Are You There, Chardonnay? It's Me, Consequences

Are You There Chardonnay? It's Me, Consequences

Amy Liz Harrison

This mom of eight’s life was ripe on paper — until the wine barrel of her own stubbornness fermented, and the drinking quietly ate through her soul. Only then could she find new wineskins.

For as long as I can remember, I felt like a grape that didn’t quite match the rest of the bunch.

From the outside, I was indistinguishable. White, privileged, one more face in a white, privileged demographic. I grew up just before the Silicon Valley tech boom, with San Francisco, the beach, and the wine country of Napa Valley all a short drive away. My aunt’s family owned a vineyard in the Pacific Northwest — a fact that felt perfectly normal at the time and now reads like the opening line of someone else’s memoir. I grew up hearing John 15 in Sunday school, the passage where Jesus uses a wine metaphor to describe the relationship between the vine, the vinedresser, and the branches — which, in retrospect, should have been the flashing red light on my dashboard. I was present and accounted for at every family function and every single Sunday at church. I loved feeling like I belonged.

Feeling like I belonged and actually belonging, it turns out, are two completely different zip codes.

Growing up, I compared my insides to everybody else’s outsides. My feelings seemed louder and more exaggerated than anyone else’s. I assumed — wrongly, but confidently — that everybody else had been handed the rules to life and a nice thick layer of emotional bubble wrap to cushion the blow of their feelings. I was technically connected to the vine. I had church, family, school — the full trifecta. But on the inside, I was a radio that couldn’t find a station. My head was incessantly busy, replaying conversations I had already had and rehearsing ones I hadn’t, and my heart carried a constant dull ache of loneliness.

I over-felt.

I over-thought.

I over-analyzed.

My grape skin was just a little too thin.

I didn’t drink until I was twenty-one. Before that, aside from the occasional furtive sip of a wine cooler or some blended, neon-colored concoction at a dance, nothing. My first real drink was a glass of champagne at Thanksgiving dinner the year I came of age, and I remember feeling warm and tingly, alive, talkative, interesting, and — for the first time in my conscious life — quiet on the inside. The chatter between my ears actually switched off. I felt capable of anything.

The next time I drank, I felt loopy and wobbly and not entirely in command of my own limbs, and I didn’t like that at all. So I stopped before I got to that point. At that stage of the story, I was what the rooms would later call a normal drinker. File that phrase away. We’ll be coming back to it.

Right after college, I got married — to a man I had known for all of five months, which is a sentence I deliver now with the self-aware eyebrow-raise it deserves. Back in the days of Dionysus, grapevines symbolized prosperity and fertility, both of which were about to become extremely literal in my life. My husband was an Australian accountant at the time. We moved to the Pacific Northwest when I was pregnant with our first baby, and we started building a life. A few more years and a few more babies, and I was in the thick of stay-at-home motherhood — diapers, dinners, laundry, home life, church life, running the nonstop house machine nobody claps for and nobody sees.

Meanwhile, my husband’s career did a thing.

He’d gotten into the airline industry and was climbing steadily toward executive-level elite. And with that climb came a peculiar new social stratum that nobody had briefed me on in advance. Every event revolved around wine. A children’s picnic? Wine. A 7 AM flight? Wine. Business trips were wine tastings. Social gatherings were wine pairings. Every home we walked into, once a certain price point was reached, had a wine cellar that was treated with the reverence of a small chapel. Nobody in these circles referred to it as liquid courage or a social lubricant. It was the expected elite elixir of the one percent, served in stemware that cost more than my first car.

A lot of the time, I was pregnant, which made the decision easy. But when I wasn’t, I joined in. At first, a glass or two at an event and I was fine. No wobble, no obsession, no mental gymnastics. I could take it or leave it, and I didn’t think about it again until the next time. But the wine opportunities kept stacking up, and somewhere in there — with no bright line and no dramatic crossing — the dance began. The wine grabbed hold of me quietly, politely, the way bad habits always do before they reveal themselves as the main event.

