I Shouldn’t Have To Explain Why I Don’t Drink
I vomit. My arms are hugging the cool, porcelain toilet. And I vomit again. My soul, if such a thing exists, is trying to escape up and out my throat. My soul is trying to hitch a ride with the sour vestige of last night’s drinks. My soul feels like a beaten mass of biology half dissolved in a bathtub of lye.
I retch. Vomit, diluted with toilet water, splashes up and hits my cheek. My eyes are crying without the tears, and I vomit again.
With every retch there is less and less coming up my esophagus, but the violent heaves don’t subdue. I cough up and choke on yellow bile. I taste the acid from my stomach and the cigarettes I inhaled last night.
I’m gifted a couple of deep breaths. A final retch and another ounce of bile hits the surface of the toilet’s mixture. The bile floats for a moment then sinks to the bottom of the bowl.
Sometimes I think about not drinking so much. But this morning I am thinking about how clean my toilet actually is as the curtain rises on the first act of my Hungover Self-loathing. I flush the toilet and watch the putrid mixture swirl and drain away.
I’ve suffered through dozens of adaptations of Hungover Self-loathing, like the scene I’ve just described.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction has published Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health (2023), a new set of guidelines for the consumption of alcohol. The guidance provides, “evidence-based advice on alcohol to support people in making informed decisions about their health” (emphasis added).
The new research shows that the harms of consuming alcohol are quite greater then what we have previously understood.
The table below shows the “continuum of risk” for alcohol consumption:
0 drinks per week — Not drinking has benefits, such as better health, and better sleep.
2 standard drinks or less per week — You are likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences for yourself or others at this level.
3–6 standard drinks per week — Your risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, increases at this level.
7 standard drinks or more per week — Your risk of heart disease or stroke increases significantly at this level.
Each additional standard drink radically increases the risk of alcohol-related consequences.
Alcohol, it would seem, consumed in any amount over 2 drinks per week increases the risk to your health.
The key point from the new guidance says, “for your health, less alcohol is better.”
It’s been six months since my last drink.
While in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was walking through a store and suddenly felt faint and hungry. The immediacy of the light-headedness and hunger pang were so sudden and so sharp that I thought I would pass out as I waited in the cashier line. I snatched up a chocolate bar to which I quickly ate after I made my purchase. Later that week I booked a doctor’s appointment, because I thought I was exhibiting symptoms of diabetes.
My doctor sent me for a blood test. The results were unexpected. My hemoglobin A1c (or blood glucose) levels were 5.4%, within the normal range (4.3-5.9%). However, my lipid panel revealed an abnormality. My low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) was at 5.18 mmol/L, out of the normal range (0.00-3.40 mmol/L).
My doctor didn’t address the troubling symptoms I experienced in the store. He was, moreover, concerned with my high cholesterol. I was prescribed 5mg of Rosuvastatin to lower my LDL-C, the bad cholesterol.
My pharmacist informed me of the common side effect of taking the cholesterol medication, which was muscle soreness. The pharmacist also said that the meds were hard on the liver and that I should not drink while I was taking them. I asked for clarification. He said just don’t drink too much.
I took the medication and I refilled the prescription and I continued taking it. Then the doctor’s office called and wanted to send me for more blood work.
At this point I was following the alcoholic advice of James Thurber, the late American writer, “One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.” I was substituting a glass of whiskey for the martini. I was still drinking just a much as I had before starting Rosuvastatin.
The second round of blood tests revealed my LDL-C was 2.27 mmol/L after three months of using the medication. It was now within the normal range, but my doctor felt it should be lower. My A1c crept up to 5.6%, still within the normal range.
About 11 months passed between my second blood test and my third. The results of my third blood test raised alarm bells. My LDL-C had increased to 3.34 mmol/L. It was now out of the normal range. My Alc increased to 5.7%, still within a normal range, but high enough my doctor referred me to the healthy eating page of the Diabetes Canada website.
At the time of my third blood test, I had received an electrocardiogram (ECG). My doctor had said that the results weren’t abnormal per se, but were possibly abnormal for someone in my age group — I’m in my mid-thirties.
I was referred to a cardiologist where I received an ultrasound of my heart, and endured a stress test ECG, which neither, thankfully, revealed any abnormalities. But my cardiologist quadrupled my prescription from 5mg to 20mg of Rosuvastatin. He said to me, “We gotta bring down that cholesterol.”
My mum, after hearing about my lab results, gifted me a copy of Dr. Jason Fung’s The Diabetes Code. I read Dr. Fung’s book, modified my diet, and started intermittent fasting (the 16:8 diet).
It’s also been six months since my last drink. I quit alcohol after receiving the results of my third blood test.
I smoked my first cigarette when I was in high school. And I smoked on and off throughout my teens into my early-twenties. But it wasn’t until my mid-twenties when I peaked — two packs a day of Rooftop Red cigarettes (the Canadian equivalent to Marlboro Red). I continued to smoke on and off into my early-thirties.
There is no mystery surrounding cigarette use. Smoking is harmful to your health. On June 13, 2019, on the day of my 32nd birthday and the day of my convocation ceremony to celebrate receiving my undergraduate degree, I smoked my last cigarette.
I was stigmatized for smoking. My close friends and family voiced there disapprovals. I was asked: When will I quit? Why don’t you quit? Why’d you start in the first place? The people I’d meet often didn’t approve of my smoking.
The opposite was true of my drinking. I never got the sense that anyone wanted me to quit outright, expect for a few of oddball, religious girls I met in university. There were often times when I took things too far and got too intoxicated. But no one was intervening and dragging me off to AA. There was a socially acceptable continuum for the consumption of alcohol: more than zero and less than blackout. So long as I was on the continuum, no one said boo about my drinking.
Alcohol is closely tied to our social lives, says Lauren Bird, a journalist in a CBC YouTube video on Canada’s new guidelines on alcohol and health.
Alcohol is social punctuation. “[It’s] a marker between the ordinary and the extraordinary,” says Christina Romualdo, a producer with CBC. When the workday is over, we have a drink. When the weekend is here, we have a drink. When there is a special event, we have a drink. When we celebrate, we have a drink. We celebrate having a drink by having another drink. We use the consumption of alcohol to distinguish the highlights of our lives.
Unlike abstaining from cigarettes or other substances, “If you don’t use alcohol it’s almost as if you need to come up with reasoning to explain yourself,” says Catherine Paradis, an alcohol researcher interviewed for the CBC YouTube video.
The social consumption of alcohol is commonplace. No one asks why I’m not going outside for a cigarette. But I get asked, not always but often enough — why aren’t you having a drink?
After declining to have a drink, sometimes I feel that my decision to not consume alcohol is somehow interpreted as a moral criticism of someone’s choice to have a drink. “The burden of the explanation falls on the one who is not drinking,” says Paradis. It’s like I have to reassure someone of their choice by sharing a brief, personal history with alcohol and its impact on my own health.
It’s been six months since my last drink. I do not know if I will remain abstemious. Nor do I know if my decision to quit will single-handedly improve the results of future blood tests. I do know that cutting alcohol from my life will improve my health.
