The Peril Of Drinking By Yourself

I'd know, believe me.

I was researching something this morning and came across this article on “The Sadness and Thrill of Drinking Alone.” I have drank alone more times than I could possibly count, so the article was interesting to me, especially this little ditty near the late-middle portion:

The stigma attached to this drives addicts to hide our solitary bingeing from our closest friends and family until we’ve hit bottom and have no choice but to reveal it. A 2017 study found that one in eight Americans is an alcoholic, but Constantine Diakolios, a medical director at Sunrise Health Treatment Center in New Jersey, says we don’t know how many of those people drink alone.

In my specific case, I’ve been married twice since 2013. I’ve been in other relationships before that. I’ve had a few 20+ year friends, and I’ve been in and out of probably 11–12 different groups since I turned 22. I would highly doubt anyone in those subsets, including the people I’ve lived with, knows exactly how much I’ve drank alone.

Now, has this gotten better over time? Yes, with pockets of backsliding and failure here and there. But better? Yes. My first job out of college was teaching kids in Houston; there isn’t much change to day-drink or solo-drink when you’re an educator, so I wouldn’t say I did it much there. When I went to Connecticut for ESPN, I had weird hours and not many friends, so I did it a little bit there. Back in NYC for ESPN, I had better friends and did it less by myself, but around fall 2009, I had a few friends move away for grad school and I started doing it a lot more. It’s been up and down for the 11 years since, including prolonged periods of not drinking at all, but there’s been a ton of solo efforts in different cities around the country (and, honestly, the world too; I drank solo in Belgium and Dublin, among other places, while on trips).

Actually, on I believe Halloween Night 2009, I had been drinking by myself at a bar in my Queens neighborhood, then started talking to some older guys about college football, drank more with them, and ended up meeting up with some friends in Manhattan around 6pm. I was already sloshed and dropping huge chunks of guacamole on top of my new iPhone, and my friend sent me home in a cab. That was probably the first time I realized that maybe I shouldn’t pre-drink at a bar by myself, but in 11 years, I’m not sure I’ve completely changed that narrative. Better? Yes. Perfect? No.

So let’s run down a little bit of this, shall we?

Is the male vs. female experience of drinking solo different?