Go Sober October - Day 1

October 1st - Day 1 of Macmillan Cancer Support's Go Sober October.

If you've found your way to this blog because you're doing the challenge, then WELL DONE! This post is dedicated to you....

Perhaps you're doing Go Sober October because a close relative or friend has died from cancer. You don't drink that much anyway, but think that a month's detox will be good for you. Well, good for you. Have fun, and raise as much cash as you can.

Maybe that's not your story. Maybe Go Sober October is just a prompt - an extra reason to address an issue that's been worrying you for a while. Perhaps your story goes a little bit like this:

You've always loved drinking. It's one of your main hobbies! It's how you met many of your best friends. You're the archetypal 'life and soul of the party,' always the last one standing (or not!).

But recently you've noticed that you're drinking more and more. You don't like to sit down and add it up, but you can easily drink a bottle of wine in an evening and - scarily - not even feel that drunk!

You're worried that it's starting to affect your health - you're overweight, not sleeping at all well, you look puffy and you've got a terrible muffin top. Plus, you're anxious and stressed a lot of the time. You wonder whether you have some sort of low lying depression. You feel like you're stuck in a rut.

Every so often you Google 'Am I an alcoholic' and do one of those questionnaires. Sure, you answer 'yes' to a few of the questions (like drinking alone - doesn't everyone?), but you know what an alkie looks like - out of control, passing out in gutters, looking like a tramp - and that's not you!

But you are starting to spend more and more of your time thinking about drinking. Wine o'clock creeps ever earlier, and alcohol free days become fewer and far between. You're losing far too much time to hangovers.

You're starting to do odd things, like watching how much other people are drinking, worrying about whether the supermarket cashier is judging you by your wine laden trolley, and having a few drinks before you even get to the party.

You've tried to cut down several times. You do deals with yourself like 'I will only drink on social occasions' or 'I will only drink at weekends,' or 'I won't drink wine, only beer,' but you never stick with the deal for longer than a week or two...

....so that's why you're doing Sober October, and that's how you've found your way here.

SO WELCOME! We've all been there.

Forget whether or not you're an 'alcoholic.' It's a red herring. The truth is, if the description above is of you, then you are addicted to alcohol. There's no shame in that - it's an addictive drug, just like nicotine.

The bad news is - it's only going to get worse. But there's good news: quitting drinking will totally transform your life - and the sooner you do it, the easier it is.

That's probably a lot to take in right now, so just do Sober October and see how you go.

If you find the first few days hard, then read Jason Vale's 'Kick the Drink, Easily.' It'll totally transform how you think about drinking.

Try reading the first few days/weeks of this blog - starting back in March. Everyone here is happy to help. And check out www.soberistas.com.

E-mail me on sobermummy@gmail.com if you'd like some advice, or you just want to get something off your chest.

As you go through the month you'll find that you're losing that puffy look, and the wine belly. You'll sleep better. Your skin will glow. You'll save money. And you'll start to feel calmer - less anxious and stressed.

Then have a think about whether a month is really long enough - because those positive changes just keep on coming.....

Good luck!

SM x

Amy Winehouse - The Final Addiction

Last night I watched a programme called 'Autopsy.' It's a pretty ghastly series which looks at the controversial causes of death of various celebrities like Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe.

Usually I'd steer well clear of something so grisly and voyeuristic in favour of catching up goings on below stairs at Downton Abbey, but last night they were doing Amy Winehouse.

I'm rather obsessed by Amy. By her music, her tragic life, and her refusal to go to rehab.

Amy was plagued by demons. She did pretty much anything to take the edge off real life, and the huge pressures of fame achieved so young. She was bulimic. She cut herself, tattooed pretty much every inch of her tiny body, and took every drug available.

But it wasn't the heroin, the crack cocaine, the ketamine, or any of the myriad of illegal drugs that she'd taken over the years that killed her. It was the legal drug: alcohol.

It struck me that we talk about 'gateway drugs', and how smoking weed might lead to taking cocaine, which could end up leading to a heroin addiction, but what we ignore is that the real gateway drug is alcohol.

Can you imagine anyone snorting a line of non descript white powder (which could be anything from teething powder to rat poison) from the back of a toilet cistern in a grimy nightclub if they weren't already drunk? Does anyone ever have the nerve to inject heroin into a vein for the first time sober?

Isn't it alcohol - the legal drug - that gives society the taste for oblivion, and for false confidence?

Excessive alcohol use easily leads to illegal drug use, which then increases the alcohol use. Many heavy drinkers use cocaine, for example, for its ability to enable you to keep on drinking. And alcohol takes the edge off a drug comedown the following day.

Back in June I wrote a post called 'Relative Harms' (click here), about Professor Nutt's 2010 study, commissioned, then ignored, by the British Government, into the relative harms of various legal and illegal drugs.

