Confessions of a Non Alcoholic

‘They’re free because we’re on the guest list.’

‘All 16. Oh yeh I bate it. Wait. Bit, I bit it. I bite, I bit. My lip.’

With my nail. With my nail? Ow that nail sure is BROKEN now. Oh. My nail is really to the bone broken. Ow. Why is my lip bleeding.

These, are my last coherent thoughts. My last memories, are: queuing; being inside (did I pay myself in?); and leaning really very intentionally close against my non-single housemate. Who I don’t fancy. And THEN… I woke up.

Of course, I didn’t just wake up. This isn’t primary school story-writing and I wasn’t having a bad dream. I was having a bad night – a ruinous, got kicked out of Inferno’s, in bed by one after trying to escape from Macca’s (how many nuggets does it take to neutralise 4 double measure?), exposed the schoolgirl crush I’ve kept secret for months, and wasted my birthday outfit, night.

I’ve been planning my 27th birthday night out for about a month. I bought three outfits, had my legs waxed and applied fake tan. I made a playlist, bought some olives and tidied my house for the pre-drinks.

I’ve been planning not to get drunk for my 27th birthday night out for about three months, since the last time I made a drunken fool of myself and consequently pushed away all my loved ones that extra irreparable inch. That time culminated in me running away from my mum on New Year’s Eve at our neighbours’ annual party, diving&sliding under the dining table and hugging my friend’s dad’s legs.

I’ve been planning on not getting so drunk I become crazy/ emotional/ angry/ dysfunctional/ disorderly/ teary/ vommy/ unconscious/ uncontrollable/ borderline schizophrenic (yes I’ve checked all these boxes) for years. When I was younger the morning after would be hilarious, all the ‘crazy’ things we’d done the night before! Now I wake up to a pit of shame harbouring in my gut.

One morning, aged 17, I woke up half naked covered in sand with a text from my friend saying: ‘don’t worry he still likes you.’

The alleged events with which she filled my blanks included kissing her and peeing in the sea. He carried me into my parents’ house (‘hi, I’m Aaron’) at 9.30pm.

That morning I had all the dread. I effing hate myself. And I’m not even a swearer. Mortified did not cover it. I well and truly learnt my lesson.

But somehow, here we are with nothing but evidence to the contrary.

Ripping Danny’s shirt open in Inferno’s, scattering buttons and integrity, pales in comparison to my worst moments. Telling him I fancy him from my favourite resting spot under the kitchen table (legs akimbo, natch) can be brushed off as drunken jesting.

“I’m the girl you see sitting on the platform with her head in her hands at Sunday noon.”

At least there were no floor prints on my white pillowcase skirt, where I’d hung out with Nameless in the piste-side skidoo shed. At least I wasn’t lost in the woods in my (underage) haste to escape the police. At least I didn’t have to shower chunks of my own vomit out of my hair, didn’t tear my muscle attempting the splits, lose my bagshoespursecardigancoat keysphonecameramakeup, wake up naked on the floor, wake up fully dressed on the floor, smoke, consume my weight in garlic sauce, pull a stranger, pull a friend, or shout at a loved one or several.

At least I hadn’t felt obliged to yell that JE NE PREND PAS LES DROGUES, STEVE just because I’d passed out in the loos, he’d kicked the door open, and arranged for me to be dragged (literally) up a mountain to my bed.

At least I hadn’t boarded a number 12 at Oxford Circus going south and woken up on a 148 going west at Holland Park an undefined amount of time later (TFL their routes, friends, and then riddle me that.)

I refrained from taking my dress off in the street. I didn’t find myself inexplicably in a car park and decide to climb into a stranger’s car. I didn’t get taken home by the police. I didn’t fall down a staircase on pimps&hoes night and wake up with fishnet imprinted into my thigh and a vertical gouge down my forehead. There was not an all-out temper tantrum when the music stopped.

I’ve outwitted the guy who followed me off the bus in a quiet suburb of Hamburg at 5am on a pitch black January morning; I’ve booked a tattoo appointment in a holiday resort, to be greeted with a page of my most secret thoughts and doodlings when I went to complain and ask for my deposit back the next day. That same holiday I lost a flip-flop in the harbour and attempted to jump the 10ft drop to reclaim it, then found a different pair of my shoes at a phone box I’d visited 24 hours earlier when I’d lost all belongings, friends and senses.

I once hot-footed it from my brother in a hotel lobby as the transfer coach pulled up, because I’m afraid of planes and I’d rather marry a holiday rep and waitress in an end-of-the-earth fishing village for the rest of my life anyway.

No, this is by no means the complete greatest hits. The point here is, I remember not one second of any of the above.

I’m the girl you see sitting on the platform with her head in her hands at Sunday noon. No she’s not about to vom, she’s dying of shame. She can’t handle her drink and you’re so glad you’re nothing like her anymore. I’m the girl who should know better. And trust me, I do. For me The Hangover wasn’t a funny film but a story with a serious moral.

Because I’m also the girl who still has a great time when she’s sober. I’ve actually had countless perfectly well-behaved good-drunk Big Nights Out. I’m smart, healthy, blessed with great friends and a perfectly nice life. For these reasons I can’t bear to apologise when I’ve been in a state, because it sounds like I’m fishing for reassurance I don’t deserve. (Hey, it’s OK to get smashed on xyour own birthday, babes!) I claim these nights strike without rhyme or reason, but they only mystery really is why some nights I knowingly go overboard and others I’m a totally normal drinker.

One friend asked are you stressed with anything you might not realise? It’s easy to go crazy to release what your mind is going through without you even knowing it, she said. (Yes, I live with a psycho-analyst, she said.)

This is a nice theory. But even if it were true it wouldn’t change what I’m doing to my body, my reputation, my friendships, my sanity.

Getting like this isn’t OK, only I don’t know how to fix it. In the meantime, here’s to dry May. Tesco do a great half price Prosecco…