What the Hell Happened Last Night?

It's exactly thirty years since the Great Storm turned Sevenoaks into One Oak, wrecked Michael Fish's reputation and contributed to the worst ever stock market crash.

I was eighteen years old back then. 

I'd left school, but had twelve months stretching ahead of me to fill before starting University, so I was living with two girlfriends and working for IBM, saving money so I could take off around the world with a backpack for a few months.

We were living on the tenth floor of a block of flats in Wimbledon.

The storm didn't wake me up. Nothing woke me up in those days. But, when my alarm finally cut through and I staggered out of bed, I remember being totally confused.

Our flat was trashed. The windows were wide open and the curtains had been pulled outside and were flapping in the wind. 

A standard lamp was leaning out of one of the windows, its shade nowhere to be seen. There were papers and rubbish all over the floor and everything was damp.

What had I forgotten now?

Had we had a party?

What had I done?

I picked up the telephone receiver (this was still a decade before I'd get my first mobile), not sure who I'd call or what I'd say, but the line was dead.

I turned on the television, but there was no picture, just an eerie fuzz.

Feeling increasingly alarmed, I switched on the radio, and that's when I discovered that it wasn't just me. The whole country was waking up to the remnants of a wild and unplanned party.

I re-lived that feeling many times over the following decades: waking up and trying to piece back the events of the night before.

How did I get home? Do I have my bag? My wallet? My keys? Did I text an ex-boyfriend? Have I upset anyone? Did I go shopping on the internet?  Are Net-a-Porter going to turn up with a stupidly expensive outfit in an overly optimistic size that I can't remember ordering?  Arrgggghhh.

But by now the only storm was the one raging in my brain.

I didn't have full on black-outs, but I did get the milder version, the precursor, known as 'brown-outs.'

(A brown-out is where you lose track of small chunks of time, so a four hour evening event in your memory only seems to have lasted an hour, and it takes you some time the next day to piece it all back together).

One of the very best things about being sober is always waking up with a clear head, with total recall of where you are, how you got there, where your stuff is, and with very little chance of having lost any friends along the way.

Bizarrely, on Monday, the anniversary of the Great Storm, the sky in London went red. For hours, in the middle of the day. This was, apparently, caused by a melange of dust from the Sahara and ash from the forest fires in Europe, but it looked like a scene from Mad Max.

As I went to bed that night, the children were hypothesising that the red sky heralded the start of a zombie apocalypse.

Oh well, I thought, at least if I wake up to Armageddon, I'll know it wasn't my fault. 

By the way, if you were walking on Wimbledon Common in the autumn on 1987 and came across a fetching beige Habitat lampshade, it's mine.

New on the SoberMummy Facebook page (click here for teleportation), a great, well-balanced article on mums drinking, plus (going up this evening) my favourite blog post by Holly Whitaker on why she (like me) hates the word 'alcoholic.'

In other news, all you lovely, kind people who've pre-ordered my book on Amazon might like to know that the publication date has been brought forward to December 28th.

Yay! But also, Yikes! Am I prepared? Of course not....

(If you haven't ordered a copy and would like to, click here for UK or here for USA).

For more on alcohol-induced blackouts, read Sarah Hepola's fabulous memoir, Blackout.

Love to you all,

SM x

Pride

I went to collect #2 and #3 from school this afternoon.

I took an overnight bag with me for #2, as he's been invited to spend the night with his bestie.

His teacher pulled me aside and said "The boys told me that they're having a hangover tonight! It's a cross between 'hanging out' and a 'sleepover', apparently. I asked them if they knew what a hangover was. They said no, so I told them that Mummy and Daddy would probably know."

(Ain't that the truth!)

"The boys both blushed, and said 'Is it what Mummy and Daddy did to make us?' It was a rather awkward classroom moment!"

How hysterical is that?

My son has no idea what a hangover is. And you know what? I can't remember feeling so proud!

(He obviously needs to work on his Biology, however).

Happy Friday, everyone.

SM x

Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays

I was singing along to the Boomtown Rats classic 'I Don't Like Mondays' the other day in the car. I looked, as ever, like a lunatic, yelling I wanna Sho-oo-oo-oot the whole day down.

I thought about all the many, awful Monday mornings that I've lived through. Monday: truly the very worst day of the week....

My Monday mornings would start at about 4am, when I'd wake up from a sweaty, restless sleep, filled with strange dreams that I couldn't quite remember, but made me feel uneasy.

For the next few hours I would toss and turn, replaying the events of the weekend in my head. How much had I drunk (again)? What had I meant to achieve but failed to (again)? What had I meant not to do, but done (again)?

I'd get up, go to the loo, go down to the kitchen to get a cold glass of water, get back into bed, toss and turn. Repeat. For several hours which felt like days.

