High Sobriety (3 page)

My brain hurt as though I was hearing nails being scraped down a blackboard. I could barely keep my eyes open. The prospect of writing an intelligible treatise on Australia's horribly convoluted alcohol-taxation system — and the effective ban on a product that, at that point, made me gag just to think about — was unpalatable, to say the least. But I did it. I pulled out stats, compiled tables, and rang up contacts to get their opinion on this watershed moment in Australia's history of dependence on grog. I even quizzed the then health minister, Nicola Roxon, thankful that it was a telephone interview and she didn't have to suffer the impertinence of my morning-after breath.

The article would go on to be showcased by my editors as part of
The Age
's submission to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association Newspaper of the Year Awards, with a blurb on how my reports had highlighted the devastating consequences of Australia's binge-drinking culture. I read the piece again after the awards, and marvelled at how much sense it made, and how little evidence there was that I might still have been over the limit when I wrote it.

A few months later, I was shortlisted in the 2008 federal government–sponsored National Drug and Alcohol Awards. I ended up being a joint winner, along with reporters at the
Geelong Advertiser
, which had run a brilliant campaign against drunken violence. I took to the lectern at Melbourne's Regent Theatre and made a brief speech, expressing my gratitude to the people in the sector who worked so tirelessly to turn around Australia's alcohol problem: people without whom I'd have nothing to write about. As I spoke — squinting in the stage lights and looking out at the 500-strong audience as the screen behind me filled with a giant image of my face beside a headline that screamed ‘STOP THIS MADNESS' — I felt it: the cold, wet wallop of hypocrisy. I might not be getting stretchered into the back of an ambulance or carted off in a police car every weekend, but I sure as hell wasn't the poster child for the moderation movement.

But the only thing I knew with more certainty than the truth of my own hypocrisy was that as soon as I was off that stage I'd be diving headfirst into the nearest bottle of wine. I knew I'd get drunk; I knew I'd be hung-over the next day. It was a Friday night, and I'd just had a major win. When you win, you celebrate. And when you celebrate, you drink. Those are the rules. Who was I to argue with several centuries of tradition?

IT TAKES THREE
years, several dozen more stories, and a whole lot of drinking before I hit the wall. Consigning New Year's Day 2011 to the expanding archive of days I'd rather forget, I wake up on 2 January hoping to feel better. I don't. I feel anxious, lost, and still horribly hung-over, my faith in the healing properties of a quarter-pounder meal and a chocolate-fudge sundae seemingly misplaced. It's past 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, but I'm far from ready to say hello to it. The sun, glinting through a chink in my bedroom blinds, seems to point at me, an outstretched finger of light challenging me to get out of bed. I shrink away from it. The memories of yesterday linger. My heart, while not quite galloping, is still cantering along as if it has somewhere really important to be. There's a sickness in my stomach, the origins of which stretch far beyond my New Year's Eve blowout. Anxiety jangles in my bones as I begin to acknowledge the obvious: drinking brought me here. And I've been here too long.

I start thinking about
Hello Sunday Morning
and what it would mean to give up alcohol for three months, turning over the implications in my head, trying to find an angle from which the prospect will look less absurd. It terrifies me — but that's how I know I have to do it. Yet I have many misgivings. How can I survive summer? All those warm nights with weekend barbecues, after-work drinks in rooftop bars, and lazy afternoons in beer gardens. Then there's the not-insignificant matter of my 35th birthday at the end of March. I can't remember the last time I had a sober birthday. The prospect is laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Maybe I can do three months without drinking, but just stop a week early so I can get pissed on my birthday.

The decision is too enormous. I pull the doona over my head, which, on day two of the hangover from the fiery pits of hell, is still thumping like a state-of-the-art subwoofer. Perhaps I'll just stay in bed a bit longer. (This is often my solution to dilemmas that seem too hard — the adult equivalent of thumping your fists on the floor and yelling, ‘It's sooooo unfair!')

