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Most people, when they think of Greece, they picture blue seas and beautiful islands, with hospitable, tanned islanders ready to welcome them. But they also think of the financial crisis. My life was greatly affected by it, leading me to develop an alcohol addiction, but also travel to places I would have never gone to otherwise. Ι am Anna and this is my story.
I was fortunate enough to be born in a middle class family with a stable income. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father a successful shop owner. Both of them seemed like very moderate people in all aspects of their life and behavior, without any visible signs of addiction. My life on the small island we lived was normal, if a little boring. I reached my teenage years protected from all the threats children in the big city have to face. And prevented from learning to protect myself, it seems.
When the financial crisis of 2008 hit Greece, everything around me changed. Businesses closed left and right, and many left to pursue their luck in northern Europe. Prices went up, people became tense and unsure. My parents started snapping at me for every little thing, to the point where I dreaded going home after school and always tried to stay out of their way. I was fourteen then and thought they hated me, that’s why they had stopped giving me pocket money that year. I saw my mother drinking wine every night before bed, but I brushed it off as normal, never having been warned about addiction and wine being considered as very light, along with beer. My father spent increasingly more hours away from home. Soon, I started asking her to pour me a glass every night, and she always obliged, saying “just a small glass for you”. We bonded over this nightly ritual. She would tell me stories of her youth and sometimes cry. She was much nicer to me when she was drunk than when she was sober. That went on for months.
Then, an afternoon after school, I met a handsome older boy in a park, where people our age used to hang out. His name was Andrei and he came from Russia with his parents when he was little. I fell in love for the first time and he seemed to return my feelings. We started spending everyday together and he was impressed by how casually I downed a whole bottle of wine, bought from money I collected by returning empty bottles I found. I knew it and purposefully drank more than I wanted, so that I would look cool in his eyes. It became like a challenge between us, and a reason to be ridiculed by our peers. Because in Greece acting as a drunk, walking funnily and vomiting, and all things drunks do, is considered the peak of uncoolness. Most people take pride in drinking just enough and acting normal when intoxicated, they believe it shows strength of character. Andrei, both of his parents being heavy drinkers, didn’t care about such things. I attached myself to him like a parasite and we started to develop interests which were very different from those of our age group, such as juggling and playing reggae music with acoustic instruments. Of course none of these things could take our attention off alcohol, it was the most thrilling of all, because it was illegal. Not that we had any difficulty in finding it. Even today, most shops sell everything to anyone with the money to buy it, without asking for identification.
One day in summer, my parents told me that they had made a very important decision. They would move their jobs to mainland Greece, where there are more financial opportunities for them and cheaper rents. Naturally, I went mad with anger at them, because this move meant that I would lose Andrei. I was desperate but whatever I said was not enough to convince them and a month later we moved. It was as if I had left my very soul behind on the island, I became still like a statue, unwilling to do anything, even eating seemed like a chore. Only two things could snap me out of it for a while. Alcohol and speaking with Andrei. My parents were too busy to pay any attention to me and had started to act even more distant and somehow suspiciously, like they had something to hide. I started school that year again, barely attended it, and took to wandering around the big, unknown city and getting to know its neighborhoods. I was happy to find some people who also played music and juggled, something I couldn’t have dreamt of in my island. But Andrei and his sad blue eyes were always on my mind, and I was unable to chase them away with alcohol. By then, I had moved on from wine to tsipouro, a drink containing 40% alcohol, which was never meant to be drunk from the bottle, but instead in a single shot glass, along with a glass of water and some meze, savory treats. And of course with friends, not alone.
Four years passed in that way, and I became eighteen, and involved with the local alternative scene. There were many squats in the city and foreigners coming and going. I had long stopped speaking with Andrei, because the very thought that he was so far away and we could not be together made me very sad. Instead, I had as many one night stands as possible with different men. Just sex without feelings and then I would forget about them. Until two years later I met one that I couldn’t possibly forget. His name was Jan, he was Czech, and he had the same blue eyes like Andrei, and the same, if not worse, drinking habits. He was twenty five and had been kicked out of his home by his father, who was ashamed of his drunk son. He had hitchhiked all the way to Greece with a simple goal in mind. To find a warmer place in which to be homeless and drink himself to death, like he thought a proper punk should do. He was the most self destructive person I had ever met. The perfect substitute for the one I really wanted. But while he told me he’s not interested in a relationship with anyone, he eventually changed his mind and we became a couple. Two people who seldom talked to each other, just had sex and shared a bottle after another of wine, beer, retsina, tsipouro, ouzo, whatever we could get on our hands on. We begged for money sometimes, other times we busked and people tossed us coins. And since I still lived at home with my parents, every night I pretended that I was very tired and went home, chewing cinnamon gums to cover the stench.
