Free High Sobriety by Jill Stark Page A

along as my guest. As we walk out onto the manicured lawns in our heels and summer frocks, I feel as if perhaps I’ve made it in Melbourne. With the string quartet playing under the marquee, and waiters passing round canapés to suited and booted VIPs, it’s a delightful scene. The lemon squash I have to settle for is somewhat less befitting the occasion than the expensive champagne filling Kath’s glass, but once I resign myself to this, I quickly get over it and enjoy the afternoon.
    As the proceedings draw to a close, I turn to Kath — the only person I know who’s happy when the temperature tops 40 degrees — and suggest that we go to a rooftop bar in the city to enjoy the rest of the evening sunshine. She seems reluctant. When pressed, she says it would be weird because I’m not drinking. I can’t get my head around it. I vowed, when I started this challenge, that while sober I would do all the things I would ordinarily do if I was drinking — and going to a rooftop bar with Kath is exactly what I’d do in this situation. Yet it’s not me who’s calling last drinks.
    â€˜Am I different when I’m sober?’ I ask her, genuinely puzzled by our predicament. ‘Am I not as much fun?’
    She looks at the floor, saying something that makes me realise my sobriety is going to involve much more than simply not drinking for three months: ‘I just don’t like the idea of being out of control when you’re in control.’
    I don’t know what to say. I feel bad for both of us. But then I remember: it’s that social contract. Her barriers are down; mine are still up. By not drinking while Kath is, I’ve upset the equilibrium. She feels unguarded and defenceless in the face of my sobriety. How could either of us relax, knowing that she feels uncomfortable and exposed?
    In the end, we do go to a beer garden for more drinks. She has champagne, while I have ginger beer and lime. I think, at least I hope, she knows that I’m not scrutinising her every move, trying to detect a slurred word here or a stumbled step there. Still, despite going out of my way to adopt just the right level of nonchalance to obscure her discomfort, I don’t think she fully relaxes until we meet up with a group of friends for dinner, several hours later. Watching her greet them in the restaurant is like seeing an exchange student return home to their family after months of living in a foreign land. Finally: people who speak her language.
    I thought that not drinking was going to be hard for me. I never expected it to be hard for anyone else. But I can see that while being the only sober one in a group of drinkers has its challenges, it’s even trickier when you’re in a one-on-one situation. No matter how hard you try, it’s like you can’t tune into each other’s frequency — it’s as if you’re trying to communicate underwater. In a group, that disconnection is dissipated by virtue of numbers. Yet when there are only two of you, it can be an immovable barrier.
    It’s only when I can no longer reach for a bottle that I realise how much my friendships rely on it. As another friend’s world splinters into pieces with the end of her relationship, I feel as if I’ve let her down because I can’t share her pain over a drink. Break-ups require expensive cocktails and soul-baring girls’ nights out, but I can’t even buy a glass of champagne and toast the start of a new chapter in her life. I feel useless. I begin to realise anew that there are few occasions, happy or otherwise, where I don’t use alcohol to enhance my relationships.
    A few days later, a colleague at work with whom I’ve recently become friendly tells me that she’s leaving to take a job in Sydney. She remarks that she wishes she’d got to know me while I’d been drinking. What an odd statement, I think, but then have to admit that I