Alcohol used to be my drug of choice.
In the early years of child rearing when boredom and fatigue painted the walls and routine was my prison, a glass (or two or three) of something alcoholic was the perception-altering serum I self-administered most afternoons in order to change the colour of my days. My behaviour was nothing outside mainstream cultural norms: All the women I knew did the same – a group of Melbourne mum’s from the inner-city suburbs seeking a soft solace.
Alcohol stayed with me for years. But as the ‘quit sugar’ campaign began to go viral my afternoon beverage DID change shape; chilled glasses of Gewürztraminer or squat, ice-filled tumblers of cucumber-spiked G&Ts were replaced by tall beakers of vodka, fresh lime and soda – low-kilojoule, sugar-free and with a kick like a mule that was heavy on pleasure and low on health-risk.
The last was important. For as far as my health was concerned, sugar appeared to me as the lesser of two evils when it came time to consider which stimulant I might have the self-control to give up.
Though I no longer drink, my relationship to alcohol was revisited this month when a new girlfriend – tired of the morning lethargy brought on by summer sundowners and looking down the barrel of – was talking about the difficulty of not drinking in a country where culture demands it. I repeated my past experience to her and she conceded; in Australia, it’s one thing to go paleo and quite another to establish your own personal Prohibition.
Founded in 2007, FebFast was for many years focussed on giving up alcohol for a month; funds raised across Australia. The focus for the period of abstinance is now broader, with participants able to give up "alcohol, sugar or something of your choice".
A thorough scroll through the organisation’s social media shows more focus on paleo sausage rolls and sugar-free craving tips than advice on how to approach abstinence. Combine this with posts promoting mocktail classes at hipster bars that do nothing to subvert the dominance of our alcohol culture and it makes me wonder if FebFast might be willing to concede what I once did – hey, we’re all happy to give up something, just so long as it’s not our cultural right to drink.
“I actually would say from conversations I’ve had that, because FebFast is supposed to be about the challenge, sugar is huge for people,” says FebFast Director Laura Callow, ostensibly putting forward the proposition that it’s sugar, not alcohol, that many Australian’s would have a harder time rescinding.
Callow says the sugar-free hashtag was added last year as a way to address growing health concerns around the annual sugar consumptions of average Australians.
“At the time we did our research it was recommended Australians consume between six to nine teaspoons (of sugar) daily but actually Australians were consuming three-times that amount,” Callow recalls. “It just felt like sugar would be a natural fit to expand the brand for the better.”
Ultimately, explains Callows, the idea of FebFast is to “pause for a cause”: “It depends what you’re vice is. I would find alcohol harder, personally. But then if you’re not a big drinker, 28 days without chocolate might be more of a challenge.”
Segmentation of sacrifice dependent on vice does take on resonance in the wake of a on Australian alcohol consumption that finds 20 per cent of Australians consume almost 75 per cent of the nation’s alcohol.
Can we extrapolate said data to deduce that 80 per cent of us have a healthy relationship with alcohol? If a healthy relationship equates with the ability to stop consumption – forever – on a whim then I struggle to believe it. And no matter what the quantity, health research leaves us in no doubt as to which of the two, alcohol or sugar, has potential to cause the most harm.
“Per gram alcohol has more calories than sugar as well as a host of other issues,” explains Margaret Hays, Accredited Practising Dietitian and a spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia. “(With alcohol) You can end up with cancers of the breast, oesophageal cancer, lung, throat and gastric cancers, as well as alcohol causing damage to your liver and brain, while increasing blood pressure and heart disease risks.”
Back to that conversation between girlfriends and the real harm appears to be our reluctance to embrace a meaningful shift away from the current environment that places alcohol at the axis of social gatherings: that anticipatory Champagne-cork-pop atmosphere shadowing every public holiday and significant festive occasion.
Honestly? I’m disappointed one of the few Australian organisations tackling the social presumption that alcohol is ‘normal’ has diluted its original message by embracing the idea FebFast is an opportunity to address any personal vice. Sugar. Cigarettes. Screen time.
I DO think, though, that a singular conversation around the presence of alcohol in our society is a conversation that we should keep having.
