How I tried and failed to give up alcohol and learned the joys of moderation
E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-77619-243-4
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
PAMELA POWER is a television scriptwriter and script editor. She is also the author and co-author of several works of fiction, including Ms Conception, Things Unseen and Chasing Marian.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
INTRODUCTION
MOTHER’S DAY Relax. I am not about to start a poem about how wonderful motherhood is and how blessed I am to have two beautiful children. Frankly, I found the whole growing a child thing and launching it into the world a bit of a shock to the system. I discovered I was pregnant a few days before the new millennium. We had a party planned at an old varsity friend’s game farm. It was going to be a blast! Except it wasn’t. I ended up not drinking while everyone was getting off their faces, plus I had a huge fight with the Husband. It was one of those ‘how dare you get off-your-face drunk and behave like a complete tit when I am with child?’ kind of fights. *Assumes Saintly Blessed Virgin Mary expression* The interesting thing about being pregnant and breastfeeding is that that is the only time since I was a teenager that I didn’t drink for any length of time. I first drank alcohol on my paternal grandmother’s farm in Ireland. I had just turned eleven, and I was with my little brother – who is actually older than me, but I call him that to differentiate between him and my big brother – and my very glam American cousin, Paul, whom I developed an immediate crush on. This was during a major family reunion and all the grown-ups had gone into town for dinner, and my lovely Uncle Ed (my father’s fave brother) tossed the car keys to Cousin Paul with a grin and a wink. We found grandmother’s stash of homemade wines – including dandelion – utterly disgusting, but we still drank them. I can remember the warm feeling they gave me as we gulped them down like medicine. We drank the wine then we drove the hire car up and down the driveway. I remember ramping over the speed bumps. Something I still love doing. Obviously I wasn’t tossing booze down my throat every weekend from when I was eleven. That probably only started at university, and I’ve been drinking steadily ever since. Except for now, when I took a year off to really examine and change the way that I consumed alcohol. I know the title was a bit of a spoiler, but that’s what this book is about. However, before we start talking about my year of not getting shitfaced, we need to define what shitfaced means. If you’ve ever found yourself, after a heavy night of drinking, googling ‘Am I an alcoholic?’ firstly, you probably need to take a good, long, hard look at your drinking habits, and, secondly, you will find yourself bewildered about what actually constitutes Having A Problem. I’ve done literally hundreds of these Am I an alcoholic? quizzes (usually when my hangover is kicking in at 3 am) and one of the questions they always ask is: ‘Has your hangover ever been so bad that it’s interfered with your work?’ They’re kidding, right? No, Reader, they are not kidding. Exhibit A It is the dress rehearsal for the dance programme at the end of my first year at drama school. We go out with the Honours’ Students to the varsity pub. I drink three gins and ten tequilas. I am black-out drunk. I remember lying on the floor of Sally’s car. I remember someone holding my hair back as I puke in the loos in the dressing rooms. I then go on stage – still off my face – and keep dancing towards the audience saying, ‘I’m so pissed, I just had three gins and ten tequilas’. This is the first time I have puked from alcohol. I am mortified the next day and do not want to face the Honours students. They are sanguine – have seen it all before and are very kind. Exhibit B I am in the Canary Islands selling timeshare. We go out to a bar and get off our faces. I have a screaming fight with my then-boyfriend now-Husband – a.k.a Paulus a.k.a. Fossil – and am convinced that he’s trying to hurt me. I run off down the road. He is getting increasingly freaked out trying to convince me that I’m imagining things. The next day I throw up in the toilet of the show house. The toilet is literally for show and cannot flush. I scurry out and leave the puke for someone else to deal with. Exhibit C I’m 22 or 23. We are living on a smallholding outside Pietermaritzburg, where we will eventually get married. We go out on Friday night to the local restaurant that has a bar we like to hang out at. I drink whisky, I’m not sure why. Am I trying to be sophisticated? Is it because I’m half-Irish? We get horribly drunk. The next day, I have to teach drama classes at the local technical