Wendyl Nissen: Breaking the drought

The decision was made. All that remained was when to do it. "Whenever you feel ready," said my husband.

"I'll do it in February - shortest month of the year," I calculated. I was about to give up drinking for a month. And from where I was standing 28 days sounded a lot more doable than 30 or 31.

"I'm just not sure I'll be able to do a whole month," I mused as February loomed.

"You stopped for three-and-a-half years once," reassured my daughter.

I looked at her blankly. Three-and-a-half days without a drink, maybe, but never three Christmases, three birthdays and three wedding anniversaries.

"No darling, I think you must have me mistaken for that other mother, the one who goes to church on Sundays and irons your school uniform every morning at 6."

"Yes you did. Four pregnancies. Four times nine months equals three-and-a-half years," she said slowly, as if dealing with a small child unfamiliar with the concept of mathematics.

"Of course, I hadn't thought about that," I said gratefully. "And, actually, all of you were overdue so it was more like 10 months so that's nearly four years."

And with that I marched off, feeling confident about my impending 28 days of sobriety. So confident that I began early, on January 31.

I knew that to change any pattern of behaviour you need to identify the triggers which encourage you to pick up. By day two I had identified all 20 of them and realised, with horror, that the first trigger appeared at 10am. Not that I have ever had a drink at 10am, I just start thinking about what I would have to drink after work.

As the triggers piled on top of each other throughout the day, like drunk uni students squashing into a Mini, the Daddy trigger, as I came to call him, would appear at 5.30pm on the dot and start jumping up and down on the Mini causing all the other triggers to squeal with delight.

"What you need is a nice exotic drink to look forward to sampling at the end of every day," suggested my daughter. "Let's go to the Asian."

"The Asian" is not a wise old wizened-up man who survived Pol Pot and ekes out a living dispensing exotic drinks. It is the local Asian supermarket where there is a shelf as long as a football court laden with pink, green, purple and orange drinks full of things like coconut jelly, sago and lychees.

We filled a trolley with two of each. After three days I tried to look at the labels to see what I was ingesting and found myself lacking the language skills to complete the task.

Lurking in the back of my mind was a mini version of the melamine poisoning of baby's milk in China so I gave up on the exotic drinks, preferring instead to invent my own.

By day 12 I had settled into a routine of a fabulous pink cocktail of rose syrup, lemon and soda to keep the Daddy trigger happy because, as it turns out, he was quite happy with a hit of sugar instead of the alcohol.

What I hadn't prepared for was the other big Daddy trigger, my husband, who had joined me on my alcohol-free month. He planted himself in my office at the end of a stressful day and suggested that we both go "off plan" and have a night on the booze.

"No way," I said resolutely.

I put it out to my social networking friends on Facebook and Twitter who I had been spending more time with lately due to the lack of drinking. "You decide. At 5.30pm I'll add up your votes," I posted.

By 5.30pm all the women said "keep it up" and the men said "have a drink, you silly old trout". I was not at all surprised and determined to keep going.

At that moment my husband appeared in my office clutching two glass flutes and a bottle of chilled champagne. Our daughter looked at us with horror. "I'm so disillusioned," she said sullenly.

"Never mind," I chuckled letting the delicious bubbles cascade down my parched throat. "Life is full of disappointments."

www.wendylsgreen.goddess.co.nz