My horizontal tantrum is interrupted by the ringing phone. I can see that it's Loretta, one of my closest friends and long-time drinking-partner-in-crime. She'd been living in Europe for nearly two years, and returned home to Melbourne in December, via a ten-day silent meditation retreat in an Indian ashram. After her alcohol-free vegan getaway, her senses were heightened, her insides were cleansed, she'd acquired a startling new level of mindfulness and, disappointingly for me, her drinking muscles had atrophied. The realignment of her chakras had turned her into a two-pot screamer, and I found it deeply unsettling. At a particularly raucous house party just before Christmas — at which my friends and I put in a marathon effort, kicking on from midday Sunday to five o'clock the following morning — I'd watched Loretta watching us. As it got to the pointy end of the night, and the drinking, singing, dancing, and general messiness ramped up, there she was, standing silently on the edge of the 20-strong group, nursing the same beer she'd had for hours, bewilderment written large on her face. It was the look you might expect of someone who'd been teleported from their lounge-room sofa to the surface of the moon.

She skipped the New Year's Eve parties and went to stay with her family in country New South Wales, working in her brother's pub instead of drinking her way into the next year. I remember getting a text around 2.00 a.m., wishing me a happy new year and telling me she was tucked up in bed with a cup of tea and a meditation book. At the party, as I sipped my tequila from a martini glass, we laughed at her newfound virtuousness, placing bets on how long it would last. Secretly, I was jealous.

This late morning, I let the phone ring for a long time before I'm ready to answer. Loretta knows me too well to be convinced that everything's just dandy when clearly it's not, so I don't even try. I tell her about the hangover that won't die, the baleful panic attack, the fact that I'm still in bed, and the monumental brain fuck I'm experiencing at the thought of not drinking for the rest of summer and a big chunk of autumn. She is, as she always is when I'm in danger of losing my shit, calm, tender, and practical. ‘Sweet, you don't have to decide anything right now. You just have to get out of bed.'

So I do. I douse my face with cold water, brush my teeth, put my trainers on, and face the day. Even with sunglasses so big they cover half my face, the sunshine hurts. But as I walk around a glorious-looking Princes Park, blue sky overhead, the pain slowly subsides and my pace quickens. I start to enjoy the warmth on my skin and the effect it's having on my thoughts. I imagine how much more rewarding a morning like this would be if I could look at it without grimacing; if I could look at it before midday. In the grand scheme of things, three months isn't that long, right? It's less than 1 per cent of my life so far. What do I have to lose — other than horrendous hangovers, a beer belly, and the gaping hole in my pocket?

Later, as it dawns on me I won't taste wine again till round two of footy season, I begin to get scared. But underneath the apprehension, the decision feels right. I am sick, in every sense of the word, of being drunk. There's no novelty in it anymore. Every. Fucking. Weekend. Sobriety can't be any more boring than that. I want to know what life is like without my beer goggles. I want to be brave enough to do all the things I do on a big night out — meet new people, dance, chat up guys, be silly just for the sake of it — without the Dutch courage that alcohol gives me. Can I shift the perception, seemingly hard-wired into my sense of self, that fun comes with a glass in its hand? After years of writing stories that sought to hold government and industry to account for Australia's drinking problem, it's time to put myself under the same spotlight.

January

I BEGIN TO
rebuild myself from the rubble and prepare for the alcohol-free journey ahead. I stock up on herbal teas, move the wine from the fridge to the back of my tallest cupboard, buy new gym gear, and start to imagine how a svelte and sprightly — and sober — me might look. I picture myself in three months' time, transformed into some sort of superhero, the newfound energy allowing me to leap over skyscrapers and shoot lightning bolts from my now-sparkling eyes. In this future world I am physically and mentally lighter, I have abs you can bounce lemons off, and I've perfected the sort of conversational skills that will make me a darling of the after-dinner circuit.

