A Glass of Wine

I was once consulting a therapist about a personal conflict to which I saw no solution.

“Let’s look at it this way,” said the therapist. “If you had a friend who came to you with the same issue, what would you say to her?”

Photo by Thomas Martinsen

I tried to picture this newly-acquired imaginary friend, about whom I knew nothing but that she was facing the same situation that I was. If I didn’t have an answer for myself, I thought, I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t have one for her. But maybe, I then thought, if she and I could sit together some sunny afternoon and discuss it over a relaxing glass of crisp white wine, then we could examine the problem together, and maybe each help the other to understand it; and even if we didn’t figure out the answer, well, at least we would have a companion to hang out and swap war stories with. In fact, I then thought, with a surge of misty affection for my newfound hypothetical buddy, it might be quite pleasant.

“I’d say, let’s have a drink,” I said.

My therapist’s jaw hit the carpet in horror. Where I had planned for my new friend and myself a companionable afternoon at a winery, some rueful laughs and maybe a cheese plate, she was seeing the two of us slumped glumly side by side on a park bench, silently necking separate bottles of rotgut tequila until we slid separately to the ground in blessed alcohol-induced oblivion. I received a stern lecture on the desirability of addressing one’s problems head-on instead of masking them with mind-altering substances, along with heavy – and I have been assured by those who would know, unnecessary – hints about Alcoholics Anonymous. She was, in fact, an excellent therapist, who in the end did help me with this and many other problems, and for whom I have no feelings whatsoever but of the warmest. But from then until we parted ways – affectionately, and only because she was moving out of state – she was regarding me at times with an eye which I can only call beady.

Call me a wine-soaked London journalist, but even after all my years in Los Angeles, I still do not quite understand the intensity of the American reaction to alcohol. I know people in both America and Britain who drink more than they should; I know people in both places who drink responsibly; I know people who, for personal preference or because they are alcoholics In recovery, do not drink at all. With the exception of my admiration for the recovering alcoholics and a different emotion towards one or two at the extreme other end of the scale, it really doesn’t affect my opinion of them one way or the other. But for many Americans, it seems, the idea of actively enjoying a glass of something alcoholic means one thing and one thing only: the mark of shame, and the slippery road to ruin.

For full disclosure, I grew up around alcohol. My parents both drank, responsibly and with great enjoyment, and, although my family was very far from perfect, their drinking never seemed to do harm either to them or to their children. I myself started drinking when I was in the Sixth Form at school, when a group of us found it hilariously scandalous to pool money together to buy an illicit two bottles of under-age cider at the off-license at lunchtime.

“How ould are yiz?” would growl the counter assistant, a gloomy youth from county Kerry, who was anyway the cousin of one of us and could easily have checked with his aunt had he been so minded.

“Eighteen,” we would reply confidently.

His eyes would narrow.

“What year were yiz born?” he would ask.

St. Angela’s was not known as a beacon of mathematics teaching. We would retire into a huddle at the shop door, brows furrowed, fingers consulted.

“1951?” we’d at last suggest.

“Yiz mean 1950,” he’d bark, slamming down the bottles on the counter. “That’ll be three and tuppence.”

I have been drinking alcohol with friends ever since then, and – given that I am lucky enough not to be physically addicted and my medical check-ups are not sounding any alarm – have never seen any particular reason to quit. In Britain, certainly when I lived there, drinking was as much a social activity as an alcoholic one; I once read a book that suggested – I would venture far from unreasonably – that for your average buttoned-up Brit, buying a friend a drink is the closest they can come to expressing open affection for them, and there is still a subtle but disarmingly tender subtext to the venerable British expression, “I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” doesn’t mean, “Let’s get roaring drunk together.” It means, “Sit down at this quiet table in the corner of the pub and I’ll go and stand at the bar and come back with something nice for you.” It means, “Relax and let me take care of you for half an hour.” It means, “I’m on your side.”

If there is a similar shade of meaning in America, I am unaware of it; and it cannot but be significant to the gap between the two cultures that Alcoholics Anonymous – bastion, not only of teetotalism, but of, heaven forfend, soul-baring – was founded, not in Britain, but in these United States.

Some of the nearest and dearest Americans in my life are members of AA, and I have nothing but admiration for them and for the part that AA plays in their continuing sobriety. I have myself attended several AA meetings to support friends, and, depending on which meeting you go to, they can be either spine-shiveringly inspirational – how did that person who had lost their job, their family, and their home, and was lying bruised and broke and drunk in the gutter after one million, thirteen thousand and three drinks, somehow find the wherewithal to reach for help before the one million, thirteen thousand and fourth? – or jaw-grindingly irritating. (Memo to some of the more fervent in recovery: there are in this wide and weary world just one or two personal challenges that the rest of us must face that are other than that of giving up alcohol; not many, clearly, but one or two).

Of course there are Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Britain, and I have no doubt that many people are helped by them; but the truth also remains that, while some Americans are made nervous by the consumption of alcohol, there is just as sizeable a contingent of Brits who are unnerved by the notion of unrelieved sobriety.

“I don’t mind people giving up drink if they have a real problem,” a dear English friend once remarked thoughtfully. “It’s the people who don’t need to give up but do anyway who bother me.” You have to wonder what particular challenge it was that unnecessary teetotalism posed to either my friend’s personal safety or private peace of mind; but whatever it was, she felt it.

Maybe this attitude is changing in England … but then again, maybe not. I was recently staying with friends in the rolling English countryside, whose 13-year-old daughter told me a story involving a tea party where one of her friends’ parents were late to pick her up because, said Maisie airily, they had been at an AA meeting. Now, this was interesting, I thought, that both Maisie’s friend and Maisie’s friend’s parents felt able to be so open about what had for so long been in Britain so intensely private a piece of information, an observation which I glancingly repeated later to Maisie’s own parents.

Maisie’s parents were intrigued by this: they knew nothing of anyone in their impeccably curated circle’s having joined any such outré organization, and Maisie was summoned to their presence for an oh, so casual chat about it.

“Which of your friends was it,” they said, “whose parents were late to pick her up from the party?”

Maisie, who is not an obtuse young woman, glared at her parents suspiciously.

“Why?” she asked.

“No reason,” said her parents. “We were just wondering which one it was.”

Maisie set her jaw.

“I can’t remember,” she said.

“Are you sure?” said her parents. “It was only last weekend, and it seems to have caused a bit of a fuss.”

Maisie flicked an accusing glance at my blabbermouth self.

“No, it didn’t,” she said. “And I still can’t remember who it was.”

“Well, it’s not a big deal,” said her parents. “But if you do happen to remember, just tell us, OK?”

Maisie had had enough.

“Why do you want to know?” she burst out. “You two aren’t even interested in cars. Why do you care which of my friends’ parents are?”

It turned out that Maisie’s friend’s parents had been to a rally at the Automobile Association.