The truth about relapse

Sobriety is life with no skips.

2013. I can only assume all the other booze had run out.

I read recently that actress Natasha Lyonne had announced that she had relapsed after around a decade of sobriety. ‘Recovery is a lifelong process,’ said Lyonne, making the news public on social media as a form of accountability, perhaps, going on to say, ‘Anyone out there struggling, remember you’re not alone.’ Despite these words of optimism and encouragement as she takes control of her life, I could still sense her disappointment and frustration through the screen. It made me think more about relapsing, and what it means.

I gave up drinking over six years ago, on my second try. My first attempt came in November 2016, the day PsychoWotsit won the US election – I know, what a day to decide to go sober. I was 40, and feeling sluggish, and after wading through the majority of the hellscape that was 2016 feeling increasingly hopeless, I decided now was as good a time as any to tune back in. I needed to feel everything.

For that is what happens when you remove alcohol, and other substances, from your life. You feel absolutely every moment as yourself. Aside from the usual code-switching most of us do in certain situations, there are no fancy hats to try on, no help with lowering your drawbridge to release the inhibitions. Everything you do becomes very deliberate. Spontaneity and randomness aren’t excised completely, but they come with a degree of management attached.

You know, pretty much, how you will feel the next day. When you touch things, the sensation moves way past your fingertips, you feel it to your core. Even mindless, unimportant things – closing a cupboard, the soft click of the front door behind you, carefully opening a bottle of water or a packet of pasta – are felt on full power.

You are moving through the world as intended. No dimmer switch. No crash helmet. No anaesthetic.

This isn’t always ideal. While the health benefits of quitting your vices become evident with relative speed, it is human nature to crave a high. A buzz from something. Booze and drugs remain the buzz-providers of choice because they require little advance preparation. You walk into a shop, you buy the booze, you drink. You make a phone call, a girl with £5,000 extension and nails longer than a kayak screeches up outside the house in a Jeep and hands you a bag while you pretend to kiss her cheek. Simple.

Some people don’t bother, and end up jumping out of planes, or hitting the treadmill, or taking up some other hobby that gets the dopamine spouting forth. Some fumble about at the back of the cupboard and try religion on. It’s no coincidence that many former drinkers end up either thrill-seeking or seeking out penance.

The prospect of never again knowing the sweet numbness of chemical distraction is a frightening one because you cannot hide from the one person who is always there: you. Being yourself all the time, with no skips provided by a night on the grog and the ensuing hangover comfort bubble, is a challenge. Especially if you’re not your own biggest fan. Not everyone can get through it.

Substances offer you the chance to shut who you really are in a cupboard, or pull the blinds down on them. A remixed version emerges – happier, drunker, more animated, more relaxed, more FUN whatever. All you have to do is open your mouth and pop inside a ticket to a dimension that doesn’t contain the you that’s worried about bills, or the future, or your waistline. The pleasure-bot version.

As with other crutches, like comfort eating or self-harm or believing everything you read in the tabloids, the comedown can be fierce, and the resultant self-loathing more intense than ever. But it’s short-lived, because there will always be another drink, or pill, or variety box from Buns From Home.

Living without these magic filters is to experience the world on eleven, in UHD. You replace the substances with running, cycling, juicing, or a different bad habit that doesn’t involve blowing up your entire life, but it’s never the same. The invincible coating provided by two drinks – and no more, although everyone forgets that – is hard to replicate.

2016. The respectable face of drinking – pink champagne, at a wedding, in Paris, holding the flute like it’s a pint. Still got a hangover, though.

That first time, I drank again after ten months. I was at awards show, and nervous, and there was free champagne everywhere, and I drank quite a few glasses in about half an hour. Not exactly a misdemeanour on the level of Lyonne’s rupture of a decade of sobriety, but I felt horrendously ashamed. Even though I hadn’t given up alcohol because I perceived I had a problem, I was embarrassed by my own weakness. So I did what any quitter would do after a small obstacle… no, not that, I drank again.

I had many hiatuses from alcohol over the next two or three years, and ruined many a lunch because I was the only one not drinking – alcohol is a gang activity that commands an unbroken psychosis, and outliers’ sobriety is viewed as contagious and toxic. But I knew I would stop again one day. Being back on it after almost a year off it was a much worse feeling than drinking constantly would’ve been. I knew what was possible.

In December 2019, the time came. I had planned it so, I even knew what my last (ever?) drink was going to be. And the next morning, as the buzz slowly trickled away, I knew I had made the right decision. I was stuck with myself for ever, the least I could do was be present.

I turned 50 a few weeks ago, and in the lead up to it, I started to think about what it would mean to begin drinking again. We’ve all had a rough few years; I don’t judge anyone who’s been heavily on the sauce throughout. Though I had never missed alcohol as such, I had mourned that easy access into a different mode. The celebratory nature of alcohol forges bonds.

Perhaps I am not any funnier with a drink inside me, but everyone else seemed to find me more hilarious – probably because they were knocking them back too. It takes me longer to change mood lanes than everyone else, and at special events, I am only briefly aligned with drinkers before their high takes them in a different direction, with stairs far too steep for me to climb.

But, I mused, if I were to have a glass of champagne, maybe, on my birthday, to mark half a century of consciousness, would it be so bad?

I internalised this for a while. I have not been tempted over the last six years. My partner still drinks, so I am around booze still. There are three bottles of champagne in the cupboard and other booze gifts I never got round to passing on. My feelings began to confuse me.

I imagined a cork popping on my 50th, the crash of the bubbles against glass, the foam receding, the narrow neck of the flute against my lips. Would that make it a proper celebration? It wasn’t like I was an alcoholic, what was the harm?

I spoke to my partner about it. Saying it out loud made it sound ridiculous. He humoured me, though, and joked that if I do fall off the wagon, I should maybe swerve the champagne and make my first drink something so disgusting that I’d never want to drink again. By the time he’d reached the end of the sentence, I knew I wouldn’t be drinking alcohol again.

The concept of relapse is a human innovation – very few lions in the wild promise to themselves they’ll never again kill an antelope – and a handy form of self-flagellation and inspiration to change. I am sure it has its uses in addiction therapy, but I hope anyone who slips up forgives themselves easily, and brushes the dust off their knees, before trying again.

I can’t say for sure I won’t ever drink again. But I haven’t yet, and that is all that matters. Best of luck, Natasha. If you ever read this, your next kombucha is on me.

@theguyliner

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