I don’t drink and dance by Anna Arabella

For my 1 year sober anniversary, I decided to come out as AF (Alcohol Free).  I made this poster to celebrate me and a few of the things I love; dancing, making costumes, old doors and this my new website!  I posted it on Social Media and people had no idea I’d given up and asked me why.  So here’s my blog about it;

Giving up alcohol just seemed so implausible to me.

It was associated with so many different parts of my life and I didn’t have a problem with it, right?  It was Women’s Hour that got me thinking.  A Mum who had given up alcohol for a year came on the programme and talked about how normalised drinking is within new Mum culture.  The ‘Gin Helps’ quips in response to the trauma and stress of adjusting to being a Mum.  And the ‘it’s OK to drink as long as you’ve given the kids tea’.  Making light of it, making it permissible.

Dancing has always been my escape from these day-to-day challenges of life.  I never used to drink before a gig and then one day early in my dance career I drank just a ¼ of a pint of larger before performing.  I felt absolutely terrible.  I was dancing to live music and I felt like I wasn’t in the music properly, I felt out of sort and full of gas.  I felt totally exposed as a fraud and an imposter, I hated it and that shocked me as every dancer knows performing with live music is the holy grail to be relished!

So I never drank before a gig again, ever.  But after, yes always.  It became part of my wind down routine, no matter what time I got home I always had 2 glasses of wine before going to bed.  It might not sound a lot but I gig’d a lot before my children and it was a ROUTINE!  Alcohol was part of birthdays and weddings and family gatherings and nights in, it was everywhere and a life without it just seemed implausible, impossible, I just couldn’t visualise it.

I’d done ‘dry January’ once before but the whole thing for me became about counting down to when wine was allowed again.  I was grumpy, tired, lacking in energy and motivation.  I felt deprived.  I lasted 28 days and feeling I had proved to myself I didn’t have a problem I had a celebratory bottle of wine and promised myself I would cut right down.  I didn’t.

On the 15^th May 2020 almost 2 months into the first lockdown, I realised neither the lockdown lifestyle nor wine time was going away.  I had a choice.  I said to myself if the lady on Women’s Hour could give up for a year then so could I.  I wasn’t going out anywhere, I certainly wasn’t gigging so it was now or never.  I also couldn’t help but notice how my Dad was telling us more and more regularly how he could give up alcohol anytime he wanted to and that he always has 2 nights off a week.  Well I wasn’t drinking 5 nights a week, but I was making the same little deals and statements with myself.

My last memory of my Grandad is of visiting him in the hospice where, whilst I didn’t know at the time, they were just keeping him comfortable.  It was a small, tired, stuffy room overly hot and he was wearing a white hospital gown.  He was struggling forward to reach one of those tiny medicine cups with an orange liquid in it.  I remember him saying ‘Annie pass me the cup’, he was the only one who ever called me Annie.  I did and he sipped from it.  I was 15 at the time and I thought it was Lucozade but I realise now it was most likely cider.  I didn’t know he was a drunk, I just loved him dearly.

It is well known in my family that my other Grandpa was a hardcore spirit alcoholic until he was 40 and then one day he just gave up and never drank again.  I don’t know why or what happened to change his relationship with alcohol but I remember my Mum telling me with pride that only 2% of alcoholics recover on their own without support, but Grandpa did.  I would love to know what determined his success.  I remember later in life he always had alcohol in the house and would make people drinks and say ‘I just want to sniff it’.  I can see him now in my mind’s eye smelling a drink.  What torture he put himself through, why did he punish himself so?

What sadness both my parents must have suffered as children with drunk fathers.  My daughter said to me one evening, ‘Mummy shall I get you your wine?’ Not would you like a drink or can I get you a glass of wine? but ‘your wine’. So normal like ‘your phone’ or ‘your coffee’.  It was a sobering moment.  I resolved then to try for 1 year sober and I had no idea how challenging that was going to be!  I had one really bad day early on and I spent the whole day posting in a support group and I would not have got through it without the kind, quick and nuturing responses.  I shared the journey with strangers not my friends.  It was a personal thing I wanted to do quietly and privately as I really didn’t know if being AF was plausible for me.

That was one year ago and here I am coming out as AF!  I feel lighter and brighter and now I don’t even know how I fitted Alcohol into my life.  After a gig now (albeit online) I change out of my costume, take off my make up and tidy up until the adrenalin starts to leave my body.  I still wake up tired in the morning, but I am not waking up to last night’s mess and I am not grumpy with my children to midday.  My son comes in and gives me the biggest snuggle and my daughter still says ‘Oh your awake’ but I can tell that she loves that I am.

I think my dancing has improved because I am in the music with all my feelings, I am telling my story and it is a celebration.  I got stuck for many years showing unresolved conflict and struggle in my dancing, albeit with a comedy twist at the end to make it entertaining, but I didn’t realise I was talking about my life and putting on a brave face in public. I am grateful to the audiences and the stages who have hosted me and witnessed these acts I felt a connection with you that was a lifeline to me.  Without Alcohol I am beginning to resolve my past and know my own truth and I am excited to see where my dance leads me next.

Thank you for reading this article, if you would like to see my next performance please buy a ticket for the next Online Zoom Hafla on 22^nd May 2021 or please join me for a class.