Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Annette Foglino is a writer in New York who is working on a book about connecting with her Italian winemaking family in Asti. She is also working on a musical about a family of winemakers.

How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Annette Foglino: I think I was about eight. Whenever we would have dinner at my Italian grandparents’ house, we’d get to splash some wine into a glass of water – it made the kids feel included. My mother always fondly recalled that my grandfather once told her – as a joke – “shut up child and drink your wine.” As common as it is for Italians to drink wine during mealtimes it doesn’t seem to translate into alcoholism. It is more of a ritual and part of tradition (and digestion).

How did/does your family treat drinking?

My mother’s drinking was strictly social – at those suburban house parties in the early seventies, she’d have a vodka and 7-Up, which seemed classy to me as a child; it was light and clear, sweet with a nice little boost of alcohol to get you woozy.

My father would drink almost every night as a way of winding down, a habit I have since imitated. He’d drink mostly beer, but on weekends, he’s sit down in front of a Western with glass of Scotch and soda. If I were watching TV too, he’d let me sneak a few sips. We weren’t allowed to eat junk food like Ring Dings and Devil Dogs, so that was my treat. I didn’t think it was all that great, but I guess the idea of something forbidden was appealing. And it was kind of a bonding ritual with my dad.

How do you approach alcohol in your everyday life?

As a treat and a way of unwinding, and not just because I watched my father do it. As a teenager and in college I was very shy and it helped me relax and be more social. I still love meeting friends for dinner and drinks – but I rarely drink during lunch or in the afternoon. I become useless – I get a headache or want to take a nap.

When I visit my cousin in Italy – the winemaker – he always orders a bottle of wine with lunch. To him, it’s part of the meal – it goes with the risotto or the salad or the pasta. I’m usually able to drink in Italy before 5 o’clock with no after effects – must be all that food.

I noticed that my cousin doesn’t drink that often after dinner, late at night, which is when I usually get going. I have a bad habit of using it to help me sleep, but really it only makes me hungry and eat more, and THEN sleep. NOT a good habit.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

Wine, of course. It doesn’t make you bloated like beer and it doesn’t knock you out like hard liquor. Wine has been called everything from “poetry in a bottle” (Robert Lewis Stevenson); “a memory,” (Drew Barrymore who has her own Italian wine label) and “a living breathing thing,” (a character in Sideways).

I don’t really understand any of this. It can be warm and relaxing and romantic – and it has slight variations in taste – but it’s just fermented grapes!

The one description I can kind of relate to is that it is “a meditation.” Most meditation masters will tell you that alcohol dulls your spiritual senses, but for me it quiets what the Buddhists call the “chattering monkey mind.” That’s one of the main reasons I like it.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking? 

It would have to be the first time I met my cousin, Sergio, the winemaker in Italy, because I was experimenting and learning, awakening my palate and all that. And I like hearing the stories that go with some of the wine. “This one is called the Devil in the Hills from the title of the Cesar Pavese novel (one of Italy’s most Americanized writers),” he told me when pouring a glass of Barolo Chinato. With a 16 percent alcohol content and infusion of China bark and rhubarb, it was once used for medicinal purposes. Many of the wines come with a story. I love that! It’s all material to me.

What about the worst time?

Like sex, everyone probably remembers the first time they got drunk. I was 14 and went to a Chicago concert at Madison Square Garden – not even a cool, hard rock band, like Led Zeppelin! A friend and I snuck in flask-shaped bottles of Seagram’s 7 and drank them straight up.

I remember hearing the band singing “25 or 6 to 4” as I hid my face in the crack of my seat trying to sleep. When it was over, all I remember was my friend’s mother and another friend guiding me down about a dozen escalators amongst the boisterous crowd. I was wearing giant platform shoes which made it easy to keep tripping. I think I blacked out one other time in college and that was it. Never blacked out again, and never drank Seagram’s 7.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

No, it hasn’t, which is surprising since I’ve been through periods where I drink too much wine at night. In my last relationship, he just started joining me and we would unwind together.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

“Sideways” is a great send-up of the wine world. Cities, like New York and Paris, have often been character s in certain movies, and that’s how the California wine country was in “Sideways,” which made the film; otherwise, there wouldn’t have been much to it.

I have a few favorite songs because I’ve been doing research for a musical I’m working on with my brother, Paul, who is a songwriter.

I love the “Drinking Song” from La Traviata (“Brindisi”). The opera is crazy (like they usually are), but what a celebrity tune. The other opera drinking song that is kind of similar, but more in a marching band kind of way, is the Drinking Song from a German operetta called “The Student Prince.” It goes, “Drink, drink, drink to the eyes that are bright!

And of course, “Red, Red Wine,” by UB40, its drawn-out reggae beat capturing just how relaxing and euphoric red, red wine can be. And then a song of my brother’s because it is clever and funny and so true. “You Can’t Be Too Old to Get Drunk.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n1B9LEOpWM

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Allison Hope Weiner was a Century City entertainment litigator before she began writing about Hollywood as a journalist. After practicing law, she became a journalist, covering movies and television for The New York Times, writing exclusive pieces about the federal investigation and trial of Pellicano and his connection to many Los Angeles power brokers. She’s also written for The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Deadline Hollywood, Vanity Fair, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and others.  She’s appeared extensively on many national entertainment television news shows including Entertainment Tonight, E! News, CBS Morning Show, Headline News, Extra and CNN.  She is the host of her own internet talk show, Media Mayhem with Allison Hope Weiner, which attempts to give the audience a chance to go behind the scenes in the media world.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

My family is filled with people who can’t drink.  We drink and then we throw-up.  I remember my mother having some wine at a fancy French restaurant and then, sitting on the curb afterwards, throwing up while my father brought the car around.  My brother, Matthew, and I went to Europe when we were in our late teens and drank heavily and threw up in every country.  It actually became a joke about who would vomit first.  Weiners are not great drinkers–although my brother has improved vastly over the years due to his time writing for the Sopranos and also from working on Mad Men.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

I tend to have just a glass a few glasses of wine a week–either during dinner or while on the set of Media Mayhem.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them? 

I do have kids and they are learning early that if they drink a lot and happen to have my genes and not their dad’s, then they too will throw–up after any kind of excessive drinking.  I tell them the Beef Steak Charlie’s story from college where I had so much Sangria that I spent the night throwing up shrimp and then the end of the evening with my head resting against the cool porcelain of the toilet in the restroom.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

I drank quite a bit in college and then, again in law school when the Olympics were in town in the mid-1980′s.  There was a place in Westwood, Los Angeles where they practically gave away Long Island Ice Tea–a very cheap happy hour of two for the price of one.  I would drink and then pretend that I was an athlete from Ireland or England and speak in a different accent as did my friend, Steven, who was much better at it.  We met a lot of people pretending to be foreign Olympic atheletes.  It was a lot of fun until later in the evening when I vomited in my closet at home and woke up the next morning and blamed it on my brother.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

My drink of choice is a Cosmopolitan because it doesn’t taste like a drink and does most of the work of making me drunk.  I can have one Cosmo and don’t have to order another….twice the buzz with half the calories.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

My best time drinking was with my brother in Rome when we had Vodka d’orange–vodka with orange soda.   We drank heavily and then went dancing in an underground club.  The evening ended with getting sick, but the next day I was met at the train station by a lovely, but unknown Libyian fellow who I’d apparently invited to travel with us.  My brother and I spent the next day trying to figure out how to get rid of him since I couldn’t even remember his name.

What about the worst time? 

Probably the worst time drinking was after my divorce–I existed on a steady diet of fuzzy navels, potato chips and cigarettes.  Dinner of champions.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

It has never really affected my existing relationships, but it has prompted a few extremely brief ones.  I am much nicer when I drink which is a problem in terms of my social life.  Men are very attracted to drunk Allison and not so much when drunk Allison sobers up and becomes, “Who the hell are you” Allison.

Has culture or religion influenced your drinking?

Yes.  In my very Jewish family, drinking was never particularly a part of our evening.  Our favorite drug was more food than wine.

What do you like most about drinking? 

I like that for a half hour, I’m free of all inhibitions.  My husband knows that if I only have one drink, he’s in for a great half hour of fun.  If I have more than one, the fun time is about fifteen minutes.