When summer came again, my father left us. It turned out that he owed money to several people and a bank, because of a previously unknown to us gambling addiction. He had to close down his shop and was too ashamed to talk about these things to us, so he just skipped town. I couldn’t care less at the time. I didn’t need him , I barely even talked to him anyways. I believed I could just keep on juggling and playing music in the street forever, and never have to pay rent because I would live at home with my mother or in squats, always happy, with a bottle in hand. The bottle was the main accessory everywhere we went, and we took pride in all things associated, like our hands sometimes shaking. It was like being with Andrei again, only I talked about my interests with other people and kept Jan around just for his looks, drinking and sex. I told him about my family problems and he didn’t show the slightest interest, he acted like he had heard these things over a thousand times in his life. “But my mother is so sad! She keeps drinking, and she wants me to find a real job, now that I am done with school for over two years!” I told him. “But there are no jobs here. Go with me to Czech Republic if you want to have a good time”. He told me. At first I found the idea ridiculous. What would I do in such a cold place?
I sat down to talk with my mother. It seemed ages had passed since we last did that, with us trying to hide our addiction from each other. I told her that I wanted to travel with Jan, and to my great surprise she agreed, probably to be rid of me. We didn’t have much money so we had to hitchhike. A month later we were on the highway, heavy backpacks on us, thumbs out trying to get a car to stop.
The journey lasted less than two weeks and we didn’t meet any dangerous people on the road. We made some money in every country we passed. The summer heat, fatigue and thrill of traveling helped both of us to be more sober than we had been in a long time, although that meant that we had many fights. Sometimes I thought that we can barely stand each other. We passed through many countries, busking to make some money on the way. At last we arrived in his small hometown, surrounded by a beautiful forest. He was well liked there and the first thing people did was invite us out to a pub. It was nothing like the bars in my country, with many people sitting at long wooden tables instead of the tiny round tables I was used to. I discovered that beer was literally as cheap as water, and of excellent quality. We stayed at different houses every week and continued in the same style, not caring about finding a job anymore. I was introduced to a kind of ersatz rum, tuzemak, and slivovice, which was so similar to our Tsipouro. People bought me drinks just to talk to me because I seemed exotic to them and I was feeling like I was in heaven. I was introduced to people both rich and poor, and noticed that the rich ones preferred more, I suppose, international drinks, such as whiskey and gin, while the poor ones drank local stuff. I felt more comfortable with the punks of this small town than with anyone else, and they were friendly and nice to me, even though each had their own share of problems.
A beautiful cloudless night we sat on the bridge, a small group of about six people, legs dangling over the river which was silver from the moonlight. It was unusually warm and I liked that, as I couldn’t get used to the cold at all. We had a bottle of tuzemak and a bottle of coke, which we mixed in plastic cups and drank to the middle. We sang and talked about the sea, which some of them had never seen, having lived all their lives in a landlocked country. We agreed to visit a pub to play cards later. Suddenly, I started feeling very dizzy, which was unusual for me after such a small amount of alcohol. “Probably the height, don’t look down”, Jan told me. I suddenly felt an urge to throw up and use the toilet at the same time. I walked behind a bush while everything was spinning and messily did it there. Then followed the group to the pub. Nobody paid attention to my state. The first thing I did was run to the bathroom immediately, and I sat down on the toilet without even checking to see if it was clean or not. There was a small sink right next to it and I puked what seemed to be my guts out. There was a bitter taste of what I thought was stomach acid. When I stood up there was blood in the toilet, a lot of blood. People were angrily pounding on the door, because I must have been inside there for ages. I left the mess as it was and walked to the house where we slept that week, without saying goodnight to anyone. Nobody came after me. I passed out on the couch.
The next day I was bleeding heavily until the afternoon. Every quarter of the hour, I ran to the toilet with diarrhea and some weird movements inside my belly, like clenching, that I had never seen before. The blood that came out of me was like pieces, some of it. The pain was great, and unfamiliar. It didn’t take me long to realise I was having a miscarriage. Jan seemed annoyed and at some point left me alone and went to the park to enjoy the sunny day. He told me to go find him if I feel better.
My feelings for Jan vanished that day, along with my ‘cool punk girl’ attitude. I felt overwhelmingly guilty and wanted to punish myself for what happened. After some hours passed and the pain started to go away, I lit a cigarette and extinguished it on my forearm, to feel pain once more. Then lit it again. And again. And again. But punishing myself wasn’t enough. Somehow, I didn’t give up completely. I also wanted things to change, there was hope in this too. I had a shower and ate a little. I admitted to myself that I didn’t need a man like that, who didn’t love me at all. I wanted to stop hiding my insecurities inside a bottle. And something I had never thought of before that day. I really wanted to have a baby, to make up for the loss. But I didn’t want to go back to Greece. I decided to try my luck in a place similar enough, but with better opportunities.
