About This Blog
DRINKING DIARIES is a forum for women to share, vent, express, and discuss their drinking stories without judgment. Whether you drink or not, are the child of an alcoholic or the mother of a future drinker, sip wine on occasion or binge drink for sport—we want to hear your story.
Whether we are drinking it or not, alcohol remains a potent part of our lives. Our culture is saturated with it, steeped in it. Drinking is one of those hot-button topics. Ask anyone you know to scratch the surface and she will find a drinking story. Maybe it’s the night she got smashed and so belligerent she spat in the bartender’s face. Or the time her alcoholic mother poured wine into a Sprite bottle so she could ride an Amtrak train, her self-medicating uninterrupted. It may be that her teenage daughter’s scar—from the time her beer-drinking boyfriend crashed the car—is healing, while hers is not. That the deepest philosophical question the stressed-out mom ponders is: “How big the glass?” Or the eyebrow-raising looks she gets when she mentions she doesn’t touch the stuff.
We drink for different reasons: to quench thirst, to loosen up or get drunk, because it tastes good, to enhance a meal, because we’re addicted, as part of a ceremony, to celebrate, to mourn. We drink when we’re happy. We drink when we’re sad. And then there are the non-drinkers, for whom abstaining may be as much of an issue as drinking.
For the two of us, alcohol is a loaded topic.
Leah: For my first grade school photo, my alcoholic mother put my sailor dress on inside out. My mother stopped drinking when I was nine years old, but by the time I hit fourteen, my older sister was sent to rehab. I spent half my adolescence at self-help meetings, and although I would rather have been hanging out with my friends, I found the personal narratives of fall and redemption riveting. From high school to college student, writer to stay-at-home mom, I have run the gamut from abstainer to binge drinker.
Caren: I grew up in a home where wine was always around. My European parents drank every night with dinner, and my mother–a French, hidden-child survivor of the Holocaust–often bragged about how she’d corrupted her American friends with the joys of a late afternoon glass of wine. But later in life, my mother’s wartime demons came back to haunt her and her social drinking morphed into need. Since then, I—a lover of wine in moderation—have been wrestling with what drinking means to me.
We want to reach out to women, like us, for whom alcohol—for whatever reason—is also a loaded topic. And so, we started THE DRINKING DIARIES…
Please check back on MONDAYS, WEDNESDAYS and FRIDAYS for the latest round of new posts, questions and interviews!
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d like to follow your blog. Both your stories have hit home and brought up many memories of growing up with an alcoholic mother who was in denial. I guess all of us were.
Hope you share your stories here–lots of opportunities to comment & participate. Thanks for reading!
Hmmm, I just watched the movie…which lead me here somehow…I think I loves this blog…I dont blog, dont really know how to do it…but I do love my cocktails…and to have ppl to share tails with are always a good thing.
Myself, I’m a beer lover…my flovor of the month is Molson Export, I guess I just love the “dirty” buzz. Beer makes me want to naughty; “is that bad?”
i know I have more to say on this subject but not now….
Hi Leah and Caren,
I just stumbled onto your site because I was looking at Jennifer Eagan’s website and was intrigued that she had an interview with “Drinking Diaries.” I wondered what that was and here I am. I am excited to have found you. I have just written my third novel, to be published by Grove/Atlantic in early July, called FATHER OF THE RAIN, which spans 34 years of a daughter’s relationship with her alcoholic father. It took me nearly five years to write and definitely is a full expression of my feelings about the complexity of drinking and its effects on a family. I’d love to send you a copy if I knew where to send it. Thanks for creating this site–it has so much to offer us all.
—Lily King
Lily, we’d love to read the book and feature you on Drinking Diaries. Sounds fascinating. I messaged you on facebook. Best, Leah
I stumbled upon your blog by accident reading the Food News Journal and curious about the interview with Amanda Hesser.
It was very timely as I have just bailed out my adult son for the second time from alcohol abuse. The first time he was driving and side-swiped a cop car (God was watching over him and anyone in his path). This time for walking in an intoxicated state and i.d. ‘ed for the outstanding DWI warrants.
Frustration, anger, pain & hard love are all the emotions I’m feeling.
I will keep reading your posts in hopes of finding some answers to help.
I think it was meant for me to find this blog. I was reading Beyond Blue on Belief.net by Therese J. Borchard and found the article with the link to the Yale study to this blog. I say meant for me to find because I realized the other day I may have a problem with alchohol. I drink everyday and not even to get drunk just because I feel like I need it to deal with my emotional problems. Thank you for this blog.
found this site by accident and I am so glad I did, active member of AA is good to see and hear from others how alchohol affects them thank you great site.
