The wine glass ceiling

For many stressed, powerful women, two chilled glasses works a treat. Until it becomes five, writes Ann Dowsett Johnston

F IVE years ago, before I headed off to an expensive treatment centre in America, it wasn’t uncommon for me to drink too much on a Sunday night, with work looming the next morning.

Slurring but not falling; comfortably sloshed before bed; waking at 3.45am when the sugar booted me up — sugar, plus a whole lot of shame and guilt.

I was a high-functioning professional in her 50s, who used a nightly wine habit to cope with the stresses of balancing my work and home life. That faithful drink was my means of decompressing from the demands of the day and prepping for the demands of the evening.

For years, this strategy worked: a glass or two while chopping vegetables and overseeing homework. It helped to unhitch my shoulders from my earlobes. It worked, when it was two glasses. Then my depression hit and two became four, and four became five. In other words, it worked until it didn’t.

Turns out, I am not the only one who used alcohol in her alpha-dog years as a means to manage a full plate of work deadlines, Halloween outfits, cooking and thank-you notes. What tripped me up was the push to be perfect at work, perfect at home, perfectly thin, perfectly together. And when perfection grew increasingly unattainable, I settled for a glass of white to soothe my frazzled nerves.

Why are women closing the gender gap on risky drinking? Last year, as I was writing my book Drink: the Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, I took a stroll through Chelsea at dusk, an hour when many have yet to draw the curtains. I passed more than one woman standing at her kitchen counter, a glass of wine at her side while she worked on dinner.

I found myself thinking wistfully of those rituals of younger years, when my son was under my roof. Those years were loud and busy. When he went off to university, the house became very quiet — too quiet. That’s when I began to think that a third drink might make sense. And once it was three, I was on the slide to four. Four was trouble. Five? I was blacking out. There was no good choice but to retire my corkscrew.

For decades, my life was punctuated with wine and the full stop was a big job as vice-principal of a university, drinking nightly, alone in a restaurant, a pile of work at my side.

Alcoholism is a progressive disease: it sneaks up on you when you aren’t looking. It sneaked up on me. With two alcoholic parents, I should have known better.

All I knew was my drinking looked nothing like my mum’s. I’m the daughter of a classic ’60s stay-at-home mum who mixed cocktails with Valium, who paced the halls at night and slept through the day. I was certain I wasn’t an alcoholic. I never missed work. I excelled at my job. I never drove drunk.

As it turns out, I am the poster girl for this era’s feminine face of alcoholism: professional, well educated, high functioning.

A “high-bottom” alcoholic (as opposed to a rock-bottom one), I went high-end for treatment. I picked a centre, associated with both Harvard and the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, where James Taylor and Sylvia Plath had wrestled with their demons. It had pedigree, pine floors and private rooms. After 30 days, I thought I was cured.

Little did I know that was just the beginning. Little did I know I was just one of thousands of women around the globe, wrestling with the same demons. US researcher Professor Sharon Wilsnack believes we are now witnessing a “global epidemic” in women’s drinking.

In 2011, Columbia researcher Katherine Keyes reviewed 31 international studies of generational and gender differences in alcohol consumption and mortality.

Her conclusion? Women like me, born after World War 2, are more likely than their older counterparts to binge-drink and develop alcohol-use disorders.

Social pressures are partly to blame. “Traditionally, individual biological factors have been the major focus when it comes to understanding alcohol risk,” Keyes says. “However, this ignores the impact of policy and environment.”

Witness the spike in alcohol marketing, the feminisation of the drinking culture, North American wines with names such as MommyJuice, French Rabbit and Happy Bitch. Berry-flavoured vodka, Skinnygirl Vodka. These aren’t manly products.

Some of this is product drive; some is entitlement. Women drink because they can. Women need a break. They deserve a break. And if drinking is about escape, it is also about empowerment. “Those in high-status occupations,” says Keyes, “working in male-dominated environments, have an increased risk of alcohol-use disorders.”

Walk into most social gatherings and the first thing you’re asked is, “Red or white?” We live in a culture where knowing your wines is a mark of sophistication.

‘I am the poster girl for this era’s feminine face of alcoholism: professional, well educated, high

functioning’

And thanks to media reports in the past few years, we have happily absorbed the news that drinking has its health benefits. If one glass is good for you, a double dose can’t do much harm, can it? Actually, a double dose may have real drawbacks; researcher Tim Stockwell suggests that the largest health benefit comes from having one drink every two days.

Which raises a simple question: why are we aware of the dangers related to trans fats and tanning beds, yet blinkered when it comes to drink?

The science is compelling — alcohol is especially damaging to women’s health, due to higher levels of body fat and lower levels of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks it down.

That’s cold comfort when I find myself thinking: I’ll never sip champagne again. Five years sober, I can say with some certainty that never again will I sit in an elegant bar, cradling a glass of sauvignon blanc. Not for me the bubbly at the wedding, the pleasure of trying a new red.

There have been times when I would have killed for a drink. I was only 18 months sober when my long-term partner left me. That first night, I wanted a Scotch. I had tea.

Seven months later, at my father’s wake, I watched as others soothed their grief with wine. Again, I would have killed for a drink, social Novocaine to numb the pain. I drank strong coffee instead. — ©