Six fricking months mother-flippers.

SIX FUCKING MONTHS.

I am six months sober today and it still feels almost dreamlike to have reached this milestone. Have I learned anything in this last six months? Well, yes actually. I've learned so many different things about myself. Here are just a few of them. 

1. I am worth more than I think I am.

I have battled with low levels of confidence, self-esteem and self-worth since I was a child. I have never understood my worth, the value I should have been placing on myself to ensure that others knew how to value me. I let people treat me like shit, as I believed that this was the price I had to pay to be loved.
Because, why would anybody love me? I hated myself. I never managed to make friends. My relationships stemmed from one night stands where two damaged people clung on to each other in the hope that the person they’re clinging to can make the world a slightly less terrifying space.
I started learning about my own self-worth when I was 27, just before I met Hubs. When he had also spent a couple of years figuring out his self worth. Together, we have supported each other through depression, anxiety, redundancies and shit jobs, losing family, losing friends, moving to a new place, fur-parenting (which often feels like farming. In a zoo. With only a spoon and blu tack to help), buying a shitting house... An engagement, where the photos all have my drunken smashed up face on them. A wedding.
We have learned about our worth together and in the last six months, we’ve developed this even more. I used to sit in the pub on a Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday (scrap that, it was most nights of the week) and my drunken line to justify our existence was, “this is what we’ll remember though”.

I don’t remember any of it. We did it so much that every night merges into one memory.

When I look back on those times, I can now see that my drinking was out of control. I remember the hangovers and the shame spiral the next day. I remember falling out with friends over petty disagreements because none of us could stand down and reason when drunk. I remember cancelling plans because I was too drunk or hungover or tied to take part. I remember having to force myself out of bed every Monday and go straight to the pub after work to feel better. I remember eating shit at work to try and carb away the hangovers. I remember my depression hitting an all time high. I remember being signed off from work. I remember waiting 18 months for a counselling referral.
I don’t remember looking after myself or knowing my worth then. And then wasn’t that long ago. In the last six months, what I have achieved, personally and professionally, is already more than I achieved in the 5 years before that. Knowing my self worth, knowing my value and commanding that respect from the rest of the world is the beginning of a path that I won’t need red shoes on to get home from, it’s a path that leads me directly home. A home of my own creation.

2. PMDD, anxiety and depression are easier to manage sober.

My drinking did not just hide a history of abuse, it also hid (and exacerbated) multiple physical and psychological conditions. In six months, I’ve learned that for a few days a month (ahem, more like two weeks), I can not function. I cry, relentlessly. I have even less confidence than I have normally. I assume I can not do anything well; including my job, my education. My anxiety peaks. My depression returns. Getting out of bed is difficult. I have no energy. I lose the motivation to eat well, exercise. I can no longer find joy in the world. I have little gratitude for how shit I feel. And zero patience. Like, absolutely none. The level of irritability I feel during these times has found me fantasising about how I would actually kill you. Especially Hubs. That’s a murder I’ve planned a thousand times.
A mood swing could happen 48 times in the space of a minute; one second myself and the next a venom spitting, fire breathing, psychopathic dragon who will burn you alive.
It has ended friendships, relationships, jobs. And whilst I am as yet undiagnosed, I believe this is Pre-Menstrual Dysmorphic Disorder. An aggressive form of PMS that can render me either useless or in full self-destruct mode. Getting this diagnosed is difficult. I have to log my symptoms for months before a doctor will even listen to me. Without just trying to throw anti-depressants in my mouth.
It has taken me 21 years to understand what is happening to my mood on a monthly basis and a combination of removing additional hormones and alcohol from my life has enabled me to see what is actually happening. Without anybody dying. Or divorcing me. I’ll write more on this separately but having the ability to isolate myself when I need to and look after myself physically and emotionally helps me more than anything else I could possibly have done.

3. My own self-development is the greatest self-care.

Apart from for a week or two a month (see above), for the most part, I finally feel like an adult. I spend my time doing things that fill my heart with joy, that get my brain moving, things that interest me. In fact, six months down the line, the thought of spending an evening in a pub, even with my friends, is the most boring thing I can actually imagine. Sorry guys.
And that can be very isolating. There are some friends I haven’t seen for a long time and that’s OK too. I knew when I made my life-changing decision that not everybody would want to come along for the ride.
For the first time in forever (SING IT. Guess what I watched last night?), I don’t blame myself for this. If you don’t want to spend time with me outside of a pub, that’s OK. We’ve all got our own shit, the only thing I can influence is my own. Meeting people where alcohol is not a defining factor of our friendship opens doors to things I would have been too scared to even consider trying a few months ago.
This level of personal development is positively impacting every aspect of my life. I understand myself and what I need to do to care for myself. I can manage my household without feeling constantly overwhelmed. My professional life is growing too. All thanks to a combination of facing my fears, personal development and time.
Tonight, I’ll be celebrating my soberversary in a pub 40 miles away at a poetry event with a friend I met through work, poetry, art and Herbology. I’ll be spending the evening with another woman who was actually part of the inspiration that stopped me from drinking. Someone who does so much for her local arts community. I might even write a piece about what she does not realise she has done for me. I might even perform it. Because there is another world outside my narrow Stamford viewpoint and I’m fucked if I’m not going to be the one to explore every aspect of it, planting my flag wherever I go.

