At every New Year’s Eve party, I’m neurotic about hanging on to my plastic cup of sparkling cider. If I have to set it down for a second to give someone a hug or use the restroom, I won’t take another sip until I’ve smelled its contents to be certain it didn’t get swapped with some drunk skunk’s champagne.
You just can’t be too careful. As a recovering alkie, I’ve found it always pays to exercise a little due diligence at bars and parties. But if you stay sober long enough, you may, despite your best efforts, unwittingly ingest booze. This could mean eating a few bites of tiramisu soaked in bottom-shelf rum from the corner Italian joint, or adding too much vanilla extract to your Fage yogurt because you underestimate the potency of one tablespoon’s worth of 40% alcohol-by-volume flavoring.
Mishaps like these have happened to me few times in my sobriety. Some well-meaning AA’s have warned that I “woke the dragon” and therefore might be triggered to drink more. But I’ve found it doesn’t have to come to that. In fact, accidentally ingesting booze doesn’t have to threaten your sobriety in any way.
I got buzzed accidentally for the first time in sobriety after chugging kombucha too fast without knowing what the hell it was (it’s tea that’s fermented with yeast and bacteria). At the time, I earned my paychecks making sandwiches at Whole Foods and my coworkers swore by the stuff, claiming kombucha’s probiotic powers could ward off any gastronomic ailment. Since people around me were getting very sick with nasty stomach viruses, I bought a bottle of Mystic Mango Synergy kombucha on my break as an insurance policy against the epidemic.
Unfortunately, I chugged the thing on an empty stomach, drinking all 12 ounces in about two swigs because I was parched from sweating over that sandwich bar. I guzzled it while sitting on a stool in the break room and suddenly became so lightheaded and dizzy I felt like I might topple over. Since I had no idea that kombucha was a fermented drink, it just didn’t even enter my brain that I was having a reaction to alcohol.
For a second, I thought I was having a stroke or a heart attack. Then, I had a sense of déjà vu.
“I know this feeling. What is this feeling? It feels familiar but I just can’t put my finger on it,” I thought. “Why do I feel sort of sick but also really relaxed and a tad happy?”
Obviously, I’m somewhat moronic because it took me more than a second to figure out what was happening. Since I had been sober for two years, I had zero tolerance, which is why the small amount of alcohol in the kombucha gave me a very uncomfortable buzz. After staying sober for a while, you get acclimated to having full control over your mind and faculties and, when that is taken away, it is not only unpleasant but also frightening. (I had the same experience after the docs at Glendale Memorial Hospital shot me up with morphine to ward off the agonizing symptoms of the gastrointestinal virus I caught—wouldn’t you know it?—just a week after downing that kombucha.)
I really wanted to make the whole kombucha thing a big dramatic deal, but the truth was it didn’t have to be—I didn’t get drunk, I just got mildly relaxed, so there weren’t any consequences. I did wind up at an AA meeting that evening to share about it and it helped to just get it out there.
There were other accidents.
When I staged (French for working a shift for free as an audition for a job) at Lucques, a very prestigious restaurant in LA, the pastry chef offered me some eggnog after service. Now I have despised eggnog since I first tried it when I was four years old and discovered it tasted like bubblegum-infused milk. But I didn’t want to be rude and refuse, so I let the chef pour me a full two ounces of the stuff. I knocked it back fast—like you’d down cough syrup—to get the misery over with.
Though I feared the flavor of that viscous custard, what I tasted was worse—bourbon. In fact, there was so much bourbon in the eggnog I couldn’t even taste the eggnog! I involuntarily winced and sort of freaked out and said, “Ah, sorry! I don’t drink!”
The pastry chef apologized profusely for not telling me that the nog was spiked.
While I worked as a pastry chef for nearly three years, I was constantly cooking with expensive spirits and wines and, when I was at the bottom of the totem pole, I didn’t always know what was specifically in some of the desserts. I was told to just “sauce the plate” or “add the bananas” during service. There were times when I’d snack on the aforementioned bananas only to realize they had been sauteed in loads of Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur from Italy. Other times, I sneaked spoonfuls of the whipped cream only to discover it was spiked with Cognac.
Recently, I had another mishap at a very intimate dinner prepared by a celebrated chef, a lovely 10-course meal. The day before the dinner, the chef asked if I had any allergies and I said that I don’t drink. After taking a few bites of the dessert, this delicate white sponge cake topped with a delightful lemon verbena semifreddo, I felt lightheaded, dizzy and disconnected from myself and realized it was full of booze. It was sad since, despite my love for savory food and long tasting menus, I always cherish the dessert course the most.
All this is to say, booze happens. It may be at a holiday party or at a restaurant, but if you do accidentally eat or drink the stuff, the best thing to do is not make it a big deal, because all that does is make you insane. Don’t beat yourself up for making the mistake because that’s what it is, an honest mistake.
Believe me, I feel galactically stupid about the kombucha thing but I didn’t let it turn into an excuse to go get drunk. I just steer clear of the stuff now…and, of course, take extra precautions when I eat sauteed bananas.
Photo courtesy of RidetoThis
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