The $98,560 habit I’m saying bye to

I’ve cautiously climbed on the trendy, noisy, sobriety* wagon again… and I forgot how comfy it was up here.

If you’ve read my work, scrolled my Instagram or crossed paths with me in the last 20+ years, you might know alcohol and I have had a long and complicated love affair. When I was young it made me act dumb but feel cool, and as I’ve gotten older my trusty crutch has matured with me, elevating from Passion Pop and Goon-Of-Fortune to $20 bottles of Shiraz and the occasional bottle of French when I’m feeling fancy.

Outside of my family, alcohol has been one of my longest-standing relationships. Cheap (bar the French), accessible and always, always there for me. We’ve broken up before, many times, once for an entire year. But like all good bad relationships, we always found a way back to each other. The clarity I felt in the off seasons always outweighed the buzz (and bloat) of the boozy ones, but given the chance to sit with a good friend and a glass of wine for a little life debrief (one of the greatest pleasures) I couldn’t say no. It was too juicy, too connective, too good for my soul. I mean, we couldn’t catch up for a lemonade, right? We are adults! Adults that have earned the legal right to consume poison that slows down time, bypasses whatever comes before relaxation and opens us up like clams.   

If you think about it though, the way we drink is kind of odd. Alcohol is the most addictive legal substance on the planet, causing more harm than any other drug. The World Health Organization says we have it to thank for more than three million deaths a year worldwide. Three MILLION. That number is shocking, but not nearly shocking enough for us to part with our adulting star chart, the ‘well done’ sticker that is our reward for surviving yet another day of poky, jabby life. And boy do we feel like we deserve one. In my tiny world alone I have to contend with two small children who believe sleep is for the weak, a career that is equal parts thrilling and infuriating and an impossibly broken heart from nursing and subsequently losing my beloved Dad. Making it through any day without falling apart feels worthy of a parade, or at very least a glass of Pinot.

But lately, I’ve started to question whether the reward is worth the risk. Sure, to my health and happiness, fitness and finances, but also to my long-term success, self-worth and – in the most un-preachy way – how my participation in ‘Mummy wine culture’ is landing on the malleable mini-me’s watching my every move. Maybe I’m just being #influenced by the fact that sobriety is now topical to the point of saturation (pun intended). So why again, why now, and what have I learned from my previous attempts?

Here's my theory. In past sobriety spells I’ve fallen prey to a deadline. As in, staying off booze for a predetermined and finite period, be it for Feb Fast (a favourite thanks to only 28 days in the desert), Dry July, Oc-sober or just until ‘insert party here’. As the finish line neared, I would count down the days until I could celebrate my return to the land of fuzz with copious amounts of the very thing I’d been abstaining from, drowning a liver that had been tricked into returning to semi-normal. After a single night off the wagon and on the turps, I was left feeling poisoned – which is exactly what I was.

Out of interest, I calculated how much I think I’ve spent on my habit in my lifetime and the figure I came up with made me feel like I had something in my eye. Of course, it’s seasonal and life-stage dependent, but this isn’t A Beautiful Mind so the sake of easy math and averaging it out, I’d say conservatively:

• 2 bottles of wine a week @ $20 = $2080 annually

• Monthly booze portion of dinners out, drinks with friends or alcohol as gifts @ $200 = $2400 annually

$2080 + $2400 x the 22* years I’ve been drinking = $98,560.

That’s a deposit on an apartment in most suburbs of Australia.

This obviously doesn’t include the hundreds of dollars I’d frequently spend on rounds of drinks for strangers throughout my early drinking career. My poorly disguised attempt to get them to like me worked for the full six seconds it took for us to down them, high five and order again, repeating until our brains entered short-term comas so they didn’t have to witness all the stupid sh*t we were about to do.

Here’s what I know so far: my life doesn’t suck without booze. In fact, it’s much, much better. Calmer. Clearer. More connected. More memorable and remembered. But this time I won’t trip myself up over any grand declaration of never drinking again, nor a dedicated time stamp that sets me up to fail. I’m Sober-ish and loving it, for as long as I’m not feeling called to drink, and maybe even a little longer.