It’s Monday—just five days after my self-enforced break from the booze and already I have a heavy-drinking weekend under my belt. Yet again in the middle of the day I find myself wrestling internally over whether to buy wine or not. I’m trying to resist the urge and manage to do the school pick-up without going via the bottle store but by 4 p.m. I’m regretting not having any wine in the house. Finally I blurt out and ask Corin if he can go and buy some. He says, ‘Nah, let’s not bother, let’s just have an alcohol-free day.’ I murmur agreement but I just can’t let it go. My brain is screaming ‘wine, wine, wine, wine’, so just after 5 p.m. when Corin leaves to take our two big boys to their Scouts meeting I pluck our youngest son off the floor where he’s playing with his plastic animals and actually say aloud to him, ‘Let’s go prove how dysfunctional I really am,’ and race to the car. I’m in such a crazy mindset that as I rush to back out of the carport I run over the new pram and smash up one of its front tyres. It’s completely stuffed. And I haven’t even had a drink yet. But still I go on. Once I’m at the bottle shop I grab two bottles instead of one: a white and a red.
Home I come and promptly scull most of the bottle of white while I bathe the Little Guy and tidy up the dinner mess. I even manage to run the vacuum over the living room floor, pausing often to slurp down another big gulp of wine. It’s barely touching the sides. Heavy-boozing, high-functioning housewife me.
Just before Corin is due home, I panic. Shit! What’s he going to think about me not sticking to an alcohol-free day? I feel embarrassed and frantic and in an instant I make a crazy snap decision—to hide the last skerricks of the bottle of white. I’m barely thinking straight, I’m a whirling dervish of boozy madness.
I grab the nearly empty bottle and crouch down on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor. I lean inside the pantry, right to the back of the bottom shelf, and tuck the bottle away behind the yoghurt maker and the spare boxes of tissues. Then I stand up, dust myself off, get out a new wineglass for Corin, open the bottle of red, pour each of us a glass and leave the bottle sitting plainly in sight on the kitchen bench.
I hid wine.
Corin arrives home and immediately spots the red wine on the bench and kind of laughs that I didn’t manage to go without. ‘Oh, you couldn’t make it, eh?’
And I laugh too, ‘Ha ha, yeah!’, and make a song and dance about how I’ve not had much yet. ‘I waited for you—see, the bottle is nearly full!’
I hid wine. I have never hidden wine before.
Over the next couple of hours Corin has maybe two small glasses of red and I polish off the rest. So most of a bottle of red wine goes down my throat to join the most of a bottle of white wine that I’d secretly drunk earlier. Another binge.
I hid wine. I got down on my hands and knees and hid a bottle to conceal how much I’d been drinking from Corin.
Eventually the evening ends and I fall into bed, drunk yet again. Where am I going with this behaviour? Where the fuck am I heading?
When Corin’s alarm goes off at 3.45 a.m. I’m already in hell. He reaches out quickly to stop the noise and gets silently out of bed, propelled by the knowledge he needs to be in the studio and on TV in just over two hours and believing himself to be the only one who’s awake at this ungodly hour. He pads quietly from the bedroom—his clothes already laid out on the dining room table as they always are so he doesn’t have to wake me as he gets ready for work.
I hid wine.
I lie still in bed and don’t say a word. My tongue is thick and my mouth is dry. My head is throbbing with an almighty headache and I’m being driven crazy by the voice inside my mind that won’t shut up. My thoughts are spewing forth, a panicky jumble of frantic words.
Oh my god I can’t believe you did that you are so dysfunctional you hid wine that is a step too far oh my god where are you heading I can’t believe you lied to Corin what is wrong with you why did you have to drink so much wine last night there is a serious problem here you really are a loser you have a major problem you cannot continue down this path you can’t control your drinking you can’t control your drinking you can’t control your drinking.
I lie there miserable, my thoughts taunting me, my bladder full, my guts churning and my head throbbing. After what seems like an eternity—but is only around twenty minutes—Corin has showered, had his tea and toast, and is sneaking out the back door to get in the car and drive to TVNZ to face the nation.
I hid wine.
Finally I get up to go to the toilet. This is absolute bloody bollocks, I think to myself as I sit on the toilet with my head in my hands. I am utterly and desperately unhappy and it is all of my own doing. It’s me who is creating this misery. I’m the one who buys the bottles. I’m the one who twists the tops. I’m the one who pours the glasses. It’s my elbow that I bend in lifting the glass time and again, and it’s my throat that swallows the liquid. It’s all me. As I sit in the dark I realise with absolute clarity that nobody else can help me. I create the pain, I’m the only one who can stop it. Not the woman at the end of the helpline, not Corin, not anyone else. Me. It’s only me.
