In graduate school, I went through a period about a year and a half where I just could not stop drinking heavily. I started using alcohol as a mechanism to cope with the loneliness I felt living in Davis, California. It got pretty out of hand actually. Every week, I would take my wine tote to the local groceries store and purchase half a dozen or so bottles of wine. I wasn’t really proud of it, but it did do wonderous things for my mood, and my body eventually got the hang of it. I ended up going cold turkey and picking up yoga to stop because it felt like a slippery slope sort of situation.
Yet, as a postdoc, now with about three years of sobriety, I’ve decided to start drinking again, this time in moderation and paired with a productive hobby like writing on my new typewriter. Drinking for me now is going to be much more than a way to cope with the harshness of life. It will, rather, be a reward and a way to enhance life. Plus, I’m hoping to get rid of some of the other habits that I’ve picked up since being diagnosed with bipolar. It’s interesting, with mental illness, you sort of have to pick the lesser of multiple evils because there’s just no way to cope otherwise.
To deal with the potential for abuse of alcohol, I’m going to implement a new rule: two drink’s the norm and three drink’s the max. Drinking is in and of itself not unhealthy, even though the medical establishment’s current guideline says it is. I don’t buy into that new recommendation, to be honest. Alcohol is a way to enhance life and to cut it out completely detracts from the quality of life. Drinking is just the smarter way to be.
The Ivory Tower 
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