Declan Lynch

Goes back on the drink

Ihad a drink the other night. An alcoholic drink. A glass of gin, it was, straight down the hatch. Gordon’s Gin, probably the best kind. It was the first drink I’d had since 1995, and I have to tell you... well, I have to tell you at this stage that I didn’t actually intend to have that drink. It was an accident.

It had the simple construction of something out of a sitcom — my wife Caroline was cooking something, and she had left a glass on the kitchen counter with the Gordon’s in it, no ice or lemon or tonic as yet — just the plain, colourless liquid. I walked into the kitchen, and we were talking. I’d been drinking a glass of water, which looked exactly like the glass of neat gin, and after a while, basically, I knocked it back. The gin, that is.

I was, as they say, taken aback. Caroline was taken aback.

We stood there for a few moments in awe at this mad thing that had just happened, the like of which had never happened before in all my years of not drinking. We were half-expecting some sort of cartoon transformation to start taking place, with me instantly turning into some deeply drunk person, and demanding more gin, more, more, more...

I could feel it now, the alcohol running through me.

Gin with no mixer in it has quite a kick, especially if you haven’t consumed a drop of alcohol since late in the last century. Indeed, when I was consuming alcohol with some enthusiasm, I was never all that fond of the gin. I would drink it if there was nothing else available, but usually I would not choose to drink it — something about the gin hangover felt particularly horrible to me, though with gin becoming weirdly fashionable in recent times, maybe they’ve been improving it somewhat.

So once the shock of that first hit had worn off, we quickly realised the meaning of it all — it meant nothing.

It was just a mistake, a freakish event, of no significance in the greater scheme.

Indeed, I think it was Pete Hamill, the Irish-American who wrote very well about drinking and about giving it up, who found himself in a remote part of Mexico, parched with thirst, arriving at a bar which had nothing for him to drink except beer — he drank it, for that terrible thirst, and then got on with his sober life.

Maybe... just maybe if I had inadvertently lowered a glass of wine or brandy, it might have hit me harder, but I still don’t think so. I really can’t see that cartoon vision materialising, with me being turned back into a full-time drinker after one blast of the old booze.

Because if we’re talking about cartoons, many of the perceptions of the nature of addiction which exist among the civilian population are indeed cartoon-like, but without the cleverness or the humour. Some believe that if the recovering alcoholic is exposed to the faintest aroma of the drink — the sherry trifle is the most common suggestion — all resistance is swept away.

And I suppose there might be a few extreme cases of this nature, but then a lot of perceptions of addiction are based on such extremes. And they can do a lot of harm, because they can be terrifying to people who might otherwise be getting help for their problems. If you’re presented with these visions of a future in which the sobriety you have attained is constantly in danger from the smallest thing, you may decide not to go there.

When the effect of the gin had worn away, as it did quite quickly, there was one more little surprise. Several hours later, I was driving a few miles to collect my daughter, when I started to wonder if there was any chance that if I was breathalysed, a trace of the gin might still be in my system?

What a tale that would be...

“I’d been drinking a glass of water, which looked exactly like the glass of neat gin...”