When I first began to recognise that my drinking was becoming a problem I was ashamed. I would read first hand accounts written by recovering alcoholics who touched on some of their ‘rock bottom’ moments but I still felt like I had to lie and make out that I wasn’t as bad as I truly was. I was embarrassed to admit it, I was embarrassed by my behaviour.
So I wanted to write this to lay it all out there, be completely honest and perhaps someone will read this and be comforted that they’re not alone in their struggle with alcohol addiction. Maybe some of the absolute god awful things that I have done will make you feel a bit better about yourself. This is not something that I particularly want to write and I’ve been putting it off because they are memories that I don’t like revisiting.
People often talk about ‘the moment they knew that had a problem’ as if it is some sort of lightbulb moment, and perhaps for some people it is, but for me it certainly wasn’t. It crept up on me so slowly that I honestly can’t pin point ‘the moment’. I think by the time I realised I needed help I was already drowning in the deep end.
I have always enjoyed a drink, it is something that I always associated with relaxing, or celebrating, or as a reward for a hard week at work. When I got my first ‘real adult’ job I used to bribe myself to get through the week with the promise of a few glasses of wine at the weekend. It felt like I’d earned it, so I’d put my feet up, pour a glass and unwind. I only ever drank of a weekend. Then after a while I began treating myself to a mid week bottle of wine, especially if it had been a tough week. This was further emphasised when I reconnected with an old friend and we began meeting every wednesday for what we referred to as ‘wine wednesday’. I had moved to a new job since then, one that was less mentally demanding so rolling up a bit hungover on a Thursday wasn’t too overbearing.
Then my wine habit became every other night, then it became almost every night. I would clear a bottle of wine on a weeknight but on a weekend I really let my hair down. I could easily get through two bottles of wine on a friday night but I was getting sloppy with my drinking. Whereas I was used to a few glasses of wine in front of the tv then tucking myself up in bed, now I was getting absolutely smashed, staying up until 4am and quite often finding myself with my head down the toilet wretching my guts up. This was no longer drinking to unwind. What made matters worse was that during this time I had began to isolate myself from people, I made the excuse that it was fine and that I just enjoyed my own company of an evening, but really I had just started to lose interest in other people’s company. I didn’t want to have to make an effort, I just wanted to be able to drink to my hearts content. Despite this I was still desperate for attention when I had a drink, not only was I desperate for attention but I was desperate to feel wanted. So after a few drinks I would find myself chatting up friends, strangers, coworkers, basically anyone who took the bate. I would text the most explicit sexual comments to people I barely knew just to get some sort of reaction. I felt like the sexiest goddess in the world when in reality I was just a sloppy drunk.
A big turning point for me came when my work rota changed which meant that my days off no longer fell on the weekend. Rather than stopping my drinking, I carried on drinking if I had a day off the next day, regardless of what day of the week it was. By this point calling in sick was starting to become alarmingly common (which was very unlike me as I’d never called in sick from any job ever), but I always had an excuse, I had a stomach bug, family emergency, blah blah blah. So I also had become a habitual liar just to cover up my drinking.
