Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This: Part I
There is a misconception that being a “sober person” equates to being a “boring person.” In my experience, that is just not true. I have a very fulfilling life, sans alcohol. I get up at 5am and go for a 5-mile walk, I study, I go to class, I venture out to the grocery store to buy cat food and whatever frozen vegetables are on e-vic that week. At night, I relax by drinking tea, cross-stitching, cleaning out the buttons of my keyboard with the corner of a toilet paper square, and watching sitcom reruns. I’m a full-blown Dare Devil, as you can plainly see.
Despite none of my behavior being particularly risky, even the most mundane of tasks are a risk to an addict. Going to class is risky, because all of the undergraduates behave as if they are majoring in ethanol metabolizing and minoring in condom fumbling’s. Watching tv is a risk, because every time Frasier offers Niles some sherry, it’s a chance for my poorly wired brain to go, “whoop! Fortified wine! What a splendid idea!” Going to the grocery store (or going anywhere) is a necessary, but fatal risk. My vice is booze. Booze is everywhere. My assassin lives in a bottle, and he is waiting at every supermarket, gas station, concert hall, theater, fundraiser, restaurant, country club, wedding, funeral, birthday party, baby shower, football game, festival, fair, and there is always that one chick (formerly me) willing to share her flask in the bathroom at any function where alcohol isn’t being served.
I don’t believe that “alcohol culture” is a conspiracy or plot to drive people to dependency, like some of my clean-livered colleagues do. My opinion is “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” and “drink ‘em if you can do it without barfing in a Lyft.” I understand capitalism. I understand marketing. I understand that the best way to sell booze is to highlight the fun being had in a group of people on drink #3. You aren’t going to see a commercial that displays the 4am shitshow when everyone is either crying, dry humping, fighting, puking, stumbling, or slurring the words “I never do this” while snorting a tiny pile of cocaine off a car key. Fireball got pretty close with the tagline “tastes like Heaven, burns like Hell.” That’s only a few steps away from the truth about Fireball, which is “tastes like viscous cinnamon jizz, burns like Mexican food indigestion.” Like I said, the blatantly showcased party scenes of alcohol ads don’t concern me. The inundated nightly habits of casual drinking do concern me.
What’s one glass of wine at the end of a long day, right? It’s nothing, as long as you have the ability to stop at one glass. A second glass of wine won’t hurt, will it? Nah. You do you, Bethany. But what people are failing to understand is that addiction is not born out of substance use or abuse. You may never have touched a drug or a drink in your life, and you could still be an addict. Those tendencies, those dependencies, those habits- they aren’t a free gift with purchase that comes glued to a box of Franzia. Addictive behavior lives inside the vulnerable people- the ones who have anxieties, insecurities, trauma, sadness, a feeling of emptiness… there is a monster sitting dormant in their brains. Addiction is like a parasite. If you start feeding it, it will grow strong enough to take over your entire existence.
I thought that getting sober during a pandemic would be impossible. No meetings (in person), no distracting activities, no coffee with friends that ended in a hug and the reassurance that “you got this.” When I managed to get, and stay, sober in this dumpster-fire of a year, I was proud. No, more than proud, I was arrogant. I thought that I had fought the ultimate fight and came out victorious. What I didn’t realize, was that I was ahead of the curve. I knew that I was an addict before the world shut down. I knew that I had the tendency to drink when I panic, before everyone else started panicking. I knew that my idle hands fit perfectly around the stem of a martini glass. I knew that one drink was one drink too many, and a thousand drinks would never be enough for me. I had already hit my rock bottom before drinking at home became the only legal activity. For me, this pandemic was just God’s way of parting the clouds to give me the finger. Little did I know, as far as alcoholism goes, I was the lucky one.
Getting the chance to explore different meetings has been a fringe benefit of taking recovery virtual. I can go to meetings in California, I can go to meetings in Alaska, I can go to meetings with only women, I can go to inclusive LGBTQ meetings at midnight (highly recommend btw). In this smorgasbord of meetings, there is a demographic that has been rapidly increasing since last March: Moms.
