#11 Q: Do You Miss Drinking?

A: Yes and No

Dear Holly,

I listen to your book on the way home from work (veterinarian, fucking stressful) to arm me for the triggers I face when I get home (two kids, husband, etc.) I've tried stopping. I took 27 days off and felt amazing. I feel like shit now. I don't want to miss out on the celebrations—vacations, birthdays, etc. I just want to know: Do you get to a point where that doesn't even matter? As in…you don't even consider or think about taking a sip?

Yours, Can't Imagine

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Dear Can't,

As you were writing me this message, I was sitting down to a late lunch in Italy. The weather was warm, it was a Sunday afternoon and there were hundreds of people sitting outside of ten different restaurants all lined up along an old Campanian road. Kids ran around and waiters doted and every single table was bursting with food and wine.

An extremely attractive waiter came up to me and asked if I spoke French or Italian or English and I presumed he spoke all three which made him even more attractive; I said parlo inglese. He pulled out my chair and came back with two sips worth of pale yellow wine in a large stemmed glass and he made the kind of eyes at me that definitely indicated he wanted to talk to me about wine and probably wanted to get me lit. If you would in your mind, please: freeze time here, because that's what I did.

He’s there, he’s making the eyes, he’s got the glass of white and he wants to tell you about it; you’re lonely; this is a trap. Next month it will be nine years since my last drink and yesterday was the 3,255th day in a row I've spent not drunk or even tipsy or even experiencing that warm tight feeling you get at the back of your neck when you've had one little sip. I had the passing thought that it didn't matter, that I could just take that wine and drink it and be in this moment and live a little. Like: I actually considered it, and in this extremely short period of time—barely seconds—I had the very real thought that I could get away with it, that I could probably just have those two sips and never have them again in my life that this would be it. Maybe I was being so ridiculous with this whole forever abstinence thing especially since WW3 is upon us and we're still in an endless pandemic and there are now such things as fire tornadoes. I could just so easily do it.