Celebrating sobriety

I broke my fast from alcohol earlier this week, ending 600-plus days of dryness with a glass of a crisp white wine. It was a beautiful summer day, and my husband Jim and I were celebrating the Hindu festival of Rakhi with our friend Caitlin. I was cooking a nine-dish vegan meal featuring the vast breadth of our summer harvest. Caitlin arrived with chocolates, some beer, and two bottles of a crisp-looking white wine. I saw the bottles cooling in the refrigerator and announced, "I think I'll have a glass of wine tonight."

I promised my husband it would only be one glass and that the glass would come deep into dinner. He in turn promised that he would not let me drink more than the one glass and would make sure that I was keeping myself well hydrated throughout the meal with apple cider and seltzer. A little before sunset, I had the one drink. And, well, what can I say? It was anti-climatic.

So what does a crisp white wine taste like after one has been dry for nearly two years? To be honest, it tasted like alcohol. Rubbing alcohol. I felt no intoxicating effect and I tasted none of the tangy sweet crispness that I had remembered with wines. I continued to sip water in between sips of the wine, partly because the wine seemed a bit difficult to swallow. I did finish the glass and at that point pretty much felt as if I were done.

What does this say about the allure of wine in our society? How much is the "fine taste of wine" a real sensation and how much of it is a story we make up in our heads?

Before I began abstaining from alcohol, I was a pretty consistent daily drinker. I would have two or three (or four or five) glasses of wine through an evening, usually beginning the sips while preparing dinner and continuing until I was ready for bed, though often I would switch from wine to whiskey or vodka on ice after the meal. It amazed me even in those days that this was widely regarded as a socially accepted practice. It seemed to me that it was something else -- an addiction, perhaps a disease? I was afraid to name the practice. I didn't want to call myself out as complicit.

Going cold turkey as I did on December 13, 2012, has been one of the greatest cleansings of my life. Without alcohol affecting my taste buds, my senses, my moods, and my brain, I have felt strong, clear-headed, direct, and fairly confident in all of my words and deeds.

But abstention, as you might guess, hasn't been easy. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I gave up alcohol, I also gave up participation in a social milieu. I no longer would meet people at bars, or feel comfortable at parties. I opted out of a pre-graduation reception that the college where I teach was hosting because one of the advertised events was a champagne toast to the new graduates. I found myself feeling guilty at large athletic events, where free beer to all finishers of such endurance events as marathons were the rewards for a job well done. In settings where I could not avoid being in the presence of people drinking (such as my cousin's wedding reception last year), I would find myself feeling chilled and unsettled. It's hard to explain that physical sensation. It was almost as if abstention was giving me a fever.

Over time, I began to relax into abstention. I can successfully sit at a bar in a pub and have a bowl full of pasta or a small pizza with a ginger ale or a root beer. I made through a friend's wedding shower at a wine bar on water alone. I can joke now about being a tee-totaler because saying I don't drink no longer feels awkward. At the same time, however, I have begun to wonder whether it would be okay to try drinking again. Moderately? A single drink on a special occasion?

I feel like the answer came through fairly clearly with those few tentative sips of what tasted like rubbing alcohol earlier this week. If there's no pleasure in the flavor of alcoholic beverages, stick with the seltzer. It's cleaner, cheaper, and healthier any time. But I also feel that there needs to be a shift in how we imagine ourselves as social creatures. We need to understand that celebrations need not be made toxic with intoxicating drinks. We need to look at those crisp lovely bottles of wine for what they are: bottles of sugar-laden, full-fat poison that will ultimately kill us if we continue to treat them as delicacies.