No More Wine, Thanks
I wrote this piece for Perspective: The Blog. It’s a vulnerable share about my relationship with alcohol. Spoiler, it’s a complicated one that is forever changing. And after speaking to a few people recently, it seems I’m not the only one.
I love wine but wine has decided it no longer loves me.
In fact, just one glass can see me being violently sick within a few hours. I get aches in my neck and pain across my face followed by a crippling migraine thrown in for good measure. My body’s way of telling me something, perhaps.
Alcohol is something that was present in my life from a young age. My parents would have wine with dinner, my grandfather favoured a whiskey and water after work and my grandma a vodka laced tonic or tomato juice. A bottle of wine almost always served with dinner and Champagne brought out to toast or celebrate whenever the occasion arose.
My 20’s were soaked in alcohol, social drinks after work, night’s out on the weekend. My boyfriend and I would often reach for a few glasses of something in the evening, be it wine, beer, or gin. Yet, I always saw alcohol as a reward and less as a fix for feeling low. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that to be a dangerous path. There was a period of time in my teens where my Dad had some trouble with alcohol, using it as an emotional crutch. So, while I could absolutely be known to ‘wind down’ with a glass of something at the end of the day, it wasn’t ever used to take me to, or pull me from, some place dark.
But for celebrations, it felt like alcohol was expected. You ‘have’ to have a drink, it’s so and so’s birthday, blah blah has gotten engaged, hey… it’s the last day at work. The list goes on, you fill in the blanks.