The first time I drank during the workday I was 29, and if I could pinpoint the moment my alcohol problems began, it would be that day.
I was leaving a job where I knew almost everyone hated me. I’d been acting like a brat and taking one sick day a month for a while, so it wasn’t surprising, but it did mean my last day (the fake nice speeches, the passive-aggressive gifts, the sparsely attended goodbyes). . do) was going to be stressful.
And my number one strategy for coping with stress was…drinking.
I took the train back home, telling myself I wanted to change clothes for later (hello, denial), then I happened to see a New Zealand sauvignon blanc (my drink of choice) in the fridge, and just… Dio It just so happened that I poured myself half a glass. It’s my last day, after all!
It made me feel better. More confused, warmer, less worried about what would come next. Hey, my brain thought, that worked. Drink during the day: win.
When I was 30, my long-term boyfriend told me he thought I needed to stop drinking. And shortly after he left me.
My naturally slim body had taken on a bulge over the top of my jeans; I stopped wearing jeans. Now I was saving five bottles of wine a week for four or five nights. But I got promoted at work again and again, so I told myself it was okay.
Yes, sometimes my hands would shake after a big night, but it went away when I ate, so don’t bother. Probably low blood sugar.
Catherine Gray’s problems with alcohol began when she was 29 years old.
When I was 32, I had a devastating recurrence of the cystic acne that had plagued me in my early twenties. My love life was a disaster. I was now self-employed and considered basically unemployed. I saved six bottles of wine a week and the shakes no longer went away when I ate.
My lowest point, at age 33, was not a dramatic story: it was internal and invisible to the naked eye. By then, he was drinking up to seven bottles of wine a week, with only one or two nights off.
Then one day, it completely dawned on me that alcohol was going to cause me an early death. Either I would trip and fall on the train tracks after too many, or it would take decades, as wine became cheaper, my group of friends became even smaller, and the amount I earned dwindled until I could well collect unemployment benefits. .
I could see it. My antifuture in social housing. Or maybe I would meet a rich man who would put up with my nonsense so I would die slowly in an attic. Either way, I knew I was going to die.
So I made the best decision of my life and stopped drinking. I’ve been sober for ten years now. I started with six months of AA meetings, which was great, decided it wasn’t for me long term, and then put together my own “program” of voracious reading about addiction, meeting sober friends through social media, exercising stress journaling, meditation apps, nightly gratitude lists, and oh my gosh, I feel like a middle-class cliché with this list, but I have to end with: yoga.
There is a silent epidemic of women secretly drinking too much. That’s why terrifying data shows there has been a 44 percent increase in the number of women dying from alcohol-specific causes.
Long story short, I rewired my brain with all the reading and started treating my body like a temple instead of a piñata. When I was four years sober, I wrote a book about my experiences, which became an instant best-seller: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. It has sold close to half a million copies and I have received thousands of letters from readers.
After dozens of expert interviews and hundreds of case studies, this is my main conclusion: Addictive alcohol use is a spectrum. I quit smoking when I was a nine on the scale. But I wish I had stopped when I was six years old, 29 years old.
Second, I discovered that there is a growing silent epidemic of women secretly drinking too much. That’s why terrifying data shows there has been a 44 percent increase in the number of women dying from alcohol-specific causes. That could have been me.
It is also a myth that heavy drinkers are broke and unemployed. A 2020 survey found that the biggest drinkers were the middle class. And the biggest drinkers in that subset? Baby Boomers from 60 to 78 years old.
If any of this sounds familiar, these are the signs that your drinking has entered the “gray zone” (a land that can last for many years) between non-addicted and fully addicted. If you relate to two or more of the following points, act now.
1. Have you Googled ‘am I an alcoholic?’
People who drink healthily don’t Google it if they find it problematic, just as people who don’t have marital problems don’t seek out relationship advice.
The amount and frequency of intake is largely irrelevant.
I have met people who consider themselves recovering alcoholics, yet they only drink two bottles of wine a week. Since they did it in a secretive way, like Gollum, ‘my precious’, it caused problems in their relationships and because of his bird-like structure, his two bottles were not my two bottles.
2. You are secretive about your drinking.
Apparently my dad hid bottles of vodka behind streetlights on his way to work, like a prominent businessman, so it was easy to fool myself with my “I’ll stay up to watch another episode” and then finish the bottle. which I would later replace. , I wasn’t ‘hiding bottles’. But that’s how it was. Because I hid from having finished it.
Other “hiding” strategies I have participated in: removing recycled glass under the cover of darkness to prevent neighbors from seeing the volume, “pre-playing” by starting at home or arriving at the bar early, and deliberately purchasing a drink that It is not visibly alcoholic, like a vodka and tonic.
These are all “hidden”, they’re just not as bald as hiding a bottle of liquor.
3. He tried to control his alcohol consumption
I began a “moderation experiment” when I was 29, in which I kept a daily unit count in a gold notebook to try to stay below my goal of 30 units per week (the 14 units recommended for women: a bottle and a bottle). -half the wine – was hilarious, I knew it would never happen). I put it away for a few months and, since I only managed to stay in limbo below 30 units twice, I ended up scribbling the careful graphs angrily.
I now know from thousands of readers that this “count and control” stage, and its abandonment, is very common. The attempt to control is actually a sign that you have lost control.
4. Would you say you drink moderately?
These are the people who protest too much because they are definitely moderate, and because they always stop at two o’clock and never have a hangover… these are the people who ask me: ‘How did you stop smoking?’ I only ask for a friend.
They also look (as I did) for people who are worse than them: ‘What about John? Drink every night!’ I collected stories of people who were “worse than me” to protect my own toxic alcohol consumption. If you have nothing to protect, you don’t need to prepare a defense speech.
5. You drink more than you intend to
This is the deciding factor. You go out with the intention of having only two spritzers of white wine or three bottles of beer and you have more. Constantly and repeatedly.
Think about other consumables in life to give this perspective. I don’t buy a family cheesecake and I intend to eat one slice and end up having three. Therefore, I have no problem with cheesecake.
If anything in this article rings true for you, know that you are not alone. The very nature of alcohol means that it literally erodes our ability to say no to more, as it lowers inhibitions and increases impulsivity.
There is a vicious cycle built into alcohol itself; It is devilishly addictive, socially defended and an addictive drug that we are expected to use regularly in a non-addictive way. Drink, but not too much, okay?
My dad used to say, “I thought the problem was the fourth drink, but it was the first.” For me it turned out to be true.
Catherine Gray is the author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, which is available now.