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why? 

I would drink Cosmopolitans poured from a pitcher into a glass, sitting in a tray of ice.  That’s the way they serve them at the Four Seasons here.  It’s a lot of fun and does the trick.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Rachelle Bergstein is a writer and editor whose first book, Women from the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us (Harper) was was named one of the New York Times’ top beach reads of Summer 2012.  Bergstein’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Awl, Slice, Bloomberg View, WSJ Speakeasy, Slate DoubleX and HelloGiggles, among others.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and her cat and can be found on Twitter at @RaBergstein.

How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Rachelle Bergstein: If you don’t count the bottle caps full of beer that my Dad used to give me when I was 3, then I was probably about 15.  My best friend and I made a plan.  We filled plastic thermoses with gin and Snapple – because that’s what we could get our hands on – and took them into the graveyard next door to my house, where we used to hang out because it was quiet and we could be alone (which probably says a lot about that teenage desperation for privacy).  We had no idea how much we were drinking and whether or not we could handle it.  But I remember this: the world shifted for a few hours.  We were laughing and totally in love with the world and each other and ourselves, and we couldn’t stop skipping because we thought it felt magical.  Unfortunately, that feeling only lasted a little while.  When we got back home we were so drunk that I couldn’t fake it with my parents; she drunk dialed a guy she liked and afterwards, started crying; I threw up all over her favorite sweater.  But I think I was lucky because that first real experience with alcohol was instructive: it’s fun, but it needs to be respected.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

It’s complicated.  There’s some problem drinking in the family history and that was made very clear to me from an early age.  But we also all enjoy drinking at some meals and celebrations and are comfortable with that.  So, for instance, that night in high school – I was totally busted and my Mom grounded me, but I think she also recognized that as a teenager, it’s pretty normal to be experimenting.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

I know I’m not alone in saying that I drank more in college than I do now, and more than I probably should have, but I think my early 20s was the worst.  I had moved to New York along with a group of friends from school, and we got very caught up in the nightlife-oriented, city-that-never-sleeps mentality.  My first job here was as a cocktail waitress, so I was serving drinks until 3 am at least 3 nights a week, and then wanting to mimic what I was seeing at work in my personal life.  And later, when I got a day job and started to have real responsibilities, my friends and I would go crazy on Friday nights, I think in part to hang onto that carefree, college lifestyle that is really undermined by having to get up at 7AM and give it your all 40+ hours a week.

Now in my 30s, I definitely look back on those times and wonder how the hell I drank as much as I did.  First of all, I’m petite so I’m buzzed off of one drink.  But I don’t feel the same need to party like I used to.  I think I’ve found ways to make my real life more satisfying.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having dinner with my friends or just my husband and getting tipsy.  But I honestly have no patience anymore for a hangover.

What’s your drink of choice?  Why?

I like white wine and beer (see: one-drink-drunk) and these days, I’ll have an Aperol and soda if I’m feeling fancy.  My husband’s a cocktail guy but I really can’t handle a Manhattan, so that’s my version.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

My husband (then live-in-boyfriend) had a work conference in Antwerp and I decided to join him.  It was our first big trip together.  A few nights in we came across the Pelican Bar, a hole in the wall with a literary theme.  I knew about Belgian beer from a beer-themed pub I worked at one summer.  We had one cheap Leffe Blond after another, talking and laughing and digging into our feelings in a way we hadn’t necessarily done before.  When we finished the streets were dark, but on our way back to the hotel we stumbled into the strangest oasis: a late-night spot called Park Avenue Karaoke.  We had to go in and I’m glad we did — it was filled with attractive young Dutch people singing American pop songs.  Amazing.

The next morning I felt horrendous and I learned another lesson: never go drink-for-drink with a man.  But in our relationship, we’ve gotten through some big life questions over a good meal and a few glasses of wine.  I think we’re both naturally a little guarded so a little alcohol can help us talk about things that might feel challenging otherwise.  But um, obviously more than a “little” can take a conversation in an entirely wrong direction…

What about the worst time?

I’ve gotten into a crappy fight or two with someone I love, but overall, I’m lucky.  Deep down I’m pretty responsible, so even when I was playing at being a party girl, I never got into too much trouble.  Mainly, I said a lot of dumb stuff, danced like a fool – which I also do sober —  and in the worst cases, got really sick.  And boy, have I gotten sick.  My “worst times” probably all involve puke.

Do you have a favorite book, song or movie about drinking?

It’s not about drinking but “Notting Hill” has some of my favorite drinking scenes of all time.  I think that movie shows drinking at its best: dinner parties, wine, great friends, silliness, honesty. “Lit” by Mary Karr is another standout: a memoir about her decision to give up booze.  Oh, and I’ve always loved “Coconut” by Harry Nilsson – is that a song about drinking?  I guess I always imagined him adding a little rum in there with the lime and the coconut.

If you could be any drink, what would you be?  What?

Maybe an Aperol Spritz: bubbly, elegant, and a little bit weird.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Toronto-based writer and branding consultant, Liz Beatty, is a frequent contributor to National Geographic Traveler, among others.  She’s currently working on a manuscript of essays about, among other things, how big ugly flaws make for brilliant parenting.

How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it? 

My “Mad Men” vintage parents drank two things that I remember:  Manhattans and Deinhard Green Label white wine. I recall pilfering sips of both at about age six or seven, but neither appealed to me, then or now.

Growing up, how did your family treat drinking? 

My dad, who died of cancer almost 20 years ago, didn’t drink until he was 33 for fear that he’d become like his alcoholic father.  This fact was deeply embedded in family lore from early on, although I didn’t know then how his experience with his dad would shape me.  By the time I came along, he and mom  began sharing a cocktail every evening.  Certainly the hard liquor flowed, the ashtrays filled and the voices grew boisterous when their good friends came over, often with kids mingling about — again, all very “Mad Men.”

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

It’s never been a conscious thing and it’s changed over time.  Nowadays, we almost never drink during the week. A glass or two over dinner or at a party on the weekend is the norm.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?  

It sounds more planned to say we’ve taken a European approach  —  never making a big deal about drinking or not drinking.  We drink occasionally in front of the kids.  If they were curious when they were younger, we gave them a sip.  As they got older,  we’d sometimes offer them a splash of something for a toast on a special occasion.  My eldest is just now of drinking age and essentially chooses to abstain, completely his decision. I am, however, point blank with my boys about this  — our extended family is a grab bag of non-addictive and totally addictive personalities, some tragically so. I tell them that you can’t know for sure which category you’ll fall into, so be mindful in your choices.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less? 

Absolutely. When the kids were young, I drank a lot more. My eldest struggled with learning disabilities and with the inimitable hypervigilence of a first-time mother, I channeled everything into helping him navigate the first and very difficult 12 or 13 years of his life.  Among other things, he was depressed at times and I drank often to stave off my own emotional burnout. He eventually turned a corner (now a happy solid university student) and my body began rejecting any level of regular drinking. Things might have gone differently if my constitution had been hardier.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking? 

The first week of first year university, I killed a bottle of cheap Chianti sitting in the residence hallway with my soon-to-be lifelong friend, Roadzy.  We were disentangling riddles of western philosophy.  We were young, unencumbered and with every sip, more brilliant, more fabulous.

What do you like most about drinking?

Funny, the less I drink, the more I enjoy it.  I’m no longer so unthinking about it, as I was binging in university or decompressing as a frazzled young mother.  Nowadays, I guess all my rituals are more considered — morning coffee, my 13-year-old’s Saturday hockey game,  an aperitif on friday night.  I’m more present to enjoy them and then, I guess, more satisfied when they’re over. In short, I’m getting old.

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why? 

I’d be the first sip of a perfect gin and tonic swallowed on the dock of a cottage bay with the July sun setting, kids inside setting up Scrabble and nothing but two weeks of classic WWII spy novels ahead.  To my mind, all other drinks aspire to be this.

Such idyllic confluences of time, place and drug speak to my personal root of addiction. Like when I smoked.  One in 1,000 cigarettes was truly great — end of day, no kids around to corrupt, sitting with smart articulate fellow smokers, no judgement, libation in hand, the mood almost giddy as I take my first drag off that first cigarette in several hours.  The other 999 smokes in between were just chasing that moment.  I imagine if my body had allowed me to become addicted to alcohol, it would have been the same.

