High Sobriety

by Jill Stark

  I AM NOT a runner. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. Until recently, even ten minutes of road running would leave me wheezing like a two-pack-a-day smoker. But cheered on by my brother, Neil — who, in the last few years, has taken up running with the dedication of a professional athlete — I decided to change that. When I gave up booze, I started going for long runs on the treadmill, increasing my time and speed gradually until I could run five or six kilometres without too much effort. Running in the outside world was a tougher challenge, and I struggled at first. But again, I built up my strength and stamina until I could run on the road for seven or eight kilometres at a time.

  Today, I aim to top that. I’ve entered the ten-kilometre event in the Melbourne Marathon. It’s my first-ever race. I’m nervous that I won’t finish, or that I’ll have to walk part of the way, or that I’ll collapse in a heap metres from the finish line.

  When my fellow runners Nat and her husband, Gary, pick me up at an ungodly hour, it’s still pitch-dark. The roads are quiet. As we drive through the CBD, we see countless young men and women staggering out of nightclubs and strip joints, yelling and swearing, forming queues outside kebab shops and wandering aimlessly in the street. Girls with mascara-streaked faces teeter on shoes with ice-pick heels. Boys, glassy-eyed and incoherent, lope around like injured animals. As we park near the race start line, I bounce out of the car and start stretching in the crisp dawn air. How strange yet satisfying it feels to be on the other side.

  I used to laugh at people like us. After my leaving party at The Rose Hotel, Loretta and I and some of the locals ended up at the Tankerville — a 24-hour Fitzroy pokies emporium and bar that can only be tolerated in the early hours of the morning, when you’re too wasted to notice the scary-looking dudes at the next table or the neon-blue anti-junkie lights in the bathrooms. As we staggered out at 6.00 a.m., making faces at the hippies doing a hot yoga class next door, we spotted some people running on treadmills on the first floor of the gym opposite. We laughed and mimicked their running as if this were the most hilarious thing we’d ever seen. Now Loretta is a yoga teacher, and I’m at the starting line of a ten-kilometre race at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

  When I start running, I’m mesmerised by the strangely soothing sound of hundreds of feet hitting the tarmac. The noise reverberates in otherwise silent streets that for today are ours alone. I’m happy to discover I’m not the slowest contestant, and I’m even running faster than I was in training. At the three-kilometre mark, a few people have already started to walk, and I vow to myself I will not be one of them. I will finish the game. My brother’s pep talk, delivered to me this morning via text message, repeats in my head like a holy sacrament: ‘Just remember — PAIN IS TEMPORARY, GLORY IS FOREVER!!!! Persevere, dig deep, enjoy and triumph!!’

  There are some funny running styles. Teenage girls in full makeup, with fake tan smudging on stick-thin legs, look awkward as they try to bob along without messing up their hair. One guy runs with his jacket in his hand, while a middle-aged woman wearing a visor and a steely expression appears to be vaulting invisible hurdles. A man wearing board shorts and a singlet looks like he’s being chased by the police. I start to get weary around the six-kilometre mark, but find a second wind when I think about all I’ve achieved in the last ten months. I can do this.

  As I reach the seven-kilometre mark on St Kilda Road, there are more spectators lining the street, cheering us on. I feel ten feet tall. I’m smiling. The sun is out, Melbourne has barely woken up, and I’m running towards the MCG, the city’s spiritual home. How nice it will be to arrive there, and to feel triumph instead of disappointment.

  My body is being pushed to its limits and I realise how far I’ve come. Would I ever have got here if I hadn’t taken a break from drinking? Suddenly, it occurs to me how ridiculous it is that our elite athletes are sponsored by a substance that’s simply not conducive to sporting success. How many times have hangovers kept me from the gym, or stopped me from even putting my trainers on and going for a walk?

