Wine Country

I woke up from a hell ride, race car brain sleep. The kind where no rest is felt just a constant acceleration of torment and then a sudden slamming on the brakes as you’re being yanked around by a barely decipherable doom. Your skull feels like it’s hit the windshield a few times, your brain feels bruised as though the inside of your head is both desert dry and hemorrhaging at the same time. You squawk out loud some nonsense to your sleeping partner. “I am gonna be sick!”  You’re constantly bracing for impact from another curveball throbbing, miserable thought.  The rest of you lies limp, moving around would disturb your empty snake stomach and the nausea would start up.  Yup, you guessed it alright. I was hung over. I had in fact consumed alcohol the day before because why not? I was in wine country after all and it was the weekend and I had never been to Sonoma before. I had had… three glasses of wine the day before. Yes, thats not much and I agree that a greater amount of alcohol would have been more baller.

  A  radiant, green vineyard spread before me while a  soft white, winter sun illuminated the grape trees… grape plants?  I didn’t learn too much about wine that day. That’s not true. I smiled and listened while the young sommelier from New Orleans told me about how making wine takes a long time, but I can’t really remember the details. I only remember that she liked the community aspect to making wine and she kept saying that the wine was slightly “enhanced” when my boyfriend asked if it was natural. We ate purple flower salads and some flaxseed toast. It wasn’t enough food for me. I was getting woozy and the sun’s heat seemed to try to communicate to me that my ass was going to get absolutely smacked by the alcohol. 

The last couple years my relationship to drinking didn’t seem to change much from my perspective. I didn’t feel addicted or that I needed it and I didn’t think I needed a complete break. I would get what I perceived to be a chill wine buzz from two glasses of wine at dinner. This is the warm buzz I like where I get curious and chatty while maintaining a healthy vulnerability without telling people every depraved thing I’ve participated in.  I feel more generous and goofy with two wines and a bit of a mischief engine kicks in. Where can the boundaries of this conversation go? Will we solve everything that causes us pain? Will we laugh deeper together? In our stomachs so that we’re really connected? Will the wine make us beautiful? Surrendering into a tableau of gorgeous humans like you’re looking through the window of a Parisian restaurant long after closing and people are still smiling, beaming at each other, with half full wine glasses in front of them, talking away and dreaming together. I love that feeling like you’re alive but a part of the scenery.  I have felt these things. More beautiful with wine. More connected to my friends. Maybe I miss having it sometimes and the cinematic way it made me feel when done perfectly like I was romancing my own life, luring out my soul from sober shyness.

Alas, I turn 33 in a week and am 115 days alcohol-less. The center could not hold. Sonoma wrecked it for me. My moods were dark, my complexion dry and grey, and I was beginning to feel strangled by the effects of drinking plus I get sorta weirded out by places that are known for drinking or parties. Another example is Palm Springs, a place I have never had fun in and never want to go to again.  Something shifted the last couple years, which is a twee way of saying I have aged. My hangovers became obscene displays of indulgent suffering. Three days of feeling physically and mentally drained after a moderately fun night of a couple drinks began to seem like a not worthwhile exchange. I joked with friends that we had all become allergic to alcohol, but that is how I feel like my body just started rejecting it. 

The time I wasted nursing a hangover instead of playing on the playground with the other adults makes me sad. Now with some months behind me, my sober experience ranges from feeling bored out of my gourd to feeling like I have a profound new psychedelic experience of reality. I am still working on what my reset button is. But the main feeling is gratitude for being kinder to my mind and body. Alcohol cloaked things and forced time onto an incessant rollercoaster of fun and recovery, but the fun got blank this year. I have not changed or learned much yet. I don’t know if it’s forever, but I would highly recommend it if you are thinking about it.