4. I am FINALLY comfortable in my own skin.

It probably helps that I’ve lost 2 stone since I stopped drinking but equally, the removal of alcohol and my capacity to live a slightly more healthy lifestyle than I used to has given me the confidence to feel comfortable in my own skin. I’m fucking blonde for fucks sake. The only hair colour I never tried because I remember somebody once telling me I would look like “even more of a whore” if I went blonde. Funnily enough, as the hair came in, those people went out. Bubbye.
I cut my hair off. Shaved the sides. Get mistaken, more times than I can recount, for a lesbian. Which, actually, when you look at my friendship group is again... Understandable. I wear clothes I have ever worn before and my summer wardrobe was hit after hit of bright, neon colours and eye-catching designs. I’m beginning to feel like the 15 year old girl who wore mismatched hippie patterned clothes and did not give a flying fuck what anybody else thought.
Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s the confidence I have in myself since I stopped drinking. Maybe it’s the decrease of alcohol related anxiety that used to turn me upside down and inside out. Maybe it’s my ever decreasing weight. Maybe it’s my relatively clear skin or the happiness that shines from my eyes. Maybe it’s the personal development and clear mental head space. Whatever is the cause of this new found confidence, I love it and wouldn’t change it for the world.

5. If a situation causes me hurt, I don’t need to stay.

Until I stopped going to the pub (because I found better things to do), I was repeatedly asked what I was drinking (AF beer in a pint glass you nobhead, now fuck off), what was the point of what I was doing, when it was going to end. Even, and my personal favourite, what I would do when Hubs inevitably left me because he obviously only loves drunk me and why would anybody want to be married to somebody who doesn’t drink?
I have been told that I could not possibly be an alcoholic because I didn’t drink as much as the person telling me this and he wasn’t an alcoholic, so how could I be? I realised, very quickly, how challenging other people found my sobriety because for some unknown reason, it made them question their drinking.
I had a man shouting at me in a pub about how now I’d stopped drinking I was just judging anybody who did. I didn’t. But then he’d already turned up pissed and drank more and more so I can understand why my sobriety would impact his enjoyment of poetry. Jokes.
I have taken to avoiding places when I am attacked for my beliefs. Whether they be about my sobriety, Feminism or just plain old red badge wearing, Labour Supporting Remoaner libtard snowflaking. Because I don’t want that kind of negativity in my life. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who are filled with hatred for anything they don’t want to understand or see happening in the world around them. I don’t want to be around people who make me cry or to cringe whenever my phone beeps in case it’s somebody harassing me by text.
I want to be inspired by love, by art, by friendship, by support, by strokes from local poetry Madonna’s. And so I shall find it.


6. My friends are the absolute bollocks.

I have a ridiculous amount of new friends. In fact, there are so many, I wonder if some of them have to go. Hah, jokes. As if I could pick my favourites. (I have.)
Whilst talking about Christmas parties at work recently, I made a comment about how I don’t drink or smoke and so those kind of events are very difficult for me to attend as I don’t really enjoy them.
It was seized upon immediately and because this is now my normal, I forgot how to answer the question, “What you don’t drink at all? Ever? Why?” A tea break in the HE block is not the time to start banging on about my alcoholism.
I answered in my usual self-deprecating way. “Because I’m a fucking psychopath.” And the room split into laughter as I deftly changed the subject. They knew what I meant.
I have written blogs about my sobriety journey and mental health for a well known sobriety blogger, who even though I have never met her, I can call her a friend judging by the random images of cat covered clothing that she sends to me on a regular basis.
I have developed new friendships based on poetry and a shared love of words. Or moved old friendships out of the pub and into herbal events. Or sound baths. Or Women’s Circles.
My friends have created alcohol free cocktails and champagnes for me. They have bought Seedlip for me to try. They have (mostly) tried to move our socialising out of the pub and into nature or coffee.
For everybody who has sat with me at lunch, everybody who has messaged me when I feel like shit, everyone who has organised coffee or lunch, everybody who has driven me to poetry events that aren’t in Stamford (veto), everybody who has dragged me to London, everybody who has traipsed through the countryside on epic dog walks with me, everybody who has read my crazy, rambling blog, everybody who has stopped drinking because they realise if I can do, anybody can do it, everybody who has got in touch again after working through their own stuff...
And my favourites... The ones who quietly tell me that I inspired them to either cut their drinking down or stop completely. You guys make my heart sing and you can not even begin to imagine what your words mean to me. The messages I have received form some of you have puled me up off the floor when I am at rock bottom. You have no idea what your words can do for somebody and what they have done for me.
Thank you all for your support, your openness to new activities and ideas and for always being there when I am falling to pieces. I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you.

