When Timaru Courier reporter Shelley Iñón decided it was time to face up to the role alcohol was playing in her life, she did not realise that stopping drinking was only the beginning. This month, Shelley will explore her alcohol-free journey, and look at the impact alcohol has in South Canterbury.
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I was not a terrible drunk, well. . .not in the later years anyway.
After becoming a parent, I had morphed into a benign mummy drunk, who — at an acceptable hour every evening — took up residence on the couch.
With an obligatory glass of wine — or three — my eyes would slowly begin to mist over.
I truly believed, as the alcohol flowed into my bloodstream, it made me a better person, a relaxed wife and a nicer mother.
My children would disagree with that statement.
Instead of the bonhomie I thought I emitted, I may have been full of frustrated sighs and annoyed expressions.
There was always a look of distaste on my oldest child’s face as I poured my first drink for the night.
I am far too scared to ask him, but I think he noticed my double standards.
He was not allowed too much juice or soda because he would rot his teeth out, nor could he have too many lollies, or too much fast food because he had to be careful with his health.
Yet there I was, helping myself to a ‘‘toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance’’.
According to the World Health Organisation earlier this year — unlike the sugar and fast food I prevented my children from having too much of — no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.
Like most mothers, I had managed to abstain from alcohol through my pregnancies and I had refused to have a drop of alcohol for an acceptable amount of time after the birth of each child.
But as my two boys grew older, and no longer needed me in the middle of the night, I had started to up the amount of alcohol I was consuming.
Facebook algorithms had sent me perfect memes, which all humorously told me mothers needed wine to numb themselves.
I had been an enthusiastic consumer.
Every supermarket trip required someone to pop over and stare at my face before checking the button which allowed the sale of alcohol, sometimes at eight in the morning.
I fell asleep easily every night. . .either tipsy or drunk.
It would be fair to say alcohol had become a problem.
Halfway through 2022 the penny dropped. No, dropped might be too strong a word — let’s just say the penny dislodged from the dusty shelf in my brain.
In desperation to get rid of the extra rolls acquired through the pandemic, I had started walking with friends, which had quickly escalated to jogging. One night as we walked home — our breath forming clouds under the street lamps — two of my friends began talking about what they were going to drink when they got home. My ears perked up.
‘‘I’m going to have a cup of hot water,’’ one claimed.
‘‘I’m going to have hot water, but I’m putting a bit of lemon juice in mine,’’ the other replied.
I spoke up, ‘‘I’m going to have a litre of feijoa cider.’’
They started laughing, they thought I was joking.
By now you — dear reader — know I was not joking. If I was going to be completely honest to them, I would admit that some nights I had begun drinking even before the jogging commenced.
The more time I spent with normal people — away from the algorithms — the more I realised how detrimental alcohol had become to my life.
But I did not want to stop drinking, I just wanted to be like my friends and drink less.
Facebook sensed my indecision, and started to send me a whole new kind of targeted marketing. Suddenly ads were appearing about weight loss from not drinking alcohol . . .the reduction of age lines . . . the perks went on.
I figured I would need to find some different drinks for *some* of the nights of the week. After all, it was nearly Christmas. I was not going to go through the festive season without drinking.
I joined a deceptively-named Facebook page, something about a non alcoholic cafe — surely they would have great mocktail recipes.
Nope.
Instead my newsfeed was flooded with before and after photos of people around the world giving up drinking.
The difference in many of them was staggering.
At 41 years old, I had just acquired my first set of jowls, and my eyelids were constantly puffy, and — despite all of the whole food meals my husband concocted — I had a problematic belly.
Could quitting drinking give me some of my youth back?
It seems shocking to me as I type this, the thing that incentivised me to quit alcohol was not out of trying to be a better mum to my darling boys, but vanity.
I wanted to see for myself, if it could have a difference to my appearance like all of these before and after photos promised, then there was something seriously wrong with it.
I took my first photo.
I would track any changes in my appearance, and if I could spot a difference then I was obviously drinking far too much.
I thought stopping would be the hardest part of the battle.
I really had no idea what I was in for.
