Three years later
Corin’s been promoted! He’s now one of the lead anchors on Break fast. Every weekday he’s out the door at 4.20 a.m. heading for the TVNZ studios to go live on-air for three hours. It’s a very challenging and exhausting role but he loves it and we’re all so proud. The boys and I are used to him not being around in the mornings and we’re cool with that. I’ve got my routines down pat and everything runs smoothly. Of course it does. I manage everything extremely well, remember? Super-efficient, high-functioning me.
The mornings go like this: wake up, jug on, mug of instant coffee, painkillers, breakfast eaten, lunchboxes packed, kids dressed, me dressed, pack schoolbags, sunglasses on, out the door and into the day! I’m smiling and happy, even if my head aches. I breeze along. There’s no problems here. I’ve made some fantastic new mummy friends in our community and our neighbours are all super-lovely. Life in Auckland is good.
We’ve produced another son since we’ve been here (three boys, can you imagine the noise levels in our house?!) and now he’s one year old I’m back working as a TV news producer two evenings a week and have also recently enrolled to do a Master of Arts thesis part-time. Mostly, however, I think of myself as a housewife, and I love it! I care for the kids and Corin, I run the house, I manage the budget, I cook, I clean, I ferry everyone around. I even manage to exercise occasionally. And of course all of this crazy busy activity is accompanied by wine. I am busting my chops to be superwoman and do it all—be a wife, mother, worker, student, and a domestic goddess (ha ha)—all while maintaining a regular, steady wine-drinking habit. High-functioning to the max!
Every day at 5 o’clock the wine is opened. Like every other house in the country, right? We drink at least a bottle a night—to be fair, Corin usually only gets one or two small glasses but he doesn’t seem to mind. By 8 p.m. the work is done, the kids are asleep and Corin’s struggling to stay awake himself. The promise of a 3.45 a.m. alarm clock lures him toward bed and off he goes. Lucky me gets to sit up alone and indulge in as much reality TV as I like!
And more wine.
I’m vaguely aware that our new routine (with Corin now a shiftworker and usually heading to bed before me) is resulting in my wine habit becoming a little bit heavier. The wines I have while preparing dinner carry over into wine with the meal. The tidy-up-the-kitchen process that should really finish with my wineglass being put in the dishwasher doesn’t. Instead I leave the glass on the bench and have another while bathing the boys and getting them into their PJs. Sometimes I carry my wineglass into the bedroom when I’m reading them a bedtime story. Often I’m filling up yet another glass when Corin is taking himself off to bed.
My part-time TV production work is carried out on Thursday and Friday, which is lucky for me because the ‘Friday drinks’ routine that was always around in my younger days is still in force and I get to load up for free in the office and kick-start my weekend. Bonus!
But as the months have passed in our new Auckland routine, I’ve been finding that one bottle of wine per day isn’t ever quite enough. Lately I’ve been buying two a day on the murky pretence ‘it’ll last a while’. But it doesn’t. Once I’m on the sofa in the evening in a quiet house with everyone else in bed, the TV on and a few vinos already in me, I find it very difficult not to keep heading to the kitchen for more. It calls to me—the wine—it calls my name; ‘I’m over here, Lotta . . . there’s a few more glasses left in me, Lotta . . . come and drink me, Lotta . . .’ I find it very hard to say no.
So I pour just one more, just one more, just one more. My drinking habit is now a very quiet, private drinking habit. The blinds are down and no one can see me. I watch TV and make trips to the kitchen and the bathroom. Sometimes I make toast and eat four pieces at 10 p.m. like a freak. Eventually I slowly make my way to bed and crash out asleep. At this point, when I’m at my most sloshed, there’s no one about. The family is all in a deep slumber. I don’t need to form sentences. I don’t even need to think very much. I’m not sure that I even realise how boozed I’m getting.
I keep painkillers in my bedside drawer and make sure I have a glass of water beside me so I can neck a couple as soon as I need to. I wake at 3 a.m. with my bladder full, my head pounding and guilt bouncing around my fizzy brain. Did I really need to have those last two glasses? Why didn’t I stop earlier? Am I okay? Is this really still normal everyday drinking? Sometimes this fizzy 3 a.m. brain keeps me awake for a couple of hours. I don’t want to, but I feel quietly miserable in those dark lonely hours.
For the most part all this drinking of mine is a solo pursuit, and as a result my growing concern is also mine alone. I try to talk to Corin about it but he doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying. He says things like, ‘Yeah, I noticed you finished that second bottle after I’d gone to bed last night’, and ‘Just don’t touch it during the week if you’re that worried’. To be fair I’m a bit like Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to discussing my drinking. I can be completely open, vulnerable and honest about it one minute (usually in the morning when I’m hungover and feeling miserable) but if he tries to bring it up when I’ve got a glass in my hand I become very flippant, defensive and hostile to the whole discussion.