How has alcoholism affected your life? 

My dad always struggled to put in its place the uncertainty of growing up with an alcoholic father.  A brilliant, kind man, dad feared deeply uncontrollable outcomes.  Looking back, I saw this dread in his obsession with safety, in his timid financial decisions and even in his anxiety level with the normal chaos of our sibling conflicts.  It took some years to connect this to my own control issues and occasional amorphous angst.  Recently, I found an old photo of my dad at age 23 with academic robes hanging off his sinewy young frame.  He was graduating that day, top of his class, from one of Canada’s most revered law schools.  Only grandma stood beside him.  He’d told me this story many times and there it was — his father just hadn’t showed up.  In the end, dad found a way to triumph over all this — he always showed up for me.

From time to time, we will post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Lesley Arfin is the author of the book, Dear Diary, based on a column she wrote for Vice Magazine. The former Editor-In-Chief of Missbehave magazine, Lesley has written columns for websites such as Street Carnage, Buzz Net, Thought Catalog, and Rookie. She penned the introduction to the 2010 interior design/photo book The Selby: In Your Place. She currently works as a writer on the HBO series Girls, the MTV series Awkward, and has also contributed to TV shows Portlandia and Girlhattan.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Lesley Arfin: My first drink without my parents watching was a bottle of whiskey that I chugged in the woods with a bunch of boys in the dead of winter. I was 12 and a half.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

Jews aren’t real big drinkers. They drink wine at dinner I guess but it’s not a big deal and no one is ever drunk. I doubt there’s ever beer or hard alcohol at my mom’s house.

How do you approach alcohol in your everyday life?

I have been sober for almost 8 years now so it’s not a part of my life really.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

When I drank, I really loved whiskey. I loved whiskey and Coke; put whiskey in coffee, whatever. Beer made me tired and full, vodka tasted like rubbing alcohol, and wine made me talk to walls. Now my drink of choice–if I’m really going for a mocktail–is ginger ale with a splash of bitters and lemon. Usually I’m lazy about it and just get ice water or a Diet Coke. I’ll drink an O’Doul’s, too.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

I remember this one day in college, towards the end of the year. It was really nice out, and we were just sitting around being bored. It was maybe 2 pm and we thought, “Let’s get a keg!” This was something we never did because I was an art student, and “kegs” were only for parties and considered a bit pedestrian, maybe. We drank cheap whiskey and PBR and everything, but kegs of beer were not the norm. So anyway, we got this keg in the afternoon and we funneled and I’m sure someone did a keg stand or something, all of these college-like things that we had always been too arty or cool for or whatever. As we kept drinking, more and more people showed up and joined the fun. I just remember laughing so hard that day, so many people were doing funny things, it was one of those days that a million private jokes happen like, in a row, and everyone is just being awesome. No drama, no hysterics, no throwing bikes into windows. Just a real good drunk day.

What about the worst time?

I was in the Bahamas, my senior year of high school. We all went there for like a “senior trip.” I really liked this guy and we had hooked up one night, just kissed. I was really happy about it. I didn’t have sex with him because I think I was just kind of afraid, but the next night I was like, “tonight I am definitely gonna do it.” I guess he wasn’t really paying attention to me and it made me feel bad, so I kept drinking and drinking and I was only 18 and didn’t know about mixing different kinds of booze, like “beer before liquor, never get sicker,” or maybe like “don’t fucking drink red wine and then tequila and then smoke pot,” or maybe even “don’t ever drink Jaegermeister, ever.” Needless to say, I did not have sex with Jason Miller that night, or any night, ever again, for the rest of my life. I prefer blacking out to puking. However, that night, I managed to do both.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

There’s a song by The Magnetic Fields called “Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin” and the lyrics are perfect. I also love the book by Augusten Burroughs, Dry. A lot of people have written books about drinking but his is my favorite. I love that book so much. My favorite movie about drinking is probably “When A Man Loves A Woman.” I just realized that everything I’ve listed here are all kind of bummers about drinking. Like they’re all about alcoholism. Sorry? I mean, I like “The Hangover,” too. “Superbad” is all about drinking, too! Yeah, “Superbad” is my favorite movie ever!

Why do, or don’t you, choose to drink?

To be honest if I had the choice, I would still drink. The problem with me is that booze turns me into such a freak show, it actually costs me my ability to choose. Well, I guess I do have a choice technically but it’s not “drink or don’t drink” it’s like “live or die.” When I drink, a switch goes off in my brain that is like “keep going at all costs and don’t stop,” and really that train leads to drugs rather than just more drinks, because I prefer drugs to drinking. I’ve tried to control it so many times and I just can’t. It’s hard to explain unless you have it yourself. Trying to control it turned out to be a much bigger pain in the ass and way more taxing on my psyche than anything else, so I just dropped it all together. Not drinking has been working out pretty well for me. It’s better, actually. If it wasn’t better I wouldn’t do it.

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why?

Sloe Gin Fizz because it sounds cool, or Long Island Iced Tea because that just makes sense.

Photo Source 1

Note: This interview originally appeared on the blog in May, 2010. 

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Kassi Underwood‘s essays, book reviews, and author interviews have appeared in The New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, The New York Daily News, The Rumpus, Exhale’s Pro-Voice Blog, Publishers Weekly, and The Days of Yore, among other publications. She won the 2012 Pro-Voice Storyteller Award for her personal essays on abortion and recently embarked on a national college tour to show every woman who’s had an abortion that she is not alone. She is working on an investigative memoir of post-abortion therapies and cultural rituals. Say hi on twitter @kassiunderwood.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Kassi Underwood: Thirteen. Kentucky straight. Three or four amber bottles were lined up on my friend’s lowboy dresser. Her mother, far more lax than mine, bought the liquor for us. I poured myself a few drinks, mixing them with something classy like RC Cola, then wandered around the house in a state of oafish bliss. I felt like I’d ingested a magic potion that would solve all my problems. Emotional and social problems, at least. In my next memory, I was crawling up my friend’s slick wooden steps on all fours, with a limp smile, thinking, “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this sooner?”

How did/does your family treat drinking? 

Alcoholism runs on both sides of my tree, so my extended family tends to proceed with either caution or irreverence. Most significantly, my father sobered up when I was nineteen.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

I took my last drink–a bottle of Chianti–at age twenty, in bed, in my flat, in Florence, Italy. That was more than six years ago. Because many of my friends are normal drinkers, I serve wine or beer to company. I have to remember that I didn’t quit drinking just to duck out of my life again or to inconvenience people with my personal issues. Just the opposite, in fact. Last summer, my mother and I toured Napa Valley together; I still love to see music in dive bars; and as a writer, I attend a lot of booze-fueled readings. Recently, I ended up on a television segment about how to use alcoholic beverages in your beauty regime. In a sort of cosmic dialogue with my last drink, the beauty editor wiped a red wine treatment on my cheeks. It didn’t send me off on a jag or anything, but I have no plans to start regularly dousing my face with wine.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

One memorable dry stint occurred when I got pregnant at nineteen. As if there were an appropriate way to handle a pregnancy I wasn’t going to keep, I still aimed to protect the baby. Maybe it’s telling that I temporarily stopped drinking—a feat theretofore unattainable—only because there was potentially someone else to guard. Quitting for my own health had never appealed to me.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

I was the opposite of selective. I stopped drinking before the legal age, so I did not often buy my own alcohol. Eventually, certain kinds of drinks stopped working, so I’d make an effort to switch from whiskey to wine to cheap-and-quick Gordon’s vodka. On a spree two months before my last drink, I ran out of liquor, so I broke into my newly-sober father’s liquor cabinet and gulped down the last of a bottle of gin, including the pad of mold floating on top.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

My memory is jammed with happy drinking scenes: sipping mint juleps at Kentucky Derby parties in my home state, out-drinking the boys in college, drunk dancing, drunk night swimming, drunk roller-skating.