From September 2017 was when it started to get really bad. By now most of my time was spent drinking, I was consuming so much of an evening that I was having to have a drink in the daytime just to ease the hangovers enough to function as normal. At some point I’d switched to drinking vodka as I realised a bottle of vodka was more convinient to hide than multiple bottles of wine. One evening just before my 27th birthday I decided to invite my work friend round for a drink, we got on really well and I fancied the company. Truth is I knew he had the hots for me and after a couple of glasses of wine I was craving some male attention. Sober me had no interest in him in anyway other than as a friend from the workplace, but I’d completely lost all touch of sober me. We ended up sleeping together and stayed up late drinking, he was sipping on beers, I was downing wine like it was a competition. The next morning he got up and went to work, I told him I’d meet him there. I was still drunk and couldn’t go in to work in that state so I called in sick and prayed that he wouldn’t grass me up. I then noticed that he’d left a beer in my room so I drank it and went back to bed. He never did grass me up but he was extremely unimpressed. I can barely remember the following months, often I’d be too hungover to physically get up and by this point the physical withdrawal was starting to make me really ill, but rather than face the problem I started ordering fancy bottles of vodka for next day delivery from amazon. I found a takeaway place near me that also delivered wine so I’d call them up and order a measly portion of chips just so they’d deliver me two bottles of wine. I was getting super crafty as well. I’d basically isolated myself from everybody but the few people that I did have around me were becoming increasingly concerned with my drinking so I became an absolute master at hiding booze in the most bizarre of places. I’d appease my mum by saying “I’m only going to drink this small bottle of wine today just to keep the cravings away”, little did she know I had a half bottle of vodka in the boiler cupboard. Sidenote – someone came to service the boiler and found my secret stash, rather than be embarassed I just cracked open a bottle and flirted with him. I was honestly a disgrace and it was about to get so much worse.
In March of last year I began speaking to a guy that I’d met through tinder. He was lovely and we started going out on nice little dates. I really liked this guy and thoroughly enjoyed his company so I kept my drinking at bay when I was around him. I knew that my drinking would ruin any hope of this relationship going well, so when we went for dinner I would sip one glass of wine and that was that. We would spend days together exploring the outdoors, going to theme parks, hiking around the countryside and the weird part was that I wasn’t climbing the walls to have a drink because I was enjoying every second of his company. But I was stupid to think I could hide it and the cracks slowly started to show. We decided to book a nice weekend away in the countryside to spend some quality time together. I wanted us to have the greatest weekend ever so I booked us a gorgeous log cabin, completely secluded, with an open fire and private hob tub, it was perfect. The day before we went I was off work so naturally spent the day sipping on vodka while I packed, he must have been able to sense that something was off when he spoke to me that evening because he was very short with me. He picked me up at 6am the next morning and I felt like I was dying, I must have looked like pure shit, I couldn’t even face eating when we stopped for breakfast and was silent for 90% of the car journey – great start to our perfect getaway. Despite this the rest of the weekend went really well, I soon felt better once I was in his company and we had a very lovely time. Once we got home though I resumed my day drinking habits and started to get snappy with him or overly emotional and clingy. Eventually he said he wasn’t feeling it anymore and went to Barcelona to start afresh. I acted like he was a dickhead and that it was all his fault but it wasn’t – it was me, my actions and my behaviour ruined it.
Things got dramatically worse from there. A couple of days after he left I got extremely drunk and decided to go visit my friend – the work friend from before. He worked nights so I turned up at 11pm, let myself in and just got more drunk waiting for him to get home. I was supposed to be in work the next day so I took my uniform with me. I ended up calling in sick, turning off my phone and staying in his flat for five days. I would run over to the shop, grab a bottle of vodka and just drink all day. After a couple of days he was sick of it. He told me that I had a problem and that I was going to get sacked and he was worried about me. Despite the fact that he was trying to be a good, concerned friend I kicked off and told him that he should mind his own business. He tried to get me to leave but I straight up refused. The next morning my family turned up and forced me to go home.
Of course my friend was right and I lost my job. I’d be ignoring their calls for a week so when I was invited to a disciplinary meeting I had no hope. I was escorted from the builded and obviously drowned my sorrows in more vodka.
A few days later I’d decided that I’d simply had enough of everything and took an overdose of prescription pills, I was in hospital for 3 days on a drip. This wasn’t the last suicide attempt that I made during this time. In the space of 2 months I was in an out of hospital more times than I can actually remember. Each time I would have to speak to a member of mental health team and each time I just ignored them. The worst time (this really upsets me to think about) I was taken in to hospital having taken an overdose and I was off the charts drunk, it was around 11pm when the hospital discharged me. I was still very, very drunk, I had no money, no taxi number so I just walked out of the hospital – I had no idea where I was or where I was going, I could barely see straight so of course I got very lost and began to panic. I couldn’t even find my way back to the hospital. I called my mum and she came to pick me up but I could hear that she was crying as she comforted me on the phone, I just sat on someone’s front garden in the freezing cold hoping she’d find me. We still don’t talk about that night.
