Two weeks ago I put down the bottle, got off the sauce, began a dry spell. I’m on a sparkling water-fueled trip to purer isles, where the cocktails are virgin and the beers near-. It’s not like I was slugging back Kahlúa with my morning coffee or slipping off to nip off a hidden bottle of Cognac. I never missed work because of booze binges. I maintained the proper ratio of loose to uptight between 5 and 9pm, generally remaining in a sometimes-hazy equilibrium on one to three glasses of wine a night. .

This was my way to relax and destress, but also to absent and anesthetize myself. Alcohol muddles the sharper feelings into indistinct, blameless aches. My sleep was crap and my mornings cranky. I started to wonder about the function of the evening ritual, how the warm blanket of cabernet sauvignon helped me to deny, ignore, or disregard my internal world. I also worried about the example I was setting for the boy about alcohol and routine, stress and substances — and what my nightly escape said about my desire to be present. I wanted to be a better example, clear-eyed and all there.

Adolescence can be a shifting, unstable place, where the temptation to disappear, to sink into something that softens and obscures, is strong and potentially dangerous. I’ve been drinking in one form or another, usually on the side of a bit too much, since I was fourteen. It started as a way to cope and quell anxiety, to not notice I wasn’t being noticed. It’s been decades since I was a messy drunk, a self-destructive youngster who craved the attention of another, whose dives into naked vulnerability generally ended in shame and the headache of morning. I’ve had fallow periods (pregnancy and the early days of motherhood), more intense spells (depressions; dissolutions), and now this, a break, perhaps something permanent. 

Or not. In theory I miss it, the blurring of the lines and deadening of sensibilities. Or I miss the anticipation of that first sip. Generally staying away from alcohol hasn’t been hard, which is confusing — if my consumption was ok-ish and taking a break not difficult, why stop forever? Why not allow bit of haziness on occasion? But it feels important to consider it, to imagine an alcohol-free future, facing the present as a full participant. 

One day at a time, as the saying goes.