The show is about chronically overweight people—compulsive overeaters. She’s got a couple of them on the stage opening up about their personal struggles and in the front row of the audience are some experts to offer sage advice. One of these experts, a doctor I think he is, starts talking about how emotionally disturbed people might try to control their emotions by overeating or doing drugs or drinking heavily. Oprah-the-Wise then says, ‘All of those habits are just different ways to squash down emotions, aren’t they?’
My brain does a small explosion. I kid you not. It is like a bomb goes off in my mind. Sitting on the sofa, I pause the TV, put my hand up to cover my mouth and freeze. I’m not being overly dramatic here, this is actually what I do. I freeze, with my hand over my mouth, staring off into wide open space, and a realisation starts to dawn on me. For the first time in a long time it’s quiet in my mind and I struggle to form my thoughts. ‘Have I . . . is my . . . . . . has my wine drinking . . . has it been . . . emotional . . . my steady constant wine drinking . . . am I . . . do I want to squash . . . is that what I’ve been doing?’
Is that why I’m such a wreck right now?
Here I am, an intelligent, well-read, mature woman who likes to think of herself as being in tune with people and wise in the ways of the world, yet I feel utterly stunned by this revelation. I don’t even know if this is a revelation. It’s a small brain explosion at any rate. Is it possible that, unbeknown to me, I have been drinking to avoid being emotional? I thought I was a party girl who drank to have fun. I thought my heavy drinking of late was just that my habit had gone too far. I thought what I was doing in stopping drinking was just breaking a habit. I think that’s what I thought. I don’t know what to think. This is unexpected.
Mrs D Is Going Without (Day 22)
I ate a lot yesterday. Pigged out. Then in the evening I was watching Oprah recorded from earlier in the day and she had a doctor talking about how emotionally disturbed people might control their emotions and one way was drugs and alcohol addiction, another was overeating. She said people eat a lot to ‘squash down their emotions’. So, have I been using alcohol to squash down emotions and yesterday did I overeat to squash down the emotions I’m feeling about my big life change?
Interesting.
Holy shit. If I’ve been using alcohol all this time to squash my emotions, do I now have to learn how to be emotional? I thought I was just learning how to not-drink.
The air around me has suddenly changed. I feel like I’m moving slower. I’m no longer just dealing unquestionably with the fact that I drink far too much and how to stop that, I’m now asking myself, ‘Why?’ Why have I been drinking heavily for years and years?
I start thinking back over my life. I try to remember my childhood. I get my old diary out from when I was a teenager and re-read it, along with letters I have received throughout the years and old notes to myself. The dusty pages contain a lot of angst and introspection—I certainly wasn’t cool and calm in my earlier years. Reading it back now, it seems clear that I had no idea what kind of person I was, or what I should be doing to make myself feel happy. I spent a lot of time floundering around trying to figure out who I was and how I fitted in: moving around different groups of friends, moving to different high schools, moving to different cities and countries, moving, moving all the time. No terrible dramas, just a lot of moving around and searching for what feels right. Searching for fun and feeling good.
It think back over old friends and workmates from years gone by (I even try to find some of them with Google and on Facebook). I mentally retrace my steps after I left home and trawl through the story of my life so far; all the jobs I’ve had (mostly journalism and media related), houses I’ve lived in (flats with friends, homes of relatives), people I’ve known (so many lovely people coming in and out of my life constantly), places I’ve lived in (Christchurch, Sydney, Wellington, Christchurch, Wellington, London, Wellington, Auckland, Wellington), and all the many places I’ve travelled to.
I rake through the memories searching for some big answer as to why I’m a boozer. It’s not an entirely comfortable process. It feels very ‘navel-gazey’ and I’ve always been very scornful about people who navel-gaze. I’m not one of those introspective soul-searchers, no way! I’m low-maintenance, fun, cruisey, upbeat Lotta, remember?
