Cape Town - I drink too much. Fact.
I don’t think I’m an alcoholic, or someone who wees in her pants while queuing at music festivals for falafels. But the truth is, I’ve somehow absorbed that suburban, middle-aged ritual of a few too many wines in the evening. Just to take the edge off.
It’s so embarrassing. One minute, you’re a 20-year-old student drinking beer out of shoes and potting balls into pockets in the pool room of the varsity club. You’re cool then! The next, you’re in your 40s slugging cheap sauvignon blanc, wondering what on earth happened to Limahl and whether the plectranthus needs trimming.
I’ve always been a good boozer. I’ve never got sick and I enunciate better when I’ve had a few. I never fight or fall asleep on the shoulders of strangers. In fact, I’m awfully nice when I’m a bit hammered. I just loooooooove everyone.
A work colleague, who I respect and admire, recently gave up drinking. She mumbled something about having been drunk and too talkative and ending up at Fiction at 4am and then driving home and parking up a bank. “I couldn’t remember how I got home,” she said. “I’m 47. I have three kids. Jesus.”
It would appear we are not alone in our shameful habits. A recent study by the London-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that one in five professional women regularly drink “hazardously”, which is defined as consuming the safe limit of 14 units a week for women. A unit is half a glass of wine. If, like me, you failed maths, the calculation is tough. And if, like me, you suspect the figure might hover around 1 947 589 units a week, the reality is sobering.
I recently went to a party and met a man who had just come out of rehab. His eyes were black as burnt iron. He drank mango juice and said it was hard to be surrounded by so many bottles. He said his wife had left him. He’d been an ass. Now he was into self-affirmation and honesty.
I come from a long line of solid boozers. Legend has it that my grandfather ran away with a barmaid to the Canary Islands, where he drank himself to death. My father is a solid tippler. He can drink a bottle of sauvignon blanc and still be able to advise you on what blue-chip companies to invest in. My brother was a cinematic soak – the kind that would make Mickey Rourke look like a hologram of Bukowski.
I remember the first time I got drunk. I was 17. Jackie, Nicci and I bought a bottle of Spiced Gold and two litres of Tab and hiked up to Breakfast Rock in Pietermaritzburg with the explicit purpose of getting absolutely motherless. We ended up lapping algae-filled puddles and Jackie fell about seven metres off a cliff. We hadn’t factored in our mothers while getting motherless, and spent two hours at Jackie’s house hosing down a belligerent Nicci in the shower. We smelt like David Attenborough and formaldehyde.
After that, there was no stopping me. I drank beer and ran around topless in the Black Stag, my then boyfriend politely running behind me holding my blouse. I drank pints with boys after work and pretended to understand cricket. I forgot my wedding speech and just went “cheers to love” and danced all night. When my brother died, I drank wine in the morning and watched Prison Break.
So it was with great trepidation that I began the lime and soda experiment. I’d started having pains in my back. I was sure my liver resembled a shrivelled Cornish pastie. I had spent too many mornings waking up fuzzy; too many nights of my husband murmuring that I smelt like a tramp.
I won’t go into the psychological blah-blah of my relationship with alcohol. It’s far too boring and cliched. And I pay my shrink R750 per hour to listen to all that stuff. She’s quite good, and makes me a Nespresso every time I see her, which knocks at least R10 off the price.
After a week of not drinking, the immediate benefits are:
1. I have magazine skin. This happened almost straight away. Gone are the weird midlife spots and saggy cheeks. I have the skin of a baby! Or Halle Berry!
2. I sleep like a dead monkey. I always thought I slept really well when I was full of wine, but I forgot I would wake at about 3am and drink a gallon of milk from the bottle while admiring the slimy courgettes in the fridge.
3. I cook. I am positively radiant with Nigel Slater recipes.
4. I’m productive. I had this notion that wine turned me into Sylvia Plath, and without it I would write only rubbish poems about rubbish seashells. I’ve written more of my novel in the past week than, like, forever. I turn up every day and have something to say. The universe doesn’t necessarily start wearing bobby socks when you’re sober.
5. I don’t feel so sad. I’m a melancholic soul. I get upset about humanity. Last week, I watched an old man try out a La-Z-Boy at the charity shop where I write. He was addled and his legs were full of water and his son desperately wanted him to like the chair. But the mechanisms were wrong and the old man struggled to get up. I didn’t cry. Instead, I told the son where he could find a better chair and winked at the old man as he left.
I don’t know how long I will keep this up. Lime and soda is nice enough, but it tastes a bit like Shakespearean frog spawn. I kind of miss my wine self: the part of me that whittles things down and sees the sky expanding. But I’m going to keep going, one day at a time.
Day nine. It’s all good. I feel mildly religious – like I should shave my head and start mountain biking. I stroke the dogs a lot. That’s enough faith for me. On a recent night out, I ordered a lime and soda. I registered the looks on everyone’s face: damn, there goes our party girl. Damn, they’ve finally got to her. Now who will sing Pixies songs with us? I still know all the words to This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven. I’m still the same, just less able to participate in a five-hour rambling conversation about neo-liberal sewage conspiracies and the merits of gas ovens.
And when I wake up in the morning, I know what’s real. I can remember what’s important. And I go into the day clear-eyed, smelling faintly of citrus, frog spawn and paper.
Cape Argus