About six months after I quit drinking, I sat at a corner table in a candlelit restaurant with one of my closest friends. It was the kind of place where we used to refill each other’s wine glasses all night, sharing appetizers and intimate details of our lives.
That night, though, it felt more like we were catching up: surface-level conversation you might have with a work acquaintance or when seated next to a distant cousin at a wedding. By the time the entrees came, we’d reached the end of these “so what else is new” updates. I recognized that we were at a threshold — one I had been unable to cross so far without booze.
There are studies that confirm what I — and anyone else who has ever made friends with another drunk woman in a bar bathroom — have always known: Drinking can help build social bonds. It lowers inhibitions and fosters feelings of connection. But what happens when you’ve come to rely on alcohol to establish and reinforce those connections?
I started drinking when I was 13, skipping class to chug cheap vodka and 40s with friends. We’d sprawl out on park benches or huddle on stoops, laughing about everything and nothing. I liked the sloshy, blurry feeling; the warmth in my cheeks and heaviness in my body. But what I liked most about being drunk was that it made it OK to say how sad I was — or to just start crying, without saying anything at all.
By my late teens, a drink in the evening (and then a second and third) to soften the edges of my life seemed normal — even more so once I became a bartender, tucked away in a nocturnal world that revolved around alcohol. I prided myself on being able to do shots with customers all night and still settle the register correctly at 5 a.m.
On my nights off, my friends and I went out, often to the same bar where I worked. And though I didn’t loiter on stoops drinking vodka out of the bottle anymore, the end of a night out was ultimately the same: Once I’d had enough to drink, it felt safe to admit to being sad or lonely or unsure.
Alcohol was a shortcut to intimacy, a way to override my fear of looking foolish or sharing too much. It was the password to a private back room where secrets could be shared without reproach. After a night of drinks and confessions with a friend, I would fall into bed and into the deep sleep of the unburdened.
But by my early 30s, hangovers escalated from discomfort to debilitation. My chronic migraines came more frequently, and were undeniably exacerbated by alcohol. I tried just drinking less, but I eventually started getting headaches partway through my first drink. Something had to change.
Cutting out alcohol entirely wasn’t that hard after years of scaling back. I didn’t miss the taste of wine or the warm, relaxed feeling — but I didn’t realize I’d have to relearn how to connect with my friends.
Seeing how much I had relied on alcohol to feel close to people I love made me more certain that cutting it out had been the right decision. I hated the idea of requiring a substance for something so essential. But that still left me with the question of how to bridge the gap; how to access that private room if the password I’d used for all these years was no longer available to me.
Eventually it became clear that I’d have to just push through the discomfort. I’d have to make a conscious decision to say the vulnerable thing that would have slipped out on its own after a few drinks. And so, at that candlelit dinner, I asked myself: What would you say right now if you were at the end of your second glass of wine? Not pretending I was drunk; just pushing myself to be bold.
I took a sip of my too-sweet mocktail, and blurted out the details of a difficult family situation that I hadn’t yet shared with anyone other than my husband. Then I laughed, in surprise or nervousness or both. But my friend didn’t miss a beat: She asked me questions, listened and empathized. And then, with the threshold behind us, she shared a worry of her own — and there we were together in that back room, saying the real stuff. I was so relieved. And in my relief, I understood that part of me had truly feared I wouldn’t be able to connect with people in the same way without drinking.
I want the people I love to see me in all of my messiness, and I want to see them in theirs. For us to be ourselves together, fully and without pretense. But wanting that closeness doesn’t make it any easier to expose my uncertainties and fears and human weaknesses.
My desire for intimacy is forever at odds with my desire to appear put-together and in control. For most of my life, alcohol made it easy to let go, but now I’m learning to do it on my own. I still feel a flutter of embarrassment as I step over the threshold, but knowing I can still access that space has kept me going — and kept me sober.
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