I can't quite believe that it's exactly a year since The Sober Diaries was published.
I wrote this book because I remembered how alone I felt when I was struggling with my drinking. I thought that, in a world where everyone drank, and where my social media feed was filled with wine memes, I was the only person who couldn't handle it.
Somewhere along the line, I'd gone from being someone who controlled her booze, to someone who was being controlled by it.
I read a huge number of books, looking for someone just like me. Most of the - often brilliant - memoirs I read focussed on the horrors of addiction. Some of the stories I identified with, but many I didn't. Then, right at the end of the story, the narrator would say 'and then I got sober and everything was brilliant.'
I really wanted a story that started there, where those stories ended. I wanted a story which went through all the details of how you got sober, and what life was actually like when you did. Was it miserable, as I suspected it would be?
So, a year after I quit drinking, I started writing the book I'd really wanted to read. A year later my fabulous editor - Charlotte Hardman at Hodder and Stoughton - picked up my proposal and took a huge leap of faith.
For three nights leading up to publication, I didn't sleep. I'd written my blog under a pseudonym - SoberMummy - as I was so ashamed about my drinking, and yet I was about to tell the whole world my darkest secrets under my actual name. Was I crazy?
But the truth is, the last twelve months have been extraordinary. I've had one or two trolls, obviously, but they've been drowned out by the tsunami of messages I've had from people all over the world saying I thought I was alone until I read your story and you could be writing about my life and now I know that life can be different. Better. Amazing.
And that gave me the courage to do a TEDx talk on the shame associated with drinking. (click here), and a talk at WOMAD for Radio 4 on the miracles that happen when you quit drinking (click here). And I feel like, I hope that, I'm making a difference.
So, I just wanted to say to all of you, a huge THANK YOU, for all your support over the last 12 months, and CONGRATULATIONS to all of you who've made a difference to your lives, however big or small. You are all superheroes.
And to celebrate 12 months of publication, the new paperback edition of The Sober Diaries is out now in the UK (click here). If you're in the USA, I'm afraid it's still only available in Kindle and Audio (click here).
Merry Christmas and THANK YOU to you all!
SM x
