My Story.
Me…
I could tell this story in so many ways. The dramatic version, the sensationalist version, the light version, the dark version. I could tell you a story of all the things I did wrong, the mistakes I made, all the times I f***ked up, said the wrong thing, embarrassed myself, blacked out or failed. That story, I am well versed in because I berated myself with shame for over thirty years. Or I could tell you the inspirational version; I could tell you about all the things I have done right, the wins, the successes.
I can tell all of those stories because they are my truth. They are all my story.
I can tell the whole truth because I no longer live in shame, I no longer regret what I cannot change, and I no longer wish I was different.
I can do this because I made a decision, to get well & remove alcohol from my life, and it was the catalyst to finding my way back to a me I could be proud of.
Little Me.
I was a sensitive child, I liked nothing more than my cuddly toys, make believe, magic and stories, I believed fairies lived at the bottom of the garden, I also believed emphatically in Father Christmas. I lived in my head a lot, I was a creative child, I liked making up plays and dance routines, drawing and crafts, I loved collections and Koalas.
As a kid we lived on a small holding with goats, ducks and an apple orchard, we didn’t have a lot of money, but that didn’t matter. I have lots of good memories of being a kid; there was a lot of happiness with my loving family. I also had a lot of fear and worry. I was very scared of things; I had recurring nightmares that I remember to this day. Even all the way back to little me, I remember feeling separate somehow or lonely. I remember shouting my worries into the sea and feeling like it was my friend. I felt awkward and couldn’t quite work out where I fit. I used to live in make believe a lot, I pushed boundaries and told stories about myself, invented untruths. An untethered soul? A highly sensitive person? An underlying fragility in my mental health perhaps? Because somehow being just me felt like it wasn’t enough, even back then.
We moved when I was 8.
Throughout my childhood and teens I would ‘act out’, fabricate, invent and elaborate creating much annoyance and frustration from those that loved me. It became a mechanism of distancing myself from that little me, little me was too sensitive, little me was scared, little me wasn’t enough, little me didn’t fit.
So I began the habit of chameleonism (not sure this is an actual thing, but I am certainly not the first woman in recovery to do this) I attempted to people please, to try to fit, because I had created a narrative that being just me wasn’t enough.
However as with any maladaptive behaviour, any disconnect from our authentic self it often backfired. I got ridiculed, I got caught out, I got noticed for the wrong reasons. I was the bully and bullied. Shy yet boisterous, outwardly confident inwardly awkward, a typical Gemini…
I did have passion though. I was passionate about a lot of things injustice being one of them, the environment, politics. I was always questioning myself though, how could I be cooler? Prettier? More liked? More like them and less like me? Why wasn’t I enough? How could I be enough?
She tells tall tales…
When my kids were young they loved Julia Donaldson books and so did I (still do). Tiddler is my story, I was a little fish and I told tall tales, yet in the end through telling my story in all its different versions it led me back to my truth and it led me from being lost to being found. Writing and storytelling has been integral in my recovery, I use it with my clients too. I invite you to watch this little fable.
My so called life.
In amongst the angst which was being a teenager I found the party scene. I came “home”. I didn’t really like drinking, it tended to bring out the worst in me, violence, anger and shamefaced drunkenness, but I found my perfect package in partying and used alcohol as an aid to social anxiety and the fear of being who I really was went away.
It was the 90’s and I found friendship, a community and belonging in the rave and festival scene. It makes sense now as post Thatcher/Reagan era kids we were trying to find ourselves and were rejecting materialism for more primitive forms of connection and bonding. I understand now as a coach, working with somatic experiencing how beneficial dance and deep rhythmic baselines are for working through trauma and the impactful experience of being a young person and how key belonging and community are for our health. A lot of things I advocate as a coach for well-being, were partly practiced in our youth which was probably why it was so hard to move away from that as an adult. However it was counter-culture deemed as anti-social behaviour and the scene had a dark side of drugs and alcohol. Us as young people, we coped with the teenage angst, our stories and our fears by using drugs and alcohol as an escape.
It has taken me time to come to terms with what we/I got up to back then, but we were teenagers and despite the dangers we put ourselves in, no one was modelling any other way to be. You don’t grow up questioning whether you should/should not drink or party when it’s culturally accepted to do so.
I think I have always been attracted to people who have a story, many of my friends growing up did, I was fiercely loyal and took on the fight of others (often misplaced, noone was looking for me to be their saviour). Which meant I dated complicated boys, who weren’t nice. I made life complicated.
