Transatlantic Musings  How to Write About Alcohol

I am successful. I am a woman. I am widowed. I have raised two sons and a daughter, founded a literary agency, worked as a fundraiser, and written three novels. You can put me on a stage, and I’ll serve homemade cantuccini and tomato chutney. You’ll never catch me in an unpresentable state. The version of myself that I allow others to see is a mixture of Mrs. Incredible and Artemis. 

But I am also the woman who quietly, or not so quietly, drank for years to adhere to that image.

My children know a different version of their mother than my former partners who spent time with or conceived a child with me. People have their own versions of others. And in order to hold on to the versions we have constructed of each other, we assign theses, speculations, and attributes to the versions that help us understand how our counterpart can do without meat, without a balcony, without a Keurig, why she chose this party and not that one, has no partner, hides her hair under a hat, or even how she maintains control of her life so much better than others. 

And so, when I went to a rehabilitation clinic for three months in 2021, I was met with incredulity. Because I don’t correspond to my milieu’s version of an alcoholic. 

In her brilliant essay “Enjoli,” Kristi Coulter uses a slogan from a 1970s perfume advertisement (“Enjoli — the eight-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman”) to show the tremendous effort it takes for a woman to live up to the version of herself that she believes she must conform to. The image of the power woman floating through the commercial — with perfectly blow-dried hair, cooking bacon on the stove, and making erotic promises to her husband — may have been replaced, but the idea of a certain version that women must fulfill has endured. As has the shame of failing to conform to that version: not being enough, not being able to do enough, not getting enough. Not enough recognition, not enough appreciation. Not pretty enough, not successful enough, not good enough as a mother, not confident enough, not assertive enough. But instead of considering how to switch off the voice that contributes to this feeling of inadequacy, we switch off ourselves. And numb the shame. Shame and alcohol are a dream team. 

In Greek mythology, the gods give Pandora a box on the condition that she doesn’t open it. The consequence is well known: A woman, Pandora, opens the box, releasing its contents. And subsequently, she has every reason to feel ashamed. But instead of examining the misery that has escaped, we opt to lure it back into the box under some pretext or another and seal the opening with an effective stopper. That stopper is alcohol. 

What I have done is unplug the stopper, allowing what lies behind it to come to light. In doing so, the version that others have of me might gain new attributes — those of an alcoholic. But I also free myself from others. I drink to not feel something, to not be something, or to not see something. Conversely, not drinking anymore means that I feel and see what is there. I live with the person I have uncovered. I allow Mrs. Incredible and Artemis to assume their place on the pedestal and reassess the limits of what I allow myself to feel, think, achieve, and be. 

Christine Koschmieder and Her Story

09/2023