What Would You Do?

I came across a YouTube video last week. It's a 'social experiment' where they film a sixteen year old boy drinking vodka from a bottle on the streets of New York to see what will happen.

Predictably, most people walk straight past, although many look shocked or concerned. A few stop to check if he is okay.

Then, a middle aged man comes up. He looks genuinely worried and sincere. He takes the boy by the arm and says this:

What are you doing, man? You can't be drinking. You're too young to be drinking.

When I was young like you, I was drinking. I lost everything. I lost my home, lost my children, lost my car, lost my job. It's a no-win situation. I ended up being homeless. For a year. Just because of this bottle.

Don't drink, man. Don't drink. You're too young. You've got youth on your side. You don't want to be homeless and losing your family and everything, do you? Because this is the worst. It's a no-win situation...

And you know what I learned?

I learned, yet again, that ex-drinkers are the bravest, wisest and most compassionate people out there, and that sharing your story is the most powerful thing you can do to help others following behind you.

It also made me think: why is it that we see the sight of a sixteen year-old drinking so shocking, and yet we expect it of eighteen year olds? And few people bat an eyelid at a forty year old drinking to excess every night of the week.

Surely anything that we instinctively know is wrong for children is also not good for adults?

Anyhow, here's a link to the video: click here. Let me know what you think.

Huge congrats to Philippa, my e-mail buddy, on TWO YEARS sober! 

Love to you all,

SM x

The Power of Stories

I've been reading Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls, with tears dripping down my face and onto my Kindle (which needed a bit of a wash, frankly). Read it - it's wonderful.

There's a scene in the book where Conor says to the tree monster "Great, another story when there are more important things going on," and the monster replies "Stories are important. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth."

And the tree is right.

Stories - the stories of others, and writing my own story, changed my life.

At a time when I felt most at sea, isolated and in despair I found the stories of other women like me on the internet, and in books like Mrs D's and Caroline Knapp's, and realised that I was not alone, that there was a way out.

Writing my own story helped me to understand what was going on in my head, served as a reminder of where I'd been, lest I forget, and found me a whole tribe of wonderful supporters (thank you!).

Alcoholics Anonymous have always been aware of the power of stories. Each meeting starts with people sharing their own.

Stories teach through 'show' rather than 'tell'. Instead of being preached at, "you must do this", (and we drinkers are not very good at following rules or instructions, are we?) telling your story shows the listener what the possibilities are, what the future could be.

How you respond to that story, what you take from it and what you leave behind, is completely up to you.

The storyteller hands you a seed - it's your choice whether to plant it, pass it on or toss it away.

Reading those lines of Patrick Ness's this morning just made me want to say thank you. Thank you to all those bloggers, writers and storytellers out there who have the courage to stand up - literally or virtually - and tell their tale.

Because stories have the power to change the world.

To read my story from the beginning click here.

Now go write that happy ending to your own story. You are the author,  so you can make it whatever you want it to be....

Love SM x