 glass creeps up to 2 or the “weekend” extends from 3 days to 4, and hey presto I’m back where I started! The amazing William Porter very kindly tells me its not my fault: alcohol is an addictive substance and like any addictive substance if you partake enough of it enough times you will be hooked like a pike on a jig hook. But is this knowledge enough to dissuade me from my strawberry daiquiri on a London rooftop terrace now and again or my glass of fizz on a hotel balcony in the Mediterranean sun? Would the odd one really be that terrible? So there is something called cognitive dissonance: its a mental conflict that happens when you believe or think 2 contradictory things at once, an internal struggle. It’s like knowing you need to protect the environment but refusing to stop using plastic bags. It makes us feel bad! Well alcohol, at least for those for whom alcohol is a struggle, can feel conflicted like this all the time, especially if we are trying to moderate. We make deals with ourselves, plan exactly how an evening will pan out, but then spend the entire night arguing with ourselves, making deals ontop of deals ontop of more deals: “just one more wont be a problem” , “I’ll drink fewer tomorrow to make up for it”, “Its Saturday night..” . My God it’s exhausting and it’s called cognitive dissonance . For the next 30 days I am of one voice and that voice is strong and that voice is sober!
2 WHEN IS A WINE NOT A WINE?
Woke up on DAY 9 full of energy and ready to take on the day! I do seem to feel more clear-headed, not just in the evenings without my glass of wine at hand but also throughout the day. The water situation is relatively stable, though I have re-purposed the dog cam in order to constantly monitor the internal pump.. my sleep routine is pretty much broken! The camera has, though, enabled some semblance of normality to return: I've created some Insta posts, done some work admin and now have some down time in the evenings.
My go to after supper is trash TV (the Below Deck franchise is my absolute favourite: did you know the amazing Sandy Yawn ditched the drink 33 years ago?) with a glass (or 3) of wine to lubricate the process. So wanting to “keep the ritual but change the substance” as is advised, what on earth shall I put in my glass? Looking back to DAY 1 this was an early issue for me. I was concerned that drinking Alcohol Free (AF) wine would be a trigger and encourage me to drink the real thing. Well by DAY 9 I have laid this particular bug-bear to bed! AF wines and spirits for me are definitely the way forward and many, especially in a mocktail are just the cats pyjamas! To be perfectly honest AF wines aren't exactly wine (though they most definitely aren’t the near-grape-juice offerings of years gone by!) AF wine (in fact all AF alcohol) goes through the same fermentation process as normal wine, but just before bottling the alcohol content is removed by distillation and filtration. Well its actually a lot more complicated than that but thats it in a shot glass! It brings to my art-history mind (my other hat!) Oeufs Sur Le Plat, sans the Plat (eggs on the plate without the plate: it loses much in translation!!) by Dali: something of a paradox.. wine without the wineness!
Anyway , I digress. So in the spirit of research my friend and I test some AF drinks. As far as wines go for us white is much more successful than red. Our favourite is Torres Natureo 0.0% . At nearly £9 its not cheap but trust me you won’t drink the bottle one go so it will last! Another we love is from the Cognato range : the white and the rose are super. I love a negroni or a Campari soda and Lyre’s Italian Spritz is a realistic alternative. Lyre do some great rum alternatives too perfect for daiquiris. Fizz alternatives are superb: we are blown away by the Freixenet 0.0% , Noughty Sparkling Chardonnay and La Gioiosa Prosecco . Just a word here on ABVs. La Gioiosa is 0.5% alcohol by volume (pure alcohol being 100%) but its ok and is classed as alcohol free: some countries insist on this rating by law in fact for all free from alcohol drinks that have been through fermentation. TBH kombucha and even a ripe banana have more alcohol by volume!! So my new evening ritual: pour a glass of guilt free, alcohol free, paradoxical wine but-not-wine and curl up on the sofa with a dog or three (and the dog cam - remember the flood) and some Below Deck shenanigans!
3 SCARY TALES AND FRIGHTENING FABLES
As life in the water mill becomes the daily grind so I find myself with even time on my hands: I can’t leave the house but I am not really doing much either! In between checking pumps I start checking out podcasts and books, documentaries and Quit Lit (yes, it really is a thing!) . In fact I am becoming quite an addict (and who said there’s no such thing as an addictive personality? Well Mark Griffiths for one. There really isn’t: some people who get more lit up by alcohol succumb to its intoxicating allure more quickly than others and that’s not down to one particular personality trait: but addiction or drinking more than is healthy can and does affect anyone!) . The incredible program I’m following run by the amazing Sarah Rusbatch (Grey area drinking coach : more on grey area later) has daily Live check-ins which sometimes include talks by truly inspirational people who have ditched the booze. My 2 stand outs from this week are Ash Butterss, who stands up loudly and proudly as a recovered alcoholic, aiming to remove the stigma from addiction, trauma and mental health (check out her fab podcast) and Justine Whitchurch who suffered near-death alcohol addiction (OMG her story is so terrifying) and now runs the Fearful to Fierce recovery program and has written an amazing book Sobriety Delivered Everything Alcohol Promised. Less scary but equally inspirational is Clare Pooley, who’s wine o’clock habit had spiralled out of control and who has written an eminently readable and relatable book The Sober Diaries as well as 2 novels.
