‘By My 50s I’d Lost Sight Of What Normal Drinking Looked Like’
Author, editor and ‘global nomad’ Robyn Flemming sat out COVID in regional Australia and this year will resume her international wanderings. She had her last drink during a hurricane in New York City in 2011 and has written about quitting alcohol in her book Skinful.
How will I cope with my life if I can never have another drink? Without alcohol, how will I soothe myself when I’m sad or disappointed or angry or frustrated? How will I fill the emptiness I sometimes feel? How can I enjoy social occasions with friends? How can I celebrate good times? How will I have any fun?
Even social drinkers who don’t have a problematic relationship with alcohol might ask themselves some of these questions if they had to quit drinking – for health reasons, say. But what about those of us who have gone beyond “social drinking” and are doing much of our imbibing alone so that no one will know how dependent we’ve become on alcohol to cope with just about everything? The thought of giving up is frightening.
I had my first drink as a teenager. For the next two decades or more I never questioned how – or how much – I drank. But by the time I turned 40, I was in its thrall. For the next nearly 20 years I struggled to find a way to keep alcohol in my life, even though the evidence was mounting that I was no longer just a social drinker with a busy social life, but was instead heading into very troubled waters.
By my late 50s, white wine and I were in a power struggle – and I was on the losing side. I’d lost sight of what “normal drinking” looked like, of how “normal people” drank. Like someone on a boat listing in a storm, I cast overboard anything I thought I could do without, to try to stay afloat and drinking. Those things included honesty (with myself and others), self-respect, peace of mind, dignity and intimacy.
Although I was struggling, I stayed mainly under the radar. Most people who knew me wouldn’t have suspected that I was frightened about where my drinking was taking me. I was a global nomad, a freelance editor who ran half-marathons and marathons in cities all over the world. I’d walked across England, trekked in the Himalaya and been to ANZAC Day dawn services at Gallipoli and in New Guinea. But inside, I felt like an imposter. I didn’t want anyone to know how much I needed that daily bottle – or bottle-and-a-half – of wine to cope with the bumps that are a normal part of life. It was a long time since drinking had simply been fun. I didn’t want others to know the real me, the woman who lived on edge inside my skin and whose anxious voice took up so much of my headspace.
““What about those of us who have gone beyond ‘social drinking’ and are doing much of our imbibing alone so that no one will know how dependent we’ve become on alcohol to cope with just about everything? The thought of giving up is frightening.””
Drinking was taking me in only one direction. At nearly 59, I had gone as low in my own estimation as I was prepared to go. My life hadn’t ended in the gutter, though I’d sometimes fallen in one. I hadn’t lost a driver’s licence for drink-driving, or a husband and children through alcoholic neglect. I didn’t need a stint in detox or rehab. I still functioned well in areas that were important to me. But every drink came at a cost. It eroded my dignity and self-respect. It caused me to lie; to feel shame and guilt, anxiety and fear; to withhold my real self from people I loved and wanted to be loved by.
When I drank three bottles of Chilean white wine during Hurricane Irene in New York City in August 2011, it was a ritualised farewell to a complex companion. I accepted that I had reached the end of that part of my story. It was time to write the first chapter of the rest of my life. I accepted that, from here on, I wouldn’t be able to live an authentic life, comfortable in my own skin, if alcohol were a part of it. There could be no more moving the day of reckoning to the first day of next year, or of next month, or of next week. Tomorrow was of no use to me. I had only today. It was time to make a new path to a different future.
Recovering from the emotional reliance on a decades-long habit would require me to trust in the process of recovery, one day at a time. One way I found to do that was to focus on some of the things I would lose by removing alcohol from my body and by changing the behaviours that had accompanied my drinking. I would lose the jitteriness in my own skin that had manifested as a tremor in my hands and fear of being seen too clearly. I would lose the anxiety that made me want to control everyone and everything around me. I would lose my shame and guilt, and my sense of regret and of wasted opportunities.
In their place, space gradually opened up for new emotions and sensations: comfort in my own skin; courage and optimism; self-confidence and self-acceptance; peace. I got my power back. The days of fear and anxiety were in the past. I was no longer afraid of what others might see should I let down my guard. I felt at home in my skin now, free to be me and to let what was on the inside show on the outside.
Skinful by Robyn Flemming is published by Brio Books, $24.95.