Since then I’ve tried a few times at getting sober. At first I wasn’t doing it for me, I was simply doing it to please my family so it’s hardly a surprise that I fell off the wagon repeately. As my body had gotten so used to drinking such large amounts of strong alcohol the withdrawal I was experiencing was horrendous beyond belief. So I tried to make this easier by weaning myself off the alcohol instead. I swapped the vodka for cider and limited myself to a certain amount a day which I would then gradually reduce. It worked for a few days but then I’d go too far and end up drinking 10 cans instead of 4 so that stopped working for me. I knew that the only was I was going to stop drinking was if I stopped completely, nothing, nadda. But at first I just wasn’t ready so it was impossible, I’d manage a few days and then make up for it by drinking myself to a blackout state. I’m talking being sick in my bed and peeing myself levels of drunk. And as embarrassing as that is to say it’s the horrible truth of how bad I had got, I was waking up in my own vomit. My mum was trying so hard to support me and help me that she would clean my sheets and rub my back while I was feeling like death. She never gave up on me and never stopped hoping that I’d get better. I could see that I was killing her, the things that I was putting her through were vile. I remember once when I was supposedly sober I snuck away to bed and pulled out my secret vodka, she confronted me about being drunk and I started to argue with her, in the heat of the argument and my aggressive behaviour she pushed me, only lightly, but as I was steaming drunk I fell backwards. She still tells me that she’s sorry for that incident and gets upset about it now, even though I deserved it for being a dick to her.
Eventually the whole sobriety thing started to click for me, at first I could only manage 5 days without drinking, then I’d cave in and get drunk, but I was started to complete little chunks of sobriety. I made an appointment with my doctor (who was aware of my drinking problem and had been trying to get me to attend a recovery programme for months) who changed my anxiety medication and also gave me a repeat prescription for thiamine and vitamin b complex. I still take these now every day. Over time my sober chunks began to get longer and the longer I was able to stay sober, the more I was able to see the grim reality of just how vile my behaviour had been and just how low I had become. I soon realised that every time I gave in and drank, I’d have to go through the horrendous ordeal of going cold turkey again, the skin crawling withdrawal symptoms were not something I wanted to keep reliving. So in the run up to christmas I went 8 weeks sober – the longest I had ever been. I was feeling so great, I was starting to feel like myself again. I was so elated when I managed to spend the whole christmas period without feeling tempted to have a mulled wine. I saw in the new year without picking up a glass of champagne. I honestly felt like the penny had dropped and I’d cracked the whole sober thing.
Then, a few days after new year, I drank. I knew that I shouldn’t, I knew it would be a huge mistake. But for some reason I let the little devil voice in my head win and figured “well you’ve pretty much sussed this whole not drinking thing so I’m sure one bottle of wine would be fine”. WRONG. Having not drank for 2 months the wine went straight to my head, my tolerance was not what it once was. I basically breathed in that bottle of wine so I ended up going for another. My brother got home and found me passed out in bed. I had massively messed up. The next day I was so disappointed in myself, I felt like I’d let myself down as well as everyone that had been rooting for me. But after feeling sorry for myself for a bit, I dusted myself off and told myself that it was a slip up and sometimes slip ups happen.
That was 55 days ago. I’m taking every day as it comes and trying to just focus on one day at a time.
I know this post was ridiculously long and to be honest I’m not expecting anyone to read the whole thing, if anything I wrote it as a means of reflection. It’s very cathartic getting it all out. Keeping in mind that I’ve never told anyone about the majority of the things I’ve mentioned in this post. I’ve never been this honest about it before. If you did read it then thank you, that’s really nice of you.
So to summarise – I fucked up my whole life and that is why I decided to stop drinking.
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Sobriety and Me 