High Sobriety (9 page)

Controversial National Health and Medical Research Council alcohol guidelines released in 2009 warned Australians, for the first time, that there was no ‘safe' or ‘risk-free' level of drinking. They also advised parents not to give their children, even older teenagers, alcohol. The guidelines — criticised by the alcohol industry and some in the health field as too conservative, and therefore likely to be ignored by the public — describe ‘risky drinking' as more than four standard drinks in one sitting (about two-thirds of a bottle of wine).

If you go by the national guidelines, I used to drink a lot. By the standards of my circle of friends, I was fairly average. The guidelines tell me that people should aim for an average of no more than two standard drinks a day, with two alcohol-free days a week and no more than four drinks in any one sitting. An official standard drink is one 100ml glass of wine or a stubby of mid-strength beer. Given that most bars serve wine in 150ml glasses, and that a bottle of full-strength beer equates to 1.4 standard drinks, I was probably drinking more than double, or almost triple, the guideline limit on a Friday or Saturday night. It doesn't seem like a lot to me, but the evidence is there: drinking like that over a regular period significantly raises the lifetime risk of long-term medical conditions such as breast cancer and heart disease.

It's a confusing message, considering it wasn't that long ago doctors were spruiking the benefits of red wine, in moderation, to protect against heart disease. Now, the Heart Foundation and the World Health Organization warn against this, stating that a review of the evidence shows that the positive effects of red wine in reducing cardiovascular disease have been hugely overstated. The message from the public-health lobby today is simple: your safest bet is to not drink at all, particularly if you're a woman (as our risk of cancer from heavy drinking increases more quickly over a lifetime). There's also evidence to show that women are at greater risk of alcohol-related neurological damage, liver cirrhosis, and depression than men. Researchers believe that hormonal differences, and the way in which women metabolise alcohol — we have less water in our bodies than men, so alcohol becomes more concentrated in our bloodstreams — increases its toxicity and promotes disease. So, the longer I carry on the way I've been drinking, the more chance I have of developing a serious health problem.

As my birthday approaches, those thoughts are at the forefront of my mind. How long can I continue to drink as if I'm invincible? On 24 March, I will officially become middle-aged. It may be time to start treating my body a little less like an Ibiza nightclub and a bit more like a Buddhist temple. The thought of turning 35 is scary. I can't remember the last time I spent a birthday completely sober, but I'd hazard a guess that Madonna was still a virgin, and I was sporting acid-washed jeans and a spiral perm. Until now, I'd rarely contemplated
not
having a drink on my birthday. But I'm determined to see it in alcohol-free. Finishing up my sobriety stint a week early would be a cop-out.

I brace myself for my friends' reactions when they find out that I'm having a sober birthday. They might find it hard to accept, given it's an occasion that has historically provided them with such amusement. I talk to Fiona in Edinburgh, who reminds me of my 15th birthday party, which my parents allowed me to have at home, leaving my 18-year-old brother and his mates in charge. It got so out of control that Fiona's cousin, an off-duty police officer who happened to be driving past, pulled up and hammered on the door to see if we needed assistance. There were teenagers hanging out of every window, and piles of vomit forming a Hansel and Gretel–style trail from our front door, stretching halfway down the street. As I came to the door, Fiona's cousin peered over my shoulder to see my brother kicking a party guest down the stairs for trying to use one of Mum's crystal vases as a beer glass.

At my 16th, my friends and I were sipping peach schnapps and lemonade (because nothing says ‘we're of legal drinking age' quite like a peach-schnapps spritzer) at a city-centre pizza restaurant when our meal was interrupted by the arrival of a police officer. He began questioning me about my age, looking at this group of ten girls who were all wearing so much makeup we looked like kids playing dress-up. As my bottom lip began to quiver, the policeman started to recite poetry. He took off his hat and plonked it on my head. The serenade finished with a kiss on my cheek. Only then did I spot my brother and his best mate on the other side of the restaurant, pissing themselves laughing, his birthday present to me clearly more of a gift to himself.