I find a lot of stuff, but I don’t find a silver bullet. It’s just a steady stream of average-life shit, a life filled with the normal (I assume) highs and lows; teenage angst and hopes and dreams, family fun and family dramas, bad relationships and good ones, supportive friends and destructive ones, insecurities and successes, knock-backs and triumphs, grief and joy, pain and laughter. Life stuff.
But all this moving and searching, and everywhere booze. Lots and lots of drinking. Booze my steady companion from aged fifteen until three weeks ago.
I’m quite wiped out by this introspective process. None of this is coming easily and I haven’t exactly leapt to a comfortable new understanding about myself. I’m not used to this sort of soul-searching. I’m not even sure if I’m searching my soul or just searching my memory bank. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. The only thing I do know is that I’m trying really hard to not drink anymore.
I do feel like I’ve taken a big step but I’m not quite sure in what direction. My mind is a whirling mass of contradictory thoughts and god I’m just sick and tired and raw and goddamn sober all the bloody time. Aaarrrggghhh!!! A glass of wine would be such a wonderful relief right now!
Then life happens. Our one-year-old—laughing wildly being chased by his big brother—trips and crashes into the door frame, splitting his head wide open.
Mrs D Is Going Without (Day 27)
Was pretty bloody knackered yesterday after spending all of Friday night in A&E with the Little Guy who fell on the door frame and split his head open. It happened at 6 p.m. and usually—pre-major-life-change to give up wine drinking—I would have had at least half a bottle in me by that point. But the new sober Mrs D was clear-headed enough to dial emergency and get an ambulance that took us to the hospital to get patched up.
Corin gets home from a long lunch just as the ambulance arrives. He stays home with the big boys while I go to hospital to get our little fella patched up. The head gets glued back together (not that bad in the end but there was a lot of blood) and of course it takes five hours at the hospital so on Saturday I’m beyond tired. I’m exhausted and grouchy and sensitive and sober yet again. I manage to drag myself through the day until about 5 p.m., when Corin (sitting comfortably on the sofa with a casual glass of red) says to me (standing at the dining table folding a huge pile of washing), ‘It’s going to be hard for you not to be able to have a release at the end of the day with a glass of wine anymore.’
This I don’t need right now. I snap.
‘But I don’t just have one or two glasses of wine!’ I hiss through gritted teeth while furiously balling socks. ‘I have a bottle and a half! That fantasy of just a couple to unwind doesn’t exist for me anymore.’ This is not cruisey behaviour but I don’t care.
Corin is a bit taken aback and tries to clarify his point. ‘I just mean . . . um . . . it’s going to take an adjustment . . . to not have that release because . . . um . . . that’s how many of us use alcohol and . . .’
He’s floundering around, poor guy, but I’m not in the mood to feel kindly about his attempts to understand what the hell I’m going through. It’s not on! I’m the bloody expert on this! Sensitive much? I get grouchier and fiercely remind him about my determined overdrinking. ‘The last thing I need is someone, especially you, working to undermine my resolve and lead me down the path of romantic reminiscing about drinking. I can’t afford right now to think romantically about unwinding with a drink!’ Romance be damned, my drinking was anything but romantic and my unwinding at the end of the day was more like a complete unravelling.
Is this a fight? We never fight. I hate fights. But I’m fired up. And I’m completely drained; physically and emotionally exhausted. I stomp around the house delivering piles of washing to various bedrooms, slamming drawers as I go. I feel shaky and teary and angry and fraught. Deep down I’m still determined not to drink but this is so hard! Much harder than I thought it was going to be. I didn’t realise stopping drinking was going to be so goddamn emotional and confusing and hard to explain. I still feel incredibly alone in my thoughts. Am I the only one who understands what I’m going through?
I retreat into the kitchen and force myself to breathe slowly and deeply. I try really hard to slow my thoughts down and look at what’s really wrong here. I’m ultra-tired and Corin’s being a bit insensitive, I tell myself. But he doesn’t mean to be. He’s trying to be truly supportive but the bottom line is, he doesn’t really get what I’m going through. He can’t get it. His brain is wired differently when it comes to booze. He can’t hear my nonstop, anxious, confused and jumbled thoughts about drinking. I pour myself a glass of ginger beer then get busy whipping cream for pudding and put clean sheets on our bed. I think hard about getting into bed later with no wine in me. I am not having wine, I tell myself repeatedly.