  As I reach the nine-kilometre mark, I’m hurting, but I know I’m home. I can’t believe I told myself for so long that I couldn’t do this. Maybe now, I can do anything. My legs ache and the balls of my feet are burning, but I power on, sprinting up the hill. I cross the finish line, and it’s one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. The weirdest thing is I don’t even feel tired at the end. It takes only a minute or so to catch my breath. I’m so energised by the thrill of finishing, I actually feel like I could keep running. When I receive my race medal, I look at it in awe. I’ve never been more proud of myself. I am a runner.

  November

  I CAN’T PUT it off any longer. It was on my list from the start of the year: find love. As much as I’ve achieved since I gave up drinking, this definitely needs some work. But how do you meet guys if you’re not rolling drunk in a bar at 2.00 a.m.? My usual method, falling on top of someone while plastered, is not so easy to pull off when you’re in full control of your faculties. Besides, something (perhaps the fact I’m still single) tells me that this strategy wasn’t really working.

  So I’m left with no choice. Friends tell me everyone’s doing it; there’s no stigma anymore. It’s the modern way for busy singles to meet. But there’s something about internet dating that leaves me feeling flat. And more than a wee bit scared. I imagine that the process of dating complete strangers would be excruciating enough with a few drinks to smooth the ride, but the prospect of doing it sober is positively petrifying.

  It’s not so much that I need a drink to calm my nerves — I know now that poise and self-belief are not measured by alcohol consumption — but that I worry my sobriety will be a barrier to easy conversation in what will already be an awkward situation. Refusing a drink might make guys self-conscious and wary. Maybe that’s just something I have to get past if I want to find out how to connect with the opposite sex without being tipsy. I can’t remember one alcohol-free first kiss before my break from booze.

  I ask my friends for their drunken horror stories and discover that I am far from alone: many of them have used booze as a way to get through the ghastliness of the singles scene. One friend remembers the ignominy of her only attempt at proper, grown-up dating. It was a singles night at a city restaurant, and she and a friend had been slipping tequila shots into their champagne for courage. It worked a bit too well. My friend made a beeline for the most attractive man in the room and shouldered the girl he was talking to out of the way, striking up a flirty conversation. After some chatting, she suggested, ‘Shall we try a little kiss now?’ This, in her drunken state, seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposal. He said yes. Later, he offered her a lift in his BMW to a bar for more drinks. This meant that he was sober. Mortified by her behaviour, and developing that uniquely intoxicated paranoia that has no connection to reality, she began imagining a future where she was chopped up into pieces and dumped on a waste ground. So she and her friend legged it out of there, leaving their would-be Ivan Milat to train his sights on someone else. The night ended with a vomit in the gutter.

  Another friend estimates that she’s pashed more than 200 guys in her life, but has experienced only one sober first kiss. Others tell me of boozy travel tales: making sweet love in the laundry room in a Barcelona hostel, or being seduced by a seemingly single neighbour in a London apartment — only to have his girlfriend burst into the bedroom while he was ‘heading down south’. One girl recalls working for an investment-banking firm in the United Kingdom and developing a ‘massive crush’ on the cute Irish boy with whom she shared a desk. ‘Cut to a week later at the Christmas party, and I decided if I got just a little tipsy it would be much easier for me to mingle and talk with cute Irish boy. Three hours later, all I remember is begging this poor man to please, please marry me, and then throwing up in his face!’

  One friend, who doesn’t drink much, says she’s been out with
several guys who drank heavily, and that proved to be its own challenge. A guy that she’d been on a couple of dates with but hadn’t heard from in a few months tried to pick her up in a bar, using the same lines he’d used when they first met. He was smashed, and oblivious to the fact they’d already dated. Yep, it’s rough out there.