I loved the way it made me feel. Adult. Relaxed. Creative. Purposeful. Glamorous. Connected. I felt fun. I felt like a desirable woman again instead of a mom whose only remaining marketable traits were “can produce a dinner” and “can unload a dishwasher.” I felt free. And I wanted more of that feeling.

Enter the chardonnay playdates at the neighbors’. Enter the book club where the book was never, at any point, actually discussed. One day I noticed I didn’t want to go to a particular restaurant with a friend because they didn’t have a liquor license. Another day I noticed I was only having fun when I was out of control — and only in control when I wasn’t having fun. I noticed both of these things and promptly filed them somewhere inaccessible, because I was not ready to look at them yet. I told myself I could slow down whenever I wanted. I just didn’t want to. Yet. I was fine. My parents were educated. I was educated. I was from a nice area. My ego and my privilege papered beautifully over the truth waiting quietly in my gut. After all, there had never been a situation in my life I couldn’t talk my way out of for the right price or the right promise.

What started as a habit became a necessity. I couldn’t fold laundry without a glass. I couldn’t empty the dishwasher without a glass. Menial tasks turned into rituals, and the rituals required a sacrament.

The consequences got louder.

I fell down the stairs and broke my leg. A year later, I passed out in the shower and broke my nose. Classy. My appearance started displaying various artistic levels of dishevelment. I began meeting the mirror every morning with the glassy, vacant eyes of a woman wondering where the person who used to live there had gone. Alcohol had smothered me and smashed me flatter than a vat of grapes at harvest.

Sunday morning church began to feel like wearing a wool turtleneck under stage lights. The cognitive dissonance wasn’t just uncomfortable; it was suffocating. One part of my life was being slowly annexed by the wine bottle. The other part was still trying to perform a religious experience vigorous enough to repair the damage the first part was doing. I grew resentful and jealous of my husband, whose career kept climbing while I felt myself becoming smaller and more invisible by the day. My kids were breathtaking, extravagant blessings — and still, my selfishness punctured the purity of my love for them. That is the thing no one tells you about the disease. It doesn’t care who you love.

All I could think about was myself. How I felt. And where the next drink was coming from.

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By this point, there was nothing glamorous or fun about any of it. I was the sediment at the bottom of the barrel. And I had begun the grand parade route of the delusional, which, if you’re unfamiliar with the itinerary, involves a significant amount of impression management.

If God wasn’t going to return me to “normal drinker” status, surely a man with degrees could. I went to psychiatrists. I went to psychologists. I fabricated my drinking numbers with the creative flexibility of a woman who has once or twice done her taxes under duress. I was hunting — really, desperately hunting — for someone, anyone, to tell me I wasn’t an alcoholic, to validate that my drinking made perfect sense given my circumstances, and to gently imply that of course I could stop whenever I wanted. (And maybe a written doctor's note to prove it to the public.) Anxiety and postpartum depression were real, legitimate, documented issues for me. I had poured alcohol over them like lighter fluid, and then stared in confusion at the fact that I was on fire.

I was drinking morning, noon, and night. I showed up to parent-teacher conferences drunk. I excused myself from hosting duties at my own parties to go take a nap, which surfaced hours later as me hunting through the house for the Riesling bottle I had started earlier. Not even I could deny the progression anymore. I just had no idea how to stop.

Finally, my husband had had enough. He persuaded me to go to a treatment program for my postpartum depression — which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was actually alcohol rehab. I walked in expecting one door and found myself in a completely different room. Classic.

Rehab was where I first heard the concept of a three-part disease: body, mind, and spirit.

I could secretly relate to the first two. The body part made sense — the physical allergy, the way my system responded to alcohol differently than a normal drinker’s. The mind part made sense too — the obsession, the way I thought about drinking even when I wasn’t. But the spiritual part? I wrote that off on contact. My pride assured me I did not, could not, be suffering from a spiritual predicament. I had been raised in the evangelical movement of the nineties. I had gone to a Bible college. I was a church member and a bona fide Bible study leader. I was reasonably confident I had been issued a laminated VIP card to God’s green room.