I couldn’t understand why I felt so messed up. I didn’t feel I had the right to feel how I did, which was often wretched, especially being friends with people whose lives were incredibly difficult. I used to wish I had a reason to feel as f***ed up as I did. I realise now that we all experience things differently. I am a highly sensitive person, life impacts me, I am an empath, I suck up the feelings of those around me and despite my parent’s dedication to create a loving home, they carried their own wounds and traumas doing the best they could with what they had. No-one’s pain or experience is less or more than mine or yours. What we know and what we feel is ours alone.
Unfortunately at the age of 18 my misspent wish to have my own “reasons” to feel as I did came true and I experienced my very own #metoo trauma whilst travelling in Mexico. I am not going to go into details here, I have spoken about this time in my life here. I am by no means dismissing this part of my story, but I invite you to explore it if you want to, at your own rhythm, rather than me triggering you here. Needless to say the year between 18-19 was hugely traumatic. From that moment parts of me were frozen. I coped by partying hard, I made my friends swear to secrecy, I made a decision to never speak about what happened to me and I tried to cover up the wound and forget, it didn’t work. I thought about it constantly, daily. I knew it impacted on relationships but I tried to ignore it. I reinvented, I reinvented again. What I know now that I didn’t then was I was dissociated and suffering from PTSD.
I moved, I went to University, I smoked, I drank, and I partied. My life which when I was little me had been so expansive and full of magic and make believe became very narrow smoke, music, party, sleep, occasionally go to Uni. I managed to pass my degree, I moved again, I had always moved, if I kept moving I could escape myself and my story.
Before the crash.
I was coping-ish entering my mid-twenties, I had let go of a caring relationship at the end of my teens because I knew I wanted more. It was probably the first time I consciously used alcohol to drown the pain of that break up. Then things were brighter, I had a great job for a theatre company in the West End of London I had money for the first time ever. I was living alone, I was still acting out though, I dont think I was particularly nice at this time, I was hard work, all over the place and erratic. I was still telling tales, but I was doing ok, considering. I was hopeful, I reconnected with one of my little me loves working in the arts.
I met a French man who told me he loved me the first night we met, I laughed. Turns out he meant it. After 911 I got made redundant and after a year of long distance dating I moved in for the Summer with the Frenchman and near on twenty years and I am still here : -) Things weren’t simple, but he loved me and we began to make plans for our life together. His sister was a lifelong teetotaler, I had never known anyone that didn’t drink before, it blew my mind I became “sober curious” (In 2003!)
We were partying and having fun, disposable incomes and our own rented flat. Things weren’t easy his friends didn’t like me, my chameleonism was backfiring, I was tired, I had put on a lot of excess weight I had a stressful job in a non-for-profit arts company. So we decided to change (my Frenchman should be a coach) we decided to get fit, take six months off the booze, I LOVED IT!
I felt better about myself, I trusted myself, I looked better, we had time together, and we did different things. We decided to move to France and start a fresh. I retrained as an English Language Teacher which I loved, however he wasn’t finding a job in France so we decided to stay put and try for a baby instead. He got a job, so we moved to France and I was three months pregnant at 26 and ready to start a new life.
However motherhood was hard, very hard, I was alone I didn’t speak French and I got hit with incredible fear, what if I do something wrong? What if I am terrible at this? What if I f***k this up, I was trying really hard to be perfect at it, my stress and anxiety levels were rocketing. 19 months later I had my son. I loved these small people SO much but the fear was overwhelming, I was losing my sense of self, I was also exhausted.
As the kids grew my anxiety grew. I know now that I had undiagnosed PTSD from the age of 18, so part of that fed the fear, the hyper-vigilance, the outbursts of anger and rage. I started drinking more, I found comfort in weekends away when I could be the old me, most of my friends were still partying so there was this disconnect of who I was on a day to day basis, and the “freedom” of partying. I was starting to lose sight of myself, my behaviour was more and more unpredictable, and the shame was more intense. I was starting to get very unwell.
The crash and sobriety #1.
I’d say the real “wheels falling off the wagon came between 2010-2013. I was angry a lot, resentful and completely lost. I was high functioning, succeeding at work, but my mental health was deteriorating. I was an insomniac knocking myself out with wine only to wake up at 3am and not sleep again. I was trying to hold it all together. My parents moved from where I grew up to London and I felt like I had lost that anchor in England. That my friends would forget me and I was so lonely. So I would sit with my “friend” red wine and scroll Facebook often blacking out and waking up with the fear of what I had said or which photo I had commented on, what “funny” photo I had posted on social media.
