High Sobriety (26 page)

September

IT'S BEEN MORE
than two months since I visited Jon Currie and he shook up my world with the words ‘pre-malignant addiction'. If damage has been done, I want to know. But the public-health system moves slowly — I'm still waiting for an appointment.

I can hardly complain; I'm not a real patient. Still, the longer I have to wait, the more time there is to dwell on the possible outcome. What if the results of these tests reveal that I have more in common with Jon's patients than I can accept? And why does the thought of drinking again scare me just as much as the thought of not drinking again?

Moderate drinking is probably not an option if I have a damaged brain. And I'm not even sure I want to drink moderately: there are times when I really miss being drunk. I'm a little bored of always being in control; I want to surrender to the night and be taken on a journey. I want to see the ‘wonderful, curious things' that Oscar Wilde spoke of so fondly. I don't miss the messy, crying-into-warm-flat-beer-at-5.00-a.m. kinda drunk, but I do hanker for that liquid gold feeling when you're a few drinks in, your inhibitions slowly dissolve, and you share a common buzz with your friends.

Most days, I don't feel cheated because the upside to sobriety is a surprisingly lush plain. I have newfound confidence and a fitter body and mind, and in place of procrastination I have acquired the ability to get shit done. But lately, approaching the pointy end of my year-long sojourn from the sauce, there are times when I really feel the strain. It's hard not to drink for this long, when practically everyone you know drinks regularly. It's hard to stay on track, when alcohol seems to ambush you on every street corner. Sometimes I'm just plain bored. There's something quite liberating about allowing yourself a night where you say, ‘Fuck it; I'm going to get smashed.' It's a tension-buster and a reward.

Yesterday, at the end of a long week, there were staff drinks at work and I found myself with my nose buried in a colleague's empty beer bottle, inhaling the enticing smell of Crown Lager. You know you're really missing booze when even the sniff of a Crownie has you salivating. My sense of smell is more keenly attuned to the aroma of alcohol than ever before. On the way home from work, I can sniff out a passenger's lunchtime shiraz from the other end of the tram. When I asked my picture editor recently if she'd had a liquid lunch, she was taken aback. She hadn't touched a drop. I'd picked up the faint smell of alcohol from a home-baked rum ball she'd eaten earlier in the day. My friends have grown accustomed to me sniffing their wine and beer before they have a sip. I close my eyes and inhale the rich fumes, as if trying to recapture the scent of a lover who has slipped away from me.

At night, I often dream of booze. The same recurring theme: I have fallen off the wagon. Sometimes it's in spectacular fashion — vomiting on a bathroom floor or waking up dizzy with shagger's hair and a strange man in my bed. In each dream I am bereft. When I wake, the sense of relief that I have not broken my booze ban is palpable, and this powers me forward. I like to think that these dreams are signposts, as I feel my way in the dark through a foreign land. They point to how gross that Crownie would taste on my breath the morning after a massive night and a few hours' sleep. They point to the fleeting satisfaction of the quick fix.

But this obsession with booze, or the lack of it, makes me fearful. I wonder if these signposts point not only to my past, but also to my future. When I do finally relinquish control, how will I manage freedom? If my hedonistic streak has a more clinical explanation, that freedom might turn into a straitjacket, locking me into an old life I've spent more than eight months trying to change.

I've told close friends about my conversation with Jon Currie. Some find the idea that I might have a dependency on alcohol preposterous. I'm a high-functioning professional woman; I'm not what an addict looks like. Alcoholics drink whisky in brown paper bags; they stumble over and slur their words, lost in a hazy dreamscape. They live in squalor, or they might live well but hide their disease, drinking vodka in the bathroom before the kids get up. But perhaps those perceptions are false — a Hollywood version of what it means to be hooked. Addiction isn't always so clear-cut.

Today, I meet someone who lived a long time in that grey space between sobriety and addiction. Will is a 41-year-old airline engineer from Melbourne. At 3.00 a.m., on a long night shift in April, he'd finished servicing the jets on his list and sat down in a quiet room for a break. He pulled out his iPhone and started to catch up with the day's news. As he scrolled through stories, he found the article about my break from drinking. He told me, ‘I was high-fiving the air and saying, “Yes!” out loud. Everything you were writing was me.'

