One evening at sunset, I found myself rocketing north alone in her car, well above the speed limit, on the verge of tears. Caring for a parent is very hard, as anyone who’s done it knows. I didn’t have a drink the next night, or ever again since.Ī few months later, I dropped everything and flew to southern Arizona to nurse my elderly mother for a month through a nasty broken leg. I didn’t judge him, but it was a wake-up call, and I was primed to hear it. After my husband had gone upstairs to bed, my friend sat on our couch drinking an entire bottle of gin, lamenting his fate, until he passed out next to our dog, whose bed that couch was. He crashed with my husband and me in Maine after his wife found out about at least one of his many affairs and kicked him out. I finally quit drinking for real almost four years ago, on 12 July 2019, the day after I watched a writer friend hit what should have been his bottom. But the pluses seemed to outweigh the minuses.

Parties were hard, and so was cooking at the end of a day of writing without a glass of wine at my elbow. But I had to admit that when I was off booze, I looked and felt better physically: I slept more deeply, had more energy, exercised more. I missed the festive loose warm soak of alcohol and returned to it eagerly. How did they get through life?ĭuring these years, I didn’t love not drinking. I felt very sorry for ex-drinkers and people who couldn’t or wouldn’t drink. So for the next few years, I ricocheted between not drinking at all for months at a time, then ramping up again until I had to quit again, and rinse and repeat. I wanted to take care of myself and forestall or mitigate the ageing process as much as possible. Nights of drinking too much showed in my face, and I could feel it in my bones. I had to concede that I wasn’t as tough as I used to be. When I got sober-ish myself in my early 50s, I wasn’t sure at first how it would work for me.

How did they knuckle through social situations, especially parties? What did they do at the end of a workday to celebrate and relax? How did they get through life? Not drinking, ever, struck me as nothing but miserable asceticism. This lasted from the age of 27 until after 50, a golden time during which I felt very sorry for ex-drinkers and people who couldn’t or wouldn’t drink. For decades, I was a hard drinker, a lush, a boozy romantic who could and did drink anyone under the table and prided myself on it.

Cultural moment synonym