High Sobriety (11 page)

This is part of the appeal of being drunk — it frees you from the suffocating constraints of social conditioning. You're either so blind that you don't know or care how you look, or you're consumed by the giddy hubris of intoxication, which colours everything you do with that glowing hue of awesomeness. I must admit that I do miss the liberation of drunkenness; you have to work a lot harder to feel bulletproof when you're sober.

So I have a choice. I can either be socially reserved, using my sobriety as an excuse for timidity, or I can let go of my inhibitions and channel my inner piss-head, minus the booze. This is what I did in February, when I saw one of my favourite bands perform: Primal Scream were touring, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of their seminal album
Screamadelica
. Hearing the wonderfully dishevelled Bobby Gillespie chunter on about the good old days in his gruff Glaswegian accent, as the iconic images of one of the defining albums of my generation played in a psychedelic light show behind him, I was transported back to the heady heights of my teenage years. As the first glorious bars of ‘Movin' On Up' rocked Melbourne's Forum Theatre, it was the closest I'd felt to being pissed since I stopped drinking. The music was so exhilarating that I couldn't help but dance like no-one was watching. But someone was. A picture taken by one of the
Age
photographers captures me dancing with such divine abandon — eyes shut, singing loudly, sweaty hair flying in all directions — that it prompted my friend Beck to comment on Facebook: ‘Holy sobriety. I didn't think a girl could roll like that going pure.' I'm learning that if I can lose myself in the moment, free of introspective bullshit, alcohol becomes superfluous.

But sobriety can't make every night top-notch. At a less than enjoyable party earlier this month, I found myself hankering for a beer. Crammed into a corner, shouting banal pleasantries to strangers above the sort of doof-doof music you hear on government anti-drugs adverts, I fantasised about how a few beers might make this party better. Then it occurred to me: sometimes a shit party is just a shit party, and no amount of booze will change that. If only I'd figured this out earlier, I'd have saved myself a lot of energy making small talk with obnoxious try-hards and hooking up with charmless narcissists. Previously, if I was having a shit time, I'd drink more; I reasoned that the faster I could get pissed, the better the night would get. It wasn't great logic, and it rarely worked.

There are, however, some things I've not yet learned to do sober. Sex and soda water have proven to be incompatible bedfellows. Apart from my Australia Day eve pash at Cherry Bar — a romantic interlude which, incidentally, fizzled out before it began — my love life has ground to a halt. When I pause to reflect on why this might be, I'm faced with a number of answers. Firstly, I realise that I haven't been sober during sex in years, probably not since my eight-year relationship ended in 2007. After the split, I threw myself into a series of unsatisfying flings and one-night stands, unions all signed in the sticky ink of pale ale and vodka. I met most of the men in a bar or at a party — which, as we all know, is the ideal starting point for any meaningful relationship. There was the hot police officer, who insisted on having the true-crime television show
The First 48
as the soundtrack to his performance, and tortured me the next morning by blasting out Cold Chisel songs as he drove me home in his Holden Commodore. Then there was the 20-something guy I picked up at 5.00 a.m., after deciding he was potential boyfriend material based solely on the observation that he was sexy and wearing a nice hat. In the harsh light of morning, I discovered that his hat was clearly designed to deflect attention from the fact that he didn't seem to own shoes. And how could I forget the romantic charmer who did the deed and waited until I fell asleep to flee, leaving me to believe, for the first few minutes of the next day, that I'd dreamed the entire unedifying experience.

If this is the calibre of men I'm hooking up with when drunk, perhaps it's better to be sober and celibate. The ugly insides of the handsome strangers I used to be attracted to are so much easier to spot now that I'm sober. Several times in the last few months, I've had guys chat me up, only to see them lose interest when they discover I'm not drinking. It's disappointing, but instructive — the kind of guy who needs a woman to be drunk before he can make his move is not much of a man.

