Hi, my name is Victoria and I am an alcoholic. 
When I first came to New York, I did not drink, not even socially. I have always had an adverse reaction to even a drop of alcohol. During college when everyone I knew marched to Tia Maria for those pitchers of margarita and zombies and ended up drunk by 3PM, I stayed sober. My major side effect to alcohol? My face turns red, my eyes gets bloodshot and my ears warm up and nope, that is not a very pleasant sight specially for someone as vain as I. So my friends have been used to having me tag along drinking binges and readily acknowledge that I would just be all over the pica-picas (finger foods), sometimes offering rice to humiliate me - hehehe.
Today it dawned on me that my New York lifestyle has evolved and a bit of alcohol is now part of it. My friends are Brazilian and so I have become familiar with the ‘caipirinhas’, a delicious mix of lime slices lightly crushed with a little sugar then mixed with cachaca and then finished off with water and ice cubes. I love it so much that after returning from Rio de Janeiro for her wedding, my friend Aline brought me a small bottle of very potent cachaca. Mojitos on the other hand are made of sugar-crushed mint leaves and then mixed with rum and seltzer water and it is also a favorite – plus, it gives you fresh breath!
In the office we try to make sure we end the week in a more convivial manner after much bantering and fist fighting week-long. We would share among us some red and white wine, cheese, olives, chips, hummus and pita. We like chardonnay, shiraz, pinot noir, cabarnet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc and some other imported inexpensive wines. My favorite has always been pinot grigio because of its fruity flavor. I used to prefer Riesling specially when paired with fish or any Asian cuisine but now I find it too sweet.
Only this week have I realized that I no longer react to alcohol the way I used to. I have built up a tolerance and can now integrate myself into the social drinking class. On Tuesday the M.O. and I went out to dinner with his college buddies and their wives and I had pinot noir with my steak, part of my Fat Tuesday ritual as I stay away from red meat for the rest of the Lent season. On Thursday, we had an “emergency wine and cheese” at work to rant about some frustrating result in the office and I started the evening with a glass of chardonnay. I then had dinner to celebrate the birthday of a friend at Lotus in the Meat Packing district where I enjoyed my black cod with a glass of pinot grigio. On Friday, my girlfriends and I had Argentine dinner at Novecento in Soho where I had two glasses of caipirinhas with my seafood linguine!
What I still haven’t developed a liking for is champagne (always gives me a headache) so I try to cheat and celebrate with sparkling white instead. When we celebrated New York’s Restaurant Week at a Scottish restaurant each part of the meal was washed down with a serving of scotch and I totally did not enjoy that. It sort of reminded me of the anti-asthma elixir I used to dread when I was younger.
Beer is something else I have not developed a taste for. Well, not totally since there are some which I find tolerable, mostly Irish beers (Guinness and Harp, specifically). But still, beer is something I would order only because I happen to be sitting in an Irish bar with my colleagues and they would roll their eyes at me if I ordered a soda. And besides, this Lent I have decided to give up all carbonated soda, including beer. So I am stuck with my grigio.
Can someone email me the number of the nearest AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) within the area code 10017?