I’m back on the wine – that’s what we baby boomers do
After six months of abstinence, Helen Kirwan-taylor says risking the disapproval of her clean-living sons was preferable to a life of boring sobriety while everyone else had fun
I’d like to say I fell off the wagon in some stupendous fashion, as one is expected to. In fact my decision to resume drinking after six months of abstinence came one night at a dinner party when I couldn’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t enjoy a glass of wine. The truth was: I was bored. My fellow dinner guests were not falling off their chairs drunk: they were socialising. I wasn’t. I reached for the bottle, filled my own glass and slowly sipped the delicious claret.
Of course I continued sipping the delicious claret after that because we all know that moderate drinking is about as realistic an idea as moderate chocolate or crisp-eating. This applies to non-alcoholics, too, for the absolute no-brainer reason that alcohol is highly addictive, habitual and fun (compared to San Pellegrino, for example). I insulted a very good friend in Normandy one weekend when I wouldn’t touch the Château Latour he brought out especially for us. “But you’re not an alcoholic?” he said, confused.
Admittedly, my experiment with sobriety left me as confused as I was before. I felt calmer, yes, more energetic, yes, but I was – dare I say it – less interested in life. I wanted to go to bed in the middle of social occasions and it showed. I felt no need to accomplish anything more in life, having accomplished not drinking, which was a job in itself. I was the source of much jealousy among friends and inspired many new sobers (all of whom went back to drinking, too, by the way). I had never hit rock-bottom or anything like that. I had just reached the point where I would start thinking about opening a bottle of wine at 4pm.
What I have now, thanks to my experiment, is a top end limit of half a bottle. Once you forget what a hangover feels like there’s no going back. My new motto is: “I love wine too much to drink too much of it.” I have wine-free days, which anyone can do if they stuff their faces with chocolate instead.
Maybe I am delusional, however, given the shocking findings in the British Medical Journal this week. According to the publication, alcoholrelated hospital admissions among those aged between 55 and 74 (women more than men) have tripled over the last decade. Meanwhile, the same is true in reverse among the under-35s, where admittance to hospital has gone from 29 per cent to 9 per cent in the same decade. The study focused on “liberal” baby boomers who never got rid of their old habits.
This hit home hard. My two sons, aged 23 and 21, have been observing my drinking habits for years. First, they were highly disapproving (and said as much). Then they were very proud (and said as much). Now they’re like scientists observing what this rat does next. Ivan, my 21-year-old who happens to be home from college in America at the moment, had a lot to say: “Alcohol for my generation is expensive and we don’t like the state of mind it puts you in. We’re also very conscious of what it does to your body, your liver and your brain. It makes you gain weight, it clogs the arteries.”
Both my boys are avidly anti-drugs, though not all of their friends are. “If people want a state change in our generation they take MDMA or cocaine, but only once in a while when they’re clubbing – never daily like wine drinkers,” says Ivan.
A keen juicer and cook, he admits his generation has benefited from health and safety awareness. “We had a visit by a drugs specialist at Winchester College, which scared us to death,” he says. “There was also a very big stigma to doing drugs. They were considered uncool.”
Both my boys drink wine if on offer at home, but stop long before we do.
As for my drinking, Ivan is not concerned yet. “I don’t think it’s out of control,” he says. “But it’s easy to unlearn that restraint. You cleaned up your body and your mind – why undo all that work?”
Judging from the dozens of emails and letters I got after my “dry-drunk” article in this newspaper in February, I know I am not alone. I know of three friends at least who stopped drinking in order to placate their highly disapproving clean-living children. With the very serious drinkers (and drug takers) there was often an ultimatum first. But let’s look at that kale-eating generation of under-35s. How many are on anti-depressants or Xanax for GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder)? Lots. Universities can’t cope with the student demand to see mental health counsellors. I’m not entirely convinced that this teetotal group has amazing coping skills. I think they depend on different drugs. “Also,” Ivan points out, “recreational drugs are illegal so no one my age is going to be as public with that as they are with alcohol.”
According to the British Medical Journal, the reason the over-55s drink heavily is life circumstances. Many in the cohort are retired, bereaved, divorced or lonely. Or some combination of the above. Alcohol and drugs quash some of the psychic pain. One researcher suggested they hadn’t found proper coping skills yet, like taking up yoga. Oh please. Yoga doesn’t make up for the fact your kids never call (unless they need money), your firm threw you out at the age of 50, or your husband left you for his secretary.
My generation is also more competitive than any before, which
‘I have wine-free days. Anyone can if they stuff their faces with chocolate instead’
‘Yoga doesn’t make up for the fact that your kids never call, or your husband left’
really doesn’t help. We were the original “Yuppies”. We despair at those who “drop out” to the country (why aren’t they running a start-up? Writing a book? Teaching English to refugees? Getting a PHD?). Personally, I think this constant judging fuels a lot of anxiety, despair and apartness, which alcohol and drugs replace. Rather than accepting a smaller life, we fight for what scraps there are left of our glamorous old one. “Alcohol is a way of coping,” says Ivan. “Is there any society where older people don’t feel sad and left out?” I just returned from America, where facelifts scream: “I’m ashamed of being old.” How can one be happy at the same time? No wonder they go home and drink.
Baby boomers did have it great – for a while at least. Ivan’s age group has no such expectations. They’re far more sanguine about happiness than we ever were. “Once you have a drink, sobriety is dull by comparison,” he says. “But who entitled you to a blissful, constantly happy life? What should excite you is being in the world, the love of work, art or people.”
My view is that if you medicate sadness you will never be unmedicated. Part of my return to drinking was the realisation that I wasn’t afraid to accept that certain things suck. As my doctor Stephan Domenig, medical director of The Original FX Mayr Health Center in Carinthia, Austria, says: “Life is to be enjoyed, not tolerated.”
I believe I drink for pleasure, but I accept that I may be delusional. If this is the case, I know what to do: get back on the wagon and be bored again.