Sarah* did not wake up in the bed of a stranger, nor vomited over the Uber driver.
She knew that she didn’t have to check her phone in the morning and shrink from the insulting texts she had sent to colleagues. She didn’t even need a Panadol. There was no drama, no tragedy, no sirens, no latch of handcuffs.
It was just one glass of Pinot Noir.
She was shopping in the supermarket one evening when she saw the clattery bar next door.
“I went inside, almost unconsciously, sat down, ordered a pinot, drank him and went home,” she told me.
“It was really that simple.”
Harmless? Boring, even? Why do I even tell you this?
Because, like me, Sarah has called himself alcoholic for six years. And now she says she is drinking again.
I have been sober for six years. Now one of my friends in recovery gives ‘moderation’ a go
We met in recovery meetings, binding on a shared feeling of fear and shame about our outside -handed drinks.
Together we recover, religiously attending meetings, week after week, month after month, year after year, we slowly rebuild our lives.
One day at the same time.
Together we celebrated our sober milestones, enjoying wine -free trips to coffee shops and shopping centers, wondered how clear our skin looked, how wonderfully eight hours of sober sleep felt.
There was no doubt about it: we were both so much happier after cutting the demonent drink.
And like two women who live in The eastern suburbs of Sydney, where ‘wines and lines’ are a socially acceptable activity, we wore our austerity as an honorary day.
But now Sarah told me that she had discovered ‘moderation’ – a foreign concept for both of us years earlier. The fact that we had found moderate drinks so impossible was the reason why we had concluded that it was better to remember completely.
After that first glass of wine, she had a few more glasses in social environments in the weeks that followed. She told me that she felt happy and under control.
In the beginning I was not worried about her. I even wondered if ‘moderation’ might also be possible for me. Maybe we were different from other women we met in those meetings?
When I met Sarah* in recovery, ‘moderation’ was a foreign concept for both of us
In the recovery we had heard women drinking morning, secret bottle shop runs, hiding drinks in dressers and desk councils. Those were things we had never done.
One woman even cried when she admitted that he would drink Handsanitor to stop her shakes.
We did not judge her – but we had never been.
Sarah and I were well -functioning mothers from the middle class whose lunch SAV Blanc Habit had become toxic, threatening to sabotage our orderly arranged life.
My drink had escalated at a stressful time in my life when I lived with non -diagnosed bipolar disorder.
During that time, I wrote bestsellerbooks and went to the gym every morning. It was not exactly what you would call a downward spiral.
Not all alcoholics end up in handcuffs. Personally, I became sober because I was ‘sick and tired to be sick and tired’ – a saying that I often hear in recovery.
That was enough for me to get help.
The story of Sarah was similar. Her rock bottom was not a trip to there, a bitter divorce or losing her job. It was too many nauseous mornings, the bags under her eyes and the shame to eliminate a trash can that sounds with wine bottles.
In recovery it was struck in us that if we ever drank again, we would probably die, kill someone by driving or ending up in the hospital or ending up an institution.
It is a fear that we had to have – even if our sausage -case scenarios tended to be manders, hazy memories of the night before and the strange morning ban.
When Sarah told me her secret – yes, ‘moderate drinking’ is really a dirty little secret in our community – I started to look at alcoholism differently.
Sarah had picked up a drink a month ago and nothing bad had happened.
Admittedly, nothing special had happened – but the story of Sarah questioned me everything that I was told about our disease, as some people like to name it.
This is what I have concluded: there can be two types of female alcoholic.
There is the classic. The alcoholic whose life implodes because of her drinks. She can lose her job or custody of their children, become homeless or in prison.
I know many women like this. Alcoholism is one of the biggest murderers there are, it is progressive and to make light out of it is dangerous and extremely irresponsible.
They just can’t drink. One is too much. A single sip causes a relapse.
But then there are women like me, such as Sarah, the slow burners, those who may have one or two drinks – and maintained this for weeks, months.
But even for us, drinking can only stay moderate for so long. We realize, one day, that two drinks in one meeting will be three, then four. Again, not catastrophic, but plenty of a slow escalation for us to realize that we are going in the wrong direction.
The story of Sarah is dangerous. Relapse is not always an immediate disaster, but for many ex-Drinkers, picking up that first glass is on fire again.
Now that I am medication for my bipolar and in a more stable place in my life, it is tempting to believe that I could drink in moderation.
Maybe I could do it. But it is not worth the gamble. I would never want to bet my life on the chance that I am one of the few alcoholics who can safely return to moderate drinks.
I worked too hard to get here. I have cleared my act, my sparkle and joy have returned and I never want to let it go again – not because of a few social wines.
So my friend Sarah is perhaps good, a few weeks in her moderate lifestyle. She can even feel more connected to others, even more ‘fun’.
But what if she doesn’t feel well next week, next month or next year? What if she is stressed or anxious and picks up a drink to calm the forces in her.
Suddenly she is self -medication again.
If you read this and ask you if you can drink again, ask yourself: what do you hope to get from it?
Sarah’s world did not fall apart, certainly. But because of her own recognition, the strange Pinot Noir has not transformed her life for good or.
Drinking would not add anything to my life and the risk only the risks to disturb the peace that I have worked for years to reclaim. I wouldn’t want it for all the money in the world.
* Name has been changed. Sarah has given Amanda Goff permission to share her story under a pseudonym.
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