Life surprises me sometimes, on account of that annoying business of not knowing everything, and so I am as astonished as anyone to report the following:

I miss missing alcohol.

I’m not missing alcohol. Although an awful lot of it has gone missing in me, over the years. Mostly it has been in the form of beer. I’ve always considered it a good sign that I don’t prefer a more direct route to oblivion. I really like beer. At a perfectly dreadful time of my life, around age 18, beer solved everything.

Or, more specifically, it solved the deadening of my spirit, when what I thought of as my super-fine mind had come undone, as any major dude would tell you. I was terrorized by panic attacks that could appear as suddenly as a thug in an alleyway. It was completely baffling at the time but I recognize the symptom now as the death throes of a false self being dismantled—although an authentic self took its time replacing it. In the meantime, beer. Specifically, Guinness in a pint glass in a London pub, followed by more. I could write my initials in the head and still read them at the bottom of the glass. And every sip filled my flailing self with peace.

But it didn’t solve everything, except in the moment. I fended off good friends, certain they couldn’t possibly love me as I was. I had sex with virtually anyone interested, just for the connection, even though I didn’t really enjoy it. It never occurred to me to see a therapist, and I’m not even sure the phrase “panic attack” existed in 1970, when my first one showed up. But beer was there for me.

For decades, my imagined fantasy happy place came from a recurring dream of ambling down the streets of England, dropping down two steps into a cellar pub, and sharing a Guinness and a game of darts with the locals, then coming back up in the sunshine and walking to the next pub. Aaand repeat.

I quit drinking altogether some time in my thirties, for a couple years, and then picked it up again later at a much more moderate level, befitting the resurgence of my spirit. But in my sixties, my doctor, predictably, told me I needed to cut down if I wasn’t planning to stop altogether. One drink a day, tops. Sure, I said. I’ll get around to it. I’ve got a little stress to work through at the moment, but one day, I’ll get to it. I was drinking two quality beers a night, and sometimes three. Let’s say: fifteen a week.

I asked her: can I keep up this pace until my liver enzymes start squawking? And that’s when she surprised me. She wasn’t worried about my liver. She said my level of drinking put me in significant danger of developing cancer. That got my attention. We kind of do cancer in my family. I wasn’t interested in it.

Well, shoot. The authorities say I, being female, should have no more than one lovely beer a night, but a man can have two? That stuck in my craw. It’s not like a man has twice my appetite for beer.

I went a few years stung by the unfairness of it all and planned to get around to cutting down eventually, but under complaint. And then one day I read a New York Times article about this very issue. I saw the graphs and correlations, and this cancer business was undeniable. Bummer! And then I read that the reason women’s recommended limit was half that of a man’s was because of her fat percentage. The alcohol goes to her fat and sets a spell before wandering off, whereas it shoots straight through a man and out the little door. Basically, alcohol spends more time in a woman, up to no good.

Huh! You mean it isn’t the patriarchy?

I can’t say how that changed everything for me, but that evening I had a glass of water instead of my second beer, and the night after that, and almost all the nights since, and it wasn’t even all that hard. One a night feels just about right now. I try to imagine that English pub crawl fantasy and I don’t get any juice out of it anymore.

I sort of miss missing alcohol, but I don’t miss it.