The word is out. It’s getting around: that you don’t have to be totally wasted to have a good time on the weekend. Actually, it’s becoming apparent that it may be your own fault that you’re boring without a beer in your hand. What? Since when? Since The Age journalist, Jill Stark – former serial party girl and drinking title-holder – challenged herself to a year without booze and discovered that fun was still possible without it – and not too bad either were the rewards that came with trading-in merciless hangovers for kinder Sunday mornings.
Stark’s debut book, High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze, is not about redemption from social exile after a stint in rehab and a wiped-out bank account. Rather, it is a very personal journey of Stark’s investigation into her own dependence on alcohol that inevitably reveals an Australian culture reliant on booze for social sustenance like a new born needs breast milk. What is ironic, that makes this book so interesting, is that Stark – in her own words – was the award winning Health Reporter for The Age who reported on Australia’s booze soaked culture during the week but then wrote herself off on the weekends.
The book begins with how this came to a head on a new-year’s day when Stark woke to a cruel morning that felt like Zeus had hammered her skull and party goers in six inch stilettos had danced the night over her body. For nearly 20 years she had enjoyed a ‘healthy’ and loving relationship with booze that accompanied her to every event, usually guaranteeing some hilarious fun and the kind of bonding with mates that comes with ‘getting loose’. But her body was beginning to protest and thoughts taunted her that her life could be summed up in two words – working and drinking. When she considered the idea of giving herself a break from the juice she was confronted by the impossibility. Why? Because alcohol is the nation’s social lifeblood used to celebrate, commemorate and commiserate explains Stark: choosing not to drink, or even to drink moderately, is like committing social suicide and casting yourself out into the wilderness never to return!
It is not surprising then that High Sobriety is imbued with the statistics that prove Australia’s increasing dependence on alcohol that comes with its ubiquitous presence at cheap prices in supermarkets and drive through bottle shops. Australians seem to take pride in “sitting at the top of the heap in world drinking ranks” claiming it to be our heritage and who we are, ignorant to the evidence that connects drinking and serious health disease. Sport and alcohol, as compatible as jam and cream, are in bed together with omnipresent advertising and sponsorships. Various vocations scramble over who is entitled to drink the hardest, from law enforcers to show biz, to the boozing and schmoozing between frenemies at The Press Gallery; stress, irregular hours, tight deadlines and tedious, boring night shifts are blamed for drinking excess. (If these are the reasons for regular states of altered consciousness, then mums and housewives have rights to slosherdom.)
Teenagers take up binge drinking with the kind of passionate camaraderie usually reserved for a footy grand final. Desperate for a party-hard image, boozy facebook profiles compliment a hard drinking identity. But when it means everything to belong, they are unlikely to concern themselves with gigantic multi-national corporations robbing their hard-earned pocket money with smartly marketed drinks like Alcopops, Cruisers and ‘wannabe wines’. (And watch out young mums, they’re after you next).
But Stark is hesitant to point the blame entirely and steers clear of moralising. The line where weekend party-binge-drinker crosses over to alcoholism is complex and usually cannot be detected until too late. Stark’s research shows that not all kings and queens of drinking party games slide into all-out dependency, but still, there are those who do head down the addictive path, it’s just that no-one’s taking responsibility when it does happen.
High Sobriety therefore seeks alternatives to a society that does not value sobriety. And Stark is not the only one. Celebrities like Ruby Rose, Daniel Radcliffe and Lily Allen, young as they are, are coming out and admitting that their hard drinking days are already over. But there’s more to this book than the idea of moderation: it’s the question of identity – who am I without a drink in my hand – a challenging notion that readers may ask themselves next time they reach for a beer like a toddler needs its dummy. As Stark puts it, “a beer should be something you enjoy, not who you are” but this may be a sacrifice too much for some.