Conversations in lifts about alcohol

Now that I don't drink alcohol, I find myself noticing things more. Things that would have slipped under the radar before. Things worth thinking about.

Somehow, conversations about alcohol keep happening in lifts. I have no idea why, but the lift seems to be the happening new venue for short conversations that exemplify sweeping societal attitudes to alcohol. There have been a fair few more than this, but I'll call out two lift conversations that gave me pause...

Clinking bottles

As a 36-year-old teetotal woman who was an alcoholic until a few months ago, I'm somewhat at the opposite end of the drinking scale to a colleague of mine, a nice chap in his mid-twenties who's having a quarter-life crisis. Given I'm practising mindful sleep hygiene, and he's practising the art of swilling away the feelings of uncertainty at the passing years, it's no surprise that our attitudes to drink differ. Our lift conversation did made me think though.

It centred around the fact he'd just got back from holiday, but (like every night) he'd partied too late with friends before he went away. This time, at his place. Since he's a kid, he's not yet learned the important life lesson of tidying your house before you go on holiday – thus safeguarding your home as a haven to come back to after your adventures, as opposed to being a stressful, grotty chore that contributes to post-holiday depression.

Partying begets bottles.

Bottles need to be disposed of.

Cue colourful imagery of him carrying cacophonous, clinking bags to the bottle bank.

It was 'so embarrassing', to use his words '...like I was an alcoholic!'

Spoken like that was the worst possible thing you could be.

Followed by a face of joking(ish) disgust.

I made a non-committal 'Mmm' and smiled.

The lift doors opened.

While I'm not upset by the conversation (he's a nice enough boy, he's just not very worldly) it made me internally facepalm for him that he'd just invoked being an alcoholic as a gross, icky, sad, terrible, no-good thing...to someone who, a few long months ago, was indeed an alcoholic.

Musing on this afterwards, it struck me that a) evidently he's not reading my blog, so he's missing out on all my scintillating thoughts. (For shame!) And b) it's still the case that the image of 'an alcoholic' has certain cookie-cutter imagery associated with it.

What does an alcoholic look like?

According to my colleague, not like me, or I guess he wouldn't have said it. I presume that he's thinking of the classic picture: probably male, probably destitute, with a bottle of something in a brown paper bag.

He's not thinking of a sharp-witted, funny, well-dressed female manager. He's not thinking of the person who guides their team to excellence. Who gets the best out of them, but lets them take the credit for her good choices. He's not thinking of someone with the brain to plan months ahead, shifting and adapting deftly to meet business needs in the short term. He's not thinking of me when he thinks of an alcoholic.

He's thinking of someone where you can tell by looking. Because people still think you can tell someone's life, just by looking. And you can't.

I'm glad of our lift conversation, because it's good to be reminded that (while I know there are whole universes inside other people) sometimes those who are just an arm's reach away are only capable of seeing what's going on within themselves. It reminds me to be as kind and compassionate as I can, in my dealings with both others, and myself.

You may not be able to see me, but I might see all the possibilities of you, if I take the time to look.

The absence of doing is offensive

Another day, another lift conversation with another acquaintance – this time the erstwhile party king. Again, no surprise that we'd have differing paradigms, but his attitude to alcohol is so pervasive in society, and my instinctive reaction so unexpected, it gave me pause.

I casually drop into conversation (as I had months ago) that I don't drink.

No ability at a poker face, this guy. Evident surprise.

"Oh. Really? You're still Doing That."

"Yeah."

"Huh... And how's that working out for you?"

Doing That...spoken like it was capitalised. With derision. Disbelief.

A shorthand form of, "The thing you're Doing which is a state of Not Doing, but moreso the one where you're actually Not Doing What I'm Doing. You're still Doing That?" Naturally, I never expected someone stuck in a perpetual loop of the same weekend to understand my path, but yeah. I'm still Doing That. And it's good.

Until you stop drinking, you don't realise just how implicit the expectation is that you will be a drinker. Or how society, the world, and life is set up for the default setting to be drinking. It's like seeing the matrix, and conversations like this serve as reminders that the green code is scrolling at the edges somewhere. (That's cool, everyone. You do you.)

What surprised me, though, was my reaction.

"Great. It's wonderful actually. It's like when you were a kid. You have all this time, and tons of stuff you do with it now. I've got so much I want to do, and not enough time."

The lift doors opened.

Weirdly (given my tendency to be the thinky-type) I'd already thought out an answer to his massive question for people I like, respect, and want to share details of my life with – somehow though, I hadn't formulated a response for those I'd rather keep at a triple bargepole's length. But there it was, tripping off my tongue. Truths from the mouths of babes.

Time is one of the most surprising gifts you give to yourself when you choose not to drink any more. It's kind of shocking when you realise just how much time you now have. Time you were wasting, getting wasted. It's actually one of the most difficult and oppressive things about those early days of sobriety: the Friday nights where you get home because you are rightly hermiting the hell out of this process, and you go, "What do I do with myself now?".

When you are addicted, you naturally get so used to your pastime being alcohol that you sort of forget what people do when they're not doing alcohol. When you get clean, you slowly (gingerly) step out of your broken body, but it takes some time for your mindset to truly catch up. By the time your brain's finished defragmenting, you've started to remember just how much fun it is to do things that aren't alcohol – and by then you're capable of doing so. The world opens up again, and it's like being a kid because every bit of free time becomes Saturday morning. Every Friday becomes that moment when you just got home from school and changed out of your uniform. It's like being a kid again, just without all the shit parts.

Musing on this conversation with the erstwhile party king afterwards, I'm grateful again. Grateful that I am not he. (Grateful I exited his circle many, many moons ago after a brief tenure as flavour of the month.) Grateful to be growing, still, even now. And glad to realise that I'm the party, not the drugs or the drink.

Damn, that's trite. But I like it.

You are the party.

Love always,

Fay

xXx