18 MONTHS SOBER!

Time does funny things.

When you first quit drinking, it slows right down. That hour between 6pm and 7pm seems to take a lifetime. Each day you climb a mountain, every week you cross a continent.

But then, one day, you realise that time is speeding up again. You can't keep track of the days any longer, so you start counting in months.

Now I've lost track of even the months. The last six have flown by. It took one of my readers to remind me (thank you, lovely LushNoMore), that for her, and me, this is one and a half years.

I was looking at my children as they're getting ready to start the new school year, and thinking about the lives they have ahead of them.

When you're a child, anything is possible.

It's like standing in a vast hall, surrounded by open doors - hundreds of them circling around you. And, as you look up, you realise that there are many storeys above you, more than you can count, of wide open doors.

Through each door is an adventure. You can become an astronaut, an astronomer, an astrologer. You could find a cure for cancer, be an Olympic cyclist or paint a masterpiece.

Then, as you get older, the doors start to close. You're now too tall to be a ballerina, too old to be a supermodel, too big to be a professional gymnast. You don't have the right A levels for medical school.

One day, around middle age, you look around you and realise that the vast hall of open doors is now a small room with only a few potential exits. It's just too late for a do-over. Every decision you've made in the past has narrowed your options for the future until it's all just more of the same.

No wonder we drink.

And that was me eighteen months ago. Depressed, fat, broke. Sipping on the endless glasses of Chablis while thinking about what might have been if I'd walked through one door rather than another.

And the thought of quitting booze feels like giving up more options, more potential adventures. Not only is life becoming increasingly dull and predictable, but you have to do it all sober. Are you kidding?

But, you know what?

Since I quit drinking, the extraordinary thing is that the room I'm standing in has got bigger and bigger. Every time I look around there are more doors I can walk through.

I've got more energy, more self respect, more time. I've lost that nagging anxiety and fear of failure, replaced by the feeling that anything is possible.

Gradually, all the pounds I've saved by not buying wine have added up, so I'm completely debt free. No credit cards, no overdraft.

And, now I'm twenty six pounds (12 kilos) lighter, even my fashion options have expanded. I no longer have to stick to black, stretchy and forgiving.

My life is totally unrecognisable.

So please don't worry that putting down the glass will make your life smaller. It's going to open up possibilities you never imagined.

Soren Kierkegaard says it much better than I ever could:

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility!

Love to you all,

SM x

Timing Makes the Hero

I get many e-mails from readers who have been thinking about quitting drinking for a while, but haven't yet taken the plunge. They're waiting, they say, until after a big party, or a summer holiday, Christmas, or a particularly stressful period at work.

I get it. I prevaricated masterfully - for weeks, months, years even - before finally taking the plunge. (And then finally taking the plunge a second time!).

The truth is, it never feels like the right time. Much like having a baby. You never feel mature enough, sufficiently well off, at the 'right' point in your career. One day you just have to grit your teeth and.... jump.

There are always (we hope) going to be parties and holidays and stressful periods. That's the beauty of life. And one day, before too long, you'll find that all those things are better without the booze.

It will be very hard for a few weeks, and fairly hard for a few months, but what's a few months compared to the rest of your life?

(You don't let nine months of getting fatter and fatter, feeling sick and tired, being kicked from the inside and not drinking stop you having a baby, do you?)

But, having said all that, there is one particular time of year that I think is especially good for quitting.

It's not January. Too obvious. Every man and his dog is quitting booze in January, and we've never been ones to run with the pack, have we?

And January is a miserable month. It's cold and grey (unless you're reading this in Australia, obvs), you're broke and there's nothing to look forward to.

No, the very best time to stop drinking is: SEPTEMBER!

Lovely, lovely September. All newly polished school shoes, sharpened pencils and anticipation. The languid last gasp of summer.

It's a perfect time for a fresh start. And there are still more than three months until Christmas, so by the time you get there you'll have the hardest bit - the first 100 days - under your belt.

So, be a hero. Take the plunge. There'll never be a better time than today.

You are not alone. There are millions of people just like you, out here in the Soberverse.

