New Phases

HAPPY SOBERVERSARY to claireperth! Awesome work, girlfriend!

Claire wrote in her e-mail to me: This year has been the best year of my life. I still haven't quit smoking, I still have some serious shit to sort out, but I feel really at peace - it's a shiny new lovely place to be! The biggest thing I have learnt is that it's a slow process to change a life; to change a really big part of who you are and to be comfortable with it takes time.

This got me thinking about the different phases we go through when we quit the booze.

Most of you will be familiar with Phase One. Many of you are still battling through it.

It's the physically tough stage, the period when you feel more tired than you can ever remember being and the phase when you become totally obsessed by booze: by drinking it, by not drinking it, reading about it, blogging about it, dreaming about it.

Then, after about 100 days, the fog starts to clear and come out into the light, blinking, and thinking ok, now what?

And now what is Phase Two, the mentally tough bit. This is when you start getting your head around the idea of 'forever', when you battle with the idea that perhaps now you can go back to 'moderating', when you have to find new ways of dealing with fear, anxiety, elation, with life.

Then, as you reach your first soberversary, you start to think hey, I may have got this now. I can do it. I've done my birthday, Christmas, a whole twelve months of ups and downs. Hurrah, but then....

....what next?

And Phase Three is all about working out what to do with the rest of our lives.

You see when you get sober you're left with huge chunks of time to fill, and massive amounts of energy and passion (because we 'overly-keen-imbibers' are a hugely enthusiastic and passionate lot - that's what got us into this mess, isn't it?).

You're also left with a sense of having wasted too much of your life and a realisation that time is precious.

Plus, twelve months of facing up to your fears and trepidations sober has given you back your courage and your drive.

So you start to think what am I going to do now?

And, funnily enough, the process of getting sober often involves re-discovering old passions, or finding new ones.

In order to make it through wine-o-clock day after day after day we take up things like running, yoga, knitting, baking - whatever stops our minds racing and keeps our hands occupied.

Then, miraculously, for many of us, the hobbies that saved us become a career. Anneinsobriety became a yoga teacher, melanie-from-boston set up a jewellery making business, Lucy Rocca took up running and founded Soberistas.

And my old passion, the thing I did to wind down, to take my mind elsewhere, was writing and reading.

When I got to my soberversary, last March, I thought how can I turn my passion into a job? And, in doing that, how can I help as many people as possible who are stuck in the same hole that I climbed out of a year ago?

So I wrote a book proposal, based on this blog, and I sent it to a few agents. Then my agent sent it to a few publishers. And along the way I got a whole heap of rejections which, in the old days, would have had me weeping into several glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and resolving never to bother again.

But, along with the rejections, I had some amazing feedback from women (all women, funnily enough. The men usually didn't bother replying) who really got it and who said there is a need for this book and we want to help you publish it.

AND YESTERDAY I AGREED A BOOK DEAL with a wonderful team at one of the biggest and best publishing houses in the world. All being well, it'll be on shelves in January 2018.

That glass of wine might give you a momentary buzz, but there is nothing like the high of having worked at something really hard for months, having been knocked back but having picked yourself up and then, finally, to have achieved what you set out to do.

That's a high that lasts for days and doesn't end with a hangover.

So, to all of you who helped me get there, thank you. I could not have done it without your support and encouragement.

And please believe me when I tell you that quitting booze really does change your life.

Love SM x

Pride Comes Before a Fall

After twenty months of not drinking I had this sense that my whole life was slotting into place. I was a little happy bunny, veritably hopping along verdant verges, counting all my blessings which went something like this:

(1) A twelve month 'all clear' from the cancer clinic and a happy, healthy family.

(2) I have finally reached my wedding weight - ten stone, one hundred and forty pounds. I have lost two stone without even trying very hard (I eat a lot of cake).

(see my post: Reasons to quit drinking #1: weight loss)

(3) I have not just one, but a flurry of publishers interested in my book. My agent is busy arranging meetings (I hope they don't change their minds once they've met me!) and has set a deadline 'for offers' of December 6th.

Life doesn't get much better than that.

I should know better than to allow myself to feel smug.

Then Mr SM comes back from the office and says "we have to talk," followed by the words most designed to make me freak out: "don't freak out."

It transpires that his whole team is being gradually 'phased out.'

Now Mr SM is relatively sanguine about the whole thing, muttering phrases such as "time for a change anyhow," and "don't want to get stuck in a rut."

He's even taking to quoting The Apprentice: "next time you come into the Boardroom, at least one of you will get fired," and "why do you deserve to stay in the process?"

I, however, am very bad at dealing with uncertainty. I spent a sleepless night catastrophizing. After just a few minutes of this information hitting my over-active brain I had us all homeless and begging on the streets.

In the morning I was blearily loading up the car with school kit when I realised that it had been broken into. Someone had stolen my stash of parking change and - bizarrely - my driving glasses.

We're looking for a thief with an unusually large number of 10p coins and an eyesight prescription of approximately -1.75, sporting a pair of rather old and battered middle-aged-lady specs.

It's on days like these when alcohol would be extremely useful. Just a few glasses of vino and all those sharp edges disappear, everything feels a bit less real and life becomes an awful lot easier to cope with...

....for a short while.

But I am stronger than that now (plus, I suspect it would bugger up any chance of that publishing contract!), so I tried all the other things that I know can help.

I did gratitude (see my post: Gratitude) and counted all my blessings (see above). I did mindfulness and stopped myself looking ahead and panicking. I did exercise. I wallowed in the bath with a dash of aromatherapy oils. And I ate cake.

And today it all seems a lot better.

Especially as I discovered that one incredibly generous and kind reader has anonymously donated £100 to my JustGiving page in aid of The Haven Breast Cancer Support Centres (see my post: Giving Back for more about The Haven and how to donate).

Isn't that awesome? Thank you, thank you, whoever you are.

Happy Friday everyone!

SM x