It's been just over two years since Will left rehab. We've spoken on the phone and by email over the last few months, but never met in person. Today, I'm anxious as I come face to face with a man who has been through treatment for an alcohol problem, yet thinks we are living parallel lives. He's a big man, with a gentle demeanour and a permanent smile. His handshake is firm and friendly. We're sitting in the upper atrium of the
Age
building, away from the bustle of the cafe downstairs. I joke that I'm meeting more heavy drinkers sober than I ever did when I was pissed. He laughs and says that, like me, he never thought he'd find himself at the point he's reached, as a non-drinker after so many years of partying. ‘My journey to the “High Sobriety” club was a mammoth one,' he says, and I bristle at the name, thinking I've inadvertently formed a Christian prayer group.

His story starts out similarly to mine, although he'd turned 17 before he had his first drink. He saw it as a sign that he was maturing, becoming a man. By the time he reached his twenties, his drinking had become ‘professional'. At 23, after stacking on a lot of weight, he decided to give up the grog and go on a fitness kick. He enjoyed his trimmer, sober self. Then, when he earned his engineer's licence, he had what he describes as a ‘fuck-it moment', getting on the piss to celebrate. He'd lasted nine months without booze — almost exactly where I am now. As the weeks and months progressed, his old drinking habits crept in. Four beers twice a week became five beers three times a week, then six, seven, eight beers, until he was drinking a dozen beers a day. But that was okay because ‘I was the bumbling, happy, fun, silly drunk. Everyone loved me. Life was fun.'

His thirties sneaked up, and it wasn't long before he found himself knocking back 18 cans of VB every day. Some days he might only drink ten beers, but they'd be followed by a bottle of gin. He never drank at work, but he knows there were days when he was impaired, and he frequently drove while over the limit. He was never pulled over. The thought of what could have been still haunts him.

When he came home from work, he'd down a can before he'd even taken his uniform pants off. He drank in front of the television. He drank down the pub with mates. Often he drank alone. His partner of 15 years asked him to cut down, and he would — for a day or two. It didn't last. Only later, during counselling in treatment, did he learn that she'd packed her bags on more than one occasion. Having convinced himself that he didn't have a problem, he was oblivious. But the ‘dead soldiers' on bin night were hard to ignore. ‘When you go to the pub, you don't see it because you're just drinking a glass. The glass goes, it's refilled, and you continue on again. There's no evidence left behind, which is probably the danger of the pub.'

At his local, he met similar souls. ‘When you have a group of heavy drinkers at the pub, they have a bond, a kinship, and they're able to talk about their problems without talking about them directly. That's a very male thing, I guess. Those people were my family. You'd sit at the bar and have a chat about life, about philosophy.'

Will's pub family reminds me of some of the regulars at The Rose. The sense of community has its benefits: mateship and social cohesion, an antidote to loneliness. But it can also harbour denial. When your problem is mirrored back at you in the faces of your friends, it's no longer a problem; it's normal. ‘I had some friends who liked to drink with me because they saw me as worse than them. They had their own problems, clearly, but I think it gave them self-confidence because they could look at my drinking and think they weren't that bad. But then, I could always find someone who was worse than me, someone who was another level of severe.'

As the year of his 40th birthday approached, Will's health started deteriorating rapidly. Burdened by huge weight gain and the beginnings of a nervous breakdown, he finally sought help. He told his GP that he felt like he was dying. ‘Physically, my body was shutting down. I had trouble breathing, my mind was a mess, I wasn't thinking straight, I wasn't performing like I used to. It was severe. He took a blood test. My liver was looking bad, my blood pressure was really up — everything pointed towards me being in real trouble. I was here at this low point, knowing it was a fork in the road. Turn left and die, turn right and live.'

Even then, he still didn't identify as an addict. He thought that he'd just stop drinking, have some counselling, and get on with things. He was a tough, no-nonsense Aussie bloke who was going to beat this on his own terms. After regular visits with a psychologist, Will reluctantly agreed to enter a private rehab facility. He had to share a room, a big ask for a fiercely private person. Inside this facility, where drug- and alcohol-addled ghosts drifted in the corridors, he was convinced that he was different.

