Mrs D is Going Without

Lotta Dann

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781877505393
• eBook ISBN:
  9781925576320
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Lotta Dann was in trouble - her fun drinking habit had slowly morphed into an obsessive hunger for wine. One bottle a night was never quite enough. When she tried to cut down, she found it nearly impossible to have an alcohol-free day.

Everyone around could see her drinking, but no one realised what a serious problem it was. She was high-functioning, fun-loving Lotta, not some messy, hopeless drunk. Only Lotta knew how sick and twisted her thinking about wine had become.

Desperate and miserable, she was falling deeper and deeper into a boozy hellhole and running out of ideas about what she could do to stop it. What's a girl to do when her beloved wine becomes the enemy?

Here's what Lotta did. She stopped drinking and secretly started a blog that charted the highs and lows of learning to live without alcohol. Mrs D was anonymous, honest and, as Lotta would discover, surrounded by people who would help her on her journey, and whom she could help in return.

1

December 2007

Holy shit, we’re relocating! My husband Corin has landed a fabulous new job at TVNZ as the morning business presenter so we have to move to Auckland, where the studios are based. It’s crazy busy and I’m flat-out organising everything. I’ve got lists for Africa. We’ve got a tight timeframe and Corin is already frequently flying up to Auckland to learn the ropes, so he’s out of the picture. But that’s okay—I’m an organisational whiz!

I’m wrapping up our lives in Wellington with ruthless efficiency. Doctor and dentist notes are being gathered. Belongings are being sorted and packed. Affairs are being ordered. Beloved caregivers are being bought gifts and showered with praise. Barbecues are being held to farewell friends and family. Tears are shed, but not mine—I’m too busy nailing it! Everyone is most impressed with how well I’m organising everything. But it’s par for the course. I manage everything in my life extremely well. No one would expect anything less.

I’m drinking my way through the relocation, of course. Lots of red wine or chardonnay (anything but sauvignon)—a bottle a night, give or take. But hey, I never start before 5 p.m.(ish) and goodness knows I need it; I’m so busy and stressed. Anyway, it’s normal, nightly drinking, and everyone does it, don’t they? Five o’clock is wine o’clock, right? Okay, so I’m not sleeping a great deal, and kind of dealing with hangovers all the time, but so what? I’m a caring mother and a supportive wife, there’s no problem here.

The hangovers aren’t actually that bad, to be honest. At this stage in my life my body is a fine-tuned wine-processing machine. And so it should be by now, it’s been used as such for the past twenty-odd years.

I first got drunk on Marque Vue aged fifteen, sitting on a beach in Banks Peninsula with a friend. We scoffed marshmallows while glugging the sweet bubbly wine. I later vomited up those marshmallows, whole, into an empty bath. It’s one of the enduring memories of my youth—those undigested marshmallows, globs of pink and white spread across the bottom of the bath along with the rest of the contents of my stomach. Did that put me off booze? No way!

Nothing about the experience of that night, or any other days and nights that I drank through my teens, deterred me. Right from that first drunken night with the Marque Vue and the upchucked marshmallows, alcohol for me is like a fun challenge. It makes everything more interesting, more sparkly, more gnarly. Alcohol cranks up the dial, ups the ante, shifts the parameters of whatever is in front of me. I love it. I absolutely love it.

I love the fissure of excitement that passes around the room when alcohol is introduced. I love the anticipation of the fun and silliness to come. I love the dangerous taste of alcohol, the warmth of it as it slides down my throat, and the feeling as it spreads around my body; first in my belly, then snaking up my back and reaching into my head. I love the sensation of alcohol fizzing around my brain and sparking my nerve endings. I love how it loosens my thoughts, loosens my limbs and shifts my reality.

I’ve spent all of my years from the age of fifteen until now practising the fine art of getting pissed, navigating the boozed space in my mind, and having fun. I’ve drunk my way through journalism school and a career in TV news, travelling the world and lately settling down with Corin and having children. I’ve always managed to take a break from drinking for pregnancies and breastfeeding, but aside from those times drinking is an entrenched part of my lifestyle. It’s what I do; I’m a drinker! Alcohol makes me feel comfortable and confident and naughty and (best of all) fun. Life is all about chasing the fun.

And luckily for me, even though I regularly drink, always steadily and sometimes heavily, rarely do I have black-outs and seldom do complete disasters occur. I manage to dance just inside the line of respectability, succeeding at jobs and managing relationships.

So now here I am in my mid-30s, married with two boisterous young sons aged just two and three years old, working part-time as a TV news producer, studying (a post-graduate diploma extramurally) and drinking my merry way through life. I’m a high-functioning, habitual boozer yet I consider myself a normal, ordinary gal with a normal, ordinary attitude to wine. Five o’clock is wine o’clock and, of course, five o’clock happens every day.

For boozy housewives like me 5 p.m. is a magical, mystical, crucial time of the day. It’s the moment at which I open the bottle and escape the monotony. The kids’ incessant demands become more bearable. I feel a little bit glamorous, a little bit naughty. I feel like I’m still part of the grown-up gang.