This year, I'm going to have to change my tactics. If those
Sex and the City
gals are anything to go by, I won't need alcohol to pick up blokes: I'll find my guy easily by seductively perusing canned goods at the supermarket, or by pretending to shop for power tools in a hardware store. Perhaps I'll join one of those singles cookery classes, or adopt a dog to act as a man-magnet.

While sober dating scares the hell out of me, it's got to be better than drunken dating disasters of the past.

WHEN I TOLD
my editor that I was giving up booze, she thought it would make a good feature for the paper. We weren't really sure how the piece would take shape, but we figured that an examination of Australia's drinking culture, told through the eyes of a binge-drinking health reporter during a break from booze, might hold some interest for our readers. Now, she's shocked to learn that I'm voluntarily opting to stay sober for another three months. She presumed, as I did, that when 1 April came along I'd have the drinks lined up on the bar, trumpets sounding and party poppers popping, as I counted down the last few seconds of sobriety and prepared to embrace my old pal boozy mcbooze-pants. Instead, I find myself writing a piece about my three months without alcohol, and how it has changed me so much that I'm extending my drinking ban until July. Outing myself as a massive booze hound in the national press was not part of my career plan, but this is exactly what I'm about to do.

The night before we go to print, I'm hunched over the news desk, staring at a printout of the next day's paper. There I am, dancing like a maniac at the Primal Scream gig, my toothy grin and wayward mane prominent above a 2500-word confessional about my binge-drinking ways. My editor laughs. ‘I can't quite believe you're doing this,' she says, and I shoot her a look so panicked that it prompts her to rest a hand on my shoulder and tell me not to worry. It doesn't reassure me. Holy shit — what the fuck am I doing? Tomorrow my colleagues will read this. Health professionals who respect me, and know nothing of my party-girl side, will view me in a different light. In 12 years of journalism, I've never had something so personal published. Our job is to report the news, and occasionally to give our opinion on it, but rarely to become it.

The next morning I wake up early to grab the paper. My tale of drunken debauchery takes up an entire broadsheet page. My face beams back at me; it's huge. In a secondary picture, I'm captured grinning inanely, my head wedged between two large glasses of beer — somewhere a village is missing its idiot. This morning I'm cocooned inside my flat, the blinds drawn, but I feel as if I've invited the world into my living room. I am starkers, in body, mind, and moniker.

Then the text messages start. Friends reading my story in bed while contending with mammoth hangovers tell me that they found it inspiring; it's made them think about how much they drink, and why. The head of public affairs at one of Melbourne's major public hospitals messages me to say that he found the article courageous and life-affirming. On Facebook and Twitter, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, contacts, and complete strangers are talking about the story in terms that make my heart lilt and my cheeks redden.

It's not even lunchtime, and the article has become the most-read story on the
Age
website. Dozens of people leave comments. Reading them, I realise that this is not just my story — my love–hate square dance with alcohol is one that countless others are having, week after week. Many are desperate to find a new dance partner. Some comments are from women my age, caught in a cycle of partying that's no longer satisfying. Others are heartbreaking: a man talks of his alcoholic father, reduced to drinking methylated spirits after retirement left him without the financial means to accommodate his habit; the father had died three weeks ago, brain-damaged, broken, and too young. For some, my story was neither uplifting nor motivational. One reader says that she found the article sad — sad that my peers define me by my drinking, and sad that I was scared to be my true self. Another thinks that the problem is not alcohol, but my inability to say no and to respect myself. One says that a six-month period of sobriety last year was ‘the most boring and depressing time of my life', and informs me, ironically, that booze bans are usually instituted by social bores. A number of teenagers relate to my experience, saying they feel pressured to drink in an environment that views abstinence as abnormal. Nothing I've ever written has had a response like this — it's like group therapy for binge drinkers. It suggests that this is a conversation worth having.

