Talking to Drummond made me think about the pattern. There were three bouts of heavy drinking, each more serious than the last. In the first two bouts, in my teens and then in my mid-20s, I responded to stress – the stress of school, the stress of work – by drinking alcohol. In the third bout, when my drinking escalated dramatically, it was as if the alcohol itself had become a stressor.
this time I was in a relationship, and we both drank. I drank more than she did. Our friends drank. When friends visited, I would open the wine in the kitchen, and pour one bottle into four glasses. I’d take the first two glasses and give them to the guests. Then I’d go back into the kitchen and drink one of the glasses as quickly as I could. Working against the clock, I’d open a fresh bottle, refill my glass, and join the other three people, who would be tucking into their drinks. But drinking always increased my desire to drink, so I would finish my second glass before the others had finished their first. Then I’d go back into the kitchen for my first “official” refill. By the time everybody had had three drinks, four bottles would be gone. There was a solution, of course – to buy five bottles. With drink, there always seems to be a solution.
“It creeps up,” said Drummond. “It’s insidious. I don’t like to think it’s ever too late, but it becomes harder and harder to do something about it once it’s got a grip on people.”
Drummond asked me about my family. Was there alcoholism in my family? Sometimes it’s hard to know, because alcohol, its entire culture, emanates a cloud of secrecy. I thought about my family. My grandfather, my mother’s father, drank robustly, to say the least. My brother drinks robustly. My mother hardly drinks. A glass of wine here and there. Maybe two at a wedding. My father drank very little until late middle-age. Then he drank in small amounts. When he retired, he drank more. In his 40s, a very light drinker, he used to warn me about my drinking. By the time I quit, he was in his 80s, and drank every day. I never saw him drunk; he claimed never to have been drunk. But I worried about the brandy, the rum, the gin. Our roles had reversed; now I would warn him about alcohol. I had never heeded his warnings; I don’t suppose he heeded mine, either. When you drink, it can be impossible to think clearly about your drinking.