I Am Not an Alcoholic: A lot of things changed for me when I stopped drinking

At last, spring is really here. As I type this the sun is beaming in my window blinding my laptop screen. I am not complaining. Sun and blue skies are the best tonic you can buy. And yes, sometimes you have to buy them. I did.

In February I went to Morocco to recharge my flat batteries and replenish my Vitamin D. Even though holidays can be a trigger – with their laissez-faire attitude and acceptance of drinking alcohol at all times of the day, with no one saying: “Is it not a bit early for that?” – the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

“Do I need to put on a towel wash?”

“Is there milk in the fridge?”

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“What’s for dinner?”

“Have you seen my tennis racket?”

No, banish all such thoughts.

With no disrespect to Morocco and its rich cultural history, I did nothing. No visits to mosques or minarets or souks were planned. I read and swam and lay in the sun.

With one exception.

I had a hammam massage. I was told to strip and to lie down on a bench, which was as hard as a slab of marble. Then, chicken liver pâté, sorry a paste, was spread over my body with a spatula. Next, still on a food theme, my body was scrubbed with a vegetable brush by the torturer, sorry masseuse. I can still feel the bristles tingling my skin as I write this two months later.

Perhaps thinking of her tip, my masseuse delighted in showing me all the dead skin she’d scraped from my body. With no Arabic to enlighten her that the tip would be much bigger if she didn’t show me my dead skin, I silently endured this debasing exhibition.

I was ordered to stand while she scooped up a ladle of water from a bucket and threw it at me. She repeated this until all traces of the chicken liver pâté were removed. Standing there naked while a burly woman is dousing me with water is not one of my finer moments. She proceeded to wash my hair, ladling water over my head. Now my eyes were stinging like my body. No More Tears hasn’t yet made it to Morocco.

I was given a robe and told to go upstairs. Oh, please, no more torture.

No, heaven awaited. Another masseuse, who hadn’t done her training in the boot camp like the one downstairs, proceeded to drizzle warm oil over my body. I’d done my purgatory and now I was to get my reward. As she rubbed her hands over my back I waited for the usual: “Oh, you’re so tense. Don’t worry, I will sort this out for you.”

And then the kneading with her knuckles, sometimes her knees, would start and I’d be biting my hand to stop myself from screaming. But no, this time she didn’t tell me that I was wound up like a tightly coiled ball of string. I began to relax as her hands did their magic work, treating my body like the temple I had been taught it was. I left the hammam looking like a drowned rat, but feeling like a sleek racehorse.

Will I be back? Probably.

[ I Am Not an Alcoholic: ‘Being alone in Paris, who was to know if I had a glass? But that was the problem, wasn’t it?’Opens in new window ]

I’m sure most people remember their first taste of alcohol? I do. It was a bottle of Babycham. Remember those? The bottles had a picture of Bambi on the label. I hated the taste and wondered how grown-ups could drink this stuff. I suspect this reaction is perhaps a very common one, yet we still go on to try it again and again.

When children don’t like their broccoli do they ask for more until they acquire a taste for it?

Now what was I going to do with the rest? My recollection is that I just put it back, hoping no one would notice that it had been opened. I’m sure if I had been asked: “Did you open a bottle of Babycham?” my answer would have been a resolute “No.” I would have blamed it on my brothers. After all, isn’t that the sole benefit of having brothers? I did discover another benefit, but that was later in my teenage years. Their friends.

I don’t know many people who, like me, can’t drink alcohol without abusing it.

Most of my friends drink, but so abstemiously as for me to wonder, why bother? But there you go. That’s the difference between us. That is the reason they can drink and I can’t.

I well remember when the bottle of wine was sitting at the far end of the table well out of my reach. I didn’t like that at all

Thoughts of alcohol enter my head without invitation regularly. Even if I am watching a film and should be distracted by the narrative, I find myself giving way too much importance to the scene where wine is being poured into a glass. I watch as the characters drink and, for longer than I should allow, imagine how it tastes. I think it is time to train myself to stop those thoughts taking up residence in my head.

