Salon.com > Drinking

I woke up at age 35

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear reader,

I'd like to tell you a couple of things about my personal life and then I would like to make a request. Two things happened this week; one brought joy and one brought pain. I was told I'm still cancer-free. And our dog died.

Three years after surgery and proton beam radiation therapy for a sacral chordoma there is no sign of recurrence. Dr. Christopher Ames of UCSF, toward whom I have the crazy mix of extreme emotions one can only have toward a surgeon who has opened one up and carefully cut away bone and tissue and helped to make one whole again, said, "Go enjoy your life." So Norma and I went and had lunch at the Cliff House, on whose deck we were married almost 20 years ago.

Then our dog died. He was the second of our two standard poodles to die within the last year. That was rough.

Now we have no more dogs to die. We feel strangely alone in the house.

So it's been up and down, as life is. Those of you who have loved dogs and seen them die, and/or who have gone through the terror and pain of cancer surgery and radiation, will relate. I say this not to ask for sympathy but to signal that you and I are not alone in these things. I know you are out there and I know you know what it is like.

Police probe the death of David Hockney’s assistant

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:35:00 +0000

Dominic Elliott, the 23-year-old personal assistant of the renowned British painter David Hockney has died, after after turning up at the artist's home in Bridlington gravely ill, reports the London Evening Standard. Elliott was rushed to Scarborough Hospital in North Yorkshire at around 6 a.m. yesterday by a friend, and listed in “serious condition,” after being found unwell at the artist’s house in Bridlington — he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

“Girls” recap: Acting on impulse

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:11:00 +0000

Being over the edge can actually be embarrassingly useful. It, like losing one's job, forces confrontations mere happenstance cannot easily achieve. In reasonable doses, it's the means by which we erode meaningless bonds, break people down to their elements, and collapse all the strictures polite society was designed to achieve.

BUT NOT QUITE YET.

As we begin this season's penultimate episode, we slide up into what I have begun to think of as a Dunhamian shot: the bed and bedroom seen from the side, like Freud's ideal diorama. In this bedroom are the yet-more-encoupled Nat (Natalia) and Adam, about to make love. We know this because Natalia says, “I'm ready to have sex now,” telling Adam “You've been really nice all week,” then laying out information and prohibitions, including “no soft touching” (takes her out of the moment) and coming outside (“I'm on the pill”). Though his expression is briefly inscrutable, Adam reacts to these proscriptions with relief. “I will do all of those things ... I like how clear you are with me.” How, responds Natalia beatifically, could a person do anything any other way?

How prisoners make moonshine

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:00:00 +0000

Drinking problems drag many people to jails or other institutions—it's a weary story of alcohol impairing self-control and morals, over and over again. Most of us can testify how much more prone we are to doing something reckless, out of character, or even criminal when we're on the "liquid courage." The impact on incarceration rates is huge: A 2008 Pew Center report indicated that 5.3 million imprisoned adults in the US—36% of the total at the time—were drinking at the time of their offense. And 2007 Bureau of Justice stats showed that over 20% of victims of violent crimes perceived that their attacker was under the influence of alcohol.

DUIs, for example, are familiar news fodder. But when you live on the inside like I do, you hear plenty of variations: "My dude got in a fight at a bar when he was plastered," one fellow prisoner tells me. "He got his ass beat, so in his alcohol-induced haze he decided to get a gun and go back to the bar. When he got there, the dude who beat him up wasn't there. But the cops were; he got arrested for being a felon in possession of a gun, and is now in the feds with me." But as with many inmates, the human ingenuity that cravings can inspire means his drinking doesn't have to end here: "What we like to do is make moonshine."

My husband won’t see the doctor

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

My spouse refuses to see the doctor!

I am very worried and frustrated about my spouse's health. But every time I bring up seeing a doctor or getting help or anything he gets defensive and angry and tells me I'm bitching at him or patronizes me by saying it's not a big deal or he'll consider what I'm saying. But he never does. I have been with him for 13 years, we have two young children, ages 7 and 3, and I told him that I thought it was selfish and inconsiderate of him not to think about how we would feel if we lost him. This only upset him and he has shut down in speaking about it now.

