27 bottles of wine on the wall...

 ... 27 bottles of WHAT??! That's right. OMG. 27 bottles of wine is what my little, tiny family went through over six days during the holidays. That's approximately 4.5 bottles per day or 1.125 bottles per person, per day. Either way, that's a shit ton of wine. No matter how you look at it. According to the CDC, a standard drink is equal to 14.0 grams (0.6 ounces) of pure alcohol. Which looks a bit like this:

    • 12-ounces of beer (5% alcohol content)
    • 8-ounces of malt liquor (7% alcohol content)
    • 5-ounces of wine (12% alcohol content)
    • 1.5-ounces or a “shot” of 80-proof (40% alcohol content) distilled spirits or liquor

Now, to put this into wine perspective. One 750 mill bottle is equal to 25.3605 ounces. So if 5 ounces of wine is the daily allowance per person, that means each person in my family had approximately 28.53 ounces of wine per day. That's 5.7 times the CDC recommended amount. Yep. That's a triple shit ton. Now, to be fair, it wasn't just the four of us, alone every day, downing our 1.125 bottles of vino each. On any given day there may have been another one or few folks there. And to be super, super fair (and honest) my 70+ yr old folks weren't downing a full bottle on their own. But I digress... back to the amount of wine consumed... which we've already determined was a shit ton to be exact. Now, you may wonder how in the world can anyone drink THAT much wine, day after day... well, I guess now is as good a time as any to share my story...

Take a cozy seat, grab a tea, this is a long one...

So, my drinking. I wasn't always a heavy drinker. Sure I had fun. And of course, I got myself into plenty of mischief. But it was always limited to the occasional off-night, here and there. It wasn't until 2003 when that would all start to change. It didn't happen overnight. It was a slow build. I'll spare you all the black and blue details, but I found myself in the most challenging relationship of my life. The man I had fallen in love with, invited into my home, into my bed... wasn't exactly the Prince Charming I thought. He was an alcoholic. An actively-drinking, alcoholic. And not just that, but an abusive, manic-depressant, bi-polar alcoholic. Who, at first, I adored. Then, I tried to fix. I thought if only he surrounded himself with "normal drinkers" then he'd become one, too. Right?? Wrong. My moderate drinking habits did not become his drinking habits. Instead, his excessive habits became mine. I'm not sure why or how this happened. Was it my way of coping with him. The old, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality?? I don't know. What I do know is this: over the course of our final year together... I had to get out. I couldn't lie about the yelling, the destruction, the bruises any more. I could not call the cops one more time. I could not wake up to another bottle of wine already gone. But most of all, I couldn't lie to myself, my family, one more day. I had to go. So I did.

Fast forward two states, 5 years and one restraining order later and there I am... sitting in my tiny SF apartment. My beloved dog, cat and bottle of wine by my side. SF is where my drinking took a turn for the worse. One bottle of wine. Every night. By myself. Maybe more if it was the weekend. I could, all by my little old self, go through 10 bottles of wine in one week (pretty sure that's above the CDC's reco'd allowance) And that's about when that little voice starting talking to me... "quit drinking." But I didn't listen. Instead. I went to therapy. And kept drinking, of course. My therapist told me I had PTSD. I thought, what?! No way. Fuck this shit. He does not have the right to control me. Not any more. I am taking ME BACK. And so I did. Or so I thought. I kept drinking... he still had me. I finally decided that I needed to move home. I needed to surround myself with my family. My parents. My sisters. People that loved me. People that would never hurt me. So I did. I moved to Chicago just over two years ago. But I still drank. A lot. Moving (again) didn't fix me. And that little voice kept yapping... "quit drinking."  So I went to yoga. A lot. I dove head first into learning and researching as much as I could about drinking. I downloaded hypnosis apps to help me quit. I read books like "Drinking: A Love Story." by Caroline Knapp. I followed blogs like Soberistas and Hip Sobriety. And then, finally, I joined an online community called Hello, Sunday Morning. HSM is an amazing online community that helps people tackle and change their drinking habits, one Sunday at a time. Through the amazing love, acceptance and support of the HSM community, I quit for three months last year. And noticed a huge decline in consumption after that. It was mostly reserved for weekends by this point. But I still drank. A lot. (See, I'm the kinda gal that when I open a bottle... I finish a bottle.) So, I went to more yoga. So. Much. Yoga. I became a certified Yoga instructor. I stopped eating meat. I started running. But still, every weekend, I drank. And still, that little voice continued to speak to me... "quit drinking."

I think it's finally time to listen to that little voice. So here I go into 2016... with no more bottles of wine on the wall...