The Wine O'Clock Myth by Lotta Dann

Author:Lotta Dann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

22.

Joanna

‘I hate with a passion that whole thing of “wine o’clock”. I just hate it.’

I wasn’t allowed alcohol growing up. It was consumed quite freely by Mum and Dad, but I don’t remember either of them ever being drunk, and we were certainly never given tastes of it. It was a reasonably strict upbringing and alcohol was a no-no for us.

I started drinking quite early, and Mum and Dad would have had a fit if they’d known what I was doing, so I hid it. I’d stay out at friends’ houses instead of being at home so that my parents didn’t have to see it. I was one Joanna at home, sitting at the dinner table, and another Joanna who went out and got plastered.

When I drank, I drank. You’d never see me have just two drinks. I absolutely loved drinking; I loved the freedom it gave me to essentially be someone else and be bold. I wasn’t that person, and I’m still not that person. I’m probably quite introverted, but alcohol made me open up and be the social butterfly that I’m really not at heart. I was looking for approval and attention and love, and the bottom of a bottle wasn’t the best place to look for that, but that’s how I went about it.

There was a period in my twenties when I was binge drinking, but it wasn’t an everyday occurrence and I still functioned quite well. I wouldn’t say I was a healthy drinker then, but it was about weekend socialising, not having to have one, two or three bottles of wine at the end of each day. That came later on.

I went into a career in hospitality and got married and had two daughters. Still a big drinker but managing it. I think there was a part of me that knew that it was the only way I could connect with people, because the friends I had, all we did was drink. That’s all we really had in common.

I lived with guilt for so many years. Like, Did I bathe my kids last night? I can’t really remember. Did I feed them? Did I put their chicken nuggets in? (Because that’s all they ever got when I was drinking.) But despite the guilt I still thought it was just fun.

By my mid thirties I was drinking daily, and it was heavy. Like, not just a couple of drinks daily; it was a lot daily. I was starting to have conflict with myself. I knew I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy with who I was, I wasn’t happy in my marriage (which was largely because of who I was). I knew I was just trying to dull all of the questions that were coming up in me about facing up to life. My business was failing, it was swallowing money that I didn’t have, and I started to hate people. When they walked in the restaurant door I really just wanted to tell them to fuck off.

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