Ch 2 - Ripples

About a year ago a friend announced to our neighborhood book club that she had stopped drinking. We all paused mid-sip while she explained that she had become concerned with her expectation of alcohol with every social event and how her sober version made her happier and healthier.  Hers was a humble declaration offered in trust and for her own accountability. I was struck by her story but it was not mine.

Later, in early April 2022, shortly before beginning my 34-day alcohol-free experiment, a New York Times guest essay, Women, Do We Need An Intervention? caught my eye. I breezed through it and decided the author wasn't speaking to me either. Her message must have hit home though, because a week later, after kicking off the day with a meet-jesus hangover, I went back and read it more carefully. 

Written one year into her own sobriety, Ericka Anderson, the essayist, noted a stunning increase in women's alcohol use disorder (+84% from 2001-2013) and some interesting contributing factors, including targeted marketing by the alcohol industry with products developed for women's consumption.  (See Jane Walker Whisky, Skinny Girl Cocktails and Mommy's Time Out Wine) The #WineMom meme, promoting alcohol to reduce the stress of parenting, has taken off with t-shirts, cocktail napkins, glassware and other paraphernalia. Check out these offerings on Etsy. And at the time of this writing, #winemom has almost 92,000 postings on Instagram. 

What really pisses me off is discovering I've been manipulated. I already went through that with nicotine, having smoked cigarettes for years. I started by believing they made me a more sophisticated teenager and ended up an adult hopelessly hooked on nicotine. It took many painful attempts spanning decades before finally quitting.

You'd think I would have learned, but here I was, once again sucked in by another mega industry, this one convincing me that I deserved a daily alcohol break.

But it wasn't just marketing and memes that led me to this point. My upper middle class family fully embraced the cocktail hour ritual and when I reached young adulthood, my parents welcomed me to the club. It was lovely! Come 5 pm, my father, a kind and generous host, would take orders for wine and mixed drinks and we nibbled on nuts and crackers while discussing the day. I don't recall any of us over-imbibing (well, mostly), at least in those early years, but it was clearly a daily event. Bill and I naturally adopted the same custom in our own home after marrying. Ridiculous as it sounds, it never occurred to me that this wasn't a common practice. I thought this was just one aspect of adulting, like paying the bills and going to the dentist.

Three weeks after my own break up with alcohol I met my book club friend (the only person I knew who had chosen sobriety after habitual drinking) for brunch. She shared her journey in more depth as well as her favorite Quit Lit books, which included Alcohol Explained by William Porter and The Naked Mind by Annie Grace. I told her about We Are the Luckiest, a powerful memoir by Laura McKowen, which I discovered in Ms. Anderson's essay, and we made plans to get together again. I'm thankful for her friendship.

Let's take a minute to appreciate the extraordinary impact of messages transmitted through human connections, media megaphones and common day occurrences. For the better or worse, they ripple through our lives, contributing to the choices we make and the people we become.

This thing is getting real. Come along for the ride as we explore non-alcoholic beverage alternatives..