Why I Decided To Put A Cork In It
The last time I had the taste of alcohol on my tongue, it was travelling upwards via my oesophagus. I was enduring the affliction of probable alcohol poisoning and certifiable self-pity, after a night as filthy as the toilet bowl my head was hung in. It was 365 days ago.
Let me clarify that I have never been a big drinker.
I was just shy of 18 when I had my first drink. It was the night of my school formal, and my best friend and I shared swigs from a Passionfruit-flavoured UDL whilst hopping excitedly from foot to foot, waiting for it to ‘kick in’. I dabbled with red wine when I travelled through Europe because I thought it was cool and chic and Parisian. I loathed it. It made my eyes bulge and face contort and totally confused my quasi-French vibe for Quasimodo. Then I went to Melbourne, and the hipsters taught me how to drink spirits infused with lavender or wattle or freshly foraged seaweed and I felt more stupid yelling my order over the bar than I did picking their top shelf ‘botanicals’ out of my teeth.
But then, there was the Christmas Party. Ahhh yes. ‘Twas the Christmas Party on a Monday night in February that gave me the cruellest, most vile, most horrific gift of all – my first hangover.
I’d spent twenty-one years trying to forge a tolerable relationship with alcohol and not once had I indulged enough to feel its treacherous touch the following day. But that fateful, festive night, I carelessly threw back my umpteenth glass of white wine, and just two hours later, I was lying on my bathroom floor watching it come up far quicker than it went down.
I spent the next day in the tumble dryer that was my body, unable to stop the bone-deep churning. I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even go up the stairs to get myself a fresh set of clothes! And all the while, I was stewing in a severe form of self-pity and anguish that only a hangover allows.
It was then that I decided that I was done with drink. Finito.
From then on, at birthdays and weddings, dinners in and pub nights out, I would find wholehearted contentment in my no-gin-all-tonic. With every point won at trivia, my drink bottle would share a celebratory clink with a dozen beers. I even went to a wine festival – me, myself and I-minus-wine – and had a fabulous time dancing the weekend away.
After a year without it, I can’t quite imagine why I’d take another sip again. It wasn’t until I stopped trying to make me and alcohol a ‘thing’ that I realised that I was, and am, entirely capable of having an absolute riot without it.
Naturally, there was a social adjustment. I recognise the oddity of being in my early twenties and opting for a premature retirement from alcohol; turning down a drink comes with a few turned heads at the bar. But for the same reason I choose not to eat bananas, or take up acrobatics, or do long-form division, is why I choose not to drink. Simply because, I do not care for it.
Too often we drink to reach the courage at the bottom of each glass. When you discover that you’ve already got it, well, that’s more intoxicating than any Hand-Foraged-Seaweed-Infused-Magic-Martini can offer.