That Bottle

 

It is another Friday and once again there is a piece on this blog. Let’s get to it.

In the spirit of walking down the memory lane in what the social media calls a Throwback Thursday, I posted several pictures as WhatsApp status updates; four to be exact. The first three were pretty normal as they showed me at the famous Game Haven, at a dinner and at Sunbird Ku Chawe. If my stature and complexion did not give away the fact that these were old pictures, the dates in the captions did. The last picture, however did not have such. In fact, it was a recent picture of me which was taken at the local bar. In the picture, I am seen clutching a bottle of Carlsberg Special in my armpits while texting on my phone. The gullibility of the people in my WhatsApp contact list meant that this picture got the most comments which I thought of responding to on this platform.

One would wonder as to why I would want to waste two pages of Richie Online space responding to comments about a K600 bottle of booze. I have a good reason. That bottle is just a representative of the many bottles of beers, ciders, gins, vodkas, whiskeys and local brews that yours truly has consumed. There are stories to that; some of which some of you may have heard. Before I respond to the comments on the bottle, I would like to share with you about my alcohol career and why the guy who finished the College of Medicine sober ended up being the chidakwa some of you may have met; and why I am making attempts to have a dry year and possibly quit alcohol.

When you listen to people talk about their drinking stories, a wide variety of reasons for drinking come up. Many would cite peer pressure and others would go on to cite cultural reasons. I would not point a finger on anyone for pushing me to the bottle. I joined the drinking community due to what is one of the commonest reasons for turning to the bottle; drowning sorrows. Without going into details of what happened, I turned to the bottle in the month of November in the year 2016. At the time, I was working for World Vision in what was a nationwide evaluation of their programs. That meant travelling around the country and being away from home and with no one watching, sliding into the bottle was easier than staying away from it in that stressful moment. Later I would come back to Blantyre to start my work at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, a point at which I moved out of my parents’ house and started living on my own in Chitawira.

In the first few months, things were controlled. In most cases, I would be drinking in my lonesome while having roasted meat and enjoying movies at home. Later I was introduced to clubbing and that led to a change in a lot of things. In some days, being out having fun meant coming back as late (or is it early?) as 4 am from a drinking spree. More money was spent on drinks and it was party after party. My circle of friends began to grow and it was all games and fun. Those were the very interesting days.

I have a lot of friends who have come to me to ask as to what people find in alcoholic drinks which are unbearably bitter. I find it hard to explain to someone who has never partaken in alkanol-laced drinks but I will attempt. The first is the calming effect that alcohol has. There are those times that your brain tends to be working in overdrive because of stress or overworking and sometimes you just need one or two to keep you calm. Here is a classic. Sometimes you tend to have an issue whose solving may need to postpone to avoid acting out of emotions. Does that sound familiar? That is where the alcohol comes in for many. Having three or four before sleeping in that case proves to be a bit more useful than not so people tend to have some to help them with their sleep before they can wake up sober and tackle the problem with fresh ideas. The problem with this is that stress drinking usually never ends well and people tend to get overboard with the drinking.

The other reason for which people like to drink is the social aspect of alcohol. You cannot have a party with tea, yoghurt or orange squash. I mean. If you want to hang out for 20 minutes, it may work but for sustained chats and things along those lines, only alcohol has the ability to keep things going when it comes to drinks. Drinking places are among the places where people make the most friends. Just a month ago, a friend I made at a drinking place helped me trace my wallet which I lost in a Sienta to Lunzu and beyond that I have made a lot of influential friends, some whom I go to for advice on real life issues. There is a catch to it, though. While you may get to make a lot of whirlwind friendships, not all of them can be sustained outside the fellowship of the bottle. Alcohol friends are those who do not hesitate to contribute a lot of money for booze for you to drink but will not do anything about your food situation at home. In the hype of the moment, it is difficult to notice the difference but after a lot of introspection, one tends to realize that they do not have any real friends.

In the modern day society where people are fond of showering each other praise for doing stupid things, it is easy to find friends who urge you on to go deeper into the bottle. I am talking about those people who call you a big man when you are taking a chug of a Castel bottle but look at you weird when you are dressed up and headed to church. Those ones who praise you for buying a crate of booze but resent you for carrying big plastic bags when you do grocery shopping for the month. “Castel mungati ameneyu?”, they would ask. You see what I am getting at? Alcohol may foster pseudo-friendships which are not productive in their own right.