The first few days were boring. ‘I didn't really partake in any of the programs; I didn't really seem like I fitted into it. I don't know if it was day three or day four, but I had breakfast, and afterwards I just sat on a couch and played games and read magazines because there's not much to do. Then, I just started to feel like shit. It was nothing like I've ever felt before. It was just getting worse and worse. I was shaky, itchy inside — you feel curly. But it was frightening; it scared the shit out of me. I said to the nurse, “I think I'm not well. There's something wrong with me.” I thought I had a cold or something. And they said, “It's starting.” I was a mess. I was like that for weeks. My mate who dropped me off came round to see me and I was just a shaking ball.'

The physical withdrawal took Will by surprise. He knew drinking had compromised his body to the point that it was failing him, but he had no idea of the extent of his problem. ‘I didn't believe I was bad enough that I needed to go to rehab. You think of rehab and you think of movie stars taking cocaine, and I thought, no, I'm not like that. You don't believe it because it's just alcohol.'

He left rehab after three weeks, but it would take six months for the shakes to stop completely. He knew that he could never drink again. Yet staying on track meant dismantling his old life. It was a ‘brutal cut' to ditch his old drinking buddies, and it was painful to avoid the pub, particularly on a warm summer's day, when his mind would taunt him with the sight, taste, and smell of cold beer. Now, he rarely goes to parties. If he does, he creates a ‘plan of attack' to protect himself from temptation. It always involves leaving early. ‘Drinking puts you in a psychological or behavioural mode, and if you don't have synergy with that mode then you're not part of the party. You've just got to learn to find other ways in life.'

This makes me sad. Is it really the case that you can be the life and soul of the party or you can be a non-drinker, but you can't be both? As much as I try to convince myself that wild times and sobriety are not mutually exclusive, I relate to Will's experience. There's no escaping the imbalance in synergies when you're sober at a party and everyone else is on the piss. Sometimes it's less pronounced than others, and you can dance like a whirling dervish, whooping it up as if you've just knocked back six tequila shots, but other times you have that feeling your immersion is incomplete. After the first few months of this sobriety adventure, I was convinced that I didn't need alcohol to be outrageous and uninhibited. But the longer I abstain, the harder it is to believe that fully. Sometimes, without a drink in my hand, I feel like a pale imitation of that riotous party girl I once was. I miss the freedom of being drunk; I'm nostalgic for the unique sense of merriment you share with fellow drinkers. It's fun and unpredictable in a way that sobriety can't easily replicate. Often, my nights out feel tame in comparison to days of old. There are times when I wonder if my sober self has become imbued with a hint of beige.

For Will, giving up grog meant that he had to redefine his identity. He's no longer the bumbling, fun guy, always ready to crack open a beer with his mates. His new personality is still in its infancy, but just as he once identified as the drunk party animal, now sobriety defines him. ‘I had a very distinguished person say to me at work that I was a disgrace for not drinking, and I was so proud of that. As shocking as it was, and the mixed emotions it brought up, jeez, it was a trophy. I'm a totally new person. I would take that over my old identity any day of the week. I'm looking forward to what I can achieve in life.'

But as I listen to him tell me about the things that fill his new life — pottering around the house doing odd jobs, catching up with friends for coffee, and leaving parties early to treat himself to a slice of cake on the way home — it sounds so conservative and controlled. He's moved from that grey space between addiction and sobriety, into a world that is a different shade of grey. But for him, there is no other way. ‘I can't drink moderately. That frightens me. If I had one sip of one beer it won't be that Saturday I'll be back into the 18 cans again, but I can see myself slipping into oblivion. It gives you the confidence that you can have one and that's fine. And then next month, something special comes along and you end up having two. And you get confident about that, and this may go on for a year or so, and after five years you're back to 18 cans a day again. That's a reality for me, and there's a very thick, deep line in the sand and I will not cross it. I will not have one. I avoid it. That's the strategy I live with. I will have to do this for the rest of my life, and it's a battle that I may lose one day. But I'm fairly determined. I want to live; I don't want to die a horrible, painful death.'