We eat pudding (I have lots), but I’m still snippy so Corin offers to put the boys to bed so I can have a bath. He doesn’t have to offer twice. I run a very deep bath filled with bubbles and as bedtime chaos rages down the hallway (‘I want five books, Dad, not two!’) I climb in to soak the tension away. Then I get into our freshly made bed. I am sober, I tell myself. I am not drinking wine. I am very clever and brave and sober.
This positive talk offers a tiny measure of comfort but doesn’t remove the general uncomfortable feeling I have at being so grouchy and emotional, but I keep telling myself I have no choice. I have to keep going and learn how to do this. I will learn. Surely I will learn, eventually.
After Corin has managed to settle the boys he comes to the bedroom armed with white chocolate to sweeten me up. It works, the tension eases and he climbs in next to me to watch a World Cup match on the bedroom telly. I plug the laptop in and start searching around the internet for information about drinking (obsessed much?). I put headphones on and watch some YouTube clips of drunk people falling over, then some clips of addiction experts offering advice on how to quit drinking. I find a clip of a coach-type woman talking about how visualising yourself sober in the future can be really helpful. Hey—that’s what I’ve been doing in my evenings! It’s great to hear someone articulate this as a sobriety technique and I feel very clever for doing it myself.
Then I get an idea and type ‘Sober Blogs’ into Google and up pop a few—this is exciting! I find one called Crying Out Now: Voices of addiction and recovery which is full of stories submitted by women about their drinking problems. I read a bunch of these stories and it’s comforting to see so many similarities to mine. I click around a bit more then come across a site called Mr SponsorPants: An AA Sponsor Blog. It’s a cheerful-looking site, all orange and yellow with cute cartoon images of a white-haired dude all over it. As I read through some of his posts I deduce that whoever this guy is, he’s been sober a long time and is full of great wisdom. Every post is brief and helpful, and illustrated with quirky images and motivational quotes.
Sitting in my bed with headphones on and the rugby playing in the background, I feel quite touched by what Mr SponsorPants is offering and suddenly decide to get brave and leave a comment. It feels so scary! But what the hell have I got to lose? No one can see who I am; I’m safely hidden behind my laptop, in my bed, in my house, down in my little corner of the world. I figure I’m invisible but for the words I leave at the bottom of his latest post:
Comment from Mrs D:
Hey just wanted to say thanks. I find your posts really useful. I am 1 month sober and going it alone aside from searching out people like yourself who share online. Plus I have a secret weapon blog I am hoping will help me stay strong. Cheers from NZ.
My hands are shaking as I copy and paste the URL from my blog into his comments section. What am I doing? I haven’t even told Corin yet about my blog but here I am sending it out into the world. But I feel safe knowing that I’m anonymous. Mrs D could be anyone. No one can discover that I’m really Lotta Dann, wobbly, emotional mother-of-three trying desperately to not be a boozer in her suburban Auckland home. Surely it’s got to be safe for me to push my blog out there into this online environment? I’m sick of feeling so alone, and Mr SponsorPants seems nice. What’s the worst that can happen? Nothing, I decide and with shaking hands click ‘publish’. I close the laptop and snuggle down to sleep.
First thing in the morning I hop back online and navigate to the Mr SponsorPants page. He has written a new post since I’ve been asleep! And I can’t quite believe it, but it feels like he has written it just for me.
Post from Mr SponsorPants:
if you are new to sobriety
hold on
one day at a time.
there are not the words
for the transformation you can experience
I cry. I actually sit in my bed and I cry. It’s like Mr SponsorPants has just kindly stroked the big knot of emotion and angst and fear and uncertainty in my belly and it’s caused me to cry. It’s a really bloody intense feeling.