Nutt concluded that alcohol was the fourth most harmful drug to the individual (after heroin, crack and methamphetamine), but was by far and away the most harmful drug to society as a whole, in terms of life expectancy, family disruption and road traffic accidents.

We look back at Amy's life and remember the pictures of her smoking a crack pipe, and stumbling along the road with bloodied feet from where she'd been injecting between her toes, and it's easy to assume that that's the behaviour that killed her.

But there were no traces of illegal drugs in her body when Amy died. Her GP says she'd been clean of drugs for two years. However, Amy's post mortem showed a blood alcohol level five times the drink driving limit.

Amy had managed, according to friends, family and doctors, to give up all the 'hard drugs'. The one that defeated her was the 'soft', sophisticated, acceptable drug: alcohol.

Alcohol destroyed Amy's final years. It ruined her voice, and her ability to perform. Remember her disastrous, drunken and incoherent last attempts at performing live in Belgrade? (I thought about posting a link, but it's too awful to watch) Friends say she became increasingly alienated and lonely.

Amy must have known that alcohol was destroying her, because she quit drinking for two weeks before her final binge, and was taking (prescribed) drugs to manage withdrawal symptoms.

Experts believe that, as a result, her tolerance to alcohol had decreased. That's why her final, lonely, binge killed her.

Here's to you, lovely, talented, haunted Amy,

SM x

The Abusive Lover

There's a lady living next door to you. You don't see her that often. In fact, you almost get the impression that she's avoiding you, that she's hiding something.

You can tell she used to be beautiful. She has gorgeous, slanting eyes like a cats, and a thick mane of blonde hair. But she dresses not to be noticed. In shapeless black. And she's (to use an expression of your mothers) 'let herself go.' She's overweight and puffy, and, when she wears makeup, she wears it like a mask.

Then, one day, you ask her in. You make a pot of tea. And you ask her about her husband, Sam, the large, jovial, slightly-too-loud chap you've met a number of times over the garden fence.

She tells you about the time they first met. She was really young. Gorgeous (although she didn't know it). She seemed confident, popular, one of the crowd. But inside she was riddled with insecurity. She felt like a sham. Don't we all when we're seventeen?

Then she saw Sam, across a crowded room at a party. He enveloped her in his big, bear like arms, and she felt like she'd come home. She was safe. When she was his girl she felt 'more.' More confident, more beautiful, more witty.

They were soul mates. Partners in crime. He made everything more fun, and everyone loved her more and more. She loved herself more.

He was cool, sophisticated. Everyone admired him and wanted him at their parties. As soon as she saw him her shoulders relaxed. She felt at ease and able to cope with anything.

As she tells you all of this, she looks sad. You watch, mesmerised, as a solitary tear falls into her cup of tea. You wonder, idly, if she'll be able to taste the salt. She's hunched over her cup, like she wants to disappear into it.

She tells you how things changed....

Gradually, so slowly that she'd hardly noticed it happening, he became different. Their relationship became different.

Where once he'd made her feel popular, sociable, and they'd constantly been out partying, now he just wanted her home. He didn't like her having other friends. It's like he was worried that they might find out about him, see what their relationship was really like. So she's lonely. Isolated.

Once he'd given her confidence. Made her feel ten foot tall, and able to take on the world. But she's not achieved anything without him for many years, and she's convinced she no longer can. Without him, she says, she's nothing. She's terrified, stressed, unable to cope.

Once he used to protect her. She felt so safe. Now he hits her. Regularly. She shows you the bruises. A rainbow of colours, from deep purple to mustard yellow. She tells you she hurts all over. Inside and outside.

You can't stay quiet any longer. Why don't you just leave him? you ask. He's not good for you. He's killing you, taking away everything you are, bit by bit.

She tells you she's scared. She can't sleep when he's not there. She can't cope with life - she's forgotten how. She's weak and useless.

He's made you feel like that! you yell. You could cope before him. You were strong, independent, able. You will be again. Just ditch the bastard!

But she loves him, she tells you quietly. And he loves her. And it used to be so good. She still remembers all the wonderful times they had together.

You cannot love someone who treats you like this! And those good times were decades ago.

And, you know what? She does leave him. Not immediately, but a few weeks later. And she's looking better already - there's a bounce in her step. You see her confidence, her beauty and her strength returning, like the green shoots of daffodils in spring.

But she takes him back.

"It's different this time!" She says, like they all do. "Those months away from me made him think. It's all fine now - just like when we first met!"

But abusers don't change their spots. It only takes a few weeks before you can hear her crying again through the dividing wall. She's back to wearing black and hiding from you.

Why? you want to yell. Walk away! Take your life back! He makes NOTHING better, he just makes it worse. He is NO GOOD FOR YOU!

Well, just remember that, my friends.

Love SM x

(Today's post was for Suzie, who commented on my post yesterday).