Darren Levin: The pandemic has made me lose the will to drink
Unlike just about everybody else in this country right now, there’s actually nothing I want less than a stiff drink. Which is as weird as it sounds, writes Darren Levin.
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I never understood the concept of fundraising someone’s sobriety.
If I’m going to swing some bucks over to your nominated charity you’ve got to do something more impressive than drink soda water with twist of lime at the pub for four weeks. It’s not like running an ultra marathon or Lycra-ing up for a really long bike ride. In fact, I’d put it just slightly above growing a moustache and reading a book as the least impressive fundraising thing you could do.
It’s why I’d be too embarrassed to do something like febfast or Dry July. But I think I may’ve just accidentally stumbled on my own sobriety challenge. For the past four weeks I’ve been doing QuarantClean.
Now before you ask for my PayPal details, there’s nothing benevolent or heroic about my decision to temporarily pause drinking. It wasn’t precipitated by a rock bottom moment like skinny-dipping at a 21st (2001), walking through a plate-glass window (2006), jumping into a freezing cold pool after a school reunion (2008), vomiting in a taxi (2010, 2013, 2016), or smashing a friend’s entire crockery collection while listening to Zorba The Greek (2008). These aren’t specific examples, Mum. I’m talking, generally here.
In the pre-Pandemic era I’d describe myself as a weekend binger. I’d smash five negronis before you had time to order your second shandy. But I have a take-it-or-leave-it relationship with alcohol that’s best expressed by the shrug emoji. I don’t drink a glass of red with dinner. I hardly ever drink around the kids.
Drinking has always been a social pastime for me. It’s opened professional doors, facilitated lifelong friendships, and helped me endure a John Butler Trio concert in the late-1990s. For the past few years it’s been my way of blowing off some steam after a hectic week. In the words of the late, great David Berman, “I’ve got a Friday night fever, sometimes a man just needs a breather”; except my breather would usually wind up with me eating a halal snack pack on the complete wrong end of town at 3am.
When the pandemic hit, I lost the will to drink. That puts me at odds with the majority of Australians who’ve been smashing beers like Bob Hawke at the Boxing Day Test. Forget toilet paper, ventolin inhalers, hydroxychloroquine, and cake mix. Aussies started panic buying booze long before you could get fined for going for a long drive or eating a kebab on the street. According to Commonwealth Bank data, sales at bottle-ohs were up 86 per cent on what they were the previous year. That probably had something to do with your favourite local pivoting to selling chicken parma take-home packs, but in the week to March 27, alcohol sales had reportedly spiked by 34 per cent.
The triple threat of health, employment and social isolation anxiety has built to soul-crushing crescendo, and I’m certainly not going to judge a single person for hitting the bottle harder than they did in 2019BC (Before COVID).
But like Scott Morrison’s attempts to put the economy into a deep freeze, I too have decided to place my boozing into hibernation. There’s absolutely nothing appealing about getting blind in a house full of children, and I’m concerned about the spiralling effect of using alcohol as a coping mechanism.
It’s why I won’t be boozing until such time as drinks aren’t confined to a Zoom window where my friends talk over each other awkwardly until someone – and there’s always someone – ruins everything by activating an animal filter. There’s no place for social drinking in a time of social distancing, but when all of this is over, the next round’s on me.
Darren Levin is a columnist for RendezView.com.au
Originally published as Darren Levin: The pandemic has made me lose the will to drink