Reason for my concern is legitimate. He smokes three to four packs a day, he has high blood pressure (he always has and the only reason I know this is I made him go to the E.R. twice in our relationship and both times, high blood pressure) and he is a heavy drinker. He's recently not as bad as he used to be; he was a raging alcoholic for about eight years and now is at about three to four glasses of vodka or mixed drinks a day. On weekends it's more.

A cocktail writer goes dry

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:30:00 +0000

I am standing in front of a roomful of New Yorkers, all sipping sample-size martinis. My husband is by my side, working the projector. Above us, "The Thin Man's" Nick and Nora Charles are wisecracking on the screen. I'd presented this seminar on cocktails in classic film a dozen times before, but tonight, something is different. I wonder if anyone will notice that neither of us has had a single drop to drink.

My husband and I had just made a New Year's resolution, and it was a doozy: abstain from alcohol for a year, or at least until we both crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon that fall. It was only the first week of January. We still had nine long, dry months to go.

We'd come to this unfamiliar, new teetotaling place partly out of a wish for a sit-up-and-take-notice new challenge, and partly out of the realization that our expanding waistlines, doughy faces, and frequent morning headaches weren't going to go away by themselves.

All my wasted New Year’s

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Like every other party girl, I was always in search of the perfect New Year's Eve. Four years ago, I rang it in at a club on the Lower East Side with my then-boyfriend. Champagne rained down on our heads at midnight as we stood on a dance floor spilling over with people and vodka. I had always been searching for this feeling of belonging, this euphoria, and I had reached that beautiful point where I was slightly tipsy but not yet drunk, and I vowed to stay there this time.

Somehow, though, I managed to talk him into hitting up one more bar before we headed back to my parents’ place. And somehow, I managed to down another drink, then another, despite his hand reaching out to stop me. I remember flashes of dancing, and then stumbling home, and screaming something about the “golden-haired prince,” a waiter I just knew was flirting with me.

When I got home, I ran to the bathroom to throw up, and then came back as if nothing had happened. I did this multiple times before passing out, mascara smeared all over my face, one heel on and the other off. I was still wearing my glittery dress.

Must I drink to socialize?

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Cary,

I love your column, and I am struggling with a problem I think you and your readers might have some insight on. I'm a 24-year-old female living on the West Coast. I have a fairly active social life but I have trouble making close friends. I am a bit of an introvert -- I don't like being the center of attention and I feel most comfortable in small social settings.

I'm shy and a bit socially awkward, and I feel like I fumble along when too many people turn their eyes to me. However, I am no stranger to the powers of alcohol. As soon as I have a couple drinks in me I become intensely more sociable. It's like my brain finally turns on, and I finally have something substantial to contribute to the conversation. I know that this is the seductive power of alcohol -- it makes you seem more interesting, more charming, more charismatic, and I think in my case it really does make me a little bit more of all these qualities. Now that I've had a few years of experience with the powers of alcohol, I want to make sure I don't develop a social crutch where I feel like I need alcohol to be interesting and responsive in social settings. I'm definitely not going to actively avoid alcohol because it's such a prominent aspect of my social life with my peers and I don't feel like I use it recklessly, but I do want to figure out how to trigger the "me," that inner sparkle, that is revealed when I drink alcohol, without having to drink alcohol. It's time for job interviews, and dating, and networking, and I feel like once I harness the inner charm in me that is so often dormant, I will thrive. Am I forever doomed to be the boring girl until I get some drinks in me?

Dumb tweet of the day: Drink up

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:09:00 +0000

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She tried to run me over!

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I think my dear friend is an alcoholic and a child in a grown woman's body. But I don't know how to help or deliver the soul-shaking wake-up call I think she deserves.

We had made plans to hang out the other night. I thought we should walk to the bar section of town; we don't live very far away at all – a 10-minute walk at most. But my friend hates walking. She convinced the rest of us to let her drive, I'm not sure how. Actually she convinced me that she would park downtown and walk home afterward (a detail that will be more significant in a minute). And I was easily swayed because she has a brand-new Beamer - I'm distracted by shiny things. But on our way downtown we discovered that the can of pop she had been brandishing, that now rested in her cup-holder, was not a pop at all but a brewski. But I wasn't too phased at the moment and I was admittedly amused by her brazen and carefree attitude, and she backed this up by frequent protests that she didn't "give a shit." (I didn't find out until later, by way of her bragging, how much beer she had consumed before picking us up – she hid it well, for a little while at least.)