I Justify Drinking Because It Is Not Heroin
A personal exploration into how alcohol is and has been a part of my life.
I am a respectable member of society. A mother. I will happily walk your kid to school, give you an egg, or lend you my car. According to my neighbours, I am a “fun person”. Children snuggle up to me, they pull me under the playscape to conspire with me, and they beg me to attack them with my fireballs. One little girl named her house after me. I bake muffins, I sing with my community, and I host play dates.
I look forward to Fridays. Well, Friday nights. The slice of time between kid bedtime and midnight, or more likely one, or sometimes even two am. Friday night is the night I can get hammered.
It’s not like I get that crazy. Gone are the days when I could sail away on a cloud of booze (or drugs for that matter), leaving my worried brain behind. Now I get a bit giggly. I chat with J, my partner in crime and parenthood. We pretend we are young and stupid. We blast music on our expensive grown-up people speakers. I search for that glorious window between buzzed and tired, trying to stretch it out.
Friday night is never as fun as I hope. I remain tethered to my psyche. Always practical. I measure my drinking by the bottle- and that’s bottle singular. I use a bottle of wine to attempt to elevate above my brain, try to escape the chaos of what am I cooking for dinner tomorrow. How many people were just killed in Gaza? Did I register the kid for soccer? I search, for that elusive escape. I don’t drink more than a bottle because my practical, responsible mom brain knows that my Saturday will be miserable if I do, but I always wish I could.
J has no problem leaving his brain behind; he reels about the house like a mischievous Puck. I envy him. He guzzles, he inhales, he skips and hops and yodels. I sit, tethered, while he spins fey-like around me. He can drink 8 beers, smoke two joints, stay up until 3, and wake up at a reasonable time without a hangover. He is probably a borderline alcoholic. I mean, if there are 10 beers in the house, he will drink all 10. He will smoke that third joint and end up dizzy on the bathroom floor. He has no control. I have control, I’ve been unable to surrender control since giving birth; I can’t lose my mind- my kid might need me.
I met J at the age of 27, twenty-one years ago, at a party. We drank Bacardi Orange around a campfire; J played guitar and we sang. We harmonized drunkenly and perfectly. I taught him to get a good buzz before eating, so the food doesn’t soak up the alcohol too quickly. We met up in Toronto two weeks later, at a cafe. I had a flask of rum in my purse, of course. We drank spiked coffee and wandered the downtown streets. Within a week he had essentially moved into my rooming house. Within a month we had our own flat.
Alcohol was omnipresent. We’d bring a “road drink” everywhere- on the bus to visit his parents, on our many meandering walks, on the subway on our way to the bar. We revelled, we rampaged through campgrounds, we woke neighbours up with our singing at 3 in the morning. We loved to go to bars and meet people, often bringing them back to our place to continue the party; accountants did rails off the toilet tank, hippies sat on our most colourful blanket to enjoy their shroom trip… I loved every moment of it.
I’ve always been fascinated with debauchery. I was an innocent, rule-abiding kid, but I idolized the bad kids, the ones who smoked behind the school, the punks, the shit disturbers. They were so cool. Just the idea of being drunk or high thrilled me. As a child, I obsessively read the last book of the children’s encyclopedia set in my bookshelf- purple number 15, the Guide For Parents. There was a section about drugs and alcohol. “How to tell if your child is using”, etc. It caressed some dark corner of my brain, strangely comforting. I made up stories in my head about drinking, and doing drugs, before I really knew what any of it was. I sought out that enticing darkness. My parents didn’t drink; they were well-adjusted, supportive adults who listened to 50s music and ABBA, and I never spoke to them about my infatuation. On the outside I was a good kid, maybe a little shy, an honour student. No one knew my secret.
I got drunk for the first time at 17 while visiting family in Australia, in their horse trailer. “You drink, right?” My cool cousin asked me. “Uh yeah of course,” I said, stomach fluttering. Finally, it was going to happen, finally I was going to get drunk! We sat at the tiny table in the trailer, played cards and drank Wild Turkey and Coke. We got completely blitzed. I LOVED it. Everything was hilarious. The bliss of release from did I say something weird? What is she thinking? Do my thighs look fat? At one point, lying on our backs beside the swimming pool, the sky above me started to spin. My practical, good kid sky had always remained still, predictable, and boring. If I had tried to stand I probably would have vomited, but instead, I gave in to the dizziness, embraced it, stars reeling, lost in awe.