I play bridge and after the game it is sociable to stay and have a drink. When I stopped drinking, I stopped staying afterwards because I couldn’t see the point if I wasn’t drinking. But I was losing out on the sociability aspect, so recently I started to stay behind and join in the conversation. Is it difficult? A little. Is it worth it? Yes.

There are many challenges in this life on Earth and we should treat ourselves well by accepting each challenge as it presents itself. What’s the alternative? Scream and shout and break things? Well, you can do those things if you want but where will it get you? A mess you will have to clean up later. And I don’t just mean the visible breakages when I speak of a mess. That kind of reaction will often have consequences that are unpleasant and avoidable.

When I get a phone call giving me bad news, I feel my body tense and I catch myself holding my breath. And before I speak, I pause. Because the first words out of my mouth will determine my reaction. If something has already happened, then there is no point in going back over the past. It’s happened. Deal with it. That doesn’t mean you have to be strong and act like it’s never happened – you can have a cry – but it does mean you have to accept it.

The expression, “It is what it is”, is heard a lot these days, but do we really just accept everything that happens as glibly as that? Unfortunately, I’m afraid we must. But what about those days when tiredness or hunger or sadness take over when “It is what it is” will not work? Taking a few minutes to breathe and sit quietly. Going into the garden I find can sometimes shift the narrative and clear my head. And just wait until it passes, because it will.

Change is also hard. We get comfortable with familiarity even if that familiarity is not a healthy one. It feels safer to stay in our situation than to explore any alternative. But maybe it is not in our best interests to resist change? We should embrace change and see where it takes us.

A lot of things changed for me when I stopped drinking. It wasn’t that I set out to make changes. I wasn’t aware that anything would change for me other than I wouldn’t be drinking. But not drinking gave me a power and a confidence and it all happened organically. There was no plan. It happened because I stopped doing something, not because of something I started. I felt the changes almost straight away. It took others a lot longer to see them and some people didn’t like the changes, that or felt threatened by them.

[ I Am Not an Alcoholic: ‘When I stopped drinking, others were not as excited as I was to finally escape the box’Opens in new window ]

I may be uncomfortable around alcohol and have to occasionally give myself pep talks, but for the rest of the time I feel so much better because I don’t drink alcohol and so, the discomfort is worth it. It might be that discomfort that is keeping me sober.

One discomfort, however, that is avoidable is passing the bottle of wine at a table and, worse, being asked to pour a glass of wine.

Even though I have asked the waiter to remove my wine glass, he still persists in placing each replenished bottle in front of me and, like a pot of tea, I am asked to be Mother. It is at this point that I suddenly find I need to go powder my nose. Let them fill their own glasses of wine. But I well remember when the bottle of wine was sitting at the far end of the table well out of my reach. I didn’t like that at all and, through snatches of conversation, watched that bottle like I was on a stakeout.

This is not a happy memory.

It seems I am destined to be the sole non-drinker whenever I am out socially. It would be nice if, occasionally, I had a companion. I feel a bit like a satellite – a part of the group, yet apart. Inhaling fumes of alcohol from their breath as they lean in to tell their stories.

Sometimes, the choosing of the wine might take some time. While this grave decision is being made, no one is interested in anything I have to say so I remain silent until white smoke appears. I am amused by how a person’s character changes over the course of an evening even after just one drink, but, by four or five, there is a marked difference in behaviour. Women become more vivacious and energetic and men, dynamic and boisterous.

So often I hear: “Oh, no I’m not having any more,” their hand hovering over their glass only for it to be quickly removed. “Oh, go on then just a tincture.”

Sometimes, observing all this happy clinking of glasses I wish my colourless glass was red and I feel a little green-eyed monster rearing his ugly head but I quickly banish him back to the dungeons.

Jealously is another word for insecurity and for me, not drinking is my strength.