New research confirms professional women are now drinking more than ever. CATHERINE FRASER meets two high-functioning alcoholics, with demanding careers, who hit rock bottom – and bounced back …
The campaign for equality of the sexes is fought nowhere more viciously than in the workplace. But keeping up with men is being cited as one of the reasons executive-level women are more likely to drink dangerously than those who haven’t graduated from third level education. From celebratory cocktails with colleagues to boozy dinners with clients, in many professions drinking is part of the job. What happens, though, when it suddenly begins to threaten your career?
“I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out of love.” So begins Caroline Knapp’s searing memoir, Drinking: A Love Story. This Ivy League-educated daughter of a Massachusetts psychoanalyst wrote her autobiography 20 years ago but its visceral honesty about the despair and agony alcohol wrought in her life is still fresh and relevant today.
While the myth of the alcoholic as the lonely hobo clutching his paper bag like a drowning man is long gone, the subject of alcoholism among our professional classes, and specifically high-flying women, is still as clouded as a chilled glass of Pouilly-Fumé. The reasons why we drink, and why some drink to excess, to ruination and even death, are various and mundane and complex. Knapp wrote: “I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often.”
Christina Reihill was a journalist in London in the 1980s, working for Condé Nast. Booze had become a problem in her life and she recalls how “lunches poured into dinners and I drove, drunk, up and down the country in my job. I’d arrive late at my desk, recovering from hangovers, strange bruises and wince-inducing memories of the night before”. By the end of her drinking career she was living on three hours’ sleep, working as a post girl dropping leaflets in strange parts of London. She came back to Dublin, got sober, trained as a psychotherapist, and created an award-winning arthouse – www.soul-burgers.com – from the chaos and suffering she endured in her addiction. Still, she says, “some days I never think of a drink … but other times I can find myself gripped with an animal desire for its promise of oblivion”.
For Jane, a dynamic accountant in her early sixties, who managed to scale the career ladder while drinking to excess, it took a long time for the penny to drop. “I loved white wine and I had lots of friends who used to drink me under the table. While I didn’t drink a lot during my working week, I certainly partied hard at the weekends. I married at the age of 22 and I had four children by the time I was 30. I continued working but unfortunately my marriage wasn’t the best. In my early 30s I realised it was crumbling; in retrospect, I needed the glass of wine in the evening to deal with whatever problems I had.”
Eight years sober now, Jane is acutely aware of what the next drink holds. “When I look at a bottle of alcohol I see poison. I run the tape – yes, you have that glorious glass of wine, next thing you’re on your knees vomiting and you’ve got the jitters, and these are probably the least of your problems.”
Yvonne, a successful Dublin-based businesswoman who recently celebrated her 50th birthday, hasn’t had a drink in decades. “I got sober when I was 30. I had just had my first child when I became aware that my drinking was out of control. Even though I hadn’t crashed cars or ended up in jail, I was psychologically disturbed with the way my life was turning out, and I was frightened about the type of mother I would become.”
She had started drinking at 17. “It crept up on me. Over the years I became engulfed in it. I found myself drinking more than everyone else, staying out later than other people. If my friends went home I’d keep going, find someone else. I’d end up coming home at eight or nine in the morning. My drinking got worse and worse, slowly. I was about 23 when I knew I had a problem and a voice would whisper into my ear – watch your drinking. I didn’t address it, I didn’t want to, I wasn’t finished.”
In Alcoholics Anonymous they talk about a rock bottom. Jane says, “I ended up on many occasions thinking this was my rock bottom and in fact I continued drinking … it’s a disease that constantly tells you you don’t have it.” Alcoholics will often testify to the moment where something clicks in their brain and they say this is the end. Jane recalls the moment she knew the game was up: “In late 2004 my mother died. On Christmas morning we always had champagne when we were opening our presents and that was the first time I realised that I was genuinely using alcohol to cope. And from 2004 to 2007 my alcoholic drinking basically took off. When I say alcoholic drinking, I mean using it purely to get away from my problems. Yes it was still social drinking, I was still functioning at home and at work, but I needed alcohol to cope.”
