High Sobriety (17 page)

At the end of my chat with Jon, I'm not sure whether to thank him for the interview or hand over my Medicare card. He tells me that if I do go back to drinking, I should be careful. My tolerance will be at an all-time low. One beer could be enough to get me drunk. Oh well, at least I'll be a cheap date, I joke. But as I walk back to my car, I'm not laughing. It's dark already, and the evening air bites. I hug my notepad to my chest, keeping the details of my intervention close to my heart.

I'M GOING HOME
to Scotland to see my family. I miss them all dreadfully, and often wish that circumstances had taken me to a life in a city slightly closer to Edinburgh and the people I love the most. Trips home are always emotionally charged, but this time there will be an added element of self-discovery: by going home, I hope to retrace my drinking steps.

Scotland was where I first experienced the seductive embrace of alcohol. I have displayed my drinking dexterity with great patriotism, seeing it as a sign that I'm a true Scot — just like Aussies, we have a love of alcohol that is etched into our national identity in indelible ink. Maybe it's the depressing weather, a history of oppression, or our reputation for sporting catastrophe that has driven us to drink. Or perhaps it's just that we're a nation built on booze. We've produced some of the most significant inventions in modern history: the steam engine, penicillin (the Aussies may have had the smarts to bring it to market, but it was Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scot, who discovered it), the telephone, and the television. But the export for which we're most renowned, and which fuels the national economy, is whisky.

Despite Mum's impressive malt collection, I've never enjoyed the ‘water of life'. I can't stomach the taste — even of the really good stuff. Over the years, I've made up for this aberration by embracing practically every other form of alcohol known to man. So it's with some trepidation that I head home booze-free to a country that has turned binge drinking into an art form.

In the airport departure lounge, I have to stop myself from ordering a beer at the bar. This time last year, Kath and I were drinking champagne at this very spot, toasting the start of a five-week trip to Spain and Italy via Edinburgh. It strikes me that drinking has historically been the way I mark the start of all my holidays; it's the signal that work is officially over and relaxation time has begun.

I order a lemonade instead. It doesn't feel the same.

Last year, during my ten days in Edinburgh, I don't think I went one day without having a drink. As in Australia, in Scotland bonding tends to be accompanied by alcohol — and when you live on the other side of the world, a boozy homecoming is practically a legal requirement. Every catch-up with friends, family, and former colleagues is toasted with alcohol.

I was particularly nervous about telling Fiona that this visit would be a sober one. Last time I came home, we went out to a nightclub we used to frequent in our university days, drinking tequila shots and dancing to The Smiths till 3.00 a.m. She assures me that my sobriety is not a concern, and that we'll have fun together regardless of what we're drinking, pointing out that she's had two children and has more experience of abstaining from alcohol for long periods of time than I do.

I'm still apprehensive. This time, those reunions won't be toasted with glasses of wine; it'll be cups of tea and glasses of juice. But my friend Ruth tells me that she's quite relieved that I won't be drinking this time around. ‘I have to steel myself for your visits. I always associate you coming home with a massive piss-up,' she says. ‘The worst hangover I've ever had was after one of your homecomings and we stayed out till 2.00 a.m. I had to work the next morning and I was very sick.'

Maybe it's not being Scottish that makes my trips home drunken affairs. Maybe it's just me.

However, some Edinburgh friends see it differently. The boys from my old paper
The Daily Record
vow to steer me off course, telling me that it's bordering on treacherous not to drink. It seems I'll dilute some of my Scottishness if I'm drinking orange juice. People never tire of telling me I've already lost my accent — which, after ten years in Melbourne, I've come to think of as ‘Scotralian' — so refusing a drink will be further evidence of my defection. Somehow I'll be letting my country down if I don't get steamin', pished, swallied, blootered, bladdered, reekin', hammered, wellied, leathered, fleein', fu', steamboats, guttered, wrecked, mortal, buckled, mingin', bleezin', muntered, fullyit, arseholed, or oot o' it. The Eskimos might have 50 words for snow, but we've got at least 450 for being drunk.