Usually I'd fall asleep at about 6am, just in time to be woken up by the alarm at 6.20am.

Then the horror of the school run, on little sleep and with a horribly muggy head. Like wading through toxic soup.

Accompanying all of this would be a little voice in my head going something like this: well here we are again you promised this wouldn't happen will you ever learn you really are utterly useless this'll be another wasted day feeling awful with nothing achieved when are you going to grow up and get a grip you're not a teenager any more you have responsibilities you are a mother a useless one admittedly what sort of an example do you think you're setting bet the other mothers on the school run can tell what a mess you are look at them in their hip pristine gym kit with their rosy glow and bags of energy look at you you're an embarrassment oh for gods sake your shirt's on inside out bloody typical can't get anything right...

So I would try to pacify the voice of self loathing with the voice of empty promises. It went like this: I know I know I hear you today is going to be day 1 of the new regime I am not going to drink until the weekend well apart from Thursday when we have a dinner party to go to and when I do drink I will alternate every glass of wine with a glass of water I will absolutely not ever ever drink more than half a bottle of wine at a time in fact perhaps I will skip the wine altogether and only drink beer because I don't even like beer or maybe I will drink only beer during the week and wine at weekends whatever in any case I am definitely going to do something this can't go on...

But then, by 5pm - or possibly even a little earlier - the Wine Witch would pipe up.

She'd say I know you have all these good intentions. I'm with you, obviously. Things have to change. But is Monday really a good day to start? You feel awful after the weekend. You've done really well to get this far though the day without dropping any balls. It's best to cut down gradually. Have just a glass or two to take the edge off. Then we can start for real tomorrow....

And the Wine Witch always won.

But now? I love Mondays!

Monday: truly the very best day of the working week.

All that potential. Seven days stretching ahead, all shiny and new, waiting to be filled up.

I wake up, recharged after the weekend, and bounce out of bed (God, I'm irritating. Apologies).

I take out my big, old fashioned, leather bound diary and go through the schedule for the week. I write a list of all the things I need to achieve, knowing that they're actually going to get done. I build in a few social events, a treat for the kids, a date night and something just for me.

And then, just for fun, I sit back with a cup of coffee and remember what Mondays used to be like....

If you're reading this on this Monday morning and haven't yet quit drinking then DO IT, and you'll never feel this bad on a Monday again.

Love SM x

Borrowing Tomorrow's Happiness

Day 120.

I read a great expression yesterday which has lodged itself in my brain:

Drinking today will be borrowing tomorrow's happiness.

It struck me that that's what I've been doing for decades!

In the early days I would be trading massive fun on a night out for a minor headache the following day. But in the latter years it was a case of minor enjoyment the night before and a massive downer the following day (or days).

There is a physiological reason for this trade off too. Drinking alcohol releases dopamine in the brain which gives us a high, but the following day(s) we have a corresponding dopamine 'crash' which makes us feel miserable.

And over time, the brain is so used to being flooded with dopamine that it adjusts the level it produces naturally, meaning that there is less happiness in the bank to borrow from.

This then got me thinking that I have, in effect, borrowed all my future booze ration and drunk it already.

Perhaps you have a set amount in your lifetime that your brain can cope with and, given that I drank about 4 times what I should have for the last twenty years, I've used it all up. Nothing left in the booze bank.

Funnily enough, that thought makes me feel a bit better. At least it seems fair.

It's like Halloween - my kids favourite day after Christmas and birthdays. They go off trick or treating and come back with cauldrons brimming over with sweets and chocolate.

Now #1 and #3 are born hoarders. They are like their father. They squirrel away their loot and bring it out gradually over the course of about 3 months! That is not normal behaviour, surely?

#2, however, is like his Mummy. His cauldron is empty in about 3 hours, and I have to scrape him off the ceiling. Then, for months he has his sisters taunting him with their saved stash.

He understands, though, that it's his choice. He decided to over-indulge massively, and now he has to pay the price.

Well, that's me. And is it such a bad situation to be in?

Look at the alternative. I could confiscate #2's sweets and hand them out to him at 'moderate', 'sensible' levels over a number of weeks. But it would miserable for both of us!

#2 would never be happy with the amount he had. He would know there was more in the house somewhere and would obsess about it. We would have constant battles and arguments. He is happier, and I am happier, knowing that it's all gone.

There's another benefit to the 'all or nothing' approach to life.

Jason Vale points out that if you drink every two or three days (even moderately), then there is never a point when you do not either have alcohol in your system or are withdrawing from having had alcohol in your system.

You are never totally 'clean' and, therefore, never get the full benefits of being sober - physically or mentally.

With my all or nothing model, I got decades of going crazy (which, let's be honest, was a lot of fun in the beginning), and now I get the new benefit of being totally 'clean and serene'.

If I'd paced my lifetime supply out more 'sensibly' maybe I'd have got neither the wild days nor the serene ones.