At my 25th, after a month-long detox diet of brown rice and vegetables, I re-established my relationship to alcohol with such fervour that I have virtually no memory of the evening from about 10.00 p.m. Two male friends were forced to prop me up,
Weekend at Bernie's
–style, to get me past the bouncers of a nightclub. Once inside, I hit the dance floor — literally — after a series of poorly executed can-can kicks saw me land flat on my back, miniskirt around my midriff, bottle of cider still in hand. A friend later told me that when I hit the deck, the thud was so loud there was an audible gasp from the crowd. But thanks to the anaesthetising powers of booze, I bounced to my feet, punching the air defiantly like Judd Nelson in the closing scene of
The Breakfast Club
.

Hitting my thirties didn't slow the tempo. Quiet Sunday-afternoon drinks for my 33rd birthday morphed into an unexpected 3.00 a.m. adventure involving Jägermeister shots, a bizarre solo dance routine — in which photos taken by my friend Mel would suggest I was channelling a baby albatross trying to fly — and a brief dalliance with a dreadlocked life coach who called himself ‘Zulu'.

Birthdays are fun like that. Not only do you have an excuse for acting like an idiot, but also your friends actively encourage it. This is particularly the case if it's a big number, such as 18, 21, or 30: it's a green light for drunkenness and fuckwittery, and I've never missed an opportunity to take full advantage of it. This year, I'm not sure how I'll even mark the occasion without raising a glass. Perhaps my birthday won't be real until its significance is recognised by having a proper drink, and until then I'll be preserved, petrified like a mosquito in a lump of amber, fabulously 34 for all eternity.

Worse still, this year, more than ever, I feel the need for a drink to ease the pain of the ageing process. When I was growing up, I imagined that by now I'd be settled down with a husband and a couple of kids. Yet here I am, five years away from 40, with no partner; still drinking like that scrawny, carefree teenager of the '90s; and faced with the very real possibility that I might never be a mother. That's not necessarily a tragedy; I'm not even sure that I want children. I'm grateful for what I have, and, for the most part, I feel content with my life. But it doesn't stop the occasional twang of panic.

As my birthday edges closer, this panic begins to play me like a banjo. What if I do meet someone and feel those maternal instincts, but my biological clock has run out of batteries? Who's going to want me when I'm wrinkly and decrepit? Perhaps that's why I used to get drunk so often: maybe binge drinking is a way to dampen the fear of being alone. Am I pouring beer and wine into a void that would be better filled with love? Or maybe I still drink as though I'm a teenager because I just don't want to grow up. Am I Peta Pan?

One of the joys of singledom is that there are no limits. You're your own boss. But when it comes to drinking, that can also be a disadvantage. There's no partner to pack you into a taxi when you've gone a bit heavy on the happy juice; there are no babies to ensure that the need to grab some sleep ahead of a 2.00 a.m. feed outranks the temptation of that last drink. That's not to say that my married or partnered friends aren't big drinkers — but they're rarely the ones cranking out indie classics on a novelty guitar and sipping tequila from a martini glass at five in the morning. Being in a relationship doesn't stop you from getting drunk, but it tends to curb the more unsavoury excesses of drunkenness. When you're single, your amplifier goes up to 11. Now, with the elucidation of sobriety, I'm forced to ask myself if, just maybe, my reasons for binge drinking stretch beyond the pursuit of fun and begin to stray into overcompensation for being alone.

My situation isn't uncommon. Australian women are getting married later, if they marry at all, and they're having children later in life. We've got more disposable income and less responsibility than previous generations. It's a cocktail (pardon the pun) for guilt-free hedonism. Getting older no longer means that the party has to stop: more than a third (34 per cent) of Australian women aged 20 to 29 binge drink at least weekly or monthly, having more than five drinks in one sitting and placing themselves at increased risk of short-term harm, such as accident or injury.

I always figured that my drinking would slow down if and when I had kids. But having a baby might not necessarily change my boozy habits. One in five — 21 per cent of — women in my age group (30 to 39) are binge drinkers. It seems that, for many of us, the drinking habits we learn as teenagers and young women carry through into later life. Surely not all of those women are single, childless thrill-seekers. Some of them must be balancing family life with getting drunk on the weekends.

