Responsible Drinking? I Don’t Know Her
Catch-up drinks. Bottomless brunch. Wine tastings. Bar crawls. Happy hours that serve as home base for networking, organizing, maintaining friendships.
While “drink responsibly” is noted on every alcohol ad — four of which, building-sized, I pass on my walk to work — it’s a vague directive. What if you never drive drunk or drink alone? Is it irresponsible to drink a bottle of wine in one sitting if you’re just relaxing at home after a horrible news cycle? What if drinking never interferes with your work, except the couple times a year you call out “sick”?
Whatever responsible drinking is, I wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t alone. Life in certain parts of DC is as sticky with booze as a Wonderland bathroom. Some 15 million or more adults in the United States use alcohol in a way that is dangerous, and DC boasts the highest percentage of heavy drinkers of any state.
One morning in August, nursing a hangover that made me feel like Mitch McConnell looks, I thought: maybe I will only ever have one drink. Another part of me asked, what would be the fucking point of that? The night before, I had lost my phone and wallet somewhere between a bar, a playground, and a Duccini’s. The subsequent identity theft hadn’t registered in my mushy brain yet, but I knew this was bad. And I knew it wouldn’t have occurred if I had successfully stuck to my simple plan: don’t get drunk.
How’d I get here? I had plenty of justifications: maybe my queer ass started binge drinking to cope with this trauma or that from living in a heteropatriarchy. There are alcoholics on all sides of my family. Maybe it was bound to happen, encoded in my genes, waiting for the right swamp. Perhaps my social context flipped a switch in my brain from “normal” to “problem” drinker. I had enjoyed drinking while in college, but I hadn’t partied the way I did the last several years in DC. None of those reasons eased my morning-afters or helped me drink less.
Getting drunk often is so normalized in my work-hard-play-hard circles that it didn’t occur to me to bring it up with my therapist. Right before she left DC for a new job, I mentioned that I was maybe drinking too much. Surprised, she told me, “You need to lead with that with your next therapist.” My next therapist had me take an alcohol abuse risk assessment, which involved questions like, have you drank more than you wanted in the last month? How often were you hungover? Do you ever blackout? How many drinks do you typically have in one night? After twenty minutes of my best attempts at honesty — I rounded down — she told me the result: I was at high risk of alcohol abuse.
I was defensive. I had asked for help, but the diagnosis seemed unfair. Sitting on her couch and sipping Therapy Chamomile, I felt out of control. I didn’t use alcohol as a way of timekeeping like true alcoholics. My drinking wasn’t ruining my relationships, career, or physical health the way it did for people with real drinking problems. I drank less than many of my friends! Yet as I counted the hours I typically spent drunk or hungover and connected the dots between sloshed weekends and miserable Mondays, it sunk in that the social lubricant was slowly eating me up.
That session was years ago. Terrified of the lifestyle changes that I imagined sobriety would require, I attempted moderation. I also experimented with month-long sober “resets,” but would start craving the glow of a good buzz and break my streak. I would insist to my therapist that this time would be different. She didn’t make me feel judged, but did keep recommending drinking memoirs. I wrote in my journal that I would “beat the odds.”
My sober friends checked in repeatedly with handy adages like “if you have to control it, it’s controlling you,” and I thanked them — even as I continued to deny the boxed wine in the room. Then I lost my ID, cards, phone, and access to all my online accounts after another failed attempt to only have two drinks. For two years, my fear of sacrificing the balm that made anything tolerable, from lobbying receptions with Republicans to 3:00 am dance parties with my night-owl friend group, kept me motivated to master moderation. After that night, I reluctantly accepted that DC’s drinking problem didn’t excuse my own. I decided to quit for good.
Sobriety from alcohol hasn’t solved all my problems, but when I stopped drinking in August, it felt like I was taking control of my life. Recognizing that I may never be able to drink safely the way most adults can has made it easier to abstain. It has changed other things, too: what time I leave parties, how I spend my Sunday mornings (those are a thing now), which relationships I work on and which were only held together with sangria. I ask people to meet me for coffee or ice cream instead of drinks. I’ve been exercising more and have a regular sleep cycle. My partner keeps our fridge stocked with lemonade and seltzer instead of pinot grigio and has my back if anyone gives me crap about going home early. Processing the negative feelings that humans experience (frustration, shame, resentment) is more manageable when I don’t numb them. I’m learning a lot about myself that I couldn’t access before, which is both exhilarating and scary. I feel stronger with each sober day that stacks up.
I don’t know how long this commitment to an alcohol-free existence will last, but uncertainty isn’t freaking me out as much these days. I’m privileged in this quest: I have health insurance, so I can afford therapy; I have leisure time to journal, meditate, and talk to supportive friends; and my whiteness and class status shielded me from criminalization as I stumbled through various drunken fuckups. Binge drinking is condoned in my gentrified slices of the U.S.’s sixth-most segregated city, but many of my fellow DC residents do not receive the resources and compassion that I benefit from in my ongoing recovery. I think people with expendable incomes and a deep bench of happy hour options can help start to address this disparity by urging Mayor Bowser to fully implement the NEAR Act, which takes a public health-centered approach to public safety.
As the new year gets underway, I’d like to raise a watermelon seltzer cheers to everyone muddling through their relationship with alcohol in 2019. If you ever wonder if you maybe drink too much, know that you’re not alone and life can be better — even in a place as loaded as DC.
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