college. It is an Indian college, and people don’t drink. After class, I sit in the head’s office, supposedly doing a recap of how the classes went but really just trying not to be sick. She can see (and possibly smell) how hungover I am and is not impressed with me. My also very hungover soon-to-be husband comes to fetch me. We have to keep stopping on the freeway on the way home to be sick out of the car doors. Exhibit D I’m 26 and have just landed a job as an actor in an educational theatre company based at the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg. This is a big deal for me. We moved up to Joburg seven months ago and despite landing an agent, it’s taken me this long to get work. We have a small, tight group of friends – four couples – all brought together by a close friend from university. We have a fantastic dinner at the one friend’s parents’ house. We each drink two bottles of red wine. I don’t remember much about the guys that night but the girls were having a full-on bonding session. The next day, Women’s Day, is a public holiday. I drag myself to rehearsals, pretending I have a tummy bug. I must’ve reeked of booze so I doubt I fooled anyone. Our director back then, Francois Theron, is now dead. So is the head of the company, Annie Barnes, and two of the actors, Hannes Potgieter and Stanley Jacobs (who died of Covid). This is a reminder that life is short. Do I really want to spend all that time being hungover? I can hear you saying, dear Reader, ‘But this was in your twenties, I’m sure you’ve calmed down since then.’ Hahahahahahaha. I wish. So obvs that question about drinking interfering with work got a big, fat tick, but I have to say that a lot of the other questions didn’t really ring any bells for me. I’m not an expert but I’ve read a literal SHIT-TON of quitlit (memoirs about giving up the grog) and have done a lot of googling, and, it’s weird, it’s almost something you have to work out for yourself. Especially, if you’re a grey-area drinker – as I was. Am. Whatever. And if you’re deciding on cutting down and perhaps pursuing moderation, you will find this is considered verboten in some circles because moderation is the word people with alcohol use disorder employ to describe their drinking. I know this because I come from a long line of alcoholics and have heard every excuse in the book. But my favourite remains: ‘Oh, I just have a couple of glasses1 of wine every night!’ Thing is, I wasn’t that person who drank a shitload and pretended I hadn’t. The most I ever drank per night on a regular basis was two glasses of wine. And I mean regular glasses, I’m not talking about those glasses you can fit an entire bottle of wine into. So I needed to find a way of managing my drinking, something that worked for me. And that something was not getting shitfaced. But to start I had to define what shitfaced meant. To me, shitfaced is not having two glasses of wine and getting a bit chatty. Shitfaced is being off-your-face, dancing on the tables, loving everyone, maybe crying, thinking you’re super-sexy, singing into a beer bottle, room spinning, having to put one foot on the floor when you lie down, calling relatives in Australia drunk. That was the person – the shitfaced person – I didn’t want to be anymore. Which brings me back to Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day 2021 started off so well. I had brought myself a couple of presents just to congratulate myself on being a mother before the actual day. One was a gorgeous black coat from Convoy, the other was a book I was dying to read. Then actual Mother’s Day came around and I was woken up with a cappuccino and a gorgeous array of presents, plus some hilarious cards with heartfelt messages from the Husband and the offspring. I got a stunning pair of black boots and a fabulous red polo neck, which was lovely, but there were slightly too many mentions of how much I work (see other addictions) in the cards. When the Firstborn was in grade R in around 2006, they had an assignment where they had to write what their mummy and daddy did for work. Daddy apparently washed all the clothes, made all the meals, played golf and went scuba diving (he has been scuba diving once and plays golf badly and has no idea how the washing machine works #justsaying). And Mummy? ‘Mummy works.’ I shit you not. That’s all the Firstborn had to say about me. I laughed it off at the time, but I have to say it was like a knife in my heart. So, whenever I read those cards that go on about how much I work, I smile through gritted teeth. Lunch was booked for 12.30 at our favourite restaurant in Parktown North in Johannesburg called The Local Grill, where we have celebrated so many family occasions. This is when the wheels didn’t exactly start to come off but...
