I’ve always been an all or nothing sort of drinker. It would either be a night ending with my dad giving me a fireman’s lift home aged sixteen, after I’d taken full advantage of the free bar at a work party, or else I wouldn’t have a drop of booze for three to four months whilst remaining a social recluse in my bedroom.
Drinking, for me, was simply a massive confidence boost, which is exactly the kind of help I needed when confronted with the sorts of social drinking situations that would literally cripple me with fear.
Alcohol was like stomaching a liquidised new identity for the night, only to deal with the consequences in the morning once I was reminded about the girl I’d punched, the guy I’d snogged or the table I’d vomited onto.
As my hangovers progressively became worse over time (a day’s worth of hangover for each bottle of wine I’d drunk) so too had the disdain I felt for myself each morning when I would be left to pick up the pieces from the unholy mess I’d caused the night before.
Aside from inducing self-loathing and fraying too many of my relationships, binging on alcohol proved to be a trigger for my disordered eating. I’d be eating happily and feeling incredible for weeks only to epically fuck it all up with just one night of drinking, sending me tumbling back again ten steps into a hole of anxiety. I’d binge and purge, re-gain weight, bury my head in syrup-laden carbs and be in a bad mood generally for the duration of my hangover.
According to the National Eating Disorder Association, “research suggests that nearly 50% of individuals with an eating disorder are also abusing drugs and/or alcohol, a rate 5 times greater than what is seen in the general population.”
I asked dietician Ursula Philpot, who specialises in eating disorders, about the issues alcohol can bring to those with a history of troubled eating.
She says: “If you’re in a place where you are able to admit that alcohol plays a part in your disordered behaviour, then I would suggest stopping it to begin with or keeping away from it as much as possible and then finding a way to reintroduce it perhaps in a way that’s safer than you used it before.
“I don’t want people to cut out food groups or normal social food and drinks long term, but I think in the short term some people do have to avoid trigger foods, trigger drinks, until they learn some skills and strategies to manage those in a better way.”
And so, upon the advice of Ursula, I stopped drinking for the short term, reintroducing only a couple of glasses of wine a couple of times over dinner with a friend over the past four months. Although I haven’t set myself a deadline to jump back on the bandwagon completely, I’m currently in no rush to get my lips around the neck of a Corona and then subsequently some guy in a band any time soon. I’d rather skip a few mediocre nights out than be sent spiralling further into oblivion as the trophies to my goals quickly slip through my sodden fingers.
If you feel like you might have a problem with drinking, this NHS article might prove helpful.