Nobody starts drinking to become an alcoholic. I certainly didn’t. Heck, I can count on my fingers the number of times I have been drunk to the point of passing out or throwing up in all my 13 odd years of drinking. But, that doesn’t matter, as I learnt. A tryst with alcoholism may not involve blackouts or bile in your bathroom sink at all. It may, in fact, be a desperate attempt to be simultaneously sober and intoxicated gone wrong.
On that rare occasion that I was hungover, I decided to try the hair of the dog – that is, a drink to curb the hangover. I had learnt about the trick from watching a movie before I had even started drinking. I think it was a 90s Bollywood film where the drunk hero woke up to beer in bed, as opposed to breakfast in bed. For someone who had never tasted alcohol, or experienced the agony of a hangover, it seemed like a harmless, fun thing to do. Before my torrid affair with the bottle started, I saw cousins and friends drink while in recovery all the time. It grew to be a perfectly acceptable thing to do among the regulars at the bar. Except, something in me never felt tempted to try it. Perhaps the hangovers in early 20s weren’t unbearable enough for me to take the plunge.
The first time I tried the hair of the dog was when I was 27 or 28. My hangover set in around four in the afternoon, in the middle of a work day, in the middle of the week! I still had about two more hours of meetings and paperwork before I could go home and rest. Two hours of sweaty palms, erratic heart rate, short breath, and a mild headache. Two hours became four. By the time I reached home, I was too exhausted to sleep! So, I caved. I poured myself a glass of wine, while yet not recovered from the previous night’s debauchery, kicked my shoes off and laid back on my couch. As the level of wine in my glass went down, my heart rate stabilised, headache receded, and palms dried up. After hours, I felt normal, for lack of a better word. I had to celebrate this with a drink! Little did I know that this drink would mark the beginning of a phase I would not want to go back to, where I would either be drunk or asleep, since the moment a hangover would strike, I’d chase it with a glass of wine. And then, what reason would I have to not have a drink?
Drinking at the end of the day is as acceptable as is breathing. Nobody questions why you end up at the bar almost every day. Nobody wonders why, if you were sick all day, you are not at home, resting. Nobody wonders why you didn’t have fresh juice instead. Everyone assumes that you’ve had a hard day, and you are just winding down with a glass of your favourite poison. Except, what are we winding down from? A hangover?