In November 2010 I returned from a boozy weekend away with friends and was exhausted, I got angry with the kids for something and then got angry with myself for upsetting them, I kicked a wall whilst wearing leather boots and shattered a bone in my foot. My husband was away on business, eventually my Dad had to come and rescue me and the kids and we spent a month in London while I was on crutches. I lied to everyone and told them I had fallen down the stairs, I was so ashamed. There were many moments like this. Accidents, blackouts, lucky escapes.
In September 2013 I had a massive panic attack. I had decided after a crazy out of control summer with some very scary moments to stop drinking and smoking and it impacted me severely. I now know that I was having withdrawals, I was sleep deprived, deeply depressed, and had no will to live, my self-esteem and self-worth was at zero.
I went to the doctor and was told I was clinically in burnout and put on antidepressants. But I didn't stop drinking. By Christmas 2013 I knew my behaviour was out of control but I couldn't stop it, I didn't feel worthy of being well. On 27 December 2013 in the middle of the night as I had constant insomnia I searched, "Do I have a problem with alcohol?" and stumbled across Soberistas. I watched an interview with Lucy Rocca and I knew - this is me. I am a habitual/problem drinker. Like many of the women blogging on Soberistas I realised I have no off switch when it comes to alcohol and that controlling my drinking was exhausting. I felt for the first time that I wasn’t alone, not only that I discovered people were thriving and loving being alcohol free.
So I tried to stop. At the beginning it was extremely hard, I had lots of slip-ups. I went to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and I wrote regularly on the site and benefitted from the inspiration of other people’s stories and peer support. In February 2014 I stopped and didn't drink for a year. Again it was fantastic; I went through a rebirth of strength, positivity and possibility. I quit my job and we decided to move to the seaside.
I was so positive that after a year, I worked my way off antidepressants with my doctor. I deemed myself fixed and convinced myself that I could drink moderately.
The crash and sobriety #2 #3 #4 and so on...
It took me a long time to understand why I went back to drinking after a year. I think subconsciously I had fixed a year in my head. “If I can do a year I don’t have a problem.” A friend of mine had mentioned how she was moderating, only drinking at the weekends and I thought I can do that. Also when I had told people about my drinking the thing they had identified as “not normal” was drinking on my own. So I set myself new rules only at the weekend, only with others, no more than half a bottle… I recreated controlled rules around my drinking, again.
However by mid-Summer 2015 (no moderation, daily holiday drinking) my sleep was awful, I felt awful so I quit again. We moved to our dream life and I arrived as a non-drinker. By November I was drinking again, we were meeting new people. We met a group of “our” people; they liked good food and good wine. One was a Sommelier so again, new rules. I will only drink fine wine at parties, wine at the weekend with my husband. Jan 2016 I did a “detox”
This back and forth continued. I would drink until my sleep was ruined; I was waking up at 3am again. Then I would quit. When I drank at parties I would either drink too much or watch myself like a hawk, making sure I ate, making sure I wasn’t seen to drink too much, and then open a bottle when I got home and could really relax. I wasn’t drinking on my own so that was ok right?
All this time I was battling my mental health which was deteriorating, I wasn’t working having taken a sabbatical to settle the kids in our new life. However I had stopped sleeping, I had got into an obsessive habit of checking the locks over and over again in the new house, I would just be falling asleep and then I would have to go and double check again.
I was having panic attacks and finding it very hard to motivate myself to do anything as I was so exhausted.
My doctor advised me to go back on anti-depressants and referred me to a psychiatrist. She diagnosed Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Sleep Anxiety Disorder i.e. insomnia and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which she believed I had been probably managing for the past twenty years since the attack. I was both relieved and terrified, I also felt embarrassed. We had just moved, we had found a nice group of friends and now I was going to be the weird “f****d up” one.
The Summer 2016, the psychiatrist put me on antipsychotic drugs as I wasn’t coping I spent the summer sleeping 12 hour nights, I stopped drinking as I had read how dangerous the pills were with the medications. The medication made me put on a lot of weight; by September 2016 I came off the meds. I wanted my life back and I wanted to be “normal” and part of “normality” was for me to drink.
This back and forth between moderating and sobriety continued. I was in therapy, I went back to work, I passed my driving test but I was deeply unhappy. I felt like I was watching my life through a window. I was present but I wasn’t connected.
