Читать книгу From Whiskey to Water - Sam Cowen - Страница 14

“But how do you know you’re an alcoholic?”

That’s a good question, and it’s one I am asked as soon as people find out I’m an alcoholic and that I’ve been sober for 14 years. Surely, if I’ve been sober for 14 years I can’t possibly be an alcoholic. Perhaps it was just when I was young? And sometimes I smile and shrug and say, “Well, I just know.” Like I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Like I know I’m a woman. Like I know I have blue eyes and blonde hair. Well, it might be blonde – it’s been so long since I started bleaching it, I’m not really sure any more. But of everything else I am sure.

“But are you sure you’re an alcoholic?” they ask. Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure. I’m sure with every fibre of my being. It’s not a phase. It’s not ‘something I’m going through at the moment.’ I’m an alcoholic. I cannot drink responsibly. I don’t know how.

How do I know? I know because people who are not alcoholics do not ever ask themselves that question, not seriously. Not during the day after the night before, not when they wake up in the night gasping for water with their tongue plastered to the roof of their mouths, wishing they hadn’t had so much to drink during the rugby or the braai or the dinner. Not even when they go to work the next day feeling tender. For the last two of my drinking years I asked myself that question a lot – first weekly, I think, and then daily, and then daily and nightly.

I know because people who are not alcoholics wake up the day after a boozy dinner and take two Panado and then tell their office mates about the night before and they don’t worry about what those people think about them. Because it’s funny. Because it isn’t a regular thing. I never told anyone about the night before. I was paranoid that they would guess the truth. That the night before wasn’t an isolated event like a birthday or a farewell or a hen’s party. The night before was just like the night before that and the night before that. That wherever I was, whether at my home or someone else’s home or at a bar or a club or a party, I would have been drunk and I would have had a hangover the next day. It wasn’t funny. It was normal.

I know because people who are not alcoholics accept that they can’t drink while they are pregnant because it’s bad for the baby, and gloomily – or not so gloomily – resign themselves to a sober nine months, with maybe a glass or two of champagne at their baby shower. They don’t decide, as I did, that they can never have children because they know they are physically and mentally incapable of staying sober for that length of time. Nine months without a drink? It may as well have been nine years. It may as well have been 90 years.

I know because people who are not alcoholics never have conversations like this over lunch. I think I’d been sober for 12 years when the following conversation unfolded.

“So, if you found out you had two weeks to live, what would you do?”

There were about five of us at the table, I think. The other four were drinking, but I didn’t mind. I don’t mind generally. My problem was never with what other people drank. My problem was what I drank and how much.

Someone in the group had recounted a story about someone who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and been given two weeks to live. It made all of us examine our own mortality.

I rushed in. That ‘angels fear to tread’ thing? Yeah, I’m one of the fools.

“I’d go straight to the bottle store.” It was a relief just thinking about it actually. With two weeks to live, I wouldn’t have to try any more. There would be no more tough evenings, desperate for a glass of wine, no more long lunches watching everyone else get boringly blotto and having to pretend to be interested the third time they told the same old story. But, even deeper than that, no more having to be vigilant all the time. I could let down the guard against potential triggers. Two glorious weeks of oblivion before the end. I wouldn’t have to feel bad; it wouldn’t be like a real relapse – I’d be guilt free! I’d have fought the good fight; it would be a very peaceful surrender.

“I’d buy a case or 10 of Shiraz and a dozen bottles of Jack Daniels and then I’d lie on the couch and watch old series reruns until the end.”

It sounded amazing. Then I became aware of the silence. Four frozen faces looked at me across the table. Someone cleared her throat and said, “But, Sam, what about your kids? And Martin?”

I hadn’t thought about them. I hadn’t thought about them at all. And when she said that, my first reaction wasn’t one of guilt or shame – it was resentment. I’d been a good person for years, hadn’t I? I’d been sober for them for a fucking long time. And now I was expected to give them the last two weeks of my life? Why couldn’t those be for me? Why couldn’t I have what I wanted? I wanted numbness. An end to anxiety. To be so gone, so inebriated, so many miles down the rabbit hole that it might be weeks before I realised I’d died.