I spent one evening in a Burlington, Vermont movie theatre watching this documentary called Festival Express. The film followed Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and The Band, circa 1970, on tour together in Canada. I was eighteen years old, and my friends and I had smuggled Nalgenes full of Carlo Rossi in our outsize corduroy purses. Once buzzed, we migrated to the aisles and all fifteen of us started cutting rug. (See also: the Hippie Dance. See also: a gorilla skipping in place. See also: dances so god awful they should probably be illegal.) I had just reached the supreme and short-lived feeling that I drank for. Drinking gave me a sense of closeness to my friends at a time in my life when I had begun to feel otherwise bereft of sociability.

What about the worst time?

Any time I had already started drinking and ran out of alcohol, the scene turned tragic. I have no recollection of this, but the group of five girlfriends I lived with in Vermont said I used to survey our evening supply, hike up my eyebrows, and look around bug-eyed, saying, “Are you sure there’s enough alcohol? I don’t think there’s enough alcohol.” You can basically swap “alcohol” for anything else in the world (cash, love, cash, friends, cash) to gather a real sense of the alcoholic psyche, a religion of scarcity. It’s hard to choose the worst time, because there were plenty of embarrassing drinking moments: getting arrested, selling my Ford Explorer for fifty dollars, being physically removed from a stage I tried to commandeer at a strip club in Montreal (dressed in a one-piece Cat Woman suit, no less).

But perhaps my all-time worst drinking bout was in Italy, a few days after Night of the Toilet-Bed, when I slept doubled-over on a toilet seat for eight hours. At that point—living off money I borrowed from a roommate I’d known for only two weeks—I had decided that I needed to get sober, but that I first needed to really grind my life into the cobblestone. So I went to this morbidly cheesy bar called YAB Disco Club. YAB was an acronym for “You Are Beautiful,” and that’s not even the saddest part. That night, I drank three Long Island iced teas in a row, but they didn’t work. I couldn’t get drunk.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

I had a habit of picking guys who had worse issues than I did. The Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty springs to mind: “Give me your tired, your poor… the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” I had some really fantastic boyfriends, too, boyfriends I treated terribly, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for sickly-looking addicts. Sallow skin and gangly. Working on a “Project Boyfriend”–always full of potential–was a distraction from my own drinking, but no matter how far gone they were, I always wound up with a derivative of the same nickname: Alky, Al, Little Alcoholic, you get the picture.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking? 

I remember traipsing to and from my first sobriety groups in Florence, earbuds blasting Ani DiFranco’s “Knuckle Down.” “Whiskey makes me smarter,” she sings, and I believed that. It took me awhile to realize that relaxing makes me smarter and that whiskey promotes said relaxation.

What do you like most about drinking?

There was always a certain point in the evening when I’d feel just perfect, like how I imagined humans were built to feel: my boobs grew like three cup sizes, I felt one with my friends and the universe, I could handle anything, I could play. Without a drink, I didn’t know how to have fun. In retrospect, I think that perfect feeling alcohol gave me was presence: a brief flight from time, when I neither dwelled on bitterness of yore nor worried some fear fantasy. Only problem? That peaceful feeling was soon overwhelmed by an invisible beast who seemed to burst out of my ribcage with a mission to consume whatever alcohol I could scrounge up. Didn’t matter who was in the way.

Why do, or don’t you, choose to drink?

Choosing not to drink is tricky because I chose not to drink so many times before I was able to uphold my own decision. A big part of maintaining my sobriety is helping other alcoholics to stay clean, an honor I wouldn’t want to forfeit. (The big secret is that they’re helping me way more).

How has alcoholism affected your life?

Where would I be today without alcoholism? While my father’s alcoholism negatively affected our family during his active years, his sobriety positively influenced us as well. If it weren’t for his example, I think I would have spent many more years out there causing wreckage.

Though I wish I hadn’t hurt anyone along the way and I wouldn’t wish this disease on anyone, I’m now grateful for my own alcoholism. Alcohol saved me from the torture of my own mind before I knew how to quiet my compulsive thinking. Without it, I would have been fatally depressed. And without loud consequences. I needed the disease to beat me down, so I would become willing to seek a more substantial solution to what ailed my spirit for so long. These days, I meditate to achieve a genuine version of the artificial presence alcohol once produced. Sometimes it actually works!

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Susanna Sonnenberg is the author of the memoir, “She Matters: A Life in Friendships,” and another memoir, “Her Last Death.” She was born in London in 1965 and grew up in New York. Her essays have appeared in Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine and Parenting, among other magazines. She lives in Montana with her husband and two sons.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Susanna Sonnenberg: Perhaps this wasn’t my first taste of alcohol, but my first whole drink, ordered just for me by my mother, was a Bellini–fresh peach juice and Champagne–on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, for my 12^th birthday.  No drink would ever taste that way again–thrillingly sweet and dense and grown up.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

I try not to worry about it. For myself or for others. This is a discipline.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?

I think–hope–we have a French attitude about children and alcohol. We drink in front of them, and from time to time let them taste the wine. We discuss the pleasures and perils of alcohol with them; try to address things with a combination of inarguable fact and parental tyranny.

When I first had a baby I was terrified that any alcohol in my system would impair my ability to keep him safe. (I’m not talking about nursing here; I didn’t drink while I was nursing.)  People who grow up with addict parents tend to think this way: all or nothing.  I had a rule for myself–absolutely no alcohol until I was sure he was asleep.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

A few days after my father died in 2010, I was wandering around New York and I had the curious thought that I wished I was a sober alcoholic, so I could head into a bar and get blind drunk. I wanted a kind of self-destructive oblivion. I wanted to not know with such clarity and consciousness all I knew about acting out.  I just wanted the damn escape.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

In the winter, red wine, because it feels sustaining.

In the summer, Campari with soda and lime, because it’s pretty.

At artists’ colonies, it’s whiskey, which feels writerly to me.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

It’s never as good a time as you intend it to be.

What about the worst time?

Unforgettable, unfortunately:  Three giant vodka martinis on top of new anti-depressants. I suffered a vile episode of hallucinations and spins for six or seven hours. But what really made it bad was that I was afraid my kids would see me like that and hate me. They were asleep, though.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

When I was a teenager I used to warn my friends about how much they’d had to drink. Oh, brother. I’m sure that affected my relationships!

One man, with whom I had no business getting involved, wooed me with very fine single malt scotch. Any tension or disagreement we had dissipated as soon as he pulled the elegant bottle down from the cabinet. There was something so governing and reassuring about the civility of the drink and the way he poured it for us.

Many of my very closest friends are recovering alcoholics. I met them after they got sober. I guess I just trust them–they’ve done the work, they’ve fought for themselves and the people they love, they are connected to their emotional experience.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

Probably something by Billie Holliday. All that ruin. And I love the line in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof–Brick explains that he drinks because he’s waiting for “the click.”

What do you like most about drinking?

The click. Even though I haven’t felt that click. I know it’s a ghost.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Ann Windes, a sober adventurer and writer, is the author of Journey to the Heart of Pachamama, a memoir about her struggle with addiction, her hilarious pursuit to find true love, and her extraordinary journey to the indigenous villages of Peru, which helped her realize that love is experienced only when it is given. She is currently a high school Spanish teacher and life coach living with her husband in Redondo Beach, California. They are expecting their first child in June.

Drinking Diaries: How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

Ann Windes: Now with over seven years of sobriety under my belt, my approach is radically different than prior to eliminating mind-altering substances from my body. Rarely do I voluntarily put myself in drinking environments, not because I might “slip” but because I just feel uncomfortable. I’ve never felt entirely at ease in social environments so without an alcoholic lubricant to loosen me up, I find conversation strained. These days I treat alcohol as an insidious demon that can take away everything that I have been blessed with in sobriety. I dedicate a lot of my time to helping women who struggle with addiction, and have also founded a program at the school where I work to provide drug and alcohol support for teens.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

During high school and college I was a heavy drinker to fit in with the crowd, but since I could keep up with the boys, I still stood out. Later in life I phased in and out of alcoholic binges that correlated with my satisfaction with my professional volleyball career.

