Amanda Knox Pens Essay About Complicated Relationship With Alcohol and Caffeine
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Amanda Knox is getting candid about her relationship with alcohol.
Knox, 36, who became a household name following her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, initially “kept alcohol at arm’s length” after she was released from prison in 2011, she penned in a Tuesday, January 2, essay for Slate.
However, after Knox began dating now-husband Christopher Robinson, whom she described as “a crack-a-beer-at-5-o’clock kind of guy,” she started drinking with more frequency.
“As the pandemic set in, it only got worse,” Knox wrote. “On a typical day, I’d have four cups of coffee before noon — coffee and I had stayed tight all along — and two or three glasses of chardonnay at the end of the workday. I had one friend slapping me awake each morning, and another working out the knots each night.”
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When Knox became pregnant for the first time, she knew she had to make a change.
“I decided to cut back to two cups of coffee a day and one glass of wine a week,” she recalled. “Then I had a miscarriage. I was devastated. Four months later, when I found myself pregnant again, I wasn’t taking any chances. I decided to cut my caffeine intake back to a single cup of coffee in the morning and forgo alcohol entirely for the duration of the pregnancy. My husband even joined me in solidarity.”
After Knox and Robinson, who tied the knot in 2018, welcomed daughter Eureka in 2021, they “returned to drinking, with an eye toward moderation, only on special occasions.” At the start of 2023, the couple decided to participate in Dry January and abstain from alcohol for an entire month.
“About halfway through the month, I found myself pregnant again,” Knox wrote. “On a whim, we thought, ‘Why not? Let’s both do Dry 2023!’”
While reflecting on her alcohol consumption habits, Knox began to think about her dependence on caffeine as well.
“I thought of a silly mug of my stepdad’s that featured a picture of Yoda and the phrase, ‘Coffee I Need or Kill You I Will.’ It suddenly registered as profoundly sinister,” she admitted. “It got me thinking, ‘What if I cut it all out altogether? Wouldn’t I be a great example to my kids to not be addicted to anything?’”
Knox told her husband that she was switching to decaf, and he agreed to make the change with her.
“I was sleeping better at night, had plenty of energy during the day, and felt truly in control of my own life,” Knox wrote of her experience quitting caffeinated coffee.
After welcoming son Echo in September and abstaining from alcohol and caffeine for the entire year, Knox is considering reintroducing the substances into her life with a more mindful approach.
“As much as I’m drawn to staying dry and decaffeinated indefinitely, total abstinence also, strangely, feels as if I’m allowing the substance to maintain power over me — as if I don’t have the guts to show the door to that friend who won’t take the hint and leave at the end of the party,” she noted. “What I’m considering now is treating both caffeine and alcohol as mindful substances, to be approached with the same care as psychedelics.”
Knox then called upon her experience being accused and convicted of a crime she didn’t commit to explain why she’s weary of hard and fast rules about what she can and can’t do.
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“I know, more than most people, what it’s like to be stripped of your agency, to be totally powerless against forces beyond your control,” she wrote. “I want to be in control of my own life, and what I’ve realized is that having a glass of wine every now and again is a way for me to affirm that control.”
Knox concluded: “I’m going to enjoy a glass of wine or a cappuccino, I’m going to do so with intent. I’ll savor the taste, and the mental shift, but also the decision itself, the act of choosing. Freedom, too, has a flavor, and a mental buzz. That’s something I never want to quit.”
Welcoming children didn’t just change Knox’s perspective on alcohol and caffeine, it also reaffirmed her desire to help others who have been wrongfully convicted.
“The thing that really hit me [after giving birth to my daughter] was what it must have felt like to be my mom going through everything that I was going through and how much my mom would have given to trade places with me at any point. But she couldn’t,” Knox said during an interview with King 5 News last month. “And I have felt more compelled than ever to try to change things just to make it so that it’s fair.”