So how was the long swim through drinks? Well. It was fun, I must say. Clubbing can be an interesting activity. Imagine people sitting around drinking and others just dancing to the music around in their hundreds. I wish there was an-alcohol free version of clubbing but as I said, it is hard to have fun around milk and Fanta Orange. Then there are the activities and places that alcohol can introduce you to; the nights of live music, trivia nights, those fundraisers that are tied to alcohol but are for a good cause and whatever you may mention. You tend to meet influential people and build good networks around alcohol at times. It just is very interesting but that is about it when it comes to the positives.

Negatives? Sit back and I will tell it all to you. Truth of the matter is that alcohol can be addictive and in most cases we tend to normalize the addiction to alcohol. In the times when working from home was just introduced, the bar tender in the local bar used to get my visit whenever a line of code I had run was not working as well as I wanted it to. Drinking became and everyday thing and I am sure that there are a lot of people who can drink every day and think that it is normal. In hindsight, I think it is not however minute the amounts may be. Then there is the positive feedback that comes with alcohol. When you have one, you want two more and when you are on the tenth bottle you just want to drink until the bar is dry. That is how I ended up drinking at a local bar without any music or whatever things people go out to look at in bars… Until 4 am. And this was not an isolated event.

People who do not drink will not understand the experience of teleporting where the last thing you remember was having fun at a club and the next thing is you waking up in bed; either at a friend’s or at your own place. Alcohol blackouts can do that to you. Money lost? You tend to have a lot of disinhibition when drinking and you can easily spend more than you would have loved when sober. And then there is the issue of losing things. In my 4 years or so of drinking, I can count about 4 phones lost at drinking joints with three of those being stolen and one being broken beyond repair. Zosaukitsa.

A lot of people expressed their displeasure with my drinking habit and tried to get me to stop. I did not because in my view I had no reason to. Drinking, to me was fun and therapeutic. The fourth of January, however had me rethink that position. Having been drinking from the 31^st of December to the night of the 3^rd of January, I woke up with a bad hangover that made me skip work on the very first day of the year. Hangovers have a way of bringing guilt and making people vow that they will never touch a bottle again and I thought I was in that exact situation. In the height of emotions, I vowed to stay sober for the rest of January although I was not sure that I would manage. I told the bartender at the bar I frequent about my decision and he laughed me off, citing that I could not manage to stay away for such a long time. When February came, it was almost Lenten season and I decided to continue with the dry run which has continued to date.

Friends have asked me as to what has sustained me and led me to three months without a drink when I could hardly last 18 hours between drinks. Do I have good answers? I doubt. On the other hand, I will try to attempt to answer the question. I think all you need is a good combination of factors for you to get to the point where you can put the bottle down and live alcohol free. For me, it was a combination of the guilt that came from all the drinks in the festive season, the implications of alcohol and how it brought me a toxic set of friends, the desire to be more productive, not having enough money and the need to experience a different life. Once you have those and a strong resolve, even complete quitting can be effortless. I can also not shake off this suspicion that someone might just be praying for me strongly and pushing all the bottles out of my way. Who knows? And maybe the second wave of Covid-19 played its role too. We cannot rule that out.

For a guy who has been drinking heavily for a little over four years, staying away from the bottle comes with its own challenges. For most people who drink, friendships and conversations are centered on alcohol and once you take that out people turn out to be friendless. Sober life has been comparatively lonely. In the cases where you still want to hang out with people you used to drink with, the insults for not drinking can become unbearable to an extent that you just have to let some people go. Then there is the thing of not having the option of therapy in stressful situations. One               thing I am struggling to train myself with is to do without alcohol whenever difficult situations come and now that they have heard that I have broken up with my bae, the bottle they have been penning each other through a global email to pay me a visit. Stress drinking can be hard to resist but I hope I will survive this.

About that bottle I had in the photo. Some were asking if the picture was from the day I posted. The answer is no. I have been clean for almost 3 and a half months now. Other asked if it was a hint that I am getting back to the drinking business and the answer to that is another big, fat NO. The idea is to stay off drinks for as long as manageable because I have realized that I cannot trust myself around drinks. Interestingly enough, four friends of mine seem to be on a sober train too. How encouraging.

There you have it then. That is the story of that bottle you saw in that picture, how it got there and how we do not want it there anymore. The tough battle of trying to stay away from drinks continues and with time I have come to realize what St Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo meant when he said abstinence is better than perfect moderation. I failed to moderate my alcohol consumption miserably so if you have not started drinking, I recommend that you do not try it.

From the deepest chambers of my heart, I remain the Sober Richie.