The physical allergy theory, though — that was groundbreaking. The suggestion that maybe some of this wasn’t entirely my fault was the first piece of real information I had encountered in the whole ordeal.

Of course, the mind part got right to work, because the obsession of the mind is a consummate professional. It planted a very reasonable-sounding seed: Maybe after this thirty-day break, you’ll be able to drink normally. On a walk one afternoon a couple of blocks from rehab, our cohort strolled past an Italian restaurant. I looked into the window. Beautiful wine bottles stood on display with the artistic confidence of a museum exhibit. Wine casks beside red wine decanters, each bottle beckoning with its own elegant label. My mouth actually watered. And I decided — right there on the sidewalk, in my rehab-issue sneakers — that I would be drinking again the moment I got out.

And I did. I was dropped off at the airport fresh from treatment, and I bellied straight up to the bar. I returned home and lied to everyone that treatment had cured me. And on some level, I even believed it, because I am nothing if not a committed optimist, and hope springs eternal, particularly in the direction of things that are actively killing you. I started taking vitamins. I read moderation books. All of this while drinking.

But you cannot prune while it’s actively raining. You cannot self-examine while you’re still soaking. The later you prune, the more rogue buds break through. I postponed my admission because of my pride and my ego, and I relapsed, and I reaped exactly the harvest I had planted. Disastrous.

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Two weeks after I came home from treatment, I was pulled over and arrested for a DUI while driving my four children home from school.

Pain has always been my greatest motivator. In one single incident, my wall of denial was ripped down to the studs, and my world disintegrated in front of my eyes, and my children were in the back seat watching it happen. That is a sentence I have to write exactly once, and then I will never write it again.

Rolling around on the rubber mattress in a holding cell all night, I finally knew I had no choice but to surrender. They say there is nothing you can do to keep a person from getting sober once they are ready. There is also nothing you can do to rush a vine before its time. I had to admit, to my innermost self, that I was an alcoholic before I could even begin to try to be sober. I had to surrender completely.

I did.

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My husband paid my bail and returned me to rehab. He didn’t know what to do with me anymore, and that made two of us. Nothing had kept me from drinking — not my freshly acquired twenty-eight-day education on alcoholism, not reflecting on how much I loved my husband and children, not even God. In complete defeat, I finally knew I had the spiritual malady, too. The delusional thinking, the rationalizations, the justifications — all of it vanished. Like a squashed grape, my pride had been pulverized, and what was left was the gift of desperation.

In the church, the bread and wine of communion represent the death of the old life and the start of a new one.

I, too, had to start over. My previous vine — the one I had been clinging to for decades — had become too corroded, too diseased, to produce anything healthy. I needed a whole new spiritual experience. And instead of researching a fresh set of traditions to try to “fix” the old one, I just let go. That is exactly when my Higher Power quietly handed me a seed for a whole new vine.

To create a fertile environment for that seed, the cracked and exhausted soil of my old life had to go through a complete upheaval. I cleared the rocks and debris. I placed the seed where it would receive the optimal amount of water and sun. I connected an irrigation system. I attended to every corner of the environment in order to support the growth I was praying for. I followed the directions laid out for me in treatment. I went to ninety meetings in ninety days. I did the homework. I took the relapse prevention classes. I handled my legal situation.

I could not make the seed grow. That was never my job. My job was to follow the directions and turn the results over to a power greater than myself.

I got a sponsor, because I did not know what I was doing, and Gen X had not prepared me for the concept of accepting help from another adult woman. As my new seedling pushed out its first bud, my sponsor gently helped me set up guidewires. I went through the steps with her. I left no stone unturned. I became willing to try things I didn’t fully understand yet — which, it turns out, is the core skill of early sobriety. And through the small, unglamorous, esteemable acts of showing up, I slowly began to rebuild the trust I had demolished with my kids and my husband.