7. Life is better in HD.

For the past four months, my alarm has gone off at 6am every day and I am awake. Not quite jumping out of bed but not wallowing in it until lunch time feeling like a bag of shit.
My productivity has increased by a billion percent. I’ve gone back into education, as a student and not just as a Lecturer. And whilst I don’t always think I am capable of doing it, I have started it and it’s something I have wanted to do forever.
I spend more time outside in nature feeling the cold, biting wind exfoliating my skin and watching the early morning sunrises with Smiley. I can see joy in everything, everywhere from the burnt umber leaves of Autumn to the grey, British drizzle of cold, Winter weekends.
I have been on holiday without booze. Which, when camping, means much less walking eight miles to the toilets and much more doing amazing things you’ve always wanted to do.
Being happy is much easier to do when you’re not in constant pain or dulled around the edges. When you can see beauty everywhere you look and everything you do is nourishing.

(The downside to this can be that “Living in HD” is horrifically difficult when you’re facing difficult emotions. Accept help, get therapy.)

8. I have found my career niche.

I am a fucking Lecturer. Yep, the kid who spent more time getting kicked out of lessons than actually learning is now responsible for teaching other people. GCSE English too, my favourite subject. And it turns out, I’m pretty good at it. According to my students. “Bare lit fam,” actually.
I’m also now a qualified exam access arrangements assessor. The first module of my Masters recently completed before I jumped back from a Level 7 qualification to a Level 6 to get my PGDE. Which I’ve been able to fund because... Oh yeah, because I’m not drinking.
This is a pretty big jump back to a year ago when I worked part time in a pub while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It’s a pretty big jump back to a blog I wrote about preferring to drink beer over my career. Although that was more social commentary on not being responsible for carrying the weight of other people’s unrealistic expectations on my sexy, broad shoulders. After all, my pub job helped us to buy a house and figure out where to go next and what a decision that was.
I’ve finally found my niche, surrounded by glorious, inspiring, beautiful people and where I travel from here is anybody’s guess.

10. I can save money! SHOCKER!

This is a big one. In the last six months, I have paid off half of my credit card debt (around £1500) and managed to save the same amount. £3000 in six months. That’s £500 a month that I alone was spending on booze, takeaways and hangover cures. Now factor in what Hubs was spending too. Probably around double that. £1500 a month between us on the party lifestyle. £18k a year.
Guess what I’d rather have? YES! The fucking money.
After a year in our first home, we actually have the money available to decorate the way we planned when we bought the house a year ago. The living room is currently in the process of being completed with a media unit, self built bookshelves and a catopia corner. Don’t ask. Seriously though… Don’t.

Not only do we have the money to bring our dreams into reality, we have the motivation to make it happen. We’re not so hungover on a Saturday morning that we couldn’t possibly manage an IKEA run. Or even drive anywhere. *EDIT* I wrote this prior to my husband spending Friday night in the pub getting shitfaced and having to force him out of bed like some stroppy Mother/teenage son relationship at 10.30am this morning. I did, however, get 1-1 doggo snuggles and coffee so… Works for me.
I haven’t been strict with my spending. I have enough budgeted to enjoy my weekends and still save money. Once we’ve finished our living room, ready for Xmas, we’ll finish saving to pay off remaining credit cards and somebody’s overdraft. Ahem. Then, finally, we might get the honeymoon we never had!


It’s taken six months to reset my brain but I’m finally there. That’s not to say that there isn’t the odd time where I would love a drink but I don’t have to lock myself in the bathroom to make sure I don’t have one anymore. How could I miss feeling like shit all of the time?!

I know that I can manage life and difficult situations without a crutch. I can do this myself. Finally.

So to cap this rambling piece of narcissistic extravagance off, here’s something I say to my students a lot.

Just do you.

Whatever it is that you want to be, do it. Happiness is not something I was ever taught to want in life but it is the only thing we have. Be happy. Just do you.