One period of my life when I drank more than usual was while playing professional indoor volleyball in Switzerland. Unable to speak the language and feeling inconsolably alone, I spiraled into an abyss of fear, self-loathing, and solitary sorrow. I would start drinking around mid-day at the local pub, go to practice, and then return picking up where I left off. Later, when I made it to the professional beach tour in the U.S.A, I couldn’t maintain my performance level and so I had to control my drinking. This behavior only worked for a while­–until I conceded to the overpowering craving to drink yet again. Theses days it’s all or nothing–and if I want a life that is rich, fulfilling, and joyful then total abstinence must be my choice.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

Most of my best times drinking were alone. My favorite memory was while I lived in Madrid, Spain. There was a neighborhood called Taberna, where I would sit at my favorite candle lit table with a large plate of assorted Spanish cheeses, taking my time with a bottle of local vino tinto (and then another) while writing for hours in my journal.

What about the worst time?

It’s hard to quantify how many dreadful experiences I have had drinking, let alone the worst. Because of my alcoholic level of drinking, the desire to be a solo female warrior, and my false pride, I put myself in a myriad of dangerous situations worldwide. Could the worst have been when I was being followed by a sinister drug dealer through the twisting streets of the Old Medina in Morocco, hoping he would lead me to some good hash? (He didn’t.) Or could it have been in England where I taunted a drunken British bloke to catch me if he could as I broke out in a jog down a dark alley laughing at him over my shoulder? Perhaps the worst was when I attempted to break the record of beer steins consumed by a female at the Haufbräuhaus in Munich and ended up waking up in another city. The list goes on, and I can assure you that none of them had happy endings.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

Not one relationship benefited positively from alcohol. There were certainly shared moments of exhalation and joy under the influence with friends while at parties, on trips, or at a concert. In hindsight it seems clear that we bonded over the thrill of the common experience, but did it make our relationship better? No. I look back on those interactions and they seem shallow.

Since I preferred to drink alone and did so alcoholically, most of my relationships suffered. Getting the relief of a drink was a higher priority than working on quality time with a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a family member. I became so self-consumed that I could not be present for any honest relationships. My concern was what could I get from someone and how could I avoid owing anyone in return.  Today, that is not the case.  I have learned how to be a reliable and trustworthy person who makes authentic and rewarding connections with my friends, my family, and my husband.

What do you like most about drinking?

My relationship with alcohol prior to getting sober was like an intimate friendship. When I got a few drinks in me it was almost like another part of myself emerged to keep me company. Alcohol helped me feel comfortable socially; it gave me writing inspiration; it gave me courage. I relied heavily on this relationship and toward the end of my drinking I didn’t think I could live without it. Before becoming aware that I had a problem, I truly cherished this bond and was blind to how it was negatively affecting me. Alcohol was my best friend­–but soon it became my worst enemy.

Why do, or don’t you, choose to drink?

I can never have just one drink. Once alcohol is in my system I make poor choices. I isolate. I think almost entirely of myself and have little concern for others. I enter a state of mind that tells me I am not loveable, I will never be good enough, and I am a worthless. I will put on a façade so others won’t know what’s going on in my vicious mind, and I will put a wall up to keep everyone out. This type of existence was how I lived for a few decades and it left me lifeless, miserable, and lonely. When I don’t drink and I work a 12-step program my life is full of meaning. I invest in others and they do the same in me. I have love in my life and I have a purpose that inspires me to be the best I can be.

How has alcoholism affected your life?

Many alcoholics who are recovering often refer to themselves as being grateful for being alcoholic. For the first few years of my sobriety as I struggled to find my true self and felt raw, awkward, and restless, this phrase seemed laughable. Now that I have been sober for some time, I understand that sentiment and also believe that I too am grateful for being alcoholic. The dark days of my drinking taught me about where I don’t want to go, the person I don’t want to be, and the people I don’t want to associate with. Without that clarity I wouldn’t know what a blessing it is to be the person I am today or how to cherish the loving people that surround me. Alcohol took me to the gates of hell but by following a 12-step program, finding my understanding in God, and trusting in that power to guide me, I was led to a new freedom, and beautiful opportunity to have serenity, purpose, and love in my heart.

Recently, Caren & I were guests on a Web Talk radio show called “Addicted to Addicts: Survival 101.” We talked to the host, Denise Krochta, about how we came to develop the Drinking Diaries blog, and we shared bits and pieces of our own stories.

Here’s more information about the radio show: “When author Denise Krochta began her search for “answers” to help herself and the addicts in her life, she found the process daunting. There were plenty of opinions – and bits and pieces of information scattered everywhere. The search was as stressful as the addicts in her life. Hear all the important, and sometimes difficult, questions related to living with and around addicts and loving them. Denise and her expert guests offer information, possibilities, relief, and hope. Sometimes knowledge is scary, but always knowledge is power.”

You can listen to the interview here.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Ann Leary is the author of The Good House, a novel which was recently released. She has also written another novel, Outtakes from a Marriage, as well as a memoir, An Innocent, A Broad. She has written fiction and nonfiction for various magazines and is a co-host of the NPR weekly radio show Hash Hags.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Ann Leary: I was about 10 years old. I was at my aunt’s wedding and was seated next to a man who was a Mormon. Apparently Mormons don’t drink alcohol, so whenever his champagne glass was filled, I would offer to drink it for him so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious.

The first time I drank with friends was when I was in ninth grade. We had moved to a small New England town where there were plenty of places for kids to go and get drunk at night – beaches, woods, baseball fields, cemeteries. The first time I did this, we all drank Cold Duck and Knickerbocker beer that somebody’s older brother had bought for us. I was a new kid in town and a little insecure, very awkward around boys and this Cold Duck and beer combination really worked for me. Each anxious gulp made me smarter and funnier and prettier and more outgoing.  I vaguely remember tackling a boy on the beach and then it was the next day and I was at my best friend’s house, having no understanding of when and how I got there.  Or how I had managed to vomit into my own hair. I repeated the booze, beer, inappropriate lunging at boys and odd geographical awakenings throughout high school and college.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

My parents and their friends drank a lot when I was growing up.  It was a different time and that’s all I’ll say about that. I stopped drinking in my early twenties, when my drinking was very seriously out of control, and I didn’t drink  for about 14 years.  Then I decided to try to just drink wine for a few years, but it didn’t work out, so I resigned from drinking altogether.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

I often tried to drink less, but whenever I drank, I never got to a point where I felt like I had had enough.  I never left a party or restaurant after a couple of drinks and thought, “That was great, now I’m satisfied.”  I knew from a very young age that alcohol affected me differently than others – not all others, and I could spot a fellow booze-hound instantly in any crowd. They were always the people I was drawn to – but I really didn’t want to be like the other messy drunk girls. I wanted to be a cool social drinker, and I had a hard time with that.  I did go through this very delusional but romantic phase with alcohol during which I fancied myself as a sort of cross between Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker – a madcap devil-may-care misunderstood writer/genius. But, in fact, I was writing lame short stories in college fiction workshops and waitressing and partying into the wee hours of the morning.

I started drinking alone when I was about twenty, living in a studio in Boston, attending college classes and working in restaurants, which is a very fun place to work if you like to drink. But I liked drinking alone because the shame possibilities were almost nil. And I felt that a blackout wasn’t really a blackout if nobody was there to see it.  It was like the tree falling in the woods.  Did it matter that I couldn’t recall part of an evening, if nobody was there to see it?  No, it did not.

Things changed when I met Denis, my future husband, who came from a family that didn’t drink at all the way my family did.  His parents were from Ireland, but alcohol was not the center of their lives and I was very fascinated by them.  They had so much fun but were never really drunk.  I stopped drinking after we had been together a couple of years, and fortunately, before we had our kids.  It was a relief to surrender to something that I had sort of known from the very beginning of my drinking.  I drank differently than most others. I lost control when I drank. Friends had told me that for years, but I finally came to accept it as a fact rather than as an attack on my character. When I stopped, there was a tremendous relief and my obsession with alcohol was lifted almost immediately.  I experienced this lovely surge of joy every morning when I woke up and remembered going to bed the night before.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

I had many, many fun times drinking when I was young, but honestly, and I know this sounds sad, but I really enjoyed drinking alone best of all, especially at the end, when I did my experimenting with just drinking wine after many years of not drinking.  If I was out with friends, I’d have my glass of wine or two.  Then, when I got home, I’d enjoy my own bottle, without the meddlesome looks or judgments of others. I just loved my party of one. Loved to open a bottle of wine and enjoy it in the company of my dogs, after the kids were in bed. I would write such brilliant prose that I unfortunately couldn’t read when I found the pages the next morning, crumpled and strewn around my bed.  But I also enjoyed drinking with my friends and my husband. I had so much love in my heart when I drank.  I wasn’t a mean drunk.  After one drink, I liked you a little more than I had liked you before.  After three, drinks, I loved you, and by my fourth or fifth drink you had to peel me off of you.