I protected that seedling with my whole life. I watered it with meetings and fellowship. I handled the buds carefully in that delicate first year, eliminating as much temptation as I could. I still craved alcohol. I wanted to make it easier for the vine to get firmly established. I wanted a clear pathway for the root network to solidify. So I even moved neighborhoods — both to simplify our family’s logistics and to reduce the number of drinking triggers on every corner. I practiced self-care before I really understood why. One day at a time, I asked my Higher Power to remove the craving.

Eventually — not fast, not dramatically, but eventually — the obsession was removed.

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Halfway through my second decade of sobriety, I am honored to say my relationships with my kids have long since been restored, as has my marriage. So much so that we have since added four more babies to the family, which brings the grand total to a number that makes grocery store cashiers visibly do the math. It is nothing short of an unexpected blessing beyond measure.

I am not, however, done. The vine requires regular pruning. It needs care through every season — inspection, pruning, balance adjustments. I ask the questions a vinedresser asks. Is the canopy providing enough shade so the clusters don’t burn? Is the vine producing enough quality fruit? Is my program of action dynamic enough to keep me from fermenting in place?

Because I know, with complete certainty, that my mind will not miss a single opportunity to convince me I am cured. Alcoholism is the only disease that spends its downtime trying to persuade you it isn’t there. So, like a grapevine stretching toward the sky, I keep reaching, seeking, taking action. Hands in the dirt. Eye on the vine.

I take inventory. I look at the scars from previous cuts. I practice meditation and reflection. How did this vine perform last season? Did I get the yields I needed? Did these shoots grow in a productive direction? Did the canopy ripen the clusters properly? And — because I have learned this one the hard way — I play the movie all the way through. What will the cuts I make today do to next season? And the season after that?

I check my tools, because the right tools matter. Are my ties strong enough to affix the wires to the delicate vine? Are my shears sharp enough to slice cleanly? My mind is still chattery — that part didn’t go away, and probably never will — but I have learned I don’t have to believe or act on everything I think. If the vine starts unintentionally drifting, I stick closer to the bunch and go to more meetings. I add fertilizer — more book studies, more workshops, more fellowship. My two favorite tools in the whole shed are gratitude and reframing, and I use both of them shamelessly.

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Today, I do everything I can to let the deep roots of sobriety grow in place, so that when hard weather arrives — and hard weather does arrive — I know what to do.

I bring in the vine shelter. My sponsor. My friends in the program. The women who will show up before you’ve even finished the sentence.

A few years ago, I almost died of acute cardiomyopathy — I was walking around with a seven percent ejection fraction, which, if you are not familiar with cardiology, is a number that causes doctors to start quietly making phone calls. Lying in that hospital bed, I had branches of my AA family come and sit beside me. They helped me stay inside my own body instead of trying to escape the feelings of it. I’ve had multiple surgeries since, and every single time, I have leaned on sober alcoholics for partnership in prayer and in processing. I have learned that tough times are inevitable, but suffering is not, and that while most of life is out of my control, I can control my actions and my attitude — provided I stay connected to my recovery irrigation and my Higher Power.

I do my part as the vinedresser. My Higher Power harvests the fruit. What happens to that fruit after the harvest is not my business.

The sense of belonging I spent the first four decades of my life searching for? I found it in the vine shelter. And it keeps getting better.

I look back on this journey with a heart that can barely contain what it’s holding. The lavish bounty of healthy grapes in front of me — I can hardly breathe at the sight of it. I’ve had the privilege of a spiritual awakening as a result of doing the steps, and I have come to see that my past is my greatest asset. It is the exact thing that allows me to carry a message of hope and recovery to someone else.

I have abundance in every area that matters. An abundance of support. An abundance of tools for living sober. An abundance of spiritual peace.

I am continually amazed that I got everything by giving up one thing — and that my cup keeps running over with a full, surprising, satisfying bouquet.

Sobriety produces the sweetest surprises.

One day at a time.

XOXO, ALH

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