And one thing I do know for sure is that drinking again now would be not just borrowing tomorrow's happiness, but a lifetime's.

Happy Monday!

Love SM x

Simple pleasures

When I quit drinking 58 days ago, I didn't realise that it would have ramifications on pretty much every aspect of my life.

One thing that has totally changed is my relationship with breakfast.

Back in the smoking-like-a-chimney and drinking-like-a-fish years which characterised my twenties, my standard breakfast was two or three Marlboro Lights and a jug of strong coffee, accompanied by a hacking cough. Nice.

Then I gave up smoking, ramped up the drinking, and rediscovered a love of food. I gained at least a stone (that's fourteen pounds to you Americans, and about 7 kilos for the continentals).

For the last few years my standard breakfast has been a boiled egg with toast (how British is that?). Pretty healthy. A good start to the day. But I was never terribly excited by it. Apart from anything else, it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything much with a constant low level hangover.

But now, not only do I wake up feeling perky, I wake up ravenously hungry. If you think about it, BS (before sober) I would consume, on top of my supper, a bottle of wine containing at least 500 calories. Then, having drowned out any willpower, I'd probably have raided the children's snack drawer for kit kats. No wonder I wasn't hungry at breakfast time!

Oddly, my favourite breakfast of old - the egg - is no longer at all appealing. It's just not sweet enough. Many of us crave sugar when we quit - apparently it has a similar effect on the dopamine (happy hormone) levels as alcohol. Alcohol is, after all, another form of sugar and grain, just in liquid form. It's very common for alcoholics to use sugar as a coping mechanism in the same way as they used alcohol. Oh God, will it never end?

So now I find that the best way to keep the sugar cravings at bay is to have a 'healthy' sugar hit at the beginning of the day. Move on you boring old oeuf, and hello 'SoberMummy's Sunrise Suprise' (the suprise being OMG no hangover!).

How to make 'SoberMummy's Sunrise Suprise':

Take 3 big spoons of plain Greek yoghurt. Throw in a handful of fresh berries (I like raspberries and blackberries best), and sprinkle with a really good quality granola.

(Note: for those children of the 1970s (like myself), do not confuse granola with that horrible, dusty muesli that our mothers tried (in vain) to get us to eat instead of Golden Nuggets or Coco Pops. Granola is way more yummy. And crunchy).

This breakfast is my new addiction. All the major food groups represented: good fats, low GI carbs, fibre, calcium, omega acids and vitamins. And it's seriously yummy.

Now I know why they say breakfast is the best meal of the day.

Huge congrats to Kags, one of my first readers, who made day 50 yesterday. She has a really sweet tooth, so this post was in her honour.

Love SM x

Play it forward

I've been thinking more about my last post - 'not the girl he married'. Thank you so much for your comments - as always, a wonderful mix of empathy, humour and sound advice.

I realised, on re-reading, that the wine witch - yet again - had me romanticising the past.

I was waxing lyrical about boozy Sunday lunches with friends, elaborate gourmet dinners at home with fine wine, and date nights in fancy restaurants with aperitifs, wine and digestifs. Oh it is so, so easy to view it all through rose (I want to put an ecoute on the e of rose, but my iPhone won't let me!) coloured spectacles.

The AA advice is, I think, to 'play it forward', so in the interests of honesty, and to cast a blow against the wine witch, here's what happens when I press forward on the memory tape....

The boozy Sunday lunches with friends: I start drinking while preparing lunch (after all, I need to add wine to the gravy!). By the time the friends arrive with various children in tow I'm about 2/3 of a bottle down and finding it seriously tricky to co-ordinate all the cooking with the chatting, and hostessing.

By the end of the meal I've become horribly boring as I repeat anecdotes I've told a million times and/or forget the punchlines. I'm stuck on 'transmit' rather than receive, so don't ask my guests anything about their lives.

Usually at least one or two of our guests aren't drinking as they're driving, or on water after drinking too much on Saturday night. I must look seriously raddled to anyone completely sober!

Once everyone leaves (about 3.30pm) I clean up, while polishing off any leftover wine, then invariably fall asleep for a couple of hours. I wake up feeling really grumpy and yell at the husband and children. I realise that homework's not been finished, and the children have spent hours on electronic devices and are bouncing off the walls. Horrible evening followed by restless night. I start the week exhausted and depressed.

And those gourmet evening meals at home over a shared bottle? Here's the truth - I spend most of the meal trying to ensure that I get more than half of the wine. Husband gets cross as he had to drink at top speed if he's going to get more than a small glass. I start planning how to casually produce second bottle without getting a 'look', or a lecture.

If I do manage to open the next bottle (or if I'd quietly polished off a few glasses before husband got home) I'm drunk and cross by the end of the meal and end up picking a fight - often over horribly boring stuff like loading the dishwasher. We try to watch TV together, but I fall asleep after ten minutes. I wake up at about 3am hating myself (again).

