Day 4

It's not my first time trying to do Dry January. I've been doing it on and off for several years, some more successful than others. Last year, after kicking off 2020 with some champagne at work, because, as always, I worked on NYE 2019, I savoured those last couple of glasses of bubbly with a GREAT feeling of all good things ahead of me that new year. If only had I known then, what was about to hit all of us. 

Nevertheless, the year had started off well. But everywhere I went, someone always offered me a glass of complimentary drink. A perk of the industry suddenly became such a nuisance. I politely declined one, two, three times. Until the fourth time it was hopeless. I gave in. It was a glass of beautiful rosé champagne at the Royal Horseguards Hotel where we had sampled afternoon tea with colleagues. I think my Dry January had lasted for about 12 days. 

So it was a good start of the year at work, and then it got even better on 14th of February, when Carla proposed to me. Of course, that joyful, tearful and one of the happiest nights of our lives, we popped up a bottle of champagne. Next day we had dinner with friends, we had some good wine and some proper Mexican tequila afterwards. 

Shortly after that, the pandemic hit. Suddenly the whole country was in lockdown for three months. Pure shock, horror and anxiety swept over everyone like a big wave. I got my first ‘risk of redundancy’ letter, which, fortunately, eventually did not materialise. 

Everyone was in utter confusion. Nobody knew what is going on, least the government. 

A friend of ours, who had meant to stay over for 2 weeks following his divorce, got “stuck” with us in lockdown. So with an adopted new tenant Filipe, and our permanent flatmate Adri, we became a household of 4. Plus the cats, of course. 

To maintain some sort of normality, some hope and any common sense in that weird mess of a world we were suddenly thrown in, we decided to really take the most of it. Carla baked fresh bread every morning, I took up Portuguese lessons, Adriana became our designated personal trainer and Filipe shook up strong cocktails almost every day. Suddenly my smoothie blender was used more frequently to make a jug of cocktail rather than a healthy juice. 

We had party every single week, just the four of us. We found some old disco lights that we put up on Friday nights, switched on the soundbars to the maximum and had theme nights where we all dressed up (which was a welcome change to pyjamas 24/7). When the weather was better we did a barbecue outside, we played lots of cards, and we bought cases of cheap beer from Lidl, had lots of shots and countless cocktails. 

Thinking back to these three months, I don’t regret the drinking and the parties that much, but I do regret the hangovers. I remember couple of really nasty hangovers, the sorts where I couldn’t get out of bed until 7pm in the evening, unless it was to drag myself to the toilet to throw up. That was truly depressing and I swore to myself every time that I will never drink again.

At least, the drinking helped to pass the time. Helped us feel a bit better in that nightmarish rollercoaster we were all on. We all needed a laugh, a relief, and the alcohol helped. 

Besides, everyone else was constantly drunk also, so it was all sort of normal. Pretty much everyone I knew had become like some kind of apocalyptic airport alcoholics. Cause in airports it's acceptable to drink any time of the day. Just that everybody was just sitting at home with nowhere to go and nothing to do. So began the Whatsapp texts from friends showing off their cocktails before 11am, boozy Zoom quizzes with colleagues from work, Internet memes everywhere about lockdown drinking. I ended up talking a lot with my friend who lives in Australia and due to time difference I ended up shaking up some morning cocktails while she was having her evening wine. It took so little for me to transform from a decent wine lover to this. 

After the lockdown, things got even crazier. Suddenly we were all free to meet people, or at least 6 of them, and to celebrate these wonderful re-unions with friends and family we hadn’t seen so long, to celebrate getting out of our 4 walls of our lockdown houses, and what did we all do? We had a drink. 

I remember two other hangovers form post-lockdown parties that I’m really not proud of. 

But as the virus didn’t go away, the restrictions were toughened up again. There was another lockdown which lasted a month. But the things only continued to get worse. Until my hotel had to shut the doors once again for the third time. 

Now things are different. Filipe is no longer with us so there are no parties. It’s winter now, and the days are so cold and dark, that it’s difficult to get out of the bed in the morning. The confusion that I associated with the previous lockdown has been replaced with a true hit of reality. I have been forced to stay at home more time last year than I was at work. My income has suffered. All my plans, dreams and ambitions for the future have been put on pause indefinitely. There is absolutely no mood to party and celebrate anything really. Even those friends from drunken Zoom calls in April have slowly disappeared, Carla doesn’t bake bread anymore and I don’t remember anything from my Portuguese lessons. Everybody’s suddenly quiet, and scared. 

I suppose now more than ever it would be easier to reach for a bottle to help to pass the day, or to bring some joy or lightness to this dark mood. But part of me is also really afraid that having those few glasses of wine a day would really accelerate a very quick downfall into a much darker place. These are the strange days that I really don’t know whether it’s more depressing to drink, or not to drink.