  It makes me wonder how many Australians would be hooking up at all if it weren’t for the matchmaking properties of booze. For young people like Beth and her friends, who told me that drinking gives them the confidence to meet guys, alcohol is a key part of sexual attraction. A 2007 survey by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education found that 63 per cent of 18- to 24-year-old Australians admitted they’d had a one-night stand while drunk. In the United Kingdom, a 2009 poll of 3000 women found that almost half preferred having sex after a few drinks because it helped them to lose their inhibitions and made them more adventurous in bed. Forty per cent of the 18- to 50-year-olds interviewed said that they were always a bit tipsy before sleeping with a new partner. Six per cent had never had sex sober. Given my experiences and those of my friends, I imagine similar results would be found if Australian women were surveyed.

  It seems that drinking to get the romantic juices flowing is an accepted way of finding a mate in modern culture. It’s sold to us as an intrinsic part of matchmaking. Dating-coach websites often feature pictures of attractive couples smiling as they share champagne and cocktails. Pubs and nightclubs have been the happy hunting grounds for singles in Australian cities for decades. In rural areas, where isolation makes it harder to meet potential partners, the Bachelor and Spinster Ball is an engrained part of bush tradition. Historically, the events were a way for men and women in farming communities to find a husband or wife, with many travelling long distances to attend the balls. They were big occasions, with a formal dress code and all money raised going to local charities. But over time, they evolved into all-you-can-drink mega-parties — usually sponsored by alcohol companies and local pubs — where getting hammered and having sex was such an integral part of the evening, guests were often given showbags with condoms and lubricant, and offered free breathalyser tests the following morning. The tradition is now waning due to rising costs, the increasing drift of young people from the bush to the city, and tighter regulation around the service of alcohol. But the tradition cemented the inextricable link between drinking and sex in the minds of many Australians.

  The idea of alcohol as an aphrodisiac is not a modern notion. The French artists and bohemians of the late 19th century used absinthe as a way to boost their sex drive. These days, champagne has become synonymous with romance and seduction. And there’s even some scientific evidence that drinking might help the sparks to fly: a 1994 study in the international journal Nature showed that even small amounts of alcohol can enhance a woman’s libido, boosting the release of the male sex hormone testosterone in the brain. The same effect was not found in men, and was more pronounced in women who were taking the pill — probably because they had lower testosterone levels than those not taking the oestrogen-based drugs.

  It’s perhaps not surprising the two should be linked: both alcohol and sex stimulate the release of the chemical dopamine into the brain’s reward pathway — essentially, its pleasure centre — sending the signal that the action is pleasurable and worth repeating. If our sexual desire is physiologically altered by alcohol, it might go some way to explaining the thousands of regrettable sexual unions taking place every Friday and Saturday night across the country. But for me, it’s rarely about craving the act of sex, and more about satisfying an emotional need. If I drink too much and I’m not in the right headspace to start with, I can really feel the depressive effects of alcohol. It can make me maudlin and sentimental, and will bring any underlying sense of loneliness to the surface. Suddenly, I’m a slave to the urge to be held, or to feel a warm body next to me as I sleep. Add to that the fact that inhibitions and logic usually vanish after about the fourth vodka and soda, turning every knuckle-dragging moron in the room into Brad Pitt, and you have the perfect storm. At that point, I won’t hold out for Prince Charming, but — to borrow a phrase from one of my fellow HSM bloggers — will be happy to settle for a half-wit wrapped in tin foil. Then, you get him home and it’s obvious that, although alcohol may have brought you together, Mother Nature’s perverse sense of humour has ensured that it has also caused complete mechanical failure and rendered any chance of sexual satisfaction a physical impossibility. As Shakespeare famously observed, alcohol ‘provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance’. Only when you sneak a look at him through one eye the next morning, as he lies there in his chocolate-brown Y-fronts like a pallid monument to regret, do you realise just how drunk you were last night.

