Drinking Games by Sarah Levy

Author:Sarah Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

PART III

SOBER

9

Alcoholism Needs a Makeover

I need to clear something up. I didn’t stop partying because I was trying to achieve some state of enlightenment or hop on a wellness trend. I loved drinking too much for that. I got sober because alcohol was destroying my life. And I didn’t do it alone.

I first learned about alcoholism when I was eleven. I eavesdropped on my mom’s phone calls to piece the story together: my aunt was an alcoholic, which meant she did things like get drunk in the afternoon before driving to pick up my nine-year-old cousin from a playdate. On their way home one day, my aunt lost control of her car, flipping it over twice in the process. When my mom spoke to my uncle after the accident she whispered, I’m so sorry, like someone had died even though my aunt and cousin had both survived with injuries. My aunt had been court ordered to attend rehab.

When I blacked out, I did it like other twenty-somethings: before crawling into an Uber or a stranger’s bed. But I thought about my aunt from time to time as my hangovers started to get worse. With my head dangling into the toilet, I wondered what her drinking had looked like when she was my age, and if it had started out feeling like magic before morphing into something darker.

I didn’t know anyone my age who was sober, so I thought I was doomed to repeat the same cycle (drink, puke, repent) until an external force snapped me out of it. A new job, maybe, or a hypothetical husband and baby. It seemed impossible that I would be able to take care of a baby with alcohol poisoning and a splitting headache. I imagined that, by then, my drinking would just work itself out.

By the time my twenty-eighth birthday rolled around, I was confronted by a few uncomfortable truths: I blacked out nearly every time I drank. I routinely had to skip out on plans after a night of drinking because of my horrible hangovers. I rarely went out on more than two or three dates with the same person, and I struggled to form meaningful connections. My friendships were subsisting on vodka sodas and rosé, and I gossiped about everyone, even the people I cared about.

I had tried to moderate my drinking before. Only one glass of wine at dinner, no more than four cocktails at the bar, no tequila shots, etc. But these guidelines never worked. To me, one glass of wine is a waste of calories. I truly don’t understand the point. I drink to get drunk; there is no in between. And it’s not like people were forcing me to take shots. After a drink or two, I was the one corralling the group to the bar and assembling lime wedges. It became a compulsion: once alcohol touched my lips, I was a different person. Still, I had a job and didn’t drink alone in my apartment or first thing in the morning.

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