By the end of the day, more than 30 new bloggers have signed up to
Hello Sunday Morning
, most of them saying that they were inspired to give sobriety a go after reading my article. Looking at their posts, which are full of the trepidation that comes with that first step, I'm reminded of how far down this road I am: I'm reminded of how insurmountable three months without booze seemed back at the start, and how insignificant another three months feels now. As I go to sleep, my body feels warmed by a day like no other. My head spins as if I'm drunk. It is 100 days today since I last had a drink. Sobriety has never been more intoxicating.

WHEN I GET
to work the next day, there are more emails from readers, friends, and contacts. Chris Raine calls, and tells me that the
Hello Sunday Morning
server is struggling to cope with the number of new sign-ups. Colleagues are messaging me, and stopping me in the stairwell with supportive words. It's great that people have connected with the story, but I'm mindful that it also revealed I was a party-hardened reprobate who verballed her boss while drunk, and used alcohol as both an aphrodisiac and an antiseptic. Under the glare of the
Age
cafeteria's down lights, I start to wonder if my loquacious confession was perhaps a case of oversharing. I worry even more when one colleague wishes me strength, and emails me the link to a 12-step recovery program.

Thoughts of rehab are quickly shelved when I get an email from a publisher. They read the article and loved it; they want to meet with me and discuss book ideas. I call Loretta in shock. As she squeals down the phone, an email arrives from another publisher. I hold my head in my hands. It feels heavy, as if it might roll off my shoulders. Writing a book is all I've wanted to do since I was a nerdy eight-year-old, lost in blissful oblivion with my nose buried in an Enid Blyton story. Who would have thought that getting pissed every weekend for most of my adult life might be the way that dream comes true?

Later, I get a call from Channel Nine. They want to fly Chris and me to Sydney the following week, to appear on the
Kerri-Anne
show. I have to stifle a giggle. I know that while my friends will be delighted my article has won me professional accolades and approaches from publishers, the achievement of being interviewed by the queen of daytime television will bring me the most kudos in their eyes. This is a woman so outrageously kitsch that she once persuaded a sitting prime minister to dance the rumba, and a federal treasurer to bust out the macarena, on national television. I immediately say yes.

During the week, Kerri-Anne's producer is in frequent contact. I'm told that the interview will largely be based on the content of my article, and will centre on the challenges faced by a binge drinker who takes a break from alcohol. Chris and I are advised that we'll be sent a series of questions, and that our answers will be provided to Kerri-Anne as ‘background'; I'm not sure why this is necessary, but I'm happy enough to do it. Yet when I get the questions, alarm bells ring. One reads, ‘When you were having a lonely evening at home with just a bottle of wine for company, did you ever feel ashamed?' They also want to know how many drinks I had a day, and whether I ever drank at work.

I call the producer. ‘It sounds like you're trying to paint me as an alcoholic,' I explain. She tells me that's not the implication, and that these questions are just to help Kerri-Anne ‘get across the issue'. I'm wary, but she's persistent. I tell her that some nights I might have had only a couple of beers or, if I stayed home, nothing at all. But, thinking back to the marathon midday-to-5.00-a.m. Christmas party last year, I say that on rare occasions I might have had, for instance, ten to 15 drinks over a long period. This, I later discover, was a mistake.

When I arrive at Channel Nine studios in Willoughby, on Sydney's north shore, I'm nervous. It's my first television appearance, and it's live. I at least look respectable after being made over by the hair and makeup department, but I worry about having a brain spasm and being rendered mute on national television. Conversely, Chris, who could talk under wet cement, is chilled. We're led through a rabbit warren of stairwells and corridors to Nine's basement studio, where we're miked up and ushered on set without further instruction. We're seated on a pastel couch under lights that make me squint. The camera is trained on Kerri-Anne, sitting opposite as she wraps up the previous segment. We're presuming she'll then throw to a commercial break, allowing her to introduce herself and put us at ease before we're on air. Instead, she begins introducing our segment. ‘On a big night of partying, my next guest, Jill Stark, was drinking about 15 drinks a day …'