But that feeling is not normal. Normal people don’t think of how great it would be to be able to embalm yourself while you’re still alive. Normal people think of how they would spend time with their nearest and dearest.

And that’s how I know I’m an alcoholic. Because until the day I die, my body will still see its nearest and dearest in the bottom of a bottle of wine.

I know because I understand and relate to stories like this.

One man, also an alcoholic, tells the story of his own journey from blissful shame to uncomfortable sobriety. He was part of a group of men and women with whom I got together sometimes after AA meetings. For some people, the official meetings provide a place to unburden and offload and question, but for us they were a place to listen and to learn and to find mercy and understanding. Especially understanding.

“So for a while I thought I was a whiskey alcoholic,” he said cheerfully. He was a big man, a ‘boet’. Afrikaans and no nonsense. You’d never guess he had spent years waking up on the kitchen floor because to go to bed meant having to climb the stairs. We all nodded sagely when he told us that. No drunk likes stairs. Stairs come with a wealth of ways to fall down and then have to explain inexplicable bruises.

“I would drink scotch until I passed out. But when I had wine I was fine.”

I laughed at that. This big Afrikaner – let’s call him Boet – drinking wine. So unlikely. So like me.

“So then I thought I was a wine and whiskey alcoholic. Because I really got into wine, you know?”

Oh God, did I know.

“At first I thought, I could totally do this, this wine lark. Especially red wine. I even joined a Wine of the Month club.”

And we all laughed at that. How we laughed! Wine of the Month? More like Wine of the Day.

“And it was cool. I drank it all. And I could talk about it. Like, I really knew my stuff in the end! I could tell you all about the different flavours and what the ‘nose’ was on a wine and all that shit.”

And it was shit. It is shit. We all knew it. But he also knew it. That’s how we all became so close. There was an old lady who used to carry a bottle of gin in her handbag wherever she went. On a good week, that would last her two days. She said she had joined Alcoholics Anonymous so she could learn to drink like a lady. Even before her first meeting was over she realised she would never drink like the lady she wanted to be, ever again. One of her ways of dealing with the day-to-day wobbles and fear and sobriety was to buy a tiny handbag. No room for gin in her bag; less room to fall down.

There was a young executive in finance. He didn’t drink every day but when he did, he made it count. He had joined us when he realised that waking up in Durban when he’d blacked out in Joburg meant he had crossed the line from knowing how to party to not knowing how not to.

There was a northern-suburbs lady who looked the picture of efficiency. She was the kind of woman who could organise a dinner party for 10 gluten-intolerant vegetarians who were allergic to lactose and pull it off effortlessly. And she started each day with a shot of vodka. Just to get the wheels turning. She had managed to hang on to a luxury German car, but not her children or her home. She was staying with an aunt while her husband took care of the kids and they desperately tried to save a marriage built on years of half-truths.

And, of course, there was me.

“I used to take a case of wine to dinner parties in case there wasn’t enough when I got there,” Boet told us, nursing a cappuccino in his huge hands, “but I got away with it because I was the guy who knew his stuff from Wine of the Month club … But you can’t drink more than half a case yourself every time and not get noticed. One of my mate’s wives said something. That was blind.”

Yes, it would have been. Of course, he could have done what I did: finish a bottle and throw it away while helping to clear the table. No one would have known it was him, and he could have carried on the charade for much longer. Years longer maybe. But he didn’t.

“Eventually I thought, nooit, I’ll stick to beer. Cos, you know … Beer.”

Yes, we knew. Beer. Half the liquor content and lots of sugar and yeast to fill you up fast. The faster you fill up, the less you can consume. Well, that’s the theory. But, for an alcoholic, those limits turn quickly into targets.

“And that was okay during rugby season, but you can’t dop the same during cricket. Except at home. And who dops beer by themselves at home?’

Who indeed? Beer is a social drink. A few after work with the boys is okay. A few by yourself in front of the TV is just sad. And when you’re sad, you start making the connection between what you’re drinking and what you’re feeling. And that’s the most uncomfortable place in the world. That’s when denial takes over like a headmaster who’s just caught you cheating. Once it’s caught you, you can never escape it.

