Goodbye To All That

After a lifetime of moderate (and occasional immoderate) drinking, Rachael Combe put down her Cabernet to investigate what lay beneath her habit. Was drinking really as healthy— or fun—as she’d always thought it was?

- Rachael Combe

I had an epiphany last summer: Drinking sucks. I was standing in a klatch of couples at a seaside cocktail party, everyone yakking about vacation plans and their children’s sports teams. I looked at my friends’ faces reddening from drink, the sweat on the men’s upper lips, the women hoisting their big goblets of wine to their lipsticked mouths. Everyone was talking too loud, and nobody was really saying anything. I was no different, clutching my wine, aggressively searching for my moment to jump into the double Dutch of conversation.

I’m exhausting, I thought. This party is exhausting. How many parties had I been to? Hundreds and hundreds. How many glasses of wine had I downed? Thousands and thousands. Teenage keggers in the woods, swanky soirees, backyard BBQs, book parties, frat parties, birthday parties, holiday parties, moms’ nights out, networking events. What had it all amounted to? Not to mention all the time spent sitting on my couch, splitting a bottle with my husband, vacantly watching TV—or parked at a bar with a girlfriend, nursing cocktails and mostly complaining to each other. It was a tale told by a desperate housewife, full of small talk and rosé, signifying nothing. It was like semantic satiation—that phenomenon when you repeat a word so many times it dissolves into meaninglessness.