It seems to me that our old friend the witch of the wine is loving the current COVID-19 situation. At three years sober I’ve not been troubled by her at all for ages – probably about a year, maybe a bit more. And yet, in the last week, she has suddenly made several unwanted appearances in my mind. I’m in no danger of drinking, don’t worry (I’m in self isolation with two children and no booze in the house and, apart from anything else, it would be REALLY embarrassing because of the whole book thing). But I’ve found it interesting to see that ding dong the witch was not in fact dead but merely dormant, awaiting the right circumstances to be reanimated. After all, a global pandemic resulting in enormous and very sudden changes to our society is a sober first for us all.
So I thought I’d share some of her mutterings from my mind over the past week or so and what I had to say to her in response (yes I really do have conversations with my wine witch – in early sobriety some of these were even out loud).
- We’re all fucked anyway so you might as well enjoy yourself now
Not true. This will end. We have no idea at the moment when, what the impact will be or what the world will look like but I’d be willing to bet that one year from now our lives will not look dramatically different to how they looked one month ago. The vast vast majority of us have long lives ahead, way beyond this thing. How do you want to spend that life? Drunk/hungover, ashamed and depressed? Or sober, strong, healthy and proud?
- You can’t cope with the boredom, drinking will liven things up
Nope. Annie Grace, when she first stopped drinking herself using the method she invented, carried out an experiment to see if alcohol – when taken entirely on its own with no other good stuff going on, no company, no fun – really would make her feel as awesome as she believed. So she sat alone in a room and drank a bottle of wine, filming herself talking to the camera while she did so. It did not make her feel remotely good. It just made her feel slow, dull and sluggish. If you are in self-isolation, especially if you live alone or are the only adult in the house, you will be doing the same thing and it will have the same effect. We felt good when we were out drinking and socialising because of the socialising, not because of the drinking.
- This is a global pandemic, normal rules don’t apply, you can always quit again when life gets easier
Perhaps you can. But will you? Really? How easy do you think that will be? And what happens the next time a crisis comes along in your life? A bereavement, a job loss, a relationship breakup. Quitting drinking isn’t something you can take on and off like a coat. Everyone I know who has quit, gone back to drinking, then quit again has said it was much harder to stop the second time. You’ve done the hard part now. Life is tough enough at the moment without giving yourself more to worry about and a Herculean task to look forward to just when you start to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
- Now is not the time for depriving yourself of things
OK witchy, I’ll give you this one. But one thing my sobriety has taught me is that not having something doesn’t always mean you are depriving yourself of it. I know, for example, that if I spend the next month eating chips and chocolate I will feel like utter crap by the end of it. However I LIKE chips and chocolate. So I will have to exert willpower in order to not eat more of them than usual because ‘I deserve it’. But I’m doing that as an exercise in deferred gratification, not because I’m a masochist who gets off on self deprivation. Same with booze. Just because you’re exerting willpower not to have it does not mean you’re depriving yourself. Look at the bigger picture. What is truly the most self-caring thing to do? It’s not drinking, is it?
- You won’t feel so lonely if you have a drink
Alcohol may numb but it’s temporary, and it’s certainly no substitute for human contact. And unless you’re planning to spend the next six months continually pissed you will regularly suffer the after effects of drinking on top of your loneliness. And they will not help it ONE BIT. Also if you’re numbing out with booze you’re less likely to be doing things that actually help with the loneliness, such as logging on to an online class with your favourite yoga teacher or having a phone chat with a good friend (in which you talk sense and which you can remember the next day). The opposite of addiction is connection, remember. So find it. It’s harder to come by right now, but certainly not impossible.
- A drink will help with the anxiety
It’s an interesting one, booze and anxiety. On the one hand in the short term it can make you feel less anxious. But I used to suffer dreadfully with morning after hangxiety. I thought today about a way to explain how it works. Imagine your anxiety is liquid in a bowl which is being sloshed from side to side. As a sober person at the moment your bowl is being sloshed gently, so that there is a constant level of ongoing anxiety, which gets slightly higher sometimes and slightly lower sometimes. For drinkers the bowl is being sloshed violently. So sometimes on one side it goes right down to the bottom (experienced as no anxiety for a short period). But on the other side it’s going right to the top. What goes up must come down and vice versa. And I don’t know about you but banking an evening’s worth of anxiety so I can feel it all at once the next morning does not sound like a remotely good plan at the moment.
- If I’m drinking my kids/spouse/partner/housemate won’t piss me off so much
Ah but they will. You can’t live cooped up with a tiny amount of people for any length of time and expect to relish their company 24/7. Whether you drink or not the people you live with are likely to get right on your tits over the next few weeks. But if you’re drinking you’ll be much less able to deal with this in a calm and rational way. Divorce rates in China have sky rocketed apparently. Just saying.
- If I’m not drinking I’m going to eat loads and put on loads of weight
Well that’s up to you isn’t it? If you care about weight gain then there are ways to ensure you don‘t overdo it on the calories. They don’t change because you’re not socialising. Plus the meals out are on hold for a while and you’re not likely to be strolling leisurely round the supermarket impulse buying treats. And it’s looking like I’ll certainly have plenty of opportunities to exercise at home once I have fully functioning lungs, as all my yoga teachers are setting up online classes. So it’s far from guaranteed that you will eat more or gain so much as an ounce in self isolation. But you know what is guaranteed? The extra 200 odd calories a glass you will be consuming with every drink of booze.
- If alcohol kills the virus on skin, drinking probably helps fight it off too
I honestly used to say crap like this to justify my drinking, for example if I was on a night out and clearly in the first stages of flu and everyone was saying FFS woman, go home! (True story: swine flu, 2009). It’s utter twaddle. Having an elevated blood alcohol level does not help you fight off viruses. In fact, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Alcohol Research, heavy alcohol consumption is associated with “adverse immune-related health effects such as susceptibility to pneumonia.” I think we can all agree that susceptibility to pneumonia is something best avoided right now.
So stand firm again the witch people – she lies and lies and lies again. The world is scary right now but this too will pass. Drinking won’t help us in the short term and it sure as hell won’t help us in the long term. As sober people we have an advantage in dealing with the current state of the world, because we have already had to identify how to soothe ourselves, how to entertain ourselves, how to nurture ourselves, how to build our inner strength and resilience. Our sobriety has been like training for a time like this. We already have all the tools we need to get through these trying times without drinking.
And get through them we will, one day at a time. Just keep on doing the next right thing.
Lots of love to all xxx