“So then I thought I’ll just drink coolers. Cos that’s not really drinking. It’s like Coke with a bit of a kick.”

Boet drained his mug.

“But I knew when I came downstairs one morning feeling like shit and found 32 empty Hooch bottles on the kitchen table … That’s when I knew I had a problem.”

And that is when he knew he was an alcoholic.

And the next day he went to AA.

I know I’m an alcoholic because the abnormal became normal. It became normal to drink a bottle of wine a night by myself. I was living alone at the time and I would drink alone. And that was normal, because who doesn’t have a glass of wine when they get home at night? Maybe two? In my case, maybe six.

It became normal to throw the empty bottle in the bin outside so I didn’t have to be reminded of it the next morning. I mean, who wants to dwell on that, right? Although at the time, of course, I didn’t think of it as ‘dwelling on that’. At the time, I thought of it as ‘not wanting to clear up in the morning’. And yet … the dishes would always be there waiting in the sink the next day.

After I got married it became normal to buy a case of wine and drink it all over the house. That way, my husband Martin wouldn’t think I had had more than a glass or two of wine by the time he got home. He’d be right, in a way. I wouldn’t ever have more than a glass or two from the bottle in the kitchen cupboard. I’d have had a glass or two of wine from at least three bottles: the one in the kitchen, the other in the living room, another in the bedroom. He didn’t know about those though. It became normal not to mention it. Why would he need to know, anyway?

I know I am an alcoholic because my need for a drink sneaks up like a mosquito in the dark. It’s not attached to a situation or a person. It’s a dull, annoying buzz that I cannot ignore or tune out. Sometimes I will be sitting in a nice restaurant, having a lovely time with good friends, under no stress whatsoever, with no underlying worries, where all is good with the world, and then someone will open a bottle at a nearby table and I’ll catch a whiff. And the world will slow down and the conversation will dull and every sense will hone in on that lovely, intoxicating, delicious, dangerous smell and my whole body will hunger for it. And in that moment I will resent everyone and everything keeping me from it. Including myself. Especially myself. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. I. Just. Want. It.

I know I am an alcoholic because the strangest things can trigger that hunger. Once, about six years ago, a friend who’s a bit of a foodie bought me a bottle of alcohol-free wine. I hated alcohol-free wine. It tasted of fizzy apple or grape juice.

“Sam, this is new. It’s made in the style of Cabernet and Merlot, so you get the taste without getting drunk.”

I was sceptical. Highly sceptical. That rubbish fake champagne you get at supermarkets had made me suspicious of such lofty claims of paradise. But I agreed to try it.

I managed two mouthfuls of fake Merlot and had to pour the entire bottle down the drain. The taste was so close. Whoever had made it had done a dangerously good job. Memories came flooding back, memories of afternoons in the sunshine with friends feeling nothing but happy, and evenings on the couch with my cat feeling peaceful and numb, and dinner parties with people I didn’t know feeling confident and funny – and I wanted it all back. I felt the loss so keenly in that moment. It was like I’d lost a part of myself. A best friend who protected me and improved me and comforted me. And I wanted her back so much. And I wanted the me that I was when I was with her. And I wanted a glass of real wine more than anything.

Almost more than anything. I wanted to be sober slightly more. But only slightly. And so, before anything could go wrong, before I accidently revved through an amber traffic light that turned red while I was in the intersection, I got rid of all that fake wine. And tried not to think about the real alternative. Not because I was relieved, but because I was afraid. I was eight years sober and I was as terrified of a relapse as I was when I was eight days sober.

There are many more ways I know I am an alcoholic, but I think the best way to describe my utter certainty is this: I still want a drink. Not all the time and not every day. Sometimes there will be a long time between those short scary bursts of desire. Sometimes there will be a few in a week. One year, I remember only one instance. I have nothing to drink away. I have a good job, a happy family and a lovely home. If I had continued to drink the way I used to, I wouldn’t have any of that. I’d probably be jobless, homeless and loveless. And I know this. And I know how lucky I am to have the love and support that I have. And yet, knowing all that, I still want a drink. And that is how I know that, 14 years down the line, I am, at DNA base level, a proper alcoholic.