And so began what was to be a lifelong obsession. I spent the rest of grade twelve trying to convince my poor friends to get drunk with me. Frustratingly, my friend group consisted of one very devout Christian, one vaguely devout Christian, and a few good, earnest kids who had never touched booze because we were underage and it was, you know, illegal.
Jenny was an unpopular girl who was constantly trying to make friends. She existed mostly outside my radar until one day I overheard her trying to convince girls to come to Victoria for the weekend, to party with her and her older sister. My ears perked up. Party? “Yeah, we’re going to get totally wasted! You should come with me!” I didn’t particularly like Jenny, but I didn’t dislike her either. I hadn’t actually spent more than five minutes talking to her in the three-plus years we’d shared classes. But I was sure going to go with her to Victoria to party!
We drove down in her car, while she went on about how her sister was so cool, that she bought us a bottle of vodka, and we were going to get SO WASTED. Spoiler alert: we weren’t really welcome there, her sister wasn’t that cool, and Jenny didn’t actually want to drink. I spent the night alone in a corner determinedly drinking vodka cranberries and talking with increasingly blurry college boys. Poor Jenny. If she had just drank with me we would’ve been friends. As it was, I told everyone that she really was that uncool. I used her and then dumped her.
Although I continued to be a bad influence on my real friends, they continued to just say no. Well, once I did manage to isolate the Christian from the Christian and tempt her like the devil I was: one evening we scored a 4 pack of wine coolers from a sketchy adult in front of the liquor store (it was a small town), and drank them on the swings. We got giggly. My Christian friend was wracked with guilt, but I just knew that those two coolers weren’t enough… I always wanted more.
Upon graduating and moving to Victoria with some girlfriends, my exploration into various states of intoxication began in earnest. I discovered that, unfettered and independent, I was a total hedonist. I LOVED getting drunk, and *surprise*, I LOVED getting high. At 18 I had a relationship with a smitten older man based on the fact that he was a pothead and I wanted to learn how to smoke pot. He also lived in his car, but whatever. I worked retail by day, but my real life revolved around getting fucked up.
By 19 I had become disenchanted with the world. My 9– 5 in the mall, surrounded by excess, making minimum wage, seemed pointless and exhausting. So I dropped out, moved into an apartment with my boyfriend (a different one- I went through guys fast back then), and woke up with hot knives.
At 20 I moved to Vancouver, and began experimenting with mushrooms and acid, serving coffee by day and tripping through the streets by night.
By 21 I had begun to feel depressed, frustrated, disillusioned. I’d always been sensitive but now that I was a “grown-up”, I couldn’t conceive of how I fit into the world, a world that seemed increasingly inhospitable and confusing.
Then I met S, an aspiring musician who had just signed a record contract. We partied like rock stars. We did all the booze and drugs, including heroin, which was everywhere in Vancouver in the late 90's. He played gigs, and I was head groupie. As such, I suddenly found myself having to socialize outside of my friend circle, to be cute and chipper, to be a “Cool Kid”. To help myself overcome the social anxiety, I relied on alcohol. So much so that I often overdid it, careening around clubs, kissing the wrong guys, instigating fist fights, blacking out. I was an absolute mess.
Embarrassed, I gave up drinking. I even apologized to everyone AA style. I shook hands. Then I turned to heroin, because it made me feel beautiful, confident, like everything would be okay. That went well.
22–27 montage: Heroin. Addiction. Detox. Needles. Detox. Heroin. OD. Detox. Suicide of a close friend. Heroin. Methadone. Still, determinedly, heroin. Accidentally orders cocaine from the dealer and injects a blast into the arm. Wooo! Cocaine! Heroin cocaine methadone cocaine, shit I’m really fucked up, pull a geographical to Winnipeg, search for heroin, inject morphine, inject caffeine pills, inject methadone, ultimately get clean, and move back to Vancouver. Heroin!
