I cannot stop humming Hozier’s rendition of this Irish drinking song. The first time I heard it, I was rendered speechless which is ironic because I have been sober (from whiskey) for over six years. Whiskey was my closest friend and also my nemesis. But I started abusing it after I returned to academia back in 2015. But the abuse wasn’t like a light switch, one day I am completely sober the next I cannot go past 5pm without a drink. It was sneaky, gradually creeping up on me till I found myself googling, “Do I have a drinking problem?”.
Turns out if you feel the need to justify your drinking by a google search… you probably have a drinking problem. Hate to say it, but there is also no judgement in the above statement. I’ve been there and done that, and due to my experiences, I am not a judgemental soul. Turns out, abusing substantives is not uncommon in academia. Once I returned to the ivory tower, I learned that a colleague had passed away unexpectedly. After a frank conversation with a friend, I learned that they were also abusing alcohol and taking sleeping pills, and one morning they just never woke back up.
Isolation and academia will do that to you. Also, whiskey. In the greatest twist of irony if you drink enough, you can pass out. But unsurprisingly, drunk sleep is not as restorative as sober sleep. I myself also dabbled in sleeping aids during the height of my drinking. Which is so outside my normal behavior that I can’t even believe that I wrote that sentence. But my memory of being drunk and taking some Benadryl will never go away. By the time my drinking got to that state, I was in my first year of my Masters. I had left my home country behind (also my now ex-husband). I was all alone in a prestigious university studying Islamic Studies, a field that was near and dear to my heart.
That loneliness paired with academic pressure made whiskey a perfect soulmate. It was always available, never gaslit me, and was easy to hide. It was perfect until it wasn’t. It was perfect until I couldn’t wait to start drinking, it was perfect until I started hiding it from my friend with benefits. It was perfect until my face started to swell and I started to smell bad. Alcohol makes you stink. I cannot remember if I smell bad or not, but when you’re drinking two to three beers and then enough whisky to pass out, you’re gonna stink.
Thankfully the second year of my Masters I decided to give sobriety a try. Coincidentally this was also the year my marriage ended. I feel like the catalyst for seeing the potential for sobriety only occurred when I was able to mail in my signed copy of my divorce documents. But that will be a story for another time.
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