And, quite honestly, I really don’t think he understands what it is I’m trying to tell him. He can listen to me, but he can’t relate. He doesn’t have the same twisted thinking that I do. His approach to alcohol seems fairly normal. Mine is not. I have a sick part of my brain that thinks about alcohol in a very obsessive and unhealthy way. I’m not what you could describe as ‘breezy’ about it. Mine isn’t a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude by any stretch of the imagination.
I think about wine all the time. I’m concerned if there’s not enough wine in the house for the evening. If we’ve got visitors I watch what other people are pouring and worry that there won’t be enough left over for me. I tend to fill my glass to the top and slurp a bit down straightaway. I flip-flop constantly, feeling guilty one minute then planning to buy booze the next. I drink it in the evening with little regard for the fizzy 3 a.m. brain or hangover ahead.
My wine consumption is constant, but not always consistent—there are heavy phases and lighter phases. But the heavy phases, they’re pretty bloody heavy and a lot goes down my throat. Here’s what a typical heavy-drinking week would look like:
Sunday: Probably hungover from Saturday. Could possibly not drink at all. But perhaps get 1 bottle and have half of it. Weekly total = ½ bottle.
Monday: No hangover, so get 1 bottle and drink it. Weekly total = 1½ bottles.
Tuesday: Hungover. Get a bottle and drink half. Weekly total = 2 bottles.
Wednesday: Non-hangover day. Supermarket day. Buy 2 bottles, drink 1¼ bottles. Weekly total = 3¼ bottles.
Thursday: Very hungover. Get a bottle, perhaps have 2 glasses. Weekly total = 4 bottles (?? ish, it’s getting hard to total).
Friday: It’s Friday!!! Drink at least 1½ bottles of wine. Weekly total = 5½ bottles.
Saturday: Hungover. But who cares?! It’s Saturday! Drink at least another 1½ bottles of wine. Weekly total = 7 bottles.
I seem unable to push aside my worry about my worsening drinking habit. There are two voices in my head. One is telling me boozing is fun and I deserve it and I’m totally fine. The other is telling me it’s not fun, I don’t deserve it and I’m not totally fine. I fluctuate from worrying for a week then not caring for a week. Worrying for a week then not caring for a week. Worrying, not caring. And all the while still drinking. It’s madness! And no one knows about it, sees it or gets it, because from the outside I’m still a superwoman. High-achieving Lotta charging ahead with her life. I’m not having crazy drunken arguments with anyone. I’m not failing to achieve anything I need to achieve in my day-to-day life. Outwardly I’m fine. But I’m not fine. I’m drinking way too much.
My private, personal hell is at its blackest at 3 a.m. I come to consciousness in my bed, my brain is fizzy, my mouth is dry, my head is sore and my bladder is full. I walk miserably down the hall to the loo. I feel guilty. I regret. I just feel so unhappy.
I’m sure I don’t seem as miserable to others as I sometimes feel. The misery comes and goes and it seems I can shove it to the side often enough to keep living normally and, most of the time, happily. Aside from my overly enthusiastic drinking habit, things are pretty good.
One long weekend we head to Napier to holiday with a bunch of Wellington friends that are driving up to meet us. We all book in to the Top 10 Holiday Park and spend three days drinking, eating, chatting, catching up, playing games with the kids, and just hanging out together.
It should be a fabulous fun weekend but it’s not great for me. I have this insane notion that a holiday weekend like this has to involve a lot more drinking than normal. This is how I’ve approached holiday weekends all of my adult life, but now at nearly 40 I’m finding it hard to control the amount of wine I pour down my throat and keep it together.
The first night I try to create some kind of crazy, boozy, party buzz which really just means I get hammered and will the others to join in with my enthusiastic wine-drinking. There are a few others that hit it along with me but all in all the night is a gentle one and I feel a bit flat heading for bed that the night is over and was lacking in some way. Lacking? What the hell am I wanting? I have the people, the environment, the holiday, but I can’t settle into that. I have to chase a boozy high. ‘Must get drunk to have fun’ methinks.
On the last night of the weekend I just go for it without caring that no one else is. Hell-for-leather drinking. I’m pestering others to get wine out of their units after ours has all gone. I’m talking total rubbish. I’m slurring. I’m noticeably trashed. I stumble into our unit at midnight completely and utterly written off. Crouch over the toilet vomiting, vomiting, vomiting. I lose a dearly beloved earring my sister gave me—is it down the toilet along with the contents of my stomach?
I wake up the next morning and put on a facade of being okay, all faux cheery and smiley as we pack up our unit and get the kids into the car. We wave goodbye to our lovely friends and drive for four hours home to Auckland. It’s an awful journey, I cry all the way. I feel unhealthy. I feel dysfunctional. I feel sad. I feel lost. And I have this nagging, gritty, burning feeling that things just aren’t right here and something has to change.