What about the worst time?

If only there had been just one.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—any of your relationships?

Yes. Oh yes.  Both.

Why do, or don’t you, choose to drink?

I just don’t drink and my life is better as a result.  It’s not even a conscious choice I make anymore.  I rarely think of drinking.  If I’m out and offered a drink, I decline, but I don’t really like people to know I don’t drink at all and sometimes I’ll mumble something about how I can’t because of medication or something.  I hate for people to feel uncomfortable about their drinking in front of me, because it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all.  We have alcohol in our house, serve it to friends, etc.

Life is short. When I quit drinking I added many hours to my day – hours that I used to lose when I was too drunk to do anything but drink  – and the hours have added up to years of being awake and alive and present for my family and my friends and for myself.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

I’ve always loved John Cheever and Raymond Carver because of all the drinking in their stories.  Hemingway too, of course.  There’s such beauty and sorrow in a good drinking story.  Cheever’s published journals reveal his very painful struggle with alcohol –  it made him mean and taciturn, wrought havoc with his family, and he knew this, but couldn’t stop for many decades. But he had such a big heart, as do so many drunks I know.  Another favorite is The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore, about an Irish woman who drinks alone. One of the saddest books I’ve ever read.  The title sums up my relationship with alcohol.  It was a lonely passion.

Nick Lowe wrote a song about drinking called “Lately I’ve Let Things Slide,” which is so great that I’m going to post the lyrics here. There’s nothing I can say about this song. It says it all:

LATELY I’VE LET THINGS SLIDE, by Nick Lowe

With a growing sense of dread

And a hammer in my head

Fully clothed upon the bed

I wake up to the world

That lately I’ve been living in

There’s a cut upon my brow

Must have banged myself somehow

But I can’t remember now

And the front door’s open wide

Lately I’ve let things slide

I go to the bin

I throw the laundry in

And pick out the cleanest shirt

Then I tell myself again

I don’t really hurt

Smoking I once quit

Now I got one lit

I just fell back into it

Along with my pride

Lately I’ve let things slide

I go to the bin

I throw the laundry in

Dig out the cleanest shirt

When all at once I’m seized again

By exquisite hurt

That untouched take-away

I brought home the other day

Has quite a lot to say, the evidence is clear

Only resign piled high and wide

About how lately I’ve let things slide

I’m just about holding on

But lately I’ve let things slide

Note: This interview was originally published on Drinking Diaries in March, 2011. 

From time to time, we will post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

Camille Sweeney is the co-author, with Josh Gosfield, of The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do. She is a MacDowell Arts Colony fellow, a somewhat repentant
 initiate of the Rye Bucks Drinking Society at Kenyon College. and one-time
 blogger (The C Spot: A Guide to the Life Erotic), contributes frequently to
 the New York Times and is at work on a novel.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Camille Sweeney: Maybe not so surprisingly, my first drink coincided with my first real makeout session. One night, the summer I turned 13, I drank an entire warm can of beer and found myself making out with a friend’s older brother’s friend in a closet jammed with sports’ equipment. I can still get a rush when I smell a baseball glove.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

In my family, drinking was always made to seem convivial and something that was better to be good at.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

My husband and I are supernaturally social, and drinking usually goes along with that. From time to time, we remind ourselves to be more moderate. I’ve never felt dependent on alcohol – like I do on coffee, for example – it’s just that more often than not, it’s nicer to have around during social occasions.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

See above.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

I get a little Zelig-ish when drinking, probably for maximum social impact – vodka with the Easties, tequila with the bad asses, rounds of Abita in New Orleans, martinis at the Monkey Bar, etc – but wine, red, white or rose, depending on the season, is usually my standard.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

Some of the best times have been with family and good intimate friends, but also with strangers, like an epic night I spent in a seaside town in Brazil with my husband and members of a samba band.

What about the worst time?

Unfortunately, drinking has to do with judgment, one of the first significant things to go when ingesting alcohol. Best example of worst judgment was when I lived in Prague, played in a warbly country band, drank through a rowdy rehearsal, and had to find my way alone in the pitch black from a deserted tiny train station outside the city to my boyfriend’s dacha down a dirt road. At the time I wrote a story about it called, “Lost,” that still makes me cringe.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

For years I carried around “Ulysses” wherever I traveled and would dive into Bloom and Stephen Dedalus’s stream-of-consciousness adventure that included a long drunken night that seemed so apt to me in my 20’s. Maybe my most recent favorite drinking-related art is Eugene Hutz’s (of Gogol Bordello) song, “Alcohol,” that he sings in concert like a slow painful love ballad. Lyrics go something like: ‘And you know that I’ll pick up/Every time you call/Just to thank you one more time/Alcohol.’ He’s got this really thick Ukrainian accent and plaintive Nick Cave tone, so until I understood the words, I was sure it was about his former girlfriend. It’s a perfect distillation of how one can feel repentant and yet so seduced by booze.

What do you like most about drinking?

Probably what I like most is the camaraderie, the myopic effects of alcohol that draw individuals and groups of people together deeper into conversation and other forms of interaction—like weddings, mosh pits and nights in the country listening to frogs. Of course, it can always backfire.

Photo Source 1

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you. 

Jennifer Spiegel has an MA in Politics from New York University, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Arizona State.  She is the author of a short story collection called The Freak Chronicles and a novel called Love Slave. She lives with her husband and two kids in Arizona.  Please visit her at www.jenniferspiegel.com.

Drinking Diaries: How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

Jennifer: There’s no alcohol in our house, and I’m afraid that—despite my philosophizing that’s it not evil in and of itself, and it’s perfectly okay for people to have a drink or two—I loathe its very presence, deeply, comprehensively, judgmentally. I have to watch myself, because I know I’m wrong for such disdain. In my life, though, alcohol has meant nothing good. When perfectly great people want to “grab a beer” to talk, I quickly—and no doubt awkwardly—suggest coffee instead. When very nice folk want a glass of wine with dinner, my insides twist. I know it’s nuts. An open bar at a wedding can induce an anxiety attack.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?

Well, here’s something. My first grader just came and sat next to me. She tried to read what I’m writing over my shoulder, and I said, “I don’t want for you to read this. Go get a book.”

I don’t really know yet how to handle it, obviously.  I kind of think it’s not so hot to forbid kids from things like TV or rock n’ roll, because it’s setting them up. It’s like creating a mystique—when, really, there may not even be one. Alcohol is obviously different than pop culture (though the romance of pop culture probably did me in—see Love Slave, my novel, for more on that). So, I’m wary of telling my kids to stay away from alcohol, but still. I want to tell them to stay away from it.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

I’ve had two bouts of drinking in my life, and I’m pretty sure they’d be considered relatively minor or nothing at all. In college, I drank—solely to get drunk, at parties. Then, when I was in South Africa, I also drank—again to get drunk, mostly at parties of some kind. The thing is that I’ve never actually liked beer or margaritas or white wine, so it’s always been a means to an end. And I can guarantee you that behind the end of drunkenness, there was a greater end: some guy. I wanted to be fun or sexy or uninhibited in his presence. Though I drank a couple times without the objects of my affection around, it always seemed like a waste of calories and time.  I would’ve rather eaten a piece of cheesecake.

The last time I had a drink was on my birthday in December 2003. I’ve never missed it, except for once. I went to Cuba in the spring of 2004, and I would’ve liked to have tried a Mojito and done things that Hemingway might have done in Havana. But, by then, I had foresworn alcohol because I was marrying into a family of reformed alcoholics. The sacrifice was easy, to be honest.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

Coffee, and I’m a pathetic addict. I’m sure I’m doing exponentially more damage to myself than any normal/casual alcohol drinker.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

My husband is a recovering alcoholic, as are members of his family. Out of respect for their plight, I’ll say very little—except that I know it’s a lifetime struggle that is so utterly complex that it’s soul-transforming, soul-shredding. I admire very greatly how hard some of the members of his family have worked on their sobriety and how much they’ve helped others too. We’re talking decades of success.