I never in a million years consider myself an alcoholic—god no! I’m not one of those people, those smelly derelicts lying in the gutter or scratching through rubbish bins. I’m a lovely, suburban, middle-class housewife, thank you very much! I don’t hide vodka in a coffee mug in the morning; in fact, I rarely drink spirits at all. I don’t stockpile booze (I buy on the day what I will consume that night). I don’t get the shakes and need a drink to make them stop. I don’t black out and forget what happened. I don’t wet my pants or sleep in my clothes. I’m well within the respectable line of drinking.

I think.

Lately, though, I’ve had this annoying, nagging realisation growing inside of me that my wine-drinking is getting kinda full-on. I’m sort of annoyingly aware that I’m always buying it, that I’m always drinking it. I’m annoyingly more aware that my hangovers are getting worse, and that yet again I feel sick in my guts from having had too much wine the night before.

This annoying awareness, this nagging knowledge, is forcing me to try and exert some control over my intake. Just lately I’ve been trying to limit the nights I drink, have regular dry-days or long periods where I abstain completely. I’m starting to have to put some effort into controlling my intake, and it’s kind of annoying to note that it’s bloody hard. I don’t want to control my drinking. I love it! I love my nightly wines. I don’t want to question my habit or dwell on the negatives; it’s normal, I’m fun, I’m hardworking, I deserve it!

I try very hard not to dwell on the fact that I’m wobbly most nights. I try very hard not to dwell on the truth that my drinking habit is slowly but surely becoming quite serious. I try very hard not to admit the fact that I have a very determined, intense, obsessed and unhealthy dedication to wine . . . No, bugger that! No time for dwelling—onwards! I’ve got a relocation to organise. Corin’s career is on the up. ‘Get a bottle of red on the way home, would you, honey? Actually, make that two.’ Yee haa!

I feel like this move to Auckland is a good thing for our family at this point in time. Our boys haven’t started school yet and don’t really care about much outside of their train set and toy cars, and of course that’ll all move with us. Anyway, change is good. I embrace change. I’m easy-going, low-maintenance Lotta! Nothing really gets to me. I’m a cruiser, cruising my way to a new life in a new city. Let’s go!

2

Three years later

Corin’s been promoted! He’s now one of the lead anchors on Break fast. Every weekday he’s out the door at 4.20 a.m. heading for the TVNZ studios to go live on-air for three hours. It’s a very challenging and exhausting role but he loves it and we’re all so proud. The boys and I are used to him not being around in the mornings and we’re cool with that. I’ve got my routines down pat and everything runs smoothly. Of course it does. I manage everything extremely well, remember? Super-efficient, high-functioning me.

The mornings go like this: wake up, jug on, mug of instant coffee, painkillers, breakfast eaten, lunchboxes packed, kids dressed, me dressed, pack schoolbags, sunglasses on, out the door and into the day! I’m smiling and happy, even if my head aches. I breeze along. There’s no problems here. I’ve made some fantastic new mummy friends in our community and our neighbours are all super-lovely. Life in Auckland is good.

We’ve produced another son since we’ve been here (three boys, can you imagine the noise levels in our house?!) and now he’s one year old I’m back working as a TV news producer two evenings a week and have also recently enrolled to do a Master of Arts thesis part-time. Mostly, however, I think of myself as a housewife, and I love it! I care for the kids and Corin, I run the house, I manage the budget, I cook, I clean, I ferry everyone around. I even manage to exercise occasionally. And of course all of this crazy busy activity is accompanied by wine. I am busting my chops to be superwoman and do it all—be a wife, mother, worker, student, and a domestic goddess (ha ha)—all while maintaining a regular, steady wine-drinking habit. High-functioning to the max!

Every day at 5 o’clock the wine is opened. Like every other house in the country, right? We drink at least a bottle a night—to be fair, Corin usually only gets one or two small glasses but he doesn’t seem to mind. By 8 p.m. the work is done, the kids are asleep and Corin’s struggling to stay awake himself. The promise of a 3.45 a.m. alarm clock lures him toward bed and off he goes. Lucky me gets to sit up alone and indulge in as much reality TV as I like!

And more wine.

I’m vaguely aware that our new routine (with Corin now a shiftworker and usually heading to bed before me) is resulting in my wine habit becoming a little bit heavier. The wines I have while preparing dinner carry over into wine with the meal. The tidy-up-the-kitchen process that should really finish with my wineglass being put in the dishwasher doesn’t. Instead I leave the glass on the bench and have another while bathing the boys and getting them into their PJs. Sometimes I carry my wineglass into the bedroom when I’m reading them a bedtime story. Often I’m filling up yet another glass when Corin is taking himself off to bed.

My part-time TV production work is carried out on Thursday and Friday, which is lucky for me because the ‘Friday drinks’ routine that was always around in my younger days is still in force and I get to load up for free in the office and kick-start my weekend. Bonus!