I ask friends and contacts who were party girls like me before children came along. Some say that the changes in their bodies have left them with a much lower tolerance to alcohol; even if they wanted to get wasted, they just don't have the constitution for it. Many found out the hard way that hangovers are not an option with young children who sleep to their own schedule, and pay scant regard to your need to lie in a darkened room with a box of painkillers and a cold compress on your head. Others say that the challenges of motherhood make that end-of-the-day drink more coveted than ever before.

My friend Catherine reckons that before she fell pregnant for the first time, she hadn't gone a day without a drink in ten years. The pregnancy was a surprise, albeit a welcome one, to her and her long-term partner, which made the lifestyle change an even tougher adjustment. ‘I knew I drank a lot, but I didn't realise how much until I had to give it up. I gave up smoking as well, and I think my body went into toxic shock. It wasn't like I was getting absolutely wasted every night before I was pregnant, but it was pretty easy for me to drink four beers or most of a bottle of wine every night because your tolerance is so high. I always had in my head that when I got pregnant I'd stop all this.'

Catherine started having the occasional glass of wine after her daughter was born, but it was only a fraction of what she used to drink. Gradually, though, she found herself getting closer to ‘Habitland'. ‘It's like smoking — it's just so insidious. You think, I'll have a nice glass of wine because I haven't been drinking at all, and then you have another one. And, also, it is that wind-down when you've had a really shit day. The four or five o'clock mark is always the hardest part of the day: it's a bit of a downer time, a natural serotonin dip in the day. It's just nice to have a bit of a wind-down — it's like a knock-off from work.'

After having her second child, Catherine's drinking has again slowed down, but she reckons she's got a few parties left in her yet.

A work contact, a senior executive in the not-for-profit sector who asks not to be named, tells me that while she's not going out to clubs like she did before she started a family, her drinking habits haven't changed much. ‘A lot of my friends are also working mums, and they're in reasonably high-pressured jobs. When we get home, having that six o'clock gin and tonic is our time,' she says. ‘It's an instant release. It's not easy to go and meditate for half an hour, or go for a run, when you've got three screaming children all wanting your attention. Sharing a bottle of wine is something that you can do together as a couple that is quite simple, and helps you to relax and debrief after a long day. You look forward to it.'

For this Melbourne woman in her early forties, working full-time and coming home in the evening to feed, bath, and play with the kids — one of whom has a severe disability — the wind-down gin and tonic or glass of wine with her husband rarely stops at a solitary drink. She knows about the national drinking guidelines, but says those rules are unrealistic. ‘Normal people don't do that. Normal people sit down and have a bottle of wine with their dinner, and that's four standard drinks each. It's not a stretch to go, “Oh jeez, we've finished that bottle, let's have another one.”'

Her weekends, while not as wild as they once were, are still full. Functions, parties, and barbecues are always accompanied by alcohol. ‘If your friendship group is the party, going-out, socialising group, it doesn't change because you get married and have kids. You don't say, “I'm going to settle down now and never have another drink.” You're not going out to the pub and having 20 drinks, but you're sitting chatting and you're having probably eight drinks, easily, without batting an eyelid. And I'm not even the biggest drinker in my friendship group.'

Her consumption levels are similar to mine. Is it naive to think that getting older or becoming a mum might change my drinking habits? Reading some of the
Hello Sunday Morning
blog posts, it's clear that for every woman who drinks less after having children, there's another who has kept pace with her old ways. Meagan, a 37-year-old mum of two boys aged three and five, from Townsville, says that her days would be a lot tougher without ‘magic wine o'clock'. I get in touch with her, and she tells me that juggling a part-time job and motherhood is harder than she'd ever imagined. ‘People think [that in staying home with children] you've got it easy — what a lark! — but in reality when you're at home with two kids under three, you just watch how quickly they trash your house. There were days where I'd go to unpack the dishwasher, and in the time it took me to do that, they'd emptied a whole tube of toothpaste in the bathroom, and smeared it all over the sink and up the walls and over the mirror. Or I'd make the bed and see this trail of flour footprints throughout the house, and they'd tipped out a container of flour, and they're acting like it's snow, throwing it all around my kitchen. The hardest days are the days where you don't get a break. You're just cleaning and washing and feeding and trying to provide them with entertainment.'