I ran away the next day, taking only the bare minimum with me, as I was too weak to carry more. An embroidered pouch with my documents, some cash, a change of clothes, a sleeping bag and my guitar and juggling toys. I should have said goodbye to the nice people of that town, but I couldn’t bring myself to see Jan again. Damn you! Damn you, you insensitive jerk! I thought, in rhythm with every step as I walked out of town.
I reached Spain in two weeks’ time. By then the bleeding had stopped but I had trouble with withdrawal symptoms. I hadn’t touched alcohol since that night on the bridge, and while it was pure torture, my determination was strong. I was almost unable to sleep or even think rationally but dreamed with my eyes open, maniacally, about all sorts of things, planning a good future. I didn’t have much luck with hitchhiking but I took trains without buying a ticket, and tried to sleep on benches and under bridges. Very often people gave me food, although I rarely felt hungry. My stomach was all weird. I finally found a town in southern Spain, which was warm enough for me, and very beautiful. I decided to stay there.
Months later, I managed to collect quite a lot of money by playing music. The people of this town and the tourists liked my songs. Things were finally looking up! People mostly left me alone when I told them my story, maybe because it was too sad for them. I met some couples with children and got an idea of how it is to raise a child. But unfortunately, I had also resumed drinking, although not as much as before. I had to stop the panic attacks that I was experiencing for the first time in my life, surely due to abruptly quitting. It also didn’t help that drinking in squares with friends was even more common in Spain than it was in the other places I had been to. I was amused when I discovered that this activity even had a name, botellon. And alcohol was almost as cheap there as in Czech Republic, but easier to find, because of the many tourists buying bottles and then leaving them everywhere half full. Many nights I found myself collecting them, filling my backpack with them and taking them to my place, a small room a bit out of town that was cheap enough for me to pay, then inviting people to drink with me.
In November of that year I had an unexpected but very welcome surprise. A long email from Andrei that made me extremely happy. He wrote to me that he had started seeing a therapist some time ago and gotten sober, that he had moved to the city I had lived in before I started traveling and that he had found a good job there. Also that he missed me and wished I could visit him. All this seemed ideal. I never stopped loving him, but I was scared of how self destructive we could be together. I answered his email and told him everything that had happened since we had last spoken. We exchanged emails for weeks, hesitating to call each other, as if the sound of each other’s voice would have been too much to bear. In the end we decided to try to be together again. I couldn’t wait to go back to Greece after that. Fortunately I had saved up enough money, and was able to fly back instead of hitchhiking.
In the end everything worked out. I moved in with Andrei in the small flat he was renting and he showed me how to apply for free therapy and government benefits. It was difficult, but living with a sober person is wonderful if one is trying to be sober too. The therapist also helped me face my problems and deal with the past, and I was prescribed medication that eased my withdrawal symptoms, so I wouldn’t have to handle everything by myself. Little by little, I stopped drinking. I found a job in a cafe and I was happy working there. It gave me something to do. Then I got pregnant.
Pregnancy was a scary experience for me, because for the whole nine months I was afraid I would lose the baby, that after years of alcohol abuse, my body would not be strong enough to carry it. Not drinking was not a problem at all, as I had already quit earlier and the hormones making me nauseous helped, too. When I saw people drinking in parks and squares I felt a bit of nostalgia but then reminded myself of all the things that are a thousand times more important. Our baby was born healthy and we were both very happy and in love, but then, not even a month later, the pandemic hit Greece and I was devastated.
Stuck at home with a newborn, being afraid of going out and unable to meet any friends made me feel really down. Nothing in my town seemed familiar anymore. While before the streets were full of music and life, now there was silence and people gathering in secret. My friends and I talked a lot on social media and joked about the time there was fifteen of us drinking from the same bottle. Of course there are people who didn’t have to change their habits at all, as they used their wealth to selfishly ignore the new laws and party in secret in their own private spaces. Not us, though. I found myself sticking to the rules for the first time in my life. Having a baby depending on me changed me for the best. Time passed quickly with work and a happy home life. I even started meeting my mother again, who to this day continues drinking. The difference is that now that she is happier, she prefers to drink with her friends instead of alone, and they do it on video calls. It’s quite interesting how things change, and middle aged people who had no contact with technology suddenly became so modern.
So, two years later, things are not back to normal yet but much better indeed. People still hang out in squares and drink, but in a more hygienic manner, using their own bottles and single use cups. And our baby is a toddler now! We recently celebrated his second birthday, got covid and healed, and started daycare. I have been sober for more than three years now and I trust myself I will keep on, no matter how hard things might get. Because I have sworn that my boy will have a happier life than any of us.
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