After a few teary moments I wipe my eyes and click over to my own blog and open up a new post. I type out the discussion that Corin and I had the evening before, how angry I felt, how wound up I got, and how I calmed myself down. Then I determinedly type yet more reminders about why I am putting myself through this hell.
Mrs D Is Going Without (Day 28)
I don’t miss going to the loo and looking at the back of the door thinking, ‘I’m pissed’.
I don’t miss going to the loo 3 times overnight.
I don’t miss being awake in the wee small hours feeling guilty about how much wine I sank the night before.
I don’t miss cursing that we have no Panadol in the house in the morning.
I don’t miss yelling at the boys to stop yelling because my head is pounding.
I don’t miss my guts churning and my head aching until mid-afternoon.
I don’t miss dragging my sorry ass through the day because of a hangover.
I don’t miss the sly fox in my brain thinking about how much wine to get, how much wine is left . . .
I don’t miss that sly wine-drinking boozy fox at all.
Despite my fighting talk and the nice feelings my Mr SponsorPants experience has given me, the next week is a shitty one. I get drinking pangs, lots of them. I feel stuck in the thick mud of just trying to get through each day without drinking. I’m not exactly having a light and fun time of it. My stupid brain keeps pulling forward romantic images of alcohol; a nice cold chardonnay at the end of a long summer’s day, a warming merlot on a winter’s evening, bubbles to celebrate, whiskey to bond. And everywhere I look—on TV, in the newspapers, around the neighbourhood—there’s alcohol. I feel overwhelmed knowing that alcohol is everywhere, wedded into every aspect of our culture, soaking every corner of our world, and thinking that for the rest of my life I’m going to have to sit outside of that. It just feels so unfair! Am I the only boring, sober loser in the world? I do not like this new me. I do not like this new reality I have chosen for myself. I do not like this at all!
But I press on. I’ve got a dogged determination and I cling to the knowledge that I just have to do this. So I deal with the pangs when they come, fending them off one after the other, stubbornly refusing to buckle and drink again, desperately remembering why I stopped. I’m proud of myself that I’m not buckling and drinking, but also nervous and uncertain about what lies ahead and just so goddamn emotional all the time.
Mrs D Is Going Without (Day 31)
I just feel so scared. I’ve been pouring red wine down my throat like it’s going out of fashion for years. For ages I’ve had an internal clock chiming a call to DRINK! At 5 p.m. I’ve got a brain that has spent hours and hours and hours affected by alcohol. Drinking it, recovering from it, feeling guilty about it, obtaining it, looking forward to it, drinking it, and so on and so on.
So why is my brain now just happily accepting my final decision to cut it out altogether? I’m fearful it’s tricking me, lulling me into a false sense of security. I like to think I’m strong-minded and clear-headed and have never kidded myself about my dysfunctional unhealthy relationship with alcohol. But to have this decision to live sober be so easy . . . well, I’m scared.
Must remember, must remember, must remember.
My mood doesn’t lighten as the week progresses and I stare down yet another non-drinking Friday night. My pimple is still there and I feel fat and unhealthy and miserable. On Friday morning I drag myself to the gym and sit on a bike for about 30 minutes doing what could best be described as a lacklustre workout. I’m so pissed off that I’m feeling so awful. Shouldn’t I be riding a great wave of hangover-free joy? En route home I stop at the store and attempt to cheer myself up by buying a bunch of flowers and some yummy nibbles for the evening ahead—I figure that since I’m not bloody spending a hundred bucks (or more) on booze each week, I should treat myself a little. I get pistachio nuts and hummus and corn chips and some nice cheese. At the last minute I decide to be kind and buy Corin an expensive bottle of red wine. I’m not drinking, but why shouldn’t he? It clinks in the bag as I put it in the car.
Was I really that bad?
When I get home I head to the computer to see if any new emails have come in. There’s one. It’s from Blogger. Why are they emailing me? Then I look closer and see that the subject line reads: ‘You have a new comment.’