2. You are secretive about your drinking
My DAD apparently hid vodka bottles behind lampposts on the way to his job — as a prominent businessman — so it was easy to fool myself that my, ‘I’m staying up to watch another episode’ and then finishing off the bottle I would later replace, wasn’t ‘hiding bottles’. But it was. Because I was hiding having finished it.
Other ‘ hiding’ strategies I’ve engaged in: taking the glass recycling out under cover of darkness to avoid neighbours seeing the volume, ‘pre-gaming’ by starting at home or getting to the bar early, and deliberately buying a drink that isn’t visibly alcoholic, like a vodka tonic. These are all ‘hiding’, they’re just not as bad as hiding a liquor bottle.
3. Tried controlling your drinking
I STARTED a ‘moderation experiment’ when I was 29, in which I kept a daily unit count in a golden notebook to attempt to stay under my goal of 30 units a week (the recommended 14 units for women — a bottle-and-a-half of wine — was laughable. I knew it would never happen). I kept it for a few months and, given I only managed to limbo under 30 units twice, I ended up scribbling the careful charts out angrily.
I now know from thousands of readers that this ‘count and control’ stage, and the ditching thereof, is very common. The attempt to control is actually a sign you’ve lost control.
4. You’d say you drink moderately
IT’S the people who protest too much about how they’re definitely moderate, and how they always stop at two, they never get hangovers: these are the people who ask me: ‘How did you quit? Just asking for a friend.’
They also cast around (like I did) for people who are worse than them: ‘What about John, he drinks every night!’ I collected stories of people that were ‘worse than me’ in order to protect my own toxic drinking. If you have nothing to protect, you don’t need to prepare a speech of defence.
5. You drink more than you intend to
THIS is the clincher. you go out intending to only have two white wine spritzers, or three bottles of beer, and you have more. Consistently and repeatedly.
Think of other consumables in life, to give this perspective. I don’t buy a family cheesecake and intend to have one slice and end up having three. Therefore, I have no issue with cheesecake.
If any of this article rings true to you, know that you are far from alone. The very nature of alcohol means it literally erodes our ability to say no to more of it, given it lowers inhibitions and that it hikes impulsiveness.
There’s a catch-22 built into the alcohol itself; it’s fiendishly moreish, socially championed and an addictive drug that we are expected to use regularly in a non-addictive way. Drink, but just not too much, OK?
My Dad used to say, ‘I thought it was the fourth drink that was the problem, but it was the first’. For me, it turned out to be true.