Mzansi's ability to booze shouldn't be regarded as a badge of honour

A month ago, I celebrated six months of sobriety. The week building up to that point was marked by a profound sense of déjà vu. Throughout my 20s I have amassed solid clean time, ticking boxes for those around me, only to return to my binge drinking on a grander scale. Why was it different this time around? It was for me.

I first tasted beer at a friend's braai aged 16. It tasted awful, an acquired taste I would grow to love, not for how well it paired with some biltong on a Saturday afternoon but for what it gave me - a heightened sense of self and delusions of grandeur, to name two things.

My introduction to alcohol came at a critical point in my adolescence. I was a gawky kid who struggled at school and endured the usual bullying that comes with that. Drinking coincided with me coming out of my shell, and I developed a façade, a clown-like persona who was the life of the party, shielding insecurities in a booze-soaked haze.

Little did I know I would embody this persona for the next 12 years.

By 2011, I was a second-year university student and the cracks were beginning to show. My "normal drinking" behaviour began to raise eyebrows. A particularly grim episode where I spent a night outside a bar in Braamfontein was a warning sign of things to come.

Binge after binge I aimed to reassure my parents and concerned friends that it was just a phase. But I wasn't the type to stop drinking after the second beer on a summer afternoon. I would often be frantically messaging people or trawling the streets looking for somewhere to get a drink long after friends had gone home.

It's often said that the difference between someone who's an alcoholic and someone who isn't is that alcoholics don't have a conscience telling us to stop. Truth be told, subconsciously I knew my family relationships and friendships were deteriorating for a long time.

The number of times I promised myself it would be different are innumerable. "I'll have two beers, then switch to whiskey and water." Next day I'm waking up not remembering a thing, with a smashed phone screen and unbearably expensive Uber receipts.

My turning point, ironically, came during the year of Covid. When President Ramaphosa announced the lockdown, I'd embarked on giving up alcohol again. I had to retreat to my family home and regroup as I was also in the midst of a months-long job search. This proved to be one of the most enlightening periods of my life. Being with myself and realising the dangerous illusion I'd lived in, where booze became the way I connected, changed my perspective.

We South Africans struggle to acknowledge our endemic binge-drinking culture. We wear our long-held status as one of the heaviest consumers of alcohol per capita as some weird badge of honour.

What concerns me is the impact this could have on my generation, Gen Z. While there's been a shift towards abstention, many of my peers in their late 20s to early 30s are part of a generation who may drink less often, but when they do it's excessive.

Our universities have for a long time been the catalysts for an ingrained and problematic culture, where you're defined by your stamina and seen as weak when you show control. In SA, alcohol is ubiquitous and often a rite of passage, with only getting absolutely destroyed and pushing your body to the limits being acceptable.

I don't aim to depress people with these observations, nor do I have an issue with people who drink. I firmly believe in a bit of real talk to address the conspiracy of silence that exists around alcohol.

My main gripe is that people don't question alcohol the way they question other things. If we can change the perception of alcoholism and what constitutes abnormal drinking and the repercussions, then we could change the national conversation to be more positive.

Let's create a culture where we don't have 47 school pupils flocking to a bar for cheap drink specials in the middle of a pandemic. Let's channel the same energy we had for the Jerusalema challenge into showing sympathy for those dealing with addictions and aiming to educate others around the perils of binge-drinking culture.

Cheers to that.