The first few alcohol-free days are actually quite fun. It's a whirlwind of exercise, wholesome meals, and the thrill of taking control of a situation that had been careering away from me like an empty shopping trolley down the face of Everest. I start writing a list of all the things I hope to achieve during my vacation from booze. This love of lists comes from my mum, who is never without a folded envelope or Post-it note filled with the scribble of her life's most immediate priorities. Like her, I've learned that there are few greater satisfactions than the sight of a fully scored-off list. Hangovers, with their side serve of procrastination, have seen me consign many a half-completed list to the bin. But this is a new dawn, a new day. There's no room for dispiriting bins of stationery.

On the latest list, which I distinguish from its predecessors by assigning it to fancy notepaper and entitling it ‘The Big List of All Lists', I write down my goals. They range from the practical (‘clean apartment properly'), to the energetic (‘start running'), to the perilously overdue (‘DO TAX RETURN!!!'), and the hopeful (‘find love'). The list is three pages long: one page for every month of sobriety. The chaos that for too long has reigned over my world has no idea what kind of regimented shit is about to come down on its head.

But I don't write a list entry for what I think I'll gain most from this experiment — maybe because I'm not sure I want to find out. By staying sober for longer than I ever have in my adult life, I may be able to figure out how I got here. It may provide the key to knowing why being drunk is so hypnotically appealing that I've been doing it almost every weekend since I was a teenager. Why do I place so much value in getting off my face when the downsides have started to cause me such grief? What is it about our culture that makes drinking a social necessity? If I'm a product of my environment, what is happening in the countries, Scotland and Australia, that have shaped me. Eighty per cent of Australians surveyed in a 2010 study said that they think we're a nation with a drinking problem. How many of us are willing to put our hands up and say we're part of it? It may be confronting to answer some of these questions, but it doesn't stop me from feeling invigorated. I love a challenge.

Yet as I ready myself to change the habits of half a lifetime, I find that not everyone is convinced of my ability to transform. When I tell my editor, Gay, about the three-month abstinence plan, she smiles and says, ‘That's good, that's really good, Jill. I'm sure you'll get there.' The arched eyebrow and voice raised half an octave suggest otherwise. She's seen me lead the charge on too many staff nights out to believe that I'm ready to give up my role as unofficial
Sunday Age
social secretary so readily. Journalism, with all the stress of meeting deadlines and the unsociable hours, lends itself well to a lush's lifestyle. We might not all be the foul-mouthed, emotionally dysfunctional boozehounds Hollywood suggests, but there are enough of us who are to elevate the depiction beyond mere stereotype. In this context, telling my editor I'm not going to drink for three months is something akin to Hugh Hefner announcing plans to join the priesthood.

Some friends are equally stunned by my decision. One is so shocked that she confesses to spilling a glass of champagne on the carpet when she reads my pledge on Facebook. Others are genuinely baffled: ‘It's a bit extreme. Couldn't you just drink on weekends?' Many are supportive, commending my ‘bravery' and promising to help keep me strong.

My family are behind me, although Dad's reaction is fairly predictable: ‘You missed out the middle stage — moderation.' This is a variation on his favourite catchphrase, ‘everything in moderation'. In my early drinking days back in Edinburgh, he'd trot it out with a shake of the head and a smile every time I'd roll out of bed at lunchtime complaining about a hangover, just to remind me that no-one forced the glass into my hand. I'd argue that if we were true to his maxim, moderation itself should be exercised in moderation; he was undeterred. A source of tremendous amusement for him was watching me and my older brother, Neil, as we reached our peak party years, hit the town, and then hit the soluble aspirin the next day. I think he teased us because it was a relief for him to discover that others in the family were human. For the 38 years that my parents were married (they divorced, painfully but amicably, in 2008), Dad never saw Mum hung-over. ‘I don't do hangovers,' she still tells us to this day. They'd go out with friends, and Dad would have a couple of pints, perhaps a port nightcap, and he'd wake up with a dull headache and a queasy stomach. Mum could get stuck into a few glasses of wine, follow it up with a couple of single malts and a whisky liqueur, and the next day she'd be singing in the shower at 6.00 a.m. as if her bloodstream was somehow impenetrable to alcohol. It was very annoying.