  I know that my bad decisions can’t be explained entirely by alcohol’s myopic night vision, but there is some evidence that beer goggles are a scientific phenomenon. In a study conducted by researchers from Bond University, 80 heterosexual men and women aged 18 to 29 were recruited from campus pubs and parties. Three groups were established: really drunk (those with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.10 per cent to 0.19 per cent — up to four times the legal driving limit); moderately drunk (0.01 per cent to 0.09 per cent); and designated drivers, or people who were sober. The volunteers were shown a series of photos of people of the opposite sex and asked to rate their attractiveness, on a scale of one to ten. Those who were moderately or heavily drunk rated those in the photographs as significantly more attractive than did their sober peers. Getting drunk had turned ‘bow to wow’. As the researchers noted, this is a concern, given that previous studies have shown that the more attractive a person is, the more likely their sexual partners are to engage in risky behaviour, such as unprotected sex. But evidence on the beer-goggle effect is inconsistent and inconclusive. In a study published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2009, researchers showed 240 men and women, in varying degrees of drunkenness, pictures of other women, and asked them to rate their attractiveness. In this study, drinking alcohol had no effect on how attracted they were to those in the photographs.

  With all that in mind, it’s probably a good thing that my first crack at internet dating is going to be a sober one. I sit down to set up my online profile, which, I quickly discover, is a unique form of torture. The photograph-selection process involves finding a picture that conveys the delicate balance of friendly but not desperate, serious but not stern, kooky but not weird, and sexy but not slutty. I’m going to need help.

  I invite my friends Nat and Mel over, to give me the benefit of their dating wisdom. Nat vetoes one picture because I’m showing too much cleavage. I argue that, given I’m spruiking myself like a house on a real-estate website, this might be the ‘appealing north-facing aspect’ that gets buyers through the door.

  ‘You don’t want those kinds of guys,’ she says, deleting the picture, and I’m reminded of just how bad I am at this stuff.

  Writing the ‘about me’ section is another exercise in self-flagellation. How to sell yourself and sound interesting, without coming across as a self-involved twit? We joke that I should write it all in tabloid-newspaper headlines: ‘Scottish Chick in Still-Single Shocker’ or ‘Melbourne’s Once-Drunkest Hack on Hunt For Love’. In the end, I settle for what is hopefully a vaguely amusing and informative précis of my passions, hobbies, and life goals.

  The part that takes the longest to resolve is the section on drinking habits. There are three options: non-drinker, occasionally/socially, and often. I wonder, much like I do at airport check-ins when they ask if you’re carrying any flammable liquids, lighters, or weapons, what kind of person thinks it’s a good idea to say yes to the last option, even if it’s true. I describe myself as a social drinker, figuring that it’s partially correct — given it wasn’t that long ago I was the most sociable of drinkers, and I can’t see myself ever again drinking in a fashion that could be described as antisocial. I just can’t bring myse
lf to tick the non-drinker box. Even after all I’ve learned from ten largely fulfilling months without alcohol, I still don’t want to be labelled as a teetotaller; the stigma of that is almost worse than the stigma of internet dating. And if I tick the non-drinking box, I worry that I’ll attract clean-living fitness freaks, mummy’s boys, or Jesus enthusiasts. There is, of course, the chance that I could attract men who, like me, are taking a break from binge drinking, and are interested in self-improvement and a relationship that runs deeper than the bottom of their pint glass, but I’m not willing to take the risk. The world of online dating is massively superficial without adding any additional reasons for men to discount you.

  When I hit the button to make my profile go live, it’s an unsettling feeling. A friend who’s using the same dating site has told me that her sister warned her against it, saying that it was a cyberspace meat market for guys in search of an easy shag. Then she related the tale of a young woman who was kidnapped by a guy she met online and taken to his home, where she discovered that he’d dug a grave in the backyard. She was held captive for two days before being rescued in a police raid. Is this what I’m risking by advertising myself in the most public space imaginable? The site doesn’t allow members to use their own names, so at least that’s something, but when the system matches me with a reporter from a rival newspaper, and I stumble across my ex-boyfriend’s best mate, I realise just how exposed I am.