Adventures in Temporary Enforced Sobriety, Part 1
I can’t drink for four months. Because it’s only the first four months of the pregnancy that count, right? This is my favorite joke these days, at barbecues and work functions, dinner parties and such. The percentage of its success going over is a little more than 50% — if I tell it to two people, one of them will inevitably laugh while the other one's logic function quits at the word "pregnancy." Not a great payout for a bon mot. But it’s better than the explanation that follows, anyway, which is not dramatic and mostly banal; quite frankly, I’m a little tired of telling it.But I will tell it to you.This summer, in preparation for possibly going on some very intense eczema medication that would change how my immune system works, I had a battery of blood tests done to make sure I wasn’t already susceptible to something dangerous. Actually, batteries are usually pretty small, and this menu of blood tests made the lab tech look at my fan of blood tube label stickers this summer and inquire, “What, were they on sale?”Everything came up normal, save one: the TB one. I have latent TB. LATENT TUBERCULOSIS. (Mishearings of this have included “ladies TB” and “latent TV,” both of which are interesting but not my specific problem.) What this means is that, at some point in my life — some time since my last TB test, whenever that was, but it was definitely before I went to Burning Man for five years straight and starting commuting by train every weekday — I became infected with TB but didn’t contract it. So, like, I have TB, but I don’t have TB: I’m not contagious, I have no symptoms, but the bacteria is chilling in my lymph nodes, giving me a 10% chance of getting sick with it. A percentage that grows larger as I get older and my immune system becomes weaker. And, since I was already getting tested to see if I could take eczema meds that work on your body the way chemotherapy does, it’s clear that my system already isn’t the fluffiest bunny in the immunity bush.So I decided to take medication for it, a four-month course of strong antibiotics. Well, to be honest, I tried to decide NOT to take it. But, as I was already spending regular time at Kaiser, the frequency with which the medical staff inquired as to the start date of my Rifampin led me to believe that I’d been flagged to the CDC, who would show up at my house if I didn’t just start taking the little red pills that turn my pee orange already. (Supposedly they also turn my sweat and tears orange but, as I’m not particularly fit oor emotional, this real-life Gatorade commercial scenario is still just in theory.) So why wouldn’t I take it? Well, I’ve got a charmingly woo-woo stepbrother in Marin who advised me against putting poison in my body due to just a 10% chance of getting something. And also, speaking of putting poison in my body, four months of strong antibiotics means four months of no alcohol in my body. And not in that cute, hey, the antibiotics won’t work as well kind of way; in that not-so-cute, you will likely have liver failure if you drink kind of way.
Now, I’m not an alcoholic. No really, I’m not. I swear. I have friends who are, and several people very dear to me are thriving in recovery. I know what alcoholism looks like. That said, what I most certainly am is a committed, enthusiastic recreational drinker. I am a married woman in my 40s with no kids. And I know that women quit drinking when they’re pregnant — I know this because I have plenty of mom friends who tell me they stopped cooking during pregnancy because they couldn’t do it without a glass of wine in their hands, or just that the not-drinking was the worst part of making a baby with their bodies. And I wrote a cocktail column for a year. I have an active social life, know bartenders all over Oakland, and have a small but impressive bar in my home. Drinking is part of who I am.So now what?