Note: Through the course of this series, some folks spoke to me with the expectation of anonymity. Consequently, names and identifying details are occasionally changed to respect that choice.
Every day I look forward to the ‘clink.’ That little sound I hear when the neck of the wine bottle lazily touches the rim of the glass as I pour a small amount for dinner making and kitchen puttering and generally catching up on the day with Jonny. I suppose I could rest the bottle on my forearm and do that fancy pour so the bottle doesn’t touch my glass, but we’re not that fancy here at Chez James. That ‘clink’ tells me the workday is over, that something is cooking, that I can transition from day to evening. In my case, I get one ‘clink’, one small drink, per day, so it’s typically at around that time every evening. Just one isn’t a hardship, but none was a struggle.
I’ve never been much of a drinker. Sure, of a Friday or Saturday night, I’d been known to put away a few, but only a few. Two drinks was typical, three was pushing, and four would result in me trying to take my pants off over my head. I can remember a few truly drunk occasions, and the corresponding hangovers were bad enough to keep me from repeating them. This is all to say, when I first got sick in 2018 and they told me to stop drinking entirely, I was bummed, but not devastated. This was a smaller task in the grand scheme of things, and a doable one, I thought. Liver function is critical in treating cancer. At the time I was diagnosed, that alone was motivation enough to just stop.
As the shock wore off and the sober weeks went on, I began to get that little itch. That niggling feeling that says, “Can’t I relax just a little bit more?” It’s like sleeping on an airplane. You’re comfortable enough, it’s quiet-ish, but it’s a foreign environment and you might doze, but you’ve got another layer of awareness to everything that’s going on around you. There’s not quite that release nor that surrender.
At this same time, at my sickest and also while the treatment was necessarily aggressive, I was very skinny. Every doctor, every relative, every article and blog post and resource said eat up. Put the pounds back on. As a small digression, as doctor’s orders go, what a great one! I had no appetite really and found it hard to put away entire meals, but I could graze like a motherfucker. Snacking became a hobby, a passion, and a lousy replacement for a glass of wine. You can’t come home from work, loosen your tie, and pour yourself a tumbler of Cheetos. I tried, but it wasn’t the same. Focusing on health and being correspondingly stressed out about it made me question how committed I was to sobriety or healthy eating. I wasn’t an addict, I thought, but here I was displaying addictive behaviour. And if it walks like a duck and drinks like a fish and eats like a hog, well, that’s trouble. So I wondered, was the same true for people during COVID?
“When the pandemic hit, my girlfriend and I found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands, and were constantly together,” my friend Dave remembers. “The city where we live locked down hard and fast, leaving us with only big grocers and small liquor/convenience stores to supply us with food AND entertainment. Alcohol at least took the edge off of some of the shock and confusion of the situation.” Who can’t relate to that? Dave and his girlfriend were both working, both making money, and neither had much to spend it on, so bring on the cocktails.
“We drank a lot,” Dave admits. “At least three drinks a day, and often more. It was normal to go to bed drunk, and alcohol helped me get to sleep, even if it was that black dreamless sleep that doesn't really give you proper rest. If we weren't at least a little tipsy at any point after 4pm, it's because we ran out of booze after the stores had closed. This rarely happened, as both of us are incredibly good planners.”
Kevin and his wife are good planners too, as far as I know. Kevin has a family, is smart with money, good career, driven to succeed. He found himself collecting sportscards during the pandemic. Baseball cards, hockey cards, like when we were kids. “After the monotony of COVID life, [card collecting] is an escape to connect with guys with similar interests across North American and cheer each other on while you all try and hit a ‘monster’ card,” Kevin tells me. “Monster” cards being those rare finds that can suddenly quadruple the value. “You spend way more than you think,” he admits, adding, “Justifying it by saying you’ll be able to sell the cards to recoup some of your money. And sometimes you can.”
Dave had to question the justifications of his drinking when a routine physical showed signs of poor liver function. An ultrasound confirmed it. The doctor was firm. Drink less, eat better.
“I could not,” Dave tells me now. “I kept drinking. Even drinking a bit more. The urgency to stop made me need to drink even more, usually to quiet my mind for sleep. I felt like my body was being snatched. My legs would walk to the bridge, my arms would reach into the ‘beer crisper’, and my mind would be saying ‘What are you doing, stupid?’ I had no control over myself anymore. It was autonomic, like going to the bathroom. What was going on? I was not an alcoholic. Society and/or Hollywood taught me that those people are all violent and emotionally unstable. They can't hold down well-paying tech jobs or function in relationships. I was kicking ass at my job and was beloved by my friends and partner.”
Collecting sportscards moved from a pastime to a worry for Kevin, too. “It has definitely affected my family as I’m constantly on my phone checking eBay and Facebook groups for a break I’m interested in joining,” he admits. “I try and involve the kids and wife as they love ripping packs as well and we started a YouTube channel. They have somewhat lost interest, and it is expensive to buy more packs than you would just for yourself, so everyone gets a chance. I’ve racked up my credit card, again justifying it to myself that at any time I could sell my collection. I have a budget for cards each month but find myself blowing past it by 150-300% monthly as there are so many ‘good deals.’”
About six months into no drinking and lots of Cheetos, my doctor said my liver, spleen, etc. looked to be functioning normally. Gone was the swelling apparently earlier, and I was now on a gentler cycle of medication than what I’d been dealing with previously. I asked her if I could drink again. She said, “Well, it’s probably not wise to be drinking drinking, but you can have a drink, one drink, when you want one.”
Isn’t it funny how much grey area we deal with here? As Dave says, Hollywood portrayals would have you believe addiction means a life in disarray, and the only fix is total sobriety. I’m sure that’s true for some people. But for me, the permission of a single drink provided a release that I still truly value. Rather than being pissed because I have to stop at one, I make sure I’m grateful for the opportunity at all. And my liver is good, if still fragile. Any time I’ve toed or stepped over the “one drink” line, I feel like true garbage the next day. Truly not worth it.
Kevin slowed down the card collecting, but he didn’t stop. “Thankfully, I am still enjoying it and find value in it… [It’s] a lot of guys aged 20-30 spending money they would otherwise be spending on a different addiction like gambling, alcohol, drugs and sex that COVID restrictions have slowed down.”
Dave’s liver scare changed his behaviour a little. “I have since more or less kept the drinking tamped down,” he says, saying he has a couple drinks a few times a week. “This is not the zero-tolerance rule that my doctor would have, but it certainly a lot better than the three-plus drinks a day.”
Dave continues, “Social expectation is still incredibly unforgiving. Even among the close friends who know about my situation, they still shrug it off, and fill up my glass without even asking. Sometimes I have the energy to fight it. Other times, I give in. Other times, I avoid friends altogether. I do dread every visit to the doctor. There are always questions, and often tests, that would betray my continued drinking. But apparently, I am willing to put up with it, all for sweet lady booze. Why?”
Why indeed? I think we comfort ourselves with the illusion that we control more than we actually do. We budget, track steps, count calories, read a book a week, get seven hours a night, eight glasses of water and on and on. But what does that matter to a global pandemic? A world war?
I don’t think we can control the world around us to the extent we want to, but we can always control the ways we cope. For me, that’s knowing when to stop working and start cooking, when to reach out to friends like Kevin and Dave, when to break out the snacks, and when to wait for the ‘clink.’