I’m now writing my third book, a novel tentatively called Sappho Unspoken, which will largely be about substance abuse and marriage. It’s focused, mostly, on the non-addict in a relationship with an addict. I’m feeling the soul-shredding thing acutely. And I know, also, as a non-addict there are things I can just never fully understand about it. I’m still baffled by the moment when a substance abuser gives in to the temptation to abuse, sacrificing his or her very soul. How does that happen?

I’m personally a control-freak, so I’m delving into a subject that involves the deliberate giving up of one’s control . . . and I’m embroiled in a psyche that mystifies me. Good fiction, weird state of mind.

(Speaking of fiction, alcohol plays an interesting role in my books so far. In The Freak Chronicles, there are several alcoholic-binges: a night of drinking in “Advent”; a one-night stand in “Nipples, Beads, Mealie, Pap”; an alcoholic missionary in “Goodbye, Madagascar”—which is the common favorite in the collection. Most of the alcohol stories take place in South Africa. Not sure what that means. And, in Love Slave, alcohol is maybe oddly and conspicuously absent. Funny. I guess.)

Has culture or religion influenced your drinking? 

Oh, yes. I think cultural attitudes have definitely influenced me by making it seductive—like some sort of rite of passage that I didn’t want to miss out on.  My own religious thinking and the tradition/orthodoxy behind it is surprisingly moderate—so I’ve at least tried to be moderate in my thinking. The religious people I know are pretty normal about alcohol.

I sort of suspect that many of the people I knew in college—those steeped in this youth culture—are now raging alcoholics.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking? 

I just saw Sex, Lies, and Videotape for the gazillionth time. It’s not about drinking, but it’s about addiction. One thing that keeps coming into my head is the scene in which one character (Graham, played by James Spader) tells another character (Ann, played by Andie MacDowell) how he’s structured his life in such a way that he neither touches or is touched by others—he tries to be alone, solitary—and she points out that the lives of others are invariably touched by him. I think I’m pretty preoccupied with the way others are affected by the action of addicts. There’s something merciless about it. And I love how the addict in this film is called on this.

What about the worst time?

Well, it wasn’t my worst time or even my second worst time, but—in retrospect only—it may be the funniest time. The worst times involve physical violence and the police. I wish I were joking. But the funniest time?

I was in college at one of my best friend’s father’s home, who—of course—was out of town. So, for some hellish reason, my friend (a guy) and I invited this other guy, who I happened to be psychotically “in love” with, over for the night to get drunk. This was over twenty years ago, so my memories are skewed but I know that my friend and love interest got completely drunk; my love interest urinated all over himself and the bathroom floor when he proceeded to pull down his pants and drop to his knees and pee in front of the toilet bowl; my love interest puked red stuff on my friend’s father’s bed, the parakeet was let out of the cage and was flying around and there was a mad shuffle to get the escaped bird, and my friend was ill and desperately calling out, “Jennifer, just help me. Clean this place up. I’m begging you.”

Somehow or other, my friend and I managed to get that place in shape before his father’s return, though his father did question the red stains on his sheets.

Isn’t that hilarious? I’m being sarcastic.

How has alcoholism affected your life?

Indulge me while I talk about my novel-in-progress, Sappho Unspoken. I’ve mentioned that I’m a control freak, and that I love Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I think these are big themes in my book: the lack of control felt by those affected by addicts, and the profound effect addiction has on the non-addict.

Another non-alcohol movie comes to mind—an absurd scene. Humor me. Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. There’s this hilarious scene in which the woman playing Woody Allen’s sister divulges how she met this guy in the personals, they went out and had a great time, they went back to her place, they started fooling around, he wanted to tie her up, he ties her up, and then he defecates on her. This is all told in Woody Allen-style, so you’re virtually in tears while watching it. But I think this might be what it’s like to live with the threat of alcoholism and the manifestation of addiction. You’re having a great time, you trust the person, and suddenly you’re bound—without control—and you’re being crapped on. Now, I know what people are thinking—and I’ve said it myself: “Well, you shouldn’t have allowed yourself to get bound.” True. But human dramas are never so simple, and it’s demeaning to both addicts and non-addicts to deny their abilities to be bound up in one another’s lives. There’s the sinking, I’m-being-crapped-on, I-have-no-control thing; but addicts and non-addicts may genuinely love one another.

Apart from substance abuse in my new novel, I’m looking at how someone hardens herself in order to cope with struggles.  Right now, I’m watching my little girls learn to cope with the first appearances of “mean people” in their lives. Up until now, they never heard little kids threaten things like, “I’m not going to be your best friend” or “You’re ugly.” As an adult, we learn to harden ourselves against such inane things. As a child, you take it in and gradually learn to absorb the hurt. I’m watching my daughters learn to absorb hurts.

I’m wondering—still mulling it over—if there’s a connection between addiction and not learning to absorb those hurts? Perhaps the addict stays soft, unable to navigate the pain? Those who absorb hurt necessarily harden themselves? They are not as susceptible to substance abuse because they’re not as soft? I’m thinking aloud here . . .

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why?

A Mocha from Bentley’s on Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, Arizona. Best drink ever. My husband humored me by getting me one on our recent trip to Tucson for a reading I was doing. And it’s still the best.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you. 

Jennifer Storm is the author of four critically acclaimed books on addiction, recovery and victimization:Echoes of Penn State: Facing Sexual Trauma, Picking Up the Pieces Without Picking Up: A Guidebook Through Victimization for People in Recovery, Leave the Light On: A Memoir of Recovery and Self-Discovery and Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?  

Jennifer Storm: My first sip was when I was very young; I would steal sips of my mother’s crème de menthe. I loved the rush I got from sneaking up on the drink and quickly drinking as much as I could while no one was watching and then running back upstairs and throwing myself onto my bed. The rush of doing something bad and not getting caught coupled with the tingly feeling the alcohol gave me made me giddy.

However, my first real drink didn’t end as well and left me anything but giddy.  I was twelve years old and trying to be cool when a much older friend handed me a 16-ounce can of beer. I remember the sweat of the can dripping down my little hand, I remember the foam splashing against the back of my throat, I remember wanting to be cool and fit in.  I drank one, two, three…blackout. My next memory was being raped.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

My family couldn’t understand why after something so horrific happened to me that I would continue to seek solace in the bottom of a bottle. My extended family was filled with addicts and my parents wanted nothing but to shelter us from them. Instead, I followed suit.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?   

Today, I don’t.  It isn’t even a factor in my world. I don’t avoid it as that’s nearly impossible but I don’t surround myself with it either. I have been clean and sober for more than 15 years and I do not have a desire to position my mind, body and spirit with it.  It simply isn’t worth it.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?  

I don’t have children of my own yet but I have had a hand in raising my 15-year-old niece and I have had very candid conversations with her about responsible drinking and knowing your own limits.  I am not foolish enough to think she won’t drink, she already has and when I found out, I handed her my first book, Blackout Girl.  She knows she is predisposed, her mother is in and out of jail for her addiction, and my brother is in recovery from his own demons. I want her to understand the role alcohol has played in our lives to shape her choices.  I told her when she plans to get drink, do so in a safe environment so that if she responds to it the way I did, she won’t end up in harm’s way.  When I travel the country speaking to young people I talk about drinking responsibly and in safe environments.  I use my own first experience to drive that message home.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

My drinking started at twelve and went hard until age twenty-two. I spent ten years heavily saturated.  I drank less when I slept, I guess, or was blacked out.  I got sober in 1997 and haven’t had a sip since.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

Back then it was Vodka, I loved vodka, mainly for its transformative ability. You could make any beverage better with a little vodka. I very much enjoyed a good dirty martini—which oftentimes serving as beverage and dinner if there were enough olives in the glass.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?  

I have good memories of being at concerts or clubs with close friends and just singing our heads off, dancing and laughing like fools.  There was a carefree nature to those times where no damage was done.  Unfortunately, most of my drinking ended with a lot of damage but I can look back fondly on good times with friends and smile.

What about the worst time?  

