Although I had fun, I also had blackouts, woke up in strange flats, got hit by a car.
Instagram: @walking_the_straight_line
I grew up in London in a house full of interesting and creative people – my father was a publisher so there were always authors and illustrators and other famous people milling around the house, telling me about their latest adventure or catastrophe. I listened and watched, fascination, as these people laughed, joked, ate, argued, debated and drank late into the evening. It felt like utopia. A place I was privileged to stand on the edge of and peek into. A place I wanted to recreate when I was a grown-up. I used to dream about the day I would be able to sit with friends, drinking wine, discussing adventures until the sun came up. I was still only 7. Growing up, drinking alcohol was just something people did. It was as normal to me as eating bread for breakfast.
By the time I was 14 I was glugging cheap beer in the park with my friends on the weekends. Time went on and beers in the park turned into cheap beer in local pubs, then cheap wine in nicer bars, then nice wine in fancy bars. By my early 20s I was working in the media industry in London and drinking every day, usually at lunch with colleagues and then after work with friends. I was ‘living the dream’, I honestly believed that. I was seeing the world, I was meeting interesting people. What more did I want? Nothing. Because honesty, I didn’t realise what I was missing out on. I didn’t realise I wasn’t really evolving as a person because I was floating and stumbling, intoxicated, dangerously around London, lucky to make it home most nights. Often I didn’t make it back to my home, but I found a safe place to black out and managed, somehow, to stay alive.
I drank because of special occasions, when happy or sad, when celebrating, partying, meeting friends for a meal, and also when doing absolutely nothing but sitting at home watching TV. Drinking was just part of my daily routine – like brushing my teeth in the morning... I drank in the evenings. I didn’t consider stopping. Why would I?
Although I had fun, I also had blackouts, woke up in strange flats, got hit by a car, fell through a glass shower door, got in arguments, found myself in a heroin den in a really scary part of London at 2am, got lost, got bruised and forgot whole chunks of time. My idea of a good night in my 20s wasn’t one that involved good friends, a delicious meal, live music and good conversation. It was when I woke up the next morning in my bed, in my pyjamas, and knew I hadn’t done anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about.
Despite all of this, I loved alcohol more than myself so on it went, into my 30s, stopping during two pregnancies but picking straight up again once the babies were a few months old. Then, like a get out of jail free card, society gave me mummy wine culture and so the merry go round went on. Just on a different playing field. This time we were in nice houses in suburbia with kids in tow. Or pubs down the road from the school on a Friday afternoon. Or a BBQ on Sunday surrounded by other families, all of the adults drinking, all of the kids running amok.
And because I still enjoyed that feeling of numbness that alcohol gave me. And because society kept telling me it was ok, that everyone was doing it, that drinking was normal, I kept going. Dedicated to my evening wine. Even though it had now turned into a bottle a night and that was hardly even touching the sides.
Then I somehow found myself in my 40s, drinking 10 bottles of wine in an average week, at home. Waking up every morning with a puffy face, red eyes, hating myself for drinking again the night before. This ‘utopia’ wasn’t playing out how I had imagined. I felt unfulfilled with my life, I felt like a bad mother, a grumpy wife, but still, my love affair with the prettiest poison you will ever find continued. Until the night of 20 December 2021.
Many people speak of rock bottom but for me that didn’t really happen. There was no catastrophe. No ultimatum from a loved one, no arrest (although that did happen once, it just didn’t stop me). For me, I was just my usual drunk self after two bottles of wine, but this time I pulled out my phone and hit record. I spoke to myself, to my sober self, and the words started tumbling (slurring) out. I was crying, pleading with myself to stop doing this.
I had tried to quit before but never made it more than a handful of weeks. I had looked at sobriety as not being allowed something I loved and that made it so hard to get through every day. But this time, the thought of quitting was empowering, not scary. I knew this was my chance, and I had to take it... so I jumped into sobriety headfirst. With a heart full of rage, a mind full of hope and a tiny beam of something I hadn’t felt since I was child starting to shine inside me. Pride. I wanted this like nothing before. I wanted to see who I was without alcohol. What I was capable of.
I signed up for a 100-day alcohol-free challenge online and started counting my days as if each one was a solid step towards a door I desperately needed to reach. I found support and people in similar situations to me. I just kept focusing on the day ahead. I would not drink that day. I slept a ridiculous amount. If I got cravings, I put my shoes on and went for a walk and didn’t come back until it had passed. I had long baths listening to sober podcasts. I bought myself treats each week with the money I was saving. I made sobriety a lifestyle. I submerged myself into it. It was the only way I was going to do it... and I had to do it.
Before I knew it, I was used to waking up in pyjamas instead of clothes and checking my phone in the morning to read the news, not to scan for mortifying messages. And the biggest thing of all? I stopped waking up every morning hating myself, full of shame and self-hatred. And that has probably been the biggest reward sobriety has given me. I learned to love myself for the first time in my adult life. After all, how can you be truly happy when your first thought every day is shame.
They say that if you ever start to worry that alcohol might be a problem in your life, then it probably already is. And it’s true. I no longer see it as something I want but can’t have, I see it as something that has taken enough from me, that I am no longer willing to allow in my life. I want to see what I am really capable of and this is the only way I can give myself a fighting chance of finding out. I recently hit 30+ months sober.