To start with, check out my pages on Reasons to Quit Drinking and Advice for Newbies.

You can do it.

Love SM x

Bridget Jones

I got up at dawn yesterday to pack up our rented holiday cottage in Cornwall before the 10am deadline.

By the time the children emerged, bleary eyed and mussy-haired, from their lairs, I'd got all the suitcases and bags shoehorned into the car, leaving them with a change of clothes for the journey, and just enough space to sit in.

(At least #3 didn't have to perch on top of a case of Beck's Blue like she did on the way down).

"MUMMY!" Wails #1. "I HAVEN'T GOT A BRA!"

At this point I lose it.

"YOU'RE NOT EXACTLY DOLLY PARTON ABOUT TO GO JOGGING!" I yell back at #1.

But she fixes me with that baleful, nearly-teenage glare, until I go and unpack her suitcase from the car, like playing Jenga with surfboards, buckets and sundry kitchen items, and retrieve the crucial piece of clothing.

Eventually, we're driving over the A4 flyover into London, and there it is. A giant poster proclaiming that BRIDGET JONES'S BABY is about to hit our cinema screens.

And I'm hit by a wave of nostalgia.

I loved Bridget. I loved her neuroses, her imperfections and her granny knickers.

I loved her humour and the way she cut through all the 'emotional fuckwittery.' And I loved the way she ate like a normal woman, smoked like a chimney and drank like a trooper.

I loved Bridget because I pretty much was Bridget.

So much so, that when the BBC were looking for people to 'star' in a documentary about the 'real life Bridget Joneses' they called me.

I flatly refused, despite a fair amount of arm twisting, to let a camera crew follow me around town for a week, but I did agree to take part in a small segment of the film - a single's dinner party.

I turned up, along with seven other 'singles' at the appointed Chelsea restaurant, and was told that the film crew would be a while setting up, "so do, please, help yourself to free drinks at the bar."

An hour later, nervous and tanked up with booze on empty stomachs, we were all flying. At least, I was.

In a herculean effort to stand up for the rights of women to be single and happy, I waved my wine glass around and proclaimed "Look. I've got a great job, a really cool car, and I own my own flat. Why on earth would I need a man to make myself complete?" Job done. Or so I thought.

I wasn't expecting anyone to actually see the documentary. My friends were all far too busy working and partying to be indoors watching TV on a Thursday night.

(And this was before the days of Sky Plus and Catch Up TV. You actually had to set a timer on your VHS machine, which was far too much hassle).

So, imagine my horror, when ALL WEEK, on prime time TV, the BBC ran a trailer.

There was only one person in the trailer: Me.

There I am, slightly tipsy, saying "Look. I've got a great job, a really cool car, and I own my own flat." Then the serious, male, voiceover cuts in: "So why can't these women find the one thing they really want: A MAN?"

Everyone saw it. Everyone saw me slapping feminism in the face and pronouncing myself un-whole.

But it didn't stop me loving Bridget.

After all, she gave us all an excuse to drink too much. She made downing gallons of Chardonnay with your friends cool. She made drinking home alone, holding a pity party for one, de rigeur.

So, what's Bridget up to now?

More of the same, apparently. Still drinking. Still going to nightclubs. Still looking for a man to make her emotionally stable.

Well that's all just bollocks.

For a start, I know - better than anyone else - that Bridget could not have drunk that amount of Chardonnay for the last twenty years without suffering some pretty major side effects.

One thing's for sure: she would NOT be the size two that Renne Zellweger portrays her as in the movie.

(I presume that Renee flatly refused to 'bulk up' to a normal size this time around).

And would a drunk, forty-something Bridget still be funny and endearing, or just a bit....sad?

I like to think that lovely Bridget would have learned something over the past two decades.

I think she'd be a brilliant, funny, imperfect mother. I think she'd have a not-always-perfect, but kind and forgiving marriage.

And I think she'd be sober. (Let's face it, moderation would never be Bridget's thing).

Love to all you proper Bridgets out there.

SM x

P.S. That was my 400th blog post. If you'd like to read from post #1 then click here.