When the buffet makes its way out, I take my chance. But by the time I get to the bar, a voice inside me is screaming no. My mouth begins to move but the empty air around me receives something unexpected. I’ve listened to the voice; I’ve walked away.
The question I keep turning over in my palms, to find a satisfactory answer to, is this: am I an alcoholic? On the side of yes: my doctors (any doctors), the people in AA, most Americans I speak to. On the side of no: most Brits I speak to, some of my best friends.
I look up one of those alcoholic checklists – ‘Am I An Alcoholic Self-Test! Instant results!’ – the ones that allow you to self-diagnose by answering twenty-six simple questions including:
Have you ever been unable to remember part of the previous evening, even though you didn’t pass out?
When drinking with other people, do you try to have a few extra drinks when others won’t know about it?
Do you sometimes feel uncomfortable if alcohol is not available?
When you’re sober, do you sometimes regret things you did or said while drinking?
Do you ever feel depressed or anxious before, during or after periods of drinking?
The results are always the same. Congratulations! You’re an alcoholic! Well, technically, it says: ‘You have a serious level of alcohol use and alcohol-related problems and should seek professional help’.
There is a disclaimer – rubbing up against a report on drug and alcohol deaths – declaring that ‘the results of this self-test are not intended to constitute a diagnosis of alcoholism’.
The binary choice is suffocating. I know I have a problem, but the rule is that you only really know you have a problem when you admit you’re an alcoholic. But I don’t think I am. I’m depressed, stitched together with fragments of trauma, desperate to escape what has often been an unbearable reality – even when it looked like everyone else’s idea of something much more than bearable – sometimes for a minute, sometimes for an hour, sometimes forever.
A problem, yes. A long-time, long-term problem, yes. Waking up clothed in a house I didn’t know, next to a man who wasn’t the one who’d handed me another glass in another room just before it all went black. The first morning I woke up lying on a wet mattress, my first thoughts going to the waterproof sheet with a screeching, beeping alarm that would go off when I wet the bed as a child, rendering me too scared to fall asleep.
While I work it out, I try my best to follow the programme but the depression that hurtled me down the rabbit hole in the first place is still peering over the edge. I feel more isolated than ever now I’m not drinking. I try not to go to bars or restaurants, because the temptation is too strong, others’ enjoyment of lubrication too infectious. I want a drink probably more than I ever have done in my life but there is one thing more than any other keeping me on the straight and narrow: the rehab centre I must go to three times a week.
When I attend for the first time, I’m given a list of client rules. They are many. From the sensible/reasonable (‘no weapons, no violence, don’t come high’), to the petty (‘no beverages in the elevator, no chewing gum’) to the puritanical (‘no open tanks, middies, short shorts or skirts, and clothes with drug/alcohol symbols or sexual/lewd references are not permitted’).
I’m given a brusque case worker whom I see twice, though the second time they can’t remember meeting me the first. Three times a week I leave work early and have three hours of treatment – two different groups for ninety minutes. I’m placed with the ‘professionals’ group for the first one – those who are high-functioning and in a professional career – and in a general group for the second. I hate both. Every minute. Every word. Everyone knows each other, has been in the programme for some time and supports and advises each other. There’s genuine warmth between them. I’m the new person and am constantly told that I have to earn my time. I barely speak in either group and am not expected or asked to. Some weeks neither group leader talks to me even once. I leave each group feeling isolated and ashamed and like a fake.
Each visit comes with a urine test for a tox screen – weeing with the door open so they can be sure it’s mine. This is what mainly keeps me clean. The shame of failing and the fear of the consequences.
I have heart-stopping dreams, dark-edged nightmares, of the police coming to my apartment to take me back to the hospital. I know I can’t go there again. But when I do inevitably fall, I fall far, arms open, scrambling for air.
The worst relapse: a Sunday. I’ve been sober twenty-three days. I’m due to interview an actor in Midtown. Our allotted meeting time comes and goes and I receive a message to say that he’s sorry but he got the day wrong and won’t be joining me. I’ve been sitting in the restaurant for an hour, sipping sparkling water. The waiter comes back over as I hang up the phone.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘They’re not coming.’
‘Do you want to stay for a drink?’ he asks.
Without even considering my answer, I order a martini. As I watch the bartender make it – cutting and curling the lemon, rolling the glass in ice, mixing the spirits – I think about calling out and cancelling it a hundred times.