I finally realized that if I didn’t get my shit together, I would die. I decided to live, committed to methadone and antidepressants, and pulled another geographical, to Toronto. I knew that I needed a purpose, so I decided to do the one thing that helped me actually enjoy life, which was work with children (I know, right?). I quickly found a nanny job and left heroin behind.
That’s where I was when I met J. I felt no qualms about drinking because it wasn’t heroin. Our alcohol use (spiced with the occasional ecstasy or blow) was over the top, but we didn’t care… we were youngish, unfettered, free. So what if I spent all day Saturday in bed, too hungover to do anything but watch movies? So what if we sometimes got into screaming drunken fights because we forgot to eat dinner? So what if we occasionally ended up cross eyed in a bathtub, or bleeding on the floor? I was a great nanny, and J had a respectable job. I had weaned off of both methadone and antidepressants.
Ten years on and it did start to get old. As 40 loomed on the horizon I started to think that maybe we should have a baby. We began to look around us, and question our future. It would be easy to continue on indefinitely, but as J said, “What would be the point?”. We decided to ditch birth control and let the cards fall where they may. I was pregnant within the year.
The prospect of forced sobriety had terrified me. Was I strong enough to resist drinking for a whole nine months? How would I cope with social engagements? Turned out that my body knew what to do- I didn't have any desire for alcohol. In fact, I knew I was pregnant because I tried to drink one night, and I literally couldn’t get my glass of wine down. That nine months was the first time I’d spent more than a week sober in probably 20 years. I surprised myself by actually enjoying the break, from the perpetual search for inebriation, from the hangovers.
40–43 montage: Baby. WTF? Sleepless. Exhausted. SO MUCH CRYING. Breastfeeding. Occasional glass of wine. All toddlers all the time. So tired. So much screeching.
When J and I emerged, shellshocked, from toddlerhood, I realised that we didn’t really see each other anymore, like as a couple. Our child was very attached and very “spirited”. Although he slept deeply, he did so with much reluctance. I was home with him, and completely exhausted by the end of the day. By the time one of us had finally successfully sung the kid to sleep- in our bed- it was all we could do to collapse on the couch and watch Netflix, sans chill.
So I reinstated Friday nights: one night a week reserved for hanging out old school style, in the name of reconnecting. Is it weird that booze has always been our language? Certainly, it would be healthier if we bonded over board games, or painting nights. For us, it’s beer and wine and music.
As we approach 50, the consequences are becoming clear. We are starting to lose some older Gen X friends, the heavy drinkers, to cancer, to heart attacks; some just sort of keeled over. A few have gone sober.
I don’t want to go sober. I tell myself that I choose to use alcohol wisely. I make a concerted effort to have a few dry days each week. I have a glass or two of wine here and there, while cooking. J drinks a beer or two after work, but we rarely drink after dinner unless, you know, it’s Friday.
I have to admit that it’s a constant balancing act: I shouldn’t drink today. A glass of wine will help me get through dinner prep. Two will carry me through these dishes. That’s enough- I hate feeling tired after dinner. Well just a smidge more. YOLO. Ugh, I drank too much and now I feel bleary and stupid.
Occasionally I get a glimpse of the dark underbelly: if we have something important to attend on a Saturday, J will often take the Friday off so we can hang out Thursday night instead. Or if I’m late with dinner and J has a third beer (no control, I tell you), and gets belligerent because he hasn’t eaten since lunch.
That darkness in me is still there, has always been, and will always be. I’ve seen all the drug movies, multiple times. I have a “booze & dope” Spotify playlist. I still tend towards sadness and rage, overwhelmed by rising sea levels! Rampaging forest fires! Greed, pollution and war, oh my! We’re past the tipping point, it’s too late, might as well drink the poison. The world seems very dark, and so I make a daily effort to let the light in, to focus on the creation of art, of community. I sing, I write, I’m learning the ukelele. I reach out to friends. I nurture my wonderfully spirited child. I hold on. And as I write this I’m telling myself that I can have a glass of wine (or two!) today, because I didn’t have any yesterday, and that anticipation caresses that dark little corner of my brain.
But hey, it’s not heroin!
*This is not promoting alcohol, but it is my journey.*