There were many “worst times”.  Obviously my love affair with drinking started with a horrific crime that shifted my entire world around. My second worst would be having my stomach pumped at age 13.  I remember the haze of red lights flashing all around me, being flat on my back with a tube being jammed down my throat and then the thick rush of black tar ripping a tide out of my mouth into a tin pan.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours? 

Every relationship I had during my ten-year addiction was affected in a negative way.  Since then, my drinking has served as a great tool for me to create change in people’s lives.  I have written many books and travel all over the country to talk about my experiences.  I receive emails weekly from young people thanking me for sharing my story, I hear from parents who express gratitude for giving them a lens with which to see and better understand their loved one who is struggling.   My drinking almost killed me, but now it is saving lives.

Has culture or religion influenced your drinking?   

I think it is really hard in this culture not to drink or be influenced in some way to binge drink.  I went to college after getting sober and immersing myself in a college culture and not drinking was an interesting challenge.  Its what I wrote Leave the Light On about to show young people that it can be done and share some of the mistakes I made.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

When a Man Loves a Woman, Basketball Diaries, Gia and the recent Flight are all movies I think depict the realities of drinking in a very real way.

Beth Hart’s “Leave the Light On” is why I titled my book after it.  The song depicts my teenage angst like no other. I respect her struggle with her own addiction.

I wrote my book Blackout Girl because I didn’t find my own story on the shelves of any bookstore out there.  I wanted a raw, honest book about addiction and recovery and not just the gory details but the path to solutions as well.  I really like Dry, and anything written by Melodie Beattie I found to be helpful in early recovery.

What do you like most about drinking?

The absence of it from my life today is the greatest thing about it.  The fact that I go walk anywhere and not be tempted or have a desire to reengage it makes me happy.

 Why do, or don’t you, choose to drink?

I do not drink because I cannot drink like a normal functioning human being. I drink to the point of oblivion and have never figured out a way not to.  Drinking led to nothing positive in my life and I only suffered gut wrenching, life altering results from it.

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why?   

A nice tall glass of water.   Water is our life force and the basis of any drink.

Each week, we post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you. 

Ellen Sussman is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, French Lessons and the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, On a Night Like This. Her novel, The Paradise Guest House, will be published in March 2013. She is also the editor of two anthologies, Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia Of Sex and Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, which was a New York Times Editors Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She teaches writing through Stanford Continuing Studies and in private classes. Her website is www.ellensussman.com.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it? 

My father would come home from work late every evening and my mother would serve him a beer and a sardine sandwich. He would let me take a sip of his beer. I was six, seven, eight, and I never came to like the taste, but I kept trying. I wanted to sit in the kitchen in my pajamas, next to my Dad, past bedtime. I remember the swirl of conversation around me, the sour taste in my mouth, and my father’s hand, reaching out to swipe the froth off my lip.

How did/does your family treat drinking? 

My parents liked to drink at parties — I remember my mother dancing on the table at a cousin’s bar mitzvah. They knew how to have a good time. But aside from my Dad’s dinner beer, they didn’t drink during the week. Booze wasn’t a big deal. No one had a problem with it. As I was growing up I never heard my parents talk about anyone who was an alcoholic.

How do you approach alcohol in your every day life?

I drink wine with dinner every night.

If you have kids, how is the subject of drinking handled? Do you drink in front of them? With them?

Yes, I have twenty-something daughters. We lived in Paris for five years and I was very much influenced by how the French approach this subject. Kids learn to taste wine and drink a little at a very young age (like my early beer training with my Dad!). They learn that wine is something to be appreciated — it adds to the dining experience. It’s not something you drink to get smashed. And there’s no need for rebellion if we’re all drinking together. One of my daughters likes to drink and joins us with a glass of wine. The other one doesn’t like wine at all but will occasionally indulge in a mixed drink.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

When my husband and I first met fifteen years ago we would have wine with lunch. We’ve given that up — too many afternoon when I couldn’t get my work done! Now we don’t open a bottle of wine until we start cooking dinner.

What’s your drink of choice? Why? 

Scotch! I love Oban in particular. One rock. It’s heaven. My husband’s drink of choice is a martini. Every time we order our drinks the bartender or waiter inevitably serves Neal the scotch and me the martini. Boy drinks and girl drinks, I guess. In the summer I order beer and he orders white wine and the same thing happens. We seem to be the gender-bending drinking buddies.

Can you tell us about the best time you ever had drinking?

I remember a Halloween party at my senior year of college. At some point in the evening we all decided that we were our costumes. I was dressed as a flapper so I was good with that. I danced, flirted and jazzed the night away. I found Jay Gatsby somewhere along the way and brought him home with me.

What about the worst time?

I’m a good time drunk, not a maudlin drunk. But I do remember one night, at dinner with a group of friends, when I fell into a swamp of self-remorse. Mixed drinks — I don’t like them, they don’t like me.

Has culture or religion influenced your drinking? 

Jews are not, by tradition, big boozers. I think the fact that I didn’t see alcoholism while I was growing up has greatly influenced my drinking life.

What do you like most about drinking?

First, I like the taste of wine and scotch. I can’t imagine eating a good meal without wine. And at a party, I like how drinking works on most people. Most of my friends get livelier, funnier, wackier. I am not someone with a lot of boundaries or inhibitions. But I do like my buzz. I like the looseness it gives me, the way it quiets my critical mind, the way it livens a party.

From time to time, we will post short interviews with interesting people about their thoughts and feelings on women and drinking. There is such a wide array of perspectives about this topic, and we are excited to gain insight into as many as possible and to share them with you.

After a misspent youth involving loads of dead-end jobs and several questionable decisions, Julie Powell, author of Cleaving and Julie & Julia–made into a major motion picture by Nora Ephron starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams–has found her calling as a writer-cum-butcher. She lives in Long Island City, Queens, when she isn’t in Kingston, NY, cutting up animals.

Drinking Diaries: How old were you when you had your first drink and what was it?

Julie Powell: It was Mad Dog, at a cast party my junior year in high school.  I spent most of the party commiserating about not getting cast as Sally Bowles with the guy who didn’t get cast as the MC.  Then my ex-boyfriend’s new love interest threw up on me and a six-foot-two guy passed out on top of me.  So.  Much.  FUN.

How did/does your family treat drinking?

I come from a long line of highly-functioning alcoholics. Growing up, my Dad thought nothing of bringing a plastic “to-go” cup with him when we drove to a restaurant for dinner, and booze was and continues to be an ever-present, benign presence. I actually didn’t drink at all until college, but in adulthood, our family tends to revolve, in our interactions, around booze. Food, too.

Have you ever had a phase in your life when you drank more or less?

The only thing that has ever persuaded me to drink less has been the prospect of great sex. I find that my enjoyment of sex dips after more than say a glass of wine. So when I think at the end of the day I’m going to be getting very well laid, that’s an excellent incentive to not crack open the bottle.

What’s your drink of choice? Why?

Nowadays, I’m mostly drinking this cheap Portuguese boxed white wine. It’s cheap, it’s plentiful, and you can fold up the boxes so it’s less apparent just how much you’ve gone through during the week when you put out your recycling.

Has drinking ever affected—either negatively or positively—a relationship of yours?

Most of my relationships are influenced by alcohol, for better or worse. My relationship with drinking is very WASPy – I tend to use it to smooth out the edges, to make confrontation unnecessary. This makes for very few arguments, but also very few in-depth discussions. Oddly, in my current unusually contentious relationship with one particular ex, exactly the opposite is true – I can ONLY express myself after three or four glasses of wine. Whether I should be or not, expressing myself, I mean, is an open question.

Do you have a favorite book, song, or movie about drinking?

Stephen Merritt!!!!  He writes great songs about drinking!  Magnetic Fields has a ton – Reno Dakota, Papa Was a Rodeo, so many… I love a line from the first song on their latest album: “you can’t go ’round just saying stuff/because it’s pretty/and I no longer drink enough/to think you’re witty…”

What do you like most about drinking?

I use drinking as anesthetic and balm. Nothing seems unbearable after the first few glasses of wine. Except not having another.

If you could be any drink, what would it be? Why?

I’d like to be a really top-notch single-malt, strong and complex and warming. But I fear I’m more of a vodka gimlet – bright, a little tasteless, and totally transparent.

Note: This interview originally ran in 2010