Hdo you know anyone who has stopped drinking? Don’t worry, they will tell you. The old vegan joke comes to mind a lot as I start talking again about how my life has changed since I gave up booze. But people mostly humor me, sometimes even pick me out. It’s surprising the number of conversations I’ve had at parties where friends I used to be hammered with now sneak up on me between their fourth and fifth drinks and mumble about how they’re starting to wonder if they should quit too.
As long as I don’t use the A word. Alcoholic. It doesn’t make anyone comfortable. You weren’t that bad. And if your definition includes literal gutters, I wasn’t (although I have fallen off quite a few sidewalks in my time). Leonard Cohen’s words from You Want It Darker could have been written for me: “I struggle with some demons, they were middle class and tame.” Making a fool of myself on one bottle too many barolo at a dinner party is hardly alcoholism after all.
But I think I was so bad. However respectable your dinner parties or expensive the alcohol you knock back, there are only so many blackouts a middle-aged mother should have. I was just lucky that the structures of my life were in place enough that my alcohol use disorder remained highly functional and that I could address it without too much drama. Hopefully, even in time. In a recent piece by old Loaded editor Martin Deeson in the Times, he quotes Ozzy Osbourne: “They either give up at 50 or they’re dead by the time they’re 60.” I was 49 when I had my last drink.
Like all the best quit lit, it starts with the anxiety of being 14, the way social anxiety evaporates with the first sips of whatever alcohol we can get our hands on. I grew up in Edinburgh and underage drinking really wasn’t a problem. The off-licence in George Street was happy to sell vermouth at a discount to friends of mine in school uniform – not even a pretense at age limit prudence. At 15, I drank so much and so fast at a formal ball that I threw up all over the table while dining at the Signet Library. Shaming, yes, but at least I continued to get straight than at O-level.
Thus began the pattern. The screws were bad, but I got away with it. That’s the problem with being highly functional.
Summer in the early 2000s. Barcelona. I used to have gastritis, painfully recurring indigestion from binge to binge. Jack Daniel’s was always the main culprit and this Spanish escapade was no exception. On a night out with European friends who didn’t understand the drive I had to get completely wiped out, they quietly pointed out that there was no need for me to order double measures every time, or knock back the drinks so quickly . I didn’t listen and paid the price, I passed out most of that night drunk and came back up the next day with a hangover worse than most. I was caught short in the station, couldn’t get to a toilet in time and threw up in a bin – a long, sturdy thread that felt weird and looked weirder. When I put my hand to my mouth, it was blood.
It was a warning sign. I sat on the train from Barcelona and decided I should never drink again. When I got to the hotel, I made a list of my top drunken moments, my love letter to alcohol. I stopped when I got to 50. Downing pints faster than the college rugby team. A night in my mid-teens on the shores of Loch Rannoch when I finally got drunk enough to snitch on the boy I like. Tequila and midnight blue skies at the end of A levels. A party on the beach in Gullane with an unromantically named guy called Terry. In all the flashbacks I was beautiful, dancing, a swing of glory on a rising star.
In my first novel, there is a scene where the main character is drunkenly singing karaoke. She thinks she is brilliant. The next day her husband shows her the video he made of her performance and she sees the truth of it. A thoughtless woman, makeup running down her face, singing along to the Smiths. We never see that we are the drunkest in the room.
The blood did not put me down, the determination did not last. Within days I was at a wedding in Madrid with a free bar serving vodka and Red Bull that really gave me wings. I got away with it again.
Throughout my 20s I was a criminal defense attorney. I grew up reading about it Rumpoles of the Bailey and its Château Thames Embankment. It was only natural that when I started my practice I gravitated towards the drinkers who went to the bars on Fleet Street every night. There were long times when dinner consisted of five pints of Stella and a packet of crisps. I can’t make fun of myself, I got away with it then; I systematically sabotaged myself, collapsing in chambers in front of senior lawyers and showing up late and hungover the next day.
The shame the morning after is always real, the terror of the night before working together. Don’t tell me don’t tell me as the calls from concerned friends start coming. The massive black bruise on my upper arm after a night in Pimlico, the cuts on my feet from the broken glass on the floor of a nightclub in Holborn when I refused to put my shoes back on. Taking taxis because I was too hungover to drive; avoiding people I barely knew for months after incoherently accusing them of gatekeeping and being in a playground gang. I repressed all the anger and sadness sober that had bled out drunk.
Rock bottom is a strange concept. This allowed me to put off a proper reckoning for years. It wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t that bad – I did drink less as the years went on. I was able to moderate my drinking, cut back. Pass the slowest drinker in the group sip by sip. I didn’t drink every day of the week. I didn’t drink on my own. I didn’t drink in the morning. I planned my drinking for the evening ahead. I didn’t drink and drive. I no longer sabotaged my work and besides, I was a terrible advocate. Crime writing is the kind of work you’d expect a drinker to do. But alcohol still took up too much space in my mind.
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Almost all the presents I received on my 40th birthday were alcohol-themed. Bottles of champagne, a sequin purse in the shape of a gin bottle. Endless cards talking about wine hour and why mommy drinks. I was horrified. But not enough to stop me. Later, when someone in the publishing industry died and every social media post commemorating them was a picture of a glass of champagne or a negroni, I thought about the pile of gifts I was eyeing with such shame. I didn’t want this to be how I was remembered if I went prematurely, me red-faced, laughing incoherently, gin in hand.
One of my best friends died in April 2021. It was cancer, it was terrible, and it was definitely not alcohol related in any way. But we were born within two weeks of each other and to see her life cut so short was a moment of reckoning for me. I could go on as I was going, or I could face the fact that I was more than a pickled brain in a pickle jar. It was time to take care of myself.
My last drink was on June 7, 2022.
Returning to Ozzy Osbourne, what he talks about is known as sniper’s alley, this time in our early 50s when it’s the last chance to make changes before we start being picked off one by one. A few friends have already succumbed to addictions, their untimely deaths terrible to watch. I may have left it too late to undo the damage I’ve done to myself, but I’m giving it my best shot. Yoga, weights, running. I might even try cold water swimming…
I faced it. Some of my friends might argue you weren’t that bad. But my name is Harriet and I am an alcoholic. I don’t go to meetings, but I go to therapy every week. I repeat the mantras. One day at a time. Keep my side of the street clean. In my own way I worked the steps. I am at peace with the shame of the past; I love waking up every morning with a clear head, a clearer conscience.
If I die tomorrow, I hope I will be remembered, but without a glass in my hand.
A Lesson in Cruelty by Harriet Tyce is published by Wildfire at £16.99. Buy it for £14.95 from guardianbookshop.com