But as the months have passed in our new Auckland routine, I’ve been finding that one bottle of wine per day isn’t ever quite enough. Lately I’ve been buying two a day on the murky pretence ‘it’ll last a while’. But it doesn’t. Once I’m on the sofa in the evening in a quiet house with everyone else in bed, the TV on and a few vinos already in me, I find it very difficult not to keep heading to the kitchen for more. It calls to me—the wine—it calls my name; ‘I’m over here, Lotta . . . there’s a few more glasses left in me, Lotta . . . come and drink me, Lotta . . .’ I find it very hard to say no.

So I pour just one more, just one more, just one more. My drinking habit is now a very quiet, private drinking habit. The blinds are down and no one can see me. I watch TV and make trips to the kitchen and the bathroom. Sometimes I make toast and eat four pieces at 10 p.m. like a freak. Eventually I slowly make my way to bed and crash out asleep. At this point, when I’m at my most sloshed, there’s no one about. The family is all in a deep slumber. I don’t need to form sentences. I don’t even need to think very much. I’m not sure that I even realise how boozed I’m getting.

I keep painkillers in my bedside drawer and make sure I have a glass of water beside me so I can neck a couple as soon as I need to. I wake at 3 a.m. with my bladder full, my head pounding and guilt bouncing around my fizzy brain. Did I really need to have those last two glasses? Why didn’t I stop earlier? Am I okay? Is this really still normal everyday drinking? Sometimes this fizzy 3 a.m. brain keeps me awake for a couple of hours. I don’t want to, but I feel quietly miserable in those dark lonely hours.

For the most part all this drinking of mine is a solo pursuit, and as a result my growing concern is also mine alone. I try to talk to Corin about it but he doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying. He says things like, ‘Yeah, I noticed you finished that second bottle after I’d gone to bed last night’, and ‘Just don’t touch it during the week if you’re that worried’. To be fair I’m a bit like Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to discussing my drinking. I can be completely open, vulnerable and honest about it one minute (usually in the morning when I’m hungover and feeling miserable) but if he tries to bring it up when I’ve got a glass in my hand I become very flippant, defensive and hostile to the whole discussion.

And, quite honestly, I really don’t think he understands what it is I’m trying to tell him. He can listen to me, but he can’t relate. He doesn’t have the same twisted thinking that I do. His approach to alcohol seems fairly normal. Mine is not. I have a sick part of my brain that thinks about alcohol in a very obsessive and unhealthy way. I’m not what you could describe as ‘breezy’ about it. Mine isn’t a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude by any stretch of the imagination.

I think about wine all the time. I’m concerned if there’s not enough wine in the house for the evening. If we’ve got visitors I watch what other people are pouring and worry that there won’t be enough left over for me. I tend to fill my glass to the top and slurp a bit down straightaway. I flip-flop constantly, feeling guilty one minute then planning to buy booze the next. I drink it in the evening with little regard for the fizzy 3 a.m. brain or hangover ahead.

My wine consumption is constant, but not always consistent—there are heavy phases and lighter phases. But the heavy phases, they’re pretty bloody heavy and a lot goes down my throat. Here’s what a typical heavy-drinking week would look like:

Sunday: Probably hungover from Saturday. Could possibly not drink at all. But perhaps get 1 bottle and have half of it. Weekly total = ½ bottle.

Monday: No hangover, so get 1 bottle and drink it. Weekly total = 1½ bottles.

Tuesday: Hungover. Get a bottle and drink half. Weekly total = 2 bottles.

Wednesday: Non-hangover day. Supermarket day. Buy 2 bottles, drink 1¼ bottles. Weekly total = 3¼ bottles.

Thursday: Very hungover. Get a bottle, perhaps have 2 glasses. Weekly total = 4 bottles (?? ish, it’s getting hard to total).

Friday: It’s Friday!!! Drink at least 1½ bottles of wine. Weekly total = 5½ bottles.

Saturday: Hungover. But who cares?! It’s Saturday! Drink at least another 1½ bottles of wine. Weekly total = 7 bottles.

I seem unable to push aside my worry about my worsening drinking habit. There are two voices in my head. One is telling me boozing is fun and I deserve it and I’m totally fine. The other is telling me it’s not fun, I don’t deserve it and I’m not totally fine. I fluctuate from worrying for a week then not caring for a week. Worrying for a week then not caring for a week. Worrying, not caring. And all the while still drinking. It’s madness! And no one knows about it, sees it or gets it, because from the outside I’m still a superwoman. High-achieving Lotta charging ahead with her life. I’m not having crazy drunken arguments with anyone. I’m not failing to achieve anything I need to achieve in my day-to-day life. Outwardly I’m fine. But I’m not fine. I’m drinking way too much.

My private, personal hell is at its blackest at 3 a.m. I come to consciousness in my bed, my brain is fizzy, my mouth is dry, my head is sore and my bladder is full. I walk miserably down the hall to the loo. I feel guilty. I regret. I just feel so unhappy.

I’m sure I don’t seem as miserable to others as I sometimes feel. The misery comes and goes and it seems I can shove it to the side often enough to keep living normally and, most of the time, happily. Aside from my overly enthusiastic drinking habit, things are pretty good.

One long weekend we head to Napier to holiday with a bunch of Wellington friends that are driving up to meet us. We all book in to the Top 10 Holiday...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• 28
• 29
• AFTERWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• RESOURCES