While these moments of clarity are as welcome as they are crucial, the next step is equally important. For Yvonne, living abroad at the time, it was particularly difficult. “I had to address the situation on my own. I had a partner but I didn’t have any family around me.” Yvonne wasn’t just isolated; she had no references for the disease. “There were no alcoholics in the family so I must have been aware subliminally of AA but you’re very desperate when you make that phone call. You’re doing it in a serious way: you really want help.”
Today AA is a worldwide phenomenon which describes itself as “an international fellowship of men and women who have had a drinking problem”. Membership is open to anyone who wants to do something about his or her drinking problem. AA will celebrate Bill Wilson’s 1950 visit to Ireland and 50 years of the Monkstown meetings on October 12 at 8pm in Dun Laoghaire Town Hall. Guest speakers will share their personal testimony and all are welcome to this open AA meeting.
Interestingly, Monkstown schedules the highest number of weekly meetings in Europe; about 24 per week – three or four a day – are run at the crypt at the rear of Monkstown Parish Church. Manifestly, even in one of the most privileged locales in the country, populated by a large swathe of professionals, there’s a need to facilitate people who work.
Even though it was over two decades ago, Yvonne recalls her first AA meeting with poignant immediacy. “I had no idea what I was going to encounter. It was a jaded living room with comfy old sofas, lamps and a coffee station. What you really want coming off the booze is a drink, but I took the coffee and sat down. It wasn’t very glam but it was unintimidating. It’s there to help you get sober and for no other reason – and the chat and the energy are what decorates it. I haven’t had a drink from that day to this. They say to attend 90 meetings in 90 days and I did.”
For Jane, as for so many, admitting she was an alcoholic was the first step. “I realised I had a major problem. I could not stop drinking.” She went into rehab in 2007. “It was pretty horrendous and I came out absolutely petrified of drinking and that lasted for about three years. You’re sober but you haven’t got sobriety – sobriety is when you’re content not to drink and when you do finally get it your whole person changes. The only thing I can say to anyone out there who thinks they have a problem is, the sober person is far, far superior to the drunk person you were. You don’t realise how much it permeates your life: it’s toxic in every way – in your family, your work, in your everyday dealings with people. Your mind is in turmoil.”
She speaks evangelically about the power of AA. “It allows you to live a good life; your way of thinking changes, you accept life on life’s terms.” She still regularly goes to meetings and meets professional women just like her: “We all have the very same problem, it’s universal, it’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about.” Though Jane needed rehab to stop her drinking, she credits AA with her recovery.
On a practical level, Yvonne got sober, got a sponsor and worked the 12-Step Programme. After a few years she returned to Ireland and started up her own business – “it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been drunk” – and had another child. She said one thing was crucial for her recovery: “The most important thing I recommend is put your sobriety first in your life – not your children, not your husband, not your job. If you want to get sober it has to be the number one thing in your life for a period of time. Don’t say I can’t do a meeting – I’ve got the soccer run or shopping – or you are never, ever going to get sober.”
For many who struggle with the concept of a life without drink, the idea of facing its challenges stone cold sober must seem impossible. Yvonne is wry on the subject. “Life goes on whether I drink or don’t drink. I had breast cancer, had a mastectomy, lost my business, started a new business, I’ve been separated – certainly I had my fair share of crises. When I was first diagnosed with cancer I was absolutely shocked and devastated but it never ever crossed my mind to drink, because drink was not going to help me.”
Ultimately these women’s stories offer a beacon of hope. As Jane observes, “a lot of people who develop alcoholism are very competent people. For me, the world was always something to conquer, I could do anything, I was superwoman – but the price I paid for that was my alcoholism. The great thing is though, I’ve become superwoman again, without the drink.”
Some names have been changed. For more information, help and support on dealing with alcoholism, see www.alcoholicsanonymous.ie.
Catherine Fraser
This article appeared in our October issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our November issue, out Thursday November 5.
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