I spend the long flight thinking about home. When I arrive, Mum and I will traditionally crack open a bottle of wine and stay up as long as my jetlag allows, catching up on lost time. This trip will be different, and I'm quite looking forward to it. Time with family is so precious; I'm going to enjoy not having it clouded by the haze of tipsiness.

I grew up surrounded by alcohol. My parents loved a drink, as did most of my friends' parents. Family get-togethers were usually fairly boozy affairs. I loved it when the oldies got a bit squiffy — what child doesn't like seeing their parents laugh, dance, and be silly?

As older teenagers, Neil and I were allowed to drink at home. Mum and Dad felt that if we were going to drink, at least they could maintain some supervision if we did it under their roof, rather than sneaking out behind their backs and putting ourselves in risky situations. (What they didn't know was that we were doing both.) Our house became the mustering point for our friends before we'd all hit the town. It was also the crash pad; some Sunday mornings there were so many doonas in our lounge room that it was hard to tell how many bodies lay beneath. My friends loved my parents' parties so much that even when I moved to the other side of the world, they'd still turn up for their annual Boxing Day bash, cram into my old bedroom, and call me in varying states of intoxication to tell me what I was missing out on.

But now, as I prepare to return home sober, with Jon Currie's words still fresh in my mind, I start to think of these events in a different light. Was this the start of my ‘pre-malignant addiction'? Did I cultivate it from an early age, learning through my parents' liberal attitude to drinking that alcohol is what makes life fun?

When I caught up with John Rogerson, chief executive of the Australian Drug Foundation, shortly after he read the story about my binge drinking, he was keen to know if my parents drank when I was growing up. I told him they weren't massive drinkers, but they liked to have a good time — and that our house did latterly become a bit of a party house. He told me research is increasingly showing that children mimic their parents' drinking habits, and that this can influence the relationship they have with alcohol in later life. I can't help being a bit cynical about this. My parents may have influenced me, but it's not the only reason I drink. And I know just as many people who grew up in families where booze was strictly off-limits, rebelled at the first possible opportunity, and went on to drink heavily. Drinking habits, as I'm learning, cannot easily be attributed to any one factor. But what I now know for sure is that when there's a genetic predisposal to dependency, binge drinking is a risky pastime.

My granddad had a drinking problem. His should have been a cautionary tale, but I've been able to dismiss any link between my drinking and his because we're not blood relatives. He was the only father Mum ever knew, but he was Gran's second husband, marrying her when Mum was ten. I know that his drinking has hurt our family. The details are sketchy — I think my parents tried to shield Neil and me from much of it. Now, as I return home sober, with a clear head and more insight into the nature of addiction than I've ever had, I'm ready to know more.

Granddad was a handsome, gentle man, who wore a kilt more often than he wore trousers. A true Highlander, he was born in the depths of an unforgiving Isle of Skye winter, in the village of Uig. He had a full head of white hair and a bushy moustache — and an enormous capacity for love. He never tired of telling me and Neil (his namesake) how much we meant to him. But his declarations usually happened when he was drunk. And he was drunk a lot. Sometimes his phone calls were incoherent. It was like listening to a sailor trying to shush a baby: there was lots of gruff oohing and aahing and whispered pet names, but not a whole lot of sense.

As a teenager, I found these calls mortifying. I hated explaining my granddad's ‘situation' to my friends. When he'd talk to me in a baby voice, calling me ‘Jilly' or ‘wee scone', and promising to come and see me soon, my face would flush. I'd rush to get off the phone and put Mum on. It's funny how your priorities change when you're no longer shackled by the pursuit of acceptance and the aching need to be normal; I'd give anything to have one more conversation with him. He could call me whatever he liked.