My heart breaks for these women. They are busting all of the stereotypes, while taking the brunt of the stigma. They aren’t uneducated, they have a master’s degree. They’ve never been homeless; they have a walk-in closet and a subzero refrigerator. Their fathers didn’t rape or abuse them, they bought them a Jetta on their 16th birthday and danced to “Butterfly Kisses” at their wedding. They don’t subscribe to a “party” lifestyle, they (along with Dr. Seuss) put the kids to bed at 8pm and after doing the dishes, changing over the laundry, wiping every surface with Lysol, and applying a futile night serum, they put themselves to bed. They aren’t selling sex for a fix; they are putting a cheeky zinfandel in their grocery cart next to the kid’s fruit snacks and the husband’s nasal strips. Most importantly, they aren’t raging narcissists who only care about getting drunk to the point of neglecting everyone they love. They are nurturing, sacrificing, laboring, chauffeuring, cooking, cleaning, kissing, hugging, teaching, diapering changing, flashcard making, snack providing mothers. They would take a bullet for their children, there’s no intentional neglect anywhere in this narrative. These Goddesses do everything, all day, every day for their families. Its just… right now… they cannot stop drinking.
The women I am describing are privileged, no doubt. But please don’t roll your eyes and discount their struggle on the basis that “it was about time something bad happened to them.” That’s cheap, addict thinking. Wealth, race, gender, and nepotism aside, you’ll find that their mental defect and your mental defect are a matching set- like earrings. Or oven mitts. While I hate that this is happening to them, they are a handy tool we can use to disprove the outdated and wildly false theory that addiction only happens to useless people with septic tank lives. Addiction happens to wonderful people with magical lives too.
Every news media platform I can think of has published a story about how alcohol consumption has increased during the quarantine. Stress surely had a big part in it. Boredom, too. Attempting to cope with a complete change in socializing, scheduling, and working could be aided with alcohol. All of these factors came tumbling down on mothers tenfold. Not only were they struggling to adjust their own lives, but they were also charged with adjusting their children’s lives. They were already trying to be the best mother’s they could be (a harsh competition amongst mother’s these days) and in an instant they had to become teachers, coaches, entertainers, counselors, babysitters… not only did they need an extra set of hands, but they also needed an extra few heads for all the hats they were forced to wear.
Alcohol is the perfect anesthetic for insecurities. What could possibly make someone feel more insecure than having 10 different jobs and feeling like you are failing at all of them? Alcohol spackles all the cracks. Stressed? Alcohol. Kids are bored? 3 drinks mommy always has fun ideas! Need a break? Margarita night with other moms. Nothing unusual, excessive, or untoward is happening there. But the brief blips of relief leave you craving more relief. The manufactured pleasure leaves you craving more pleasure. The fabricated happiness begets the need for more happiness. The price of that happy, pleasurable relief is going to rapidly go up in cost.
Two glasses of wine won’t quench the thirst for very long. Two glasses become four. Your kids think you are a blast on glass four. Your cartoon voices are funnier, you let them bike around the cul-de-sac longer because you are settled and imbibing on the front porch. Four drinks mommy says, “screw the casserole, let’s order pizza.” Your husband may say something like, “I like this side of you.” He starts drinking more too. It becomes a thing you do together- it’s fun- like it was before you had the kids. For a brief, fleeting moment, you are happier than you have ever been. You love your life four drinks in. Four glasses won’t do it for you for very long.
You don’t remember when it became a habit, but now you unsheathe that corkscrew at 4pm. Lunches are thrown together, the laundry is piling up, you remembered to buy three bottles of pinot grigio but forgot the milk. And, really, mom? Pizza? Again? You’ve already finished a bottle by yourself by the time your husband gets home. He doesn’t think you’re easy-going anymore, he thinks you’re sloppy. The kids don’t think you are fun anymore, they think you are slipping towards insanity. Things are falling apart. The logical thing to do would be to stop drinking… but there is no logic in this nightmare. Addiction got ya, babe. It got ya good.
She was just one of many tiny boxes on my computer screen, but she stood out. Big diamond ring, salon highlights, cashmere sweater, I assume a pretty face, but it was resting in her hands at the moment. Her chest heaved, her nimble fingers quaked, her tears coated her wrists, and her rolling sobs echoed through my speakers.
“I just don’t understand…” she desperately wailed, “why can’t I stop?”
PART II AVAILABLE ON FRIDAY