What about 'date nights'? I usually manage not to pick a fight, and generally collapse in a cheerful(ish) heap when we get home, but I sleep really badly and wake up with the hangover from hell. I spend all morning counting the minutes until I can open the next bottle, as I know it's the only way of making the headache go away.

So, the truth is that whilst the husband probably does miss the girl he married 13 years ago (if he can remember her. Not sure that I can!), he almost certainly doesn't miss the girl he was married to 35 days ago.

Happy, sober Easter everyone!

Love SM x

Sundays - Hair of the Dog

Happy Sunday Morning Everyone!

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe where everything has ended up back to front. I remember when I was a child I used to think that if I dug a hole deep enough I'd end up in Australia where everything would be kind of similar but we'd all be standing upside down. (Did any of my Australian readers imagine ending up in London?). Well, giving up a chronic alcohol habit is a bit like that. For example, in the BS (Before Sober) days, Friday nights and Saturday nights were the best, and Sunday mornings were the pits. Now, AF (Alcohol Free), Friday and Saturday nights are the hardest BUT Sunday Mornings are our reward!

One of the best things about glorious, empty but filled with promise and expectation, Sunday Mornings AF is remembering the horror of Sunday Mornings BS. So here's a trip down memory lane:

4am Sunday morning: wake up, head pounding, dry mouth, dying for a wee. Gradually try to piece together exactly what led to feeling like this. Wish I hadn't. Lots of self hatred and self flagellation and empty promises to self to change. Endless trips to the loo and the fridge to get more water. Toss and turn until about 6.30am. Go back to sleep until woken up by kids and dog at 7ish. Try really hard not to be grumpy and horrible. Fail. Spend all morning wishing time away until midday when I can 'reasonably' open a bottle of wine 'while I'm getting lunch ready'. Watch minute hand on kitchen clock obsessively because I cannot drink in the morning. Only alcoholics do that, and I am not an alcoholic. Open bottle at 11.50am so glass is ready for midday. Drink first glass wine fast. Feel much better.

It strikes me now that one of the core differences between 'normal' drinkers and 'overly enthusiastic' drinkers is their attitude to hangovers. I was always amazed at people who would refuse a drink at Sunday lunch because they'd drunk too much the night before and 'couldn't face it'. Surely they knew that the only way to 'face it' was to drink more? I was an enthusiastic proponent of  'hair of the dog'.

The phrase 'hair of the dog' comes from a time when - bizarrely - it was believed that the cure for rabies was to put the 'hair of the dog that bit you' onto the rabid dog bite. There is also a great Swahili phrase for drinking off a hangover: kuzimua which means being assisted to wake up after a coma.

A recent scientific study Proof: the science of booze by Adam Rogers claims that 'hair of the dog' really is the only effective cure for a hangover. This is because alcoholic drinks contain methanol, which is poisonous, and doctors treat methanol poisoning with ethanol i.e. alcohol.

There is another, more worrying, reason why 'hair of the dog' works according to alcoholrehab.com and it's this: 'A common reason why heavy drinkers experience hangovers is that they have actually entered the early stages of withdrawal. By drinking alcohol the next morning they are preventing these withdrawal symptoms from taking hold.' Seems obvious, but I'd honestly never thought of it like that!

I checked out the good old National Health Service website for their advice on hangover cures, and found this classic line: 'The best way to avoid a hangover is not to drink.' Well no shit Sherlock (as they say, but not in front of the kids, obviously, or it's another pound in the swear box). But, acutally, that is what I am doing! And it's Sunday morning. Beautiful, glorious, Sunday morning, and I feel amazing!

So, here's my plan for the day. I will not be grumpy and clock watchy all morning followed by drunk and asleep most of the afternoon. Oh no. I am taking #1 and dog to park this morning for good walk and girlie chat. Come back and cook roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for lunch (oh yes, my French readers, it is not for nothing that you call us 'les rosbifs') Have judging of the great cheesecake bake off (yesterday husband and #1, inspired by the Great British Bake Off on TV, had an argument about who could make the best cheesecake. Their efforts, plus one from Waitrose, are in the fridge awaiting the family blind taste test). Collapse with Sunday papers. Take #2 and #3 to pet shop to buy birthday presents for the dog. Have birthday tea (with dog food cake and candles) for said dog. Play massive game of Monopoly or similar. Put kids in bed and watch 3 episodes back-to-back of latest box set with husband. Collapse into bed sober and happy.

So, Sundays are still about 'the dog'. But this one's six years old today, smelly, furry and totally loveable.

Enjoy your Sober Sunday my sober friends! And if you're reading this with a chronic hangover, pondering giving it all up then please join us!

Love SM x