Granddad was never an aggressive or violent drunk. He was rarely maudlin. For the most part, he was sentimental and sweet. But even the most good-natured addict will eventually hurt the ones they love. One night, after a long session at his local, the barman told Granddad that he'd had one too many, confiscating his car keys. A fellow drinker, observing this exchange, later offered to drive him home and make sure he got back to his wife safely. The man took him home, but stole the car. Another time, Granddad told Gran that he was nipping out to buy a paper. She didn't see him for three days. When he returned, paper in hand, he explained, ‘There was a long queue.' It's a story that took on folklore status in our family — an amusing anecdote that turned a disease into a quaint character foible. It's this type of story about Granddad that I remember vividly. Perhaps the passing of time has blurred the bleaker parts of those years, leaving only the harmless stories in sharp focus. I know that the reality was uglier.

A few nights after I arrive home, Mum and I are curled up in armchairs in her living room, our traditional glasses of wine replaced with cups of tea. I ask if she'll tell me the story of Granddad's drinking. She speaks softly as she tells me how her parents disintegrated.

It was the late 1980s, and Granddad had been drinking a lot. He'd been disappearing, often for days at a time. A dam can only take so much pressure before it bursts. One afternoon, Mum walked into her parents' flat on the south side of Edinburgh to find her mother sitting alone in the kitchen, in her favourite chair beside the fire, her face drained of colour. ‘I knew straight away that something was really wrong. She stood up, burst into tears, and just collapsed in my arms: “I can't do it anymore; I just can't do it.” She was sobbing and shaking.'

Mum had never seen this proud Highland-born woman so distressed. Gran was inconsolable. She needed the sort of help Mum couldn't give her. They went to the family doctor, who made an emergency appointment at the Royal Edinburgh — a psychiatric hospital. When they got there, Gran made a plea to the admitting doctor. ‘Mum was begging,
begging
this man, “Please take me in, take me in. I need to be here.” She was exhausted. She couldn't cope. She just needed peace. When I left her there, in a locked psychiatric ward full of geriatrics, that was the worst day of my life.'

Mum's voice breaks a little. She pauses, staring straight ahead. She takes a deep breath that seems to cause her physical pain. ‘The second-worst day of my life was telling Dad that Mum wasn't coming home, that she couldn't live with him anymore. That was the only time in my entire life when he raised his voice to me. He just couldn't comprehend how his drinking was hurting her. But the stress of not knowing where he was or when he was coming home, of not being able to rely on anything he said — it was too much. And she was tired of lying and hiding this from people. She was tired of making excuses to his work and to family about him.'

Granddad's boss, at the electrical-engineering firm where he worked, knew that Grandad had a drinking problem but didn't want to sack him, fearful of the maelstrom it might trigger. Instead, he sent him to a doctor, who ran some tests. The doctor couldn't believe he was still alive. Still, Granddad kept drinking. Mum persuaded him to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. ‘We were sitting around in a circle and everyone was introducing themselves — “I'm Pamela, I'm an alcoholic,” and so on. And the man said, “We've got a new member tonight. Neil, would you like to say anything?” I was holding his hand, and he just shook his head. I knew then that we'd lost. He physically couldn't bring himself to say that he had a problem.'

Gran was in hospital for six months. ‘For a long time, she didn't smile. She was just blank-faced when I'd go in to see her; she'd be sitting in a chair, staring into space. One day, I went in and there was a gardener outside, and he'd lit a bonfire. Mum was staring at the smoke rising up, and she said, “That's where they burn the bodies. That's where I'm going. To the crematorium.” That broke my heart. She thought that would be the best answer, to just not be alive anymore.'

Gran's nervous breakdown was compounded by guilt. She worried about being a burden, and about the effect that her illness was having on her family. The weight of it all only exacerbated her depression. She'd been divorced once already, at a time when women in unhappy marriages were expected to grin and bear it. The shame of another failed marriage would be devastating. But at the root of all her sadness was the fact that she missed her husband dreadfully. Logically, she knew that he was the reason she'd fallen off a cliff, but in her heart he was the rope that could pull her back up again. ‘The great tragedy of it all was they loved each other. They couldn't live with each other and they couldn't live without each other,' Mum says.