Confederacy of drunkards

I wore my drinking like a badge of honour. Somehow, the fact that I could keep it together—without my wife or kids ever really knowing—felt like an achievement. This was mine. My secret. I hid bottles everywhere: in coat pockets, hanging shopping bags, the tops of kitchen cabinets, under the car seat, even in the bushes by our gate. I was an adult, yet I treated this like some kind of game. Could I make it through a conversation without slurring? Could I make it to the supermarket and back without wetting myself? I could still run 10 kilometres, even if my sweat smelled like ammonia. I could still hold down a job and appear totally straight when anyone else with that much in their system would be on another planet.

It felt like I was beating the odds. My grandfather had been an alcoholic, and the funny stories about his drinking made him seem heroic. My dad liked his drink, but his capacity was nothing like mine, so in a way, I felt I was "beating" him, too. My closest friend was in a similar situation. We compared notes proudly, writing music together while we drank and smoked weed, churning out songs we were both proud of—even if it took half an off-license to maintain our energy and creativity. I told myself we were cheating the system.

And somehow, despite it all, my liver seemed to handle it. Every blood test came back fine. Invincible. I convinced myself I didn’t need the drink—that I could quit at any time but didn’t want to, because I liked how it made me feel. But the truth was, I’d stopped feeling anything about it a long time ago. It was habit, nothing more.

During lockdown, it finally hit me. Reaching into the fridge for my third glass of Muscadet before midday, I heard myself say aloud, “I want to obliterate myself.” The words slipped out without a thought, and I was shocked to hear them, even from my own mouth. What was going on?

In that moment, I realised I needed help. I reached out to my GP, who put me on a course of CBT. The sessions were surreal: “Imagine you’re sitting by a river, watching leaves float downstream. Place each thought on a leaf and let it drift away.” How was this supposed to help? I quit the sessions.

Around this time, my friend had also quit drinking and was facing his own demons. My wife, too, had cut out alcohol after reading about the harm it was doing to her and our family. She encouraged me to do the same, but I resisted. I didn’t want to jump on the health fad train just because everyone else was.

But a couple of weeks later, I did it. I just stopped. To my surprise, it was easy. I quit cold, no withdrawal symptoms—though I did get the night sweats. I don’t understand it; I should have suffered more physically, after all those years.

Maybe I’d already chipped away at the worst of it without realizing it. Or maybe it was a relief to finally let it go.