By the time the kids wake up I’m totally buggered. I’ve got an awful wide-eyed sleep-deprived feeling on top of an intensifying headache, churning sick guts and an overwhelming feeling of guilt and dysfunction.
As the kids bang and crash their way through their cereal (are they shouting on purpose?) and I bemoan the lack of painkillers in the house, the TV gets flicked on and up pops Corin on the screen. He’s interviewing the prime minister. Corin looks great, all crisp and alert with his suit on and hair done, in his element talking about politics.
I stand at the kitchen bench watching my husband on the television at the other end of the living room. Honestly, it’s like an out-of-body experience: I can see the scene as if through the lens of a movie camera. Me—the hungover dishevelled housewife, with bed hair, a dirty dressing gown, droopy eyes and miserable face. Corin—smiling, alert and focused on the television, asking pertinent questions. It’s horrendous, my misery is deep and I feel very, very alone. I’m locked in my own private hell. My own private drinking hell. And I put myself here, I poured all the wine down my throat last night. I hid wine and lied about how much I’d had to drink.
I shudder, imagining what fans of Break fast would think if they could see the truth of what Corin lives with at home. I think about how all the women’s magazines have wanted to do feature articles on us since he became a TV presenter—the classic ‘TV Star At Home With Lovely Wife and Cute Kids’ story. We’ve always refused, not wanting to present an untrue fantasy version of ourselves to the nation, all styled and groomed and flawless. Well, if only they could see the truth, that Corin Dann’s wife is actually a bloody loser lush who can’t control her drinking.
I feel like crying. I’m fucking it all up. I’m an embarrassment to myself. Do I want to have this hidden problem, go on boozing and pretending that I have it all together, pretending that I’m superwoman, pretending that I’m not a problem drinker? Do I want to be this woman?
As the kids get dressed (‘No, you can’t wear your pyjamas to school!’), I crouch down on the kitchen floor and reach into the back of the pantry to retrieve the bottle I hid last night. I still feel like there is a camera on the ceiling watching my every move, so acute is my awareness of how utterly wrong this behaviour is. I pour what’s left of the bottle down the sink (not much) and hurl the empty into the recycling bin. I’ve had enough of this shit, goddamnit! I’ve had enough. This has got to stop. Now. I grasp at the feeling that if I only have myself to blame then I only have myself to change and if it’s only me changing myself then surely I can make that change.
I feel like I’m fighting desperately in the middle of a war and I’m losing. But it’s a crazy kind of sick and twisted war because I’m on both sides of the battle. On one side is the me who knows my drinking is a problem and knows it’s wrong and feels guilty and shitty and awful all the time. Then there’s the me on the other side which is the me I turn into the minute I make the decision to drink and the alcohol enters my system. At that point I switch sides and start fighting back with myself, with a brain that is fuzzy and warm and under the influence. I’m at war with myself; it’s me on me.
Yet there’s this other enemy against me, another substance. Alcohol. Once I put alcohol in my body I jump immediately to the other side of the battle and start fighting back at myself. The problem isn’t me, the problem is the substance. The problem is alcohol. Deep down I know that unless I remove the alcohol completely, I’m never going to win this war. I’m going to spend the rest of my days fighting a ridiculous, stupid, crazy, awful war. I have to be smart. I know that to win I must remove the alcohol. Remove the alcohol and the war is over.
But fucking fuck holy shit motherfucking fuck! This is alcohol, for fuck’s sake! Who lives without alcohol? Alcohol is everywhere! It’s an intrinsic element of our landscape; it’s wedded into every aspect of our culture. It’s part of life.
And not only is it everywhere but alcohol is a huge part of my own personal identity. It’s been my constant companion since I was a teenager. I drink. I’m a drinker. I love to drink. I’m fun Lotta. I’m that naughty, up-for-it girl who everybody likes having fun with. It’s who I am, for fuck’s sake. Am I going to have to completely reinvent myself if I stop drinking? What if people don’t like the new me?
What if I don’t like the new me?
Glumly, I realise that I have no choice. Either I’m going to keep fighting this ridiculous war with myself, or I’m going to commit to being on one side of it forever by completely obliterating the other side, by removing alcohol and never drinking again. Alcohol is the enemy, not me. Alcohol is the problem, not me. Alcohol has got to go. Standing there in my dressing gown the thought comes to me: ‘I could just do it and stop right now. I could just take that fucking leap and remove alcohol from my life.’