High Sobriety by Jill Stark Page B

had to do to get free alcohol was renounce drinking?
    He returns ten minutes later, taking the untouched vodka shot with him. ‘Well done — you’ve passed the challenge.’
    I didn’t realise I was being tested.
    It’s the first of many occasions where my decision not to drink is taken as an open invitation to try to knock me off the wagon. I’d like to think that my personality hasn’t been muted because I’m not drinking booze, and that I can still crack a joke and hold up my end of a conversation, but some people are intent on proving me wrong. ‘When can you drink again?’ they ask with panicked voices, as if my life is on hold and any endearing character traits have abandoned me.
    Sometimes I wonder if people would be more relaxed if I were holding a beer bottle. Even if it were filled with water, I suspect that the illusion would be enough to ease their tension. I’m starting to realise that even if I don’t need alcohol to enjoy social situations, sometimes it makes other people more comfortable if I act as if I do.
    Melbourne radio host Derryn Hinch — a former heavy drinker who gave up alcohol for health reasons — says that non-drinkers in Australia are marginalised and ridiculed. ‘I’ve had friends who’ve gone to pubs, and I’ll say, “I’ll have a lemon squash.” They’ll say, “Why? You’re a girl!” A female says, “I’m not drinking.” “Are you pregnant? Is there something we should know about?” The non-drinkers are [treated like] criminals,’ he told a conference on alcohol-related brain injuries in 2008. In my second month of sobriety, the truth of that is bearing down on me with great force. Like non-smokers at an office party in the 1970s, teetotallers are the new social pariahs. Being sober in a nation where 80 per cent of people over the age of 14 are drinkers feels like being part of an underground counterculture you’re not sure you asked to join. That historical fear of the wowser is so engrained that I can only imagine how tedious it must be for people who never drink to have to face this level of pressure and mistrust on a regular basis. It’s tiring to constantly explain why you’re not drinking, in a culture that does little to embrace a booze-free lifestyle and much to encourage the opposite.
    So I decide to ask one of the only non-drinkers I know how he copes with a life of permanent sobriety. Nick is my friend Bridget’s husband. He grew up in Canberra, where the two met in high school. Being around him is easy; he’s a natural conversationalist who will always make you think and often make you laugh. He’s a full-time entertainer, performing stand-up comedy, magic, and conman tricks for corporate clients and pub crowds. I’ve never asked why he doesn’t drink, but I’ve always wondered. Today, over lunch in a Northcote cafe, he tells me. ‘I started drinking when I was about 17, the usual house parties where everyone goes along and drinks too much. There’s a history of alcoholism in my family, and I have a really addictive personality, so I would come home from school and have a beer by myself. All day I’d be like, I’ve got to get home and have a beer; I’ve got to get home and have a beer. I didn’t really notice it was a problem until I was about 18 and my girlfriend died in a car accident, and that knocked me about a bit, so I started binge drinking. I’d get paralytically drunk all the time. I’d drink every day. Then I just realised I can’t be a person who drinks.’
    Eighteen months after having his first drink, he stopped. Not one drop of alcohol has passed his lips since. A self-confessed control freak, he won’t even nibble a rum ball at Christmas or eat food that’s been flambéed. The pressure to drink, he says, is enormous and unrelenting. But it hasn’t come