Moving on from scary tales and frightening fables I hit the heavyweights: the real hide-behind-a-cushion horror stories. Louis Theroux has always been one of my go to documentary makers. I watch Drinking to Oblivion: its gritty and honest and ultimately extremely sad. But then someone in my group tells me it’s based on a much earlier documentary called Rain in My Heart . Before you rush off to watch this STOP - know it is an altogether different beast not for the faint hearted. Shocking? totally. Raw? Disturbing? Desperate? Hopeless? Yes, it’s all those things. As far as Quit Lit/documentaries go it was definitely my rock bottom. Lets move on quickly .. Ab Fab! OMG I loved this show!! Watch it for the pitch perfect script, the laugh out loud humour and the sheer randomness of the plot but also the underlying sadness of Patsy and Edina living their best lives in a haze of drugs and alcohol. And then there is there masterpiece that is The Queens Gambit: Anya Taylor-Joy plays a high functioning addict in this immense drama set in the world of chess: and its a huge girl power cheerleader to boot!
So the bedtime story on DAY 11? Well to be perfectly honest I needed a bit of break from the Quit Lit and the flood so I’m reading Piranesi by Susannah Clarke, its got absolutely nothing about alcohol, addiction or water .. or has it?
4 FADE AWAY AND RADIATE
Its DAY 13 and I’m really getting sick to the sea-bed of this darned flood! I keep turning off the indoor pump to see if the water tase has dropped below floor level and although the water is no longer pouring in it is still coming in and it is still too high for comfort: The dining room still looks like scene from an archeological dig and I’m so tired of the incessant hum of heaters and de-humidifiers drying out the (thankfully now written off by the insurance company) sitting room carpet and floor. I keep going check on the pumps, I even put a little round stone as a marker to watch the water level.. every half hour, every 15 minutes, every 5 minutes. It’s beginning to feel like an old movie: you know how it will pan out, but you force yourself to watch anyway. And when i’m not physically watching I’m fixated by the blue neon glow of the dog cam: in the words of Debbie Harry: the dream (nightmare) is on the screen.
So back on DAY 10 I said I’d talk about grey area drinking. Grey area drinking is anything that falls between moderate and risky. That’s quite a vague description really. So let’s dissect it a bit. Moderate drinking in the UK is defined as between 7 and 14 units of alcohol a week for women or no more than 9 standard sized drinks a week: so about a glass of wine a night. I’ll not go into how much I was drinking here but it was definitely in excess of that. Risky drinking on the other hand is binge drinking (5 or more units in 2 hours) or heavy drinking (35 units or more a week for women). The area in between is the grey area, the buffer zone. What are the signs you might be a grey area drinker. Well I love this test from Annie Grace: how much is your house worth? (its ok - no need to put it in the comments - just keep that amount in your head) if someone offered you half that amount but you could never ever, not even one glass of bubbly at your daughters wedding, drink again would you take it? Did you hesitate? At all? Just a millisecond? Well if you did then you are probably a grey area drinker. if you said outright NO WAY would I do that then you probably have a bigger issue and should take a break!
So where do you stand? White, black or somewhere in there middle? I started this blog by described myself as a grey area drinker however measuring myself by those criteria I may need to rethink (with sobriety comes honesty) but the bad memories are fading away. This is a common psychological phenomenon, called fading affect bias, whereby negative painful memories fade more quickly than positive ones. We remember the ice cream at the beach, aged 8, but not that we were bought it because we fell over and grazed our knee. But it was a great ice cream: raspberry ripple with a flake and multicoloured sprinkles. Neither do we remember it gave us a tummy ache on the way home and our Mum had to stop the car so we could throw up! Fade away and radiate! Fade away!
5 PINK CLOUDS AND SECOND HAND NEWS
It’s DAY 14.. half way through.. who’d have thought it! Has it been easy? Well so far not too bad! No huge cravings, though a few times I have thought why the hell am I doing this, what really is the point ? Do I miss drinking? Well yes now and again! I look longingly now and again at the empty wine rack and the ads for Bolly on Tv or witty pop ups in my in-box from wine merchants I have previously kept in Christian Louboutins. However today I catch myself dancing round the kitchen to Fleetwood Mac. I feel euphoric and ironically as if I’ve been drinking champagne all morning!! I also feel strangely optimistic for the future: could I possibly sustain this idea of not drinking beyond the 30 days? I really do feel its something I could, and possibly want, to do! After all its not been that hard so far!! Deluded? Unrealistic? This phenomenon is apparently known as the pink cloud syndrome . Think rose tinted glasses and floating in the sky with angels in blue jeans singing Fleetwood Mac covers! However, It feels great, I feel great, I feel like I can take on the World.
So alcohol, hear this, you are most definitely second hand news!