Tick , tock , it ' s wine o ' clock ! ( again )
A liver full of Karma
Finally , the evening was done . The children were in bed at last . Ahhh ! The voluptuous , velvety siren call … wine time .
Tick , tock , it ' s wine o ' clock ! ( again )
I ' ve been there myself . It ' s the end of the day , time to relax . Time to crack open a bottle of red . Come on ! We ' re all nannied to death , aren ' t we ? Guidelines and directives about everything .
Anyway , we ' re told red wine is good for us , and that gives us a carte blanche to take it intravenously . If a little is good , more must be better – right ?
Well , I guess it ' s a matter of degree . To live by that mantra is tantamount to handing the reins of your life over to the wine bottle . And that ' s exactly what Caroline had done – and millions of others , too . When it happens , most people know .
Most people know when a bit of evening un-wine-ding is chipping away at their wellbeing . For a year now Caroline had been drinking way too much wine . She had started to hate what it was stealing from her life .
A liver full of Karma
The Buddhist principle of Karma , that oft-quoted ideology so favoured in social media memes , holds that what we do and intend comes back at us in some form or another .
Caroline ' s behavioural cause-and-effect was easy to see . Her face was bloated . She told me she was less " there " for her children and husband , that she felt sick all the time , found it harder to focus on work . She fretted that other parents and co-workers could see the recent trend of her tremors and shakes , her changed appearance , her vagueness . She told me plaintively :
" It ' s disgusting of me but I now feel that I only really live for that glass of wine !" But " that glass ", she confessed tearfully , often descended into two or occasionally three bottles a night .
She didn ' t think her husband knew how much she drank . After all , it had started innocently enough . Just one or two glasses to wind down after the day . Her " me time ".