So, made dinner tonight..had a beer, cause I love beer…1 lead to 3…wishing I had someone to enjoy drinks while cooking… with…
I am trying to stop drinking…I want to and pray to but keep going back to it…I am tired and weary…so many things i have done over 30 years…I am 54 and want my life to be what it should be. Therapists tell me I don’t want it enough, I know i do but i am afraid…I hate it…
Thanks for listening. I am glad I found this website quite by accident…
I just celebrated a year of sobriety and am very grateful that. Of late, some of my demons have been rearing their ugly heads and it’s been kinda tough to take, but it’s part of the process. I come from a long line of drinkers (many, many generations of alchies in my fam), and I don’t wish to pass on that heritage to my kids. I was not the best mom when my oldest (now 18) was growing up, and I see how it’s affecting her now. That is hard to take, even though she insists she forgives me.
I love that I found this site (through a Women for Sobriety post). There is never enough reading material in my opinion. Thanks!
I’ve been meaning to start writing my own blog and so tonight I looked up Julie Powell (who I really enjoy) to see which blog site she used when she started out…I came across her interview with you and here I am–two hours and many essays later, reflecting heavily on my own life. This year the Ball dropped (on me) at about 10pm–which is about when I think I blacked out–and I rang in 2011 by punching my completely undeserving husband in the eye for trying to help me to my feet . Just reading this in print is humiliating and so unlike the person I usually like to call myself. Tomorrow will be 7 days without a drink–no wine while cooking, no “unwinder” to enjoy with TV…and it hasn’t come easily. Tonight I’ve discovered I’m not unique in my troubles and this site, I think, will be a place of comfort for me while I search for my “off switch” and try to define the role of drinking in my life. Thanks very much.
I read some of the “drinking” blog.I work in a Correctional Facility.I dont find the sad stories that people share while incarcerated about drinking amusing at all. People incarcerated dont have the luxury of reading or responing to blogs when they are in jail for killing a family in a black out drunk.Victims and families that suffer from anothers “alcohal” problem,would not find your blog amusing either.
I do drink,I like to drink,but there are also other joys in life that can be lived with out alcohal as a “balm” as you call it.
Being Canadian, I am always impressed with the openness with which you Americans discuss yourselves. Your openness about alcohol permits me to say that I like to drink 2-3 glasses of wine every day with my dinner, and maybe even more on weekend evenings. (I wonder if my family doctor believes me when I say I drink no more than 2 glasses a day!) I just finished reading a fascinating medical report that links the ingestion of sugar not only to diabetes but also to metabolic syndrome and some forms of cancer. Since reading the piece, I realize that I must try to stick to 2 glasses a day from now on to protect my liver and prevent getting a life-threatening illness. My sister, who also likes to drink, tells me I’d better buy bigger wine glasses:) I will let you know how I fare in the coming months.
i’m so glad i found this blog today! i just got my second DWI in 3 years, lost my license for 6 months, will probably have to go to outpatient again (YUK!) & to AA (double YUK) & am don’t want to give up drinking … i don’t drink often, i don’t drink much, but i did get that DWI. & i DO like to drink WHEN i DO drink! i’m a 51-yr old women going to college in a drinking town & that’s the way it is … abstinence does not work for me. NO does not work for me. anyway, thanx for listening… polly
Hi – I too am glad to have found this blog. Am in the UK but worked a lot in NYC in the past. We lost three friends to alcoholism and so we wrote a book Help Them Beat the Booze in an attempt to help all those out there who love someone an alcohol abuse problem and don’t know where to turn or are embarrased to ask for help. Whilst we totally respect all forms of treatment and approaches for some the more obvious ones like AA and rehab did not work and you end up losing good talanted lovely people who never chose the live of an addict – it chose them. The book talks about new and potentially exciting treatments that we hope in time will be widely available and speaks to experts around the world. Love can often push the boundaries of conventional medical wisdom in a desperate attempt to find a cure when time is running out for someone you love. If you have not experienced alcohol additiction first-hand it is difficult to know how incredibly painful the journey is and hope is something we all need when things get really bad – we hope the book gives some of that to people who read it.
I found out about this blog today from an article in Salon. I’d love to get it in my email every week. Do you have plans to take any subscribers?
Patec–we’re working on developing a newsletter & link, so if you send us your email address, we can add you to our list. Otherwise, you can subscribe in a google reader. Thanks for reading!
How do I subscribe in a google reader? I’m not familiar with that term. . .
Hi, my name is Heather! Please email me when you can, I have a question about your blog!