Like many millennials who grew up in a smallish town, my relationship with alcohol came barrelling into my life hard and fast. Teens getting their stomach pumped on the weekend was a pretty normal occurrence; so was giving a stranger on the street a tenner to buy you and your mates a bottle of cheap vodka. “She’s speaking on the big white telephone” was slang in Devon for having your head down the toilet.
Everyone found it funny: funny that one time I woke up in a flower bed, and that none of us could ever remember getting home. On holiday in Spain aged 16, I got so sick on sangria that, let’s just say, I never drank anything “with bits in” ever again. Then, university happened, and those three years went by in a white wine blur. Cheap “trebles”, bright blue shots, the Snakebite concoction of lager, cider and blackcurrant. Constant low hum headaches and empty wine bottles rattling about under the bed. Entering the world of work, it was “after-work drinks!!!”, where you got to find out all the juicy stuff about your colleagues and your boss. I drank my way through all of those nights too without ever stopping to ask: is there an option not to do this?