I kept on asking my husband but wasn’t I happier when I didn’t drink at all? He would say yes, I wouldn’t hear him. I (or the wine witch) convinced me that alcohol was fundamental to our relationship and our life in France.
The beginning of the end.
I look good in this picture, right? I was hugely hung-over and SO tired, but I look good so that’s ok? At the beginning of 2017 I went sober (again) then went back to drinking again. I was so exhausted of the hamster wheel. I knew in my gut that I was happier when I didn’t drink - less depressed, less anxious, I could look at myself in the mirror, I could trust myself more. I liked myself more.
I was beginning to unpack my past, the trauma, the fear, the pain. I was working through shame and guilt that had become such a part of me I didn’t realise that self-loathing wasn’t a given state of being in therapy. I discovered podcasts and started listening to Happier with Gretchen Rubin It fascinated me that you could have an impact on your own happiness, I started employing her happy hacks and saw a difference, the voice in my head - wasn’t I happier when I didn’t drink at all? - started getting louder and harder to ignore.
This photo was taken on my birthday in 2017 my brother’s and I had surprised my Dad for his birthday the night before, my Dad was about to start chemo & radiotherapy (he is thankfully now cancer free) but I couldn’t get this conflict out of my brain, that my solution to my Dad’s cancer was to drink myself to black out. There was a clear gap between my values, the person I wanted to be, and my drinking, but I couldn’t get it to stick.
I liked sober me more, but I wasn’t confident enough and I couldn’t forgive myself enough for all the mistakes I had made, to claim her. I didn’t feel like I deserved her and my life of people pleasing led me to choosing yet again to keep drinking, because that’s what other people seemed to want.
Summer 2017 my husband took a month long holiday and we spent family time travelling through France, Portugal and Spain. Summers, holidays, Xmas and high days were always the worst for me, I could keep my drinking in check during the working week, but holidays I drank every night and often every lunch time, I was yet again, exhausted. Over the past couple of years my excuse to stop was if I woke up at 3am again (which I always did) and I was secretly hoping it would happen again.
The best decision I have ever made…
Whilst we were on holiday in Spain, I spent many nights looking out at this view wishing, hoping for my life to change. My best friend had given me Bryony Gordon’s book Mad Girl to read, it had blown my mind that someone rather than trying to pretend she was ok, or try to get fixed was owning her mental illness, she was living with her problems rather than trying to hide them. I had this narrative circling in my head, maybe I have a story to tell, maybe if I shared my mental health, trauma and drinking story, maybe that’s the key to help, be seen and to heal and let go of the stigma. I WAS SO TIRED.
One evening as we were just sitting down to have a glass of wine whilst preparing dinner, my son jumped in the pool and hit his head on the cover, my husband jumped in the pool and pulled him up, there was a lot of blood, luckily he “only” split his eyebrow, we spent the next 6 hours in a Spanish hospital and he got stitches. My husband said to me when we got in the car “thank goodness we are sober”. Something shifted in me.
I couldn’t get it out of my head, how many more risks, how many more times? What is this worth? When will you respect the gift of life? My wish was answered, I woke at 3am and I knew I was done with drinking. I downloaded a free short course from Annie Grace and that was enough to grab hold of sobriety again with both hands.
That was 17th of August 2017
I knew I needed accountability, to build a life I loved sober, to find a sober community and for it to be the central pillar of my life choices, my anchor.
It wasn’t easy being back at Day 1, when I had had a year of sobriety, I wasn’t a newbie, but I was starting again all the same. So, I set up my Instagram account.
And now…
There is not a day that goes by that I regret going sober.
I am more balanced, more silly, more relaxed, more settled, more patient, more grounded, I am more focused, I am more present, I am more confident, I am happier.
My mental and physical health has improved.
I am a good example to my kids, I can teach them tools I have learned of emotional intelligence, nervous system regulation, answering to their needs and building resilience. I am hopeful and excited for the future; I have plans rather than living day to day.
I know myself, like myself, trust myself.
I have kept old friends that really loved me; I have let toxic relationships fall away. I have grown up and feel wise. I have the most incredible network of sober friends.
I love my job.
I have rediscovered creativity, a love of swimming, writing, dancing, and painting - things I left behind as a teenager. I look after myself with good food, nice drinks and a monthly massage because I have more me money now, I don’t waste money on alcohol. I feel part of a movement that is greater than me, a movement to empower women to reclaim their lives and their wellbeing where men can talk about their emotions without judgement.
I feel proud of myself.
Thank you for reading my story.
I’d love to hear yours.
Love M xx
