I waited a long time for my first drink. I'd had a few sips, swigs
and nips of Manischewitz at Passover; a wine cooler on a camping trip
with friends; and whiskey at an eighth grade sleepover. Still, I never
had a proper drink until graduation night of senior year.
Why was I immune to peer pressure -- a paragon of willpower who
tagged along with her friends while they drank, got drunk and let loose?
In high school, I mostly avoided parties and stopped kissing boys,
since kissing boys was something you usually did at social gatherings
with the help of alcohol. Did I enjoy standing in the corner at parties,
observing the other humans at play? I was shy to start with; I could
have used a boost.
But I was petrified I'd end up as an alcoholic -- like my mother. Or
that my parents would send me to drug rehab -- like my older sister. As
soon as my mother stopped drinking, my parents didn't let one drop of
alcohol cross the threshold of our house. My mother felt that being
around alcohol would cause a relapse. She told me about the dangers, for
an alcoholic, of having vanilla extract in the kitchen cabinet.
How did I know I wasn't a potential alcoholic? What if I had too much
and lost control? Alcohol might make a person go helter skelter like
Charles Manson. It could kill a whole family, like the pair of murderers
in Capote's
In Cold Blood. I did not want to fall prey to that
serial killer like my wild child sister, who pretty much failed high
school; or my mother, who spent years trying to get her life back on
track. No, I would not veer off the path, a happy idiot, tempted by
alcohol's crooked, beckoning finger. All I had to do was lay low, get
good grades and get into an Ivy League school. Then I'd be safe.
At my "sibling interview" for the rehab where my sister ended up,
they asked me if I drank. I confessed that I'd had a "sip of beer." They
told my sister, who expressed her deep concern. I remember thinking
I might as well have been drinking all those years.
They still suspected me. I knew if I didn't watch myself, I'd end up in
Florida, too -- seventeen hours by car from our house in the suburbs of
D.C.
Flash forward to graduation night, senior year: That morning, I'd cut
my waist-length hair off, up to my ears. My mother cried, but I was
ready to start fresh. The week before, I'd gotten my braces off. At one
of the graduation after-parties, I finally allowed myself my first full
drink: a bottle of beer. Hadn't I sailed through high school near the
top of my class, gotten into the Ivy League and escaped drug rehab? For
all that, I deserved a reward.
One beer. Just one.
The first sip tasted bitter but cool, refreshing on a humid June
night. In the center of the room stood the boy I loved. I'd always loved
him, but he'd never loved me back. I was tame. He was wild. He had a
sexy blonde girlfriend who drank and smoked.
I eyed the boy I loved and took one sip of the beer, then another and
another, until I tilted my head back to catch the last drops. The beer
gave me a pleasant, floating-above-it-all feeling. My body tingled --
alive -- as if one beer had fertilized all the seeds inside me and I
could finally flower. My secret thoughts gave way to impulses that could
finally be acted upon. I walked up to the boy I loved and smiled:
Courage in a bottle.
I must have spoken the ancient language of "beer" because somehow, he
and I ended up on the front lawn, my face tilted toward his, poised for
a kiss.
Just as he leaned forward to kiss me -- his eyes fusing; his face, a
dizzying blur -- his girlfriend drove up in her car and honked the horn,
startling us. "Come on, K!" she called out.
He shrugged his shoulders and off he went. I stood there, alone on
the lawn as the car pulled away, my beer buzz crashing down. Later, at
our diner hangout, I sobbed to my friends. I thought I was crying about
the boy, but now I know I was probably crying about the beer. I didn't
know then the merits of two beers, or that three beers might have erased
the disappointment, the humiliation. Blotted it out.
That I learned with my second, third and fourth drinks only three
months later as a freshman in college. Night one: I went from room to
room, greedily drinking everything I could get my hands on -- gin and
vodka and rum and beer -- until I blacked out.
As the daughter of an alcoholic, I had no concept of moderation. It was either none or ten.
I fell head over heels in love with drinking. Why hadn't I discovered
it earlier? I could have kicked myself, thinking of all those chances
I'd missed, all the unrequited crushes I'd had in high school that would
have been consummated if only I'd let myself drink.
Drinking made me bold, helped me march right up to a blonde Adonis,
the guy my friends and I called "The Greek God," and plop down on the
ground next to him during an outdoor party. He asked me out, but when we
went to his fraternity formal, I had to do a few shots beforehand with
my friends so I'd stay bold and not revert back to my more subdued,
sober self. It didn't last long with him--he didn't know me.
Drinking helped me come up with nicknames for cute guys at parties;
helped me take those guys home and sit on my bed with them, singing "Put
on Your Sailing Shoes" at the top of our lungs. Drinking gave me the
swagger to pick the guys I wanted instead of waiting for them to pick
me.
Never mind the fact that I woke up hungover most mornings and slept
till noon. Never mind that sometimes I didn't know why a guy was smiling
at me in the dining hall. Had something happened? Never mind that I
graduated college lost, having no idea what I was supposed to be doing
other than hanging out.
This isn't one of those cautionary tales where I say I regret all the
drinking I did or ended up in AA. I needed to make a course correction;
to let myself get out of control after all those years of rigidity. I
don't regret the drinking at all, which continued through my twenties
and thirties -- not at the same fever-pitch, but steadily, until I had
children and was way too busy and tired and intent on being a role model
to keep it up.
If the alcoholic's problem is denial, then the daughter of an
alcoholic who doesn't become an alcoholic herself has the opposite
problem: over-vigilance. I'm not complaining -- I feel incredibly lucky
that I dabbled in hard drinking and escaped rock-bottom addiction. I'm
merely pointing it out.
After all these years, I have finally figured out what works for me,
drinking-wise. Even so, some strange quirks remain. I feel squirmingly
self-conscious when I walk into a liquor store, fearful of what the
people in the store and behind the counter might think, even if I'm
there to purchase one or two bottles of wine. I usually make small talk
to calm my nerves.
I approach alcohol with some amount of reverence, and I get
irrationally angry at the jokey tone of the cocktail moms and the
creators of Mommy's Little Helper wine and the talk show hosts who make
it seem fun and easy-breezy to drink wine at 10 in the morning. How do
the struggling or recovering alcoholics who might be watching feel?
I can't quite shake the little voice in my head that whispers, every time I take a sip of alcohol,
Careful: this could change your life.
Reply:
Good News! Those alcoholic blackouts in the college dorm are a thing of
the past. Now you can usually count on somebody recording the
highlights of your drunken antics. You can now reconstruct your
fun-filled night from reviewing all the videos.
These videos can be useful later on, too! - You'll know to whom you owe
an apology (in case you get to steps 8 & 9 of the 12 steps) and what
you're apologizing for. ----Professor Wagstaff
Oh my, I feel the to need to thank thank to you for taking the time to
have this article posted. I feel privileged to be the first one to
respond. I can relate. I may have not have found myself in the same
situation you were in but I did have a medical condition that may have
led to dire consequences if I had chosen to take any of the drugs that
were available in my vicinity. I have to be honest I was tempted but
fear stayed my hand. From what you mentioned fear also stayed yours, in
your younger years. We we ----amybh33
