She gets up and pours herself a strong one
My friend Sarah and I are dabbling lightly in the libations lifestyle.
In January, I had a cocktail at City Theatre when I saw a play and it was nice – bourbon and other stuff. I said “huh, I guess I like bourbon.”
This led me down the path of craving a never-have-I-ever hot toddy when I was sick in February. The lack of any alcohol in the house led me down a rabbit hole of researching bourbon and mixers and oh, there’s so much to know.
Then Sarah and I went to a play in February. I panicked at the bar and ordered a very dry white wine. It was not great. So I said to Sarah – we need a fallback wine, a fallback cocktail, and a list of things we want to try.
A few weeks later, we stopped at the liquor store, the state store, the package store, the ABC store, etc. I had done my research so I picked out a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of wine, and these cute little mixers of raspberry and vodka that turned out to be awful because of the artificial sweeteners – bleah.
That night we both made hot toddies and text about them. I was pleased with mine and that’s about all until tonight. Tonight, I am sick again so I decided on another hot toddy with tea in lieu of water. The small measuring cup was in the dishwasher so I stood looking at the bottle, pondering my options to get just the right amount of bourbon. Honey and lemon – I can be flexible.
I don’t have a jigger. Actually, I think I do somewhere in the attic – my grandmonster was a bartender and somehow I ended up with the weird stuff, including four copper cups branded with a recipe for a Moscow mule. I have them around the holding pennies, hair scrunchies, cat treats, etc. I saw the jigger in the late fall, but it fell into the boxes.
I looked around the kitchen and what caught my eye – a stainless steel reusable Popsicle maker. It is four ounces so I just filled it halfway. Boom. As much as I like tea, I think I prefer my hot toddies with water.
That’s not the way I want my story to end
My relationship with alcohol is complicated. That’s the nice way of saying a lot of family members were or are currently alcoholics. It has been one of the most destructive forces in my life. I don’t take that lightfy.
My dad was an alcoholic. So were three of my four grandparents, at least three uncles, one aunt, and multiple extended family members. I see addiction and alcoholism dripping down into young generations – the children of my extended family. My first adult relationship was with an alcoholic, of course.
I had the usual college shenanigans, but not excessively so. In graduate school, drinking beer at the local bar (‘The Chimes’) was de rigueur for my entire department. I was pretty much a beer drinker, to some extend because I took the typical path of saying beer isn’t like booze.
Then I began taking my mental health recovery more seriously. My psychiatrist was very firm that I should not drink at all to avoid conflicts with my medication. My therapist agreed I should stop drinking because of my intense family history.
So I stopped. I would have one glass of Sangria in the summer and a little bit of wine when I took my grandmother out to dinner – she was 90 trying to order two glasses so I had the waiter water hers down and give me the other half. It was a whole thing. She was not an alcoholic, just elderly.
I missed the whole artisanal/craft beer (and booze) revival because I knew a pint would kick my ass.
Even my ex-laws were rampant with abusers of alcohol, too. So being a non-alcoholic family unit was smart and not that hard. We both lots of bad memories from our growing up years. And too many friends who didn’t let that stop them from creating more of those memories for their own children.
I honestly thought my experiences were unique until I tried to set some boundaries with adults in my life – as an adult – whose choices made me acutely uncomfortable. Not a single time did any of those folx respond well to the boundary. Some left my life, others remained warily in my circle. I was just sad to learn how deeply alcohol culture had wounded so, so many people. I also blamed myself for not being better at the boundaries, slowly realizing I could truly not control these choices. A bitter lesson.
My own path to healing those wounds wasn’t easy or pretty, more of tilted trajectory with a few side quests and several rounds of hitting the restart button. Learning about my family history helped me put my relatives behavior into context. I stopped trying to force my father onto a pedestal, choosing to hold him accountable with compassion and a lot of pity. Not exactly the best framework, but an improvement for both of us.
Why do I feel this party’s over?
But I did like the taste of some drinks. So why not enjoy something in moderation that I have clearly demonstrated to myself I can do without upon request? I talked with my current psych med provider who told me which meds to skip if I have a drink. Simple as that. Most of the time someone else is driving or I’m in an Uber so that’s not a problem.
Sarah and I are going to a musical on Tuesday and a play on Friday. We’ll probably have a drink at the play.
I never understood healthy alcohol culture where you could focus on flavors and cute glasses, a bar set, and a reasonable pace working through a case of beer. I never learned how to order a cocktail. I don’t know anything about wine or beer really. Most of my experiences involved getting drunk on cheap beer or peeling someone else off the floor who was drunk on God knows what.
I took on so much responsibility coping with their alcohol use that I had no breathing room to simply enjoy a drink. Not five drinks. Not out of the bottle. Not a pile of cans next to me – these were all part of my life experiences, but not my own choices.
Toss in my social anxiety and I stand at a bar like a deer in the headlights. And say “house white” or “whatever’s on tap” because those are things I know. I like other drinks but feel silly ordering a sex on the beach or a cosmopolitan.
I’m torn between feeling foolish and feeling like I’m playing with fire. Neither is a good feeling.
This in between space from teetotaler to tippler includes everything from knowing your fancy wine vintage to children putting a drunk parent to bed, then cleaning up whatever was broken. Those children are broken, too. I don’t hate bars, but I genuinely wish organizations who hold planning sessions would consider a sober space as well as a bar. Do both. Include everyone. Honor all experiences.
One thing further – I’ve learned that alcohol culture can be a red flag for other abusive behavior. I was part of a planning session with an organization for a celebratory event. They picked a bar, I suggested adding a sober event and man, did I strike a nerve. This organization has unresolved issues with previous leaders sexual misconduct, drug use, etc. The culture hasn’t changed as much as they think.
I backed out of that hornet’s nest and found another way to help.
Addiction affects the whole family or system.
You won’t remember all my champagne problems
I proposed to Sarah that we attend some mixology/cocktail classes to learn and have fun.
A Star Wars themed class at Wiggle Whiskey?
Spring cocktail lessons including a Rob Roy?
I made some rules that seem reasonable based on my experiences. I had all these rules around myself based on other people’s experiences. I’ve never used recreational drugs, not even marijuana. In part that was also due to family history, but in part due to the drugs I take to manage my disabilities. Now that’s a healthy decision.
If I was ever tempted, I remembered the feeling of hypomania and the destruction is caused as I buzzed along. Taking meds to stay connected to reality makes taking drugs to disconnect seem a little pointless. But I can understand the temptation to take that path.
Alcohol culture contributes to these dangerous choices, by lauding the use of alcohol as fun, normal, and even necessary. It can be those things, but like most things – it isn’t really neutral. My experiences with alcoholism tells me that it can easily be weaponized, brandished to control other people. Restricting access to alcohol won’t contain the damage.
Changing the culture could. But it is pretty embedded in us as human beings.
These choices have the power to impact a lot of lives.
I feel it is important to emphasize that there are no children in this house so the Popsicle mold isn’t a poor choice.
