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Standing in line at the wine shop, I could feel myself morphing into Britney Spears under the woman’s gaze. It was drizzling and getting dark, almost bedtime for my one-year-old son. She was an immaculately dressed Upper East Side doyenne, neatly cradling several bottles and an enormous Chanel tote. I was wearing sweats, my unwashed hair slicked with rain. Clutching a bottle in each hand, I nudged my son’s stroller forward with my hip. My cheeks grew hot as I imagined what she must be thinking: What kind of mother drags her kid out in this weather to buy booze?
But then she gave me a weary, commiserating smile. “Rough day, eh?” she said. “If the stock market falls any more, I’m going to have to get one of those,” she nodded toward the stroller, “to wheel my wine out of here.” It had been a crappy day. My husband was out of town, our nanny had called in sick, and I had a huge deadline at the office. Every cell in my body was chanting, “char-don-nay, char-don-nay, CHAR-DON-NAY!” But there was no way I was copping to being desperate for a drink. I gave the lady a tight smile and looked away.
I am a guilty drinker. No matter how old I get, when I walk into a liquor store, I feel like a teenager with a fake ID. My heart races and a panicky voice in my head yelps, “Act normal,” as though I’m a drug mule at the border with a colon full of heroin-stuffed condoms.
It’s not the amount I imbibe that bothers me. Alcohol has never caused me to drive the wrong way on the highway, pass out in my car, forget to wear underwear, or check into a hospital for “exhaustion.” While it’s true that, back in the day, my friends and I spent perhaps too many evenings downing Cosmos and dancing on bars, I can at least fondly remember those nights—look Ma, no blackouts! And these days, encroaching middle age and motherhood have made me into the very model of a modern moderate drinker.
What worries my little puritan soul is, instead, how much I love that one drink every evening. Back in my party girl days, I never drank alone. Now that’s my favorite way to knock back the vino, in the quiet hour between when I put my son to bed and when my husband gets home from work. It’s the only time I ever get to think—ever. But with every single actor, singer, and socialite in the entire world having recently completed a stint in either prison or rehab because of alcohol-related problems, I’ve been wondering, is there really a healthy way to drink?
From a physical standpoint, evidence has continued to accumulate that moderate drinkers have reduced rates of stroke, heart disease, kidney cancer, diabetes, and other ailments compared with both lifetime abstainers and those who used to drink but stopped. And aside from a slight increase in breast cancer risk, most of the negative health consequences of drinking (liver disease, esophageal and stomach cancer, mental illness) are confined to heavy drinkers.