A Conversation with the Demon Drink

New Year’s Resolutions: Do we still do those? 

I feel like in recent years we may have come to the other side of resolutions, acknowledging their arbitrariness and that maybe we can just all be grownups and not make promises we’re pretty sure we won’t keep.

And yet…oh, I really wanted to make a resolution this year. After taking in the more-than-usual quantity of holiday alcohol I had a great desire to declare, “All RIGHT! That’s IT! 2023 will be a year of No. Booze. Whatsoever!!” I wanted to hold a ritual where I prayerfully dumped the last half bottle of Trader Joe’s Cote du Rhone down my bathtub drain while committing to draining the demon drink out of my life.

But, eh, I love a glass of wine now and again (and sometimes again).

And I don’t love making hardline rules for myself. (Well, that’s not entirely true. I LOVE the grandiosity of making Big Rules…I just don’t love following them when they feel arbitrary and unnecessary.)

So I simmered this idea for a few days. I thought about how much I love sitting at a bar alone on a winter’s night with a book and a well-mixed cocktail, or having a glass of wine at a special dinner out, or red wine and pizza Friday nights at home. 

I also thought about the times I look forward a little too much to the drink I would have at the end of the day/week. Or how sometimes that drink would shift from simple enjoyment to a tool for disassociating or numbing. 

Alcoholism runs in my family. I am not an alcoholic. But that doesn’t mean my relationship with alcohol is uncomplicated. 

One day on a walk I decided to hold a conversation between my Self and Alcohol — what was working in our relationship, what wasn’t. And what I realized was that it was exactly that - the conversation - that was vital. Because it became about the Relationship, not the Rules. 

I understood that I wanted to make space for my relationship with alcohol to shift if need be. To not just mindlessly pour a glass or rigidly deny it but to engage in conversation about why I’d like that drink. What are my motivations? Do they feel nourishing or harmful in this moment? Then based on that conversation, decide if I want to have one drink, more or none at all. This is part of what it means to learn to listen to and then heed the messages of the brain and body. 

It’s also a practice of breaking apart the arbitrary hierarchies we create in our culture and within our own selves. My aim is a fluid, spiralic relationship with the parts and pieces of my life rather than no-back-talk-young-lady, linear rule creation. I get a bit itchy and reactive living under imperious dictates, even ones I hand down to myself. Hierarchical structures can’t truly serve our bodies or our communities because they are characterologically unable to engage with nuance, situation and selfhood, they can’t be bothered to pause for genuine communication and conversation. And, well, I’d rather live differently.

So let’s move in and converse with our bodies in order to live in relationship, not hierarchy with them - as complex and complicated as that might sometimes be. 

(Note: I also know there are moments and situations in our lives when it is healthier to have these conversations end, full stop. That’s beautiful knowledge as well.)