by Angela Perez
I am now one week into satisfying my “sober curious” curiosity. I remain, for now, committed to not drinking alcohol.
As a social drinker, a week of not drinking alcohol isn’t really an achievement. I can go long stretches. No, the difference 7 days later is a caressing certainty that I will not return to it. Before the pandemic, I stopped drinking for four years. All those years ago, I saw the alarming signs that drinking did not agree with my aging body. But in some pointless defiance against getting older, I ignored the signs for too long until I was too tired to keep the party going.
Enter COVID-19. During the pandemic, in those first peculiar, chaotic weeks, I decided red wine and good gin were more than warranted for this forced staycation. But, very quickly, I had to admit, all of that solo drinking and smoking cigarettes (if I drink a certain amount, I inevitably want to smoke – a ritual, to be sure), alcohol was doing the opposite of helping me cope. It made me more sad, depressed, and more bewildered than I already was. So I stopped.
But when the threat of Covid ended, and social distancing was an evil of the past, oh my, I was like Prometheus unbound – desperately intending to make a point of the pointlessness, unfairness, and purposelessness of the universe. I traveled regularly to the Caribbean and South Florida to scuba dive for weeks on end and imbibe all of the good cocktails beach life had to offer. But, no adventure was filling the void nor clarifying the perpetual bewildering aftermath of the pandemic. Alcohol heightened that bewilderment, made it darker and darker until the adventures folded in on themselves, and I decided to stick closer to home.
Ah, but dark, sullen bars and saloons call out to me. Because I am an introvert by nature and don’t particularly enjoy talking to people when I have been drinking, it’s a bizarre cosmic pull. But I like being in public spaces of inebriation as a cultural anthropologist, enjoying the foolishness of it. Also, I love getting hammered listening to rock and roll. I must have music I enjoy thrumming in the background when I drink, or else the experience is ruined for me.
Alcohol tickles me into talking to anyone and smiling and chuckling at it all. But it’s only skin deep. Nothing in a bar nor in a gin glass touches my soul. Instead, the two form a clear glass sarcophagus around it, and the bright singing of drunks is muffled, but at least it is noise of some kind in a silent universe.
Long story short, I’m one week into my commitment to not drink alcohol, and dark worry has fallen to the way side; the glass coffin has shattered and been swept away by a warm summer breeze. And I now remember how to walk the Earth with point and purpose. Road trips ahead with dive gear and good books in tow, ah!
