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[Music]

Hodran Stoughton Audio presents

The Sober Diaries - How One Woman Stopped Drinking and Started Living

Written by Claire Pooley

Read for You by Karin Cass

The month when I finally realised that the Vino has to go.

March

Day zero

Something has to change.

On a scale of 1 to 10, today is languishing at around a minus five.

It's a Sunday, so I have a hangover, obviously,

but this is the Sunday after my birthday party,

so today's hangover is a particularly special one.

A humdinger, a prize winner.

My brain seems to have shrunk to the size of a marble,

and it's banging off the sides of my head like a game of pinball.

I'm sweating alcohol and drowning in successive waves of nausea.

I keep clutching at the worktop in my kitchen like a desperate sailor

clinging onto a life raft. This is not a good idea,

because I keep catching sight of my grey puffy face reflected in the polished granite.

Yikes.

Even on a good day, which this is obviously not,

the noise level in my kitchen would be unbearable.

Maddie, aged six, is playing Minecraft and yelling something about having spawned

in a nest of creepers.

Kit, aged eight, is watching on YouTube somebody else play Minecraft,

and I'm fairly sure they just used a totally inappropriate word.

And Evie, aged eleven, is practicing her scales on her clarinet.

Whenever Evie plays a minor scale, the dog howls as if his life is ending.

He's sensitive. I desperately want to tell Evie to put the damned instrument down,

but what kind of a mother yells at her child for voluntarily doing her music practice?

Just as I'm thinking that things can't possibly get any worse,

always a bad idea. The doorbell rings.

I'm still in my nightie, and believe me, it's not the sort of garment you want

anyone to see you in, not even Jehovah's Witnesses or the man who reads the gas meter.

I do the only sensible thing, and duck down below the kitchen units,

out of sight of the window. Now, not only can my unwanted visitor

see three seemingly unattended children in my kitchen,

but they can also hear them yelling, "Mummy, what are you doing on the floor?"

I'm aware as I sit it out and wait for whoever is on my doorstep to give up,

hoping that they won't call social services, that the rational response at this point in

time is to vow to not touch another drop of alcohol for several days, if not weeks.

I need to sweat it out and rehydrate. But I also know that the only thing in the world

that is going to make me feel any better is another drink.

A glance at the kitchen clock from my crouching position.

Is it broken? It's barely moved since I last looked at it. Just after 11 a.m.

Not drinking before midday is one of the rules. If you drink in the morning,

you're an alcoholic, right? But after 12, particularly at the weekend, is perfectly okay.

Everyone knows that. I open the cupboard and reach past the packets of rice,

crisps and wieta-bix. No chocolate cereals in my house because I am a good mother,

most of the time, to investigate the bottles of drink.

There's an open bottle of red wine with about two inches left in the bottom.

It is very unlike me to leave a bottle unfinished. I must have fallen asleep,

passed out, before I managed to drain it. Yay! It's a sign! That wine is there for a reason.

It's saying, "Drink me," like an adult-rated version of Alice in Wonderland.

I can't possibly pour the wine into a glass. My children are pretty used to mummy having a glass

of wine permanently welded to her hand, but even they might bulk at the site of one at 11 a.m.

So I take out a mug from the cupboard and pour the dregs of the bottle into it.

Only minutes after I've knocked back the wine, the throbbing in my head subsides to a gentle hum.

And that's when I look down at the mug in my hand and see what's printed on it.

The world's best mum. I hate myself. Something has to change.

To be honest, I've known for several years that it was all starting to go wrong.

I can't remember the last time I went a whole day without a glass of wine.

On a regular weekday I'll have a large glass while helping the kids with their homework,

then a second glass while preparing the evening meal. Then I'll hide that more empty-than-full

bottle in the back of the cupboard so that I can open a brand new one when John,

the long-suffering husband, comes home and will share it over dinner.

When I say share, what I actually mean is that we'll both have some,

but I'll make damn sure that I get more than he does.

So if I make myself add that all up, which I try very hard not to do, obviously,

it's more than a bottle of wine every day. Then there's the weekend.

Hurrah for the weekend when lunchtime drinking is perfectly acceptable, obligatory even.

And there's usually a social event. So on a Saturday or a Sunday, probably both,

I can easily polish off two bottles. Oh my god, I'm drinking nine or ten bottles of wine a week.

Now, I am pretty adept at closing my eyes, sticking my fingers in my ears and going la la la la

whenever anyone mentions the government guidelines. But even so, I know that this is well in excess

of the recommended levels. Around 100 units. I confessed to 14 the last time I was quizzed

by a medical professional. Surely they know we all lie? It has to stop. I take a brutal look at

myself. I'm 46 years old, but I'm quite sure I look older. I'm rattled. I'm the sort of woman

that my mother would describe, and she does, as having "let herself go." I'm too stone-everweight,

and most of that is on my belly. If I stand up straight and look down, I can't see my feet.

I've started to hate taking buses, as people often offer me their seats.

A friend of Maddie's asked me in front of a bunch of other mums about the baby in my tummy.

I told him, through gritted teeth, that it was actually cake. He looked horrified.

Perhaps he thinks I'm going to give birth to a vast blueberry muffin.

Sleep is another major issue. I get sleep easily enough—rather too easily, actually.

I can't remember the last time I made it through to the end of a movie before passing out on the

sofa. But then I wake up at about 3 a.m., tossing and turning, sweating booze and hating myself.

I usually manage to drop off to sleep again at about 6 a.m., just before the alarm goes off.

Then there's the wine-witch. That's the pet name I've given to the voice that seems to have taken

up permanent residence in my brain, which turns even the most solid of resolutions into dust,

whispering things like, "Look, there's only a small amount left in the bottle.

You might as well finish it, or it'll go off." Or, "She's poured a way larger glass for herself

than she's poured for you. Tip another slug in, while no one's watching."

The wine-witch is a great fan of the concept of "me time." It might be only 5 p.m.,

but you've had a hard day. You've spent all day being bost around by people under the age of 12,

and now it's grown-up time. You've earned it. And the killer. Everyone else is doing it too.

I'm constantly broke, but funnily enough, I've never thought to blame this on the wine.

I've economised on pretty much everything else, going out, clothes, grooming. But I'll still

shell out a small fortune on wine every week, because if you're drinking shabby, you're a

connoisseur, not a lush, right? What kind of an example am I setting my children?

I don't want them to grow up thinking that all adults need buckets of alcohol

in order to cope with the ups and downs of everyday life.

Just last week, when I was picking Maddie up from school, her teacher pulled me aside and said,

"I have to tell you something funny that happened today. I was hearing Maddie read,

and the book was called A Cup of Tea. I said, 'Does Mummy like to drink tea?'

And she replied, 'Oh, no! Mummy likes to drink wine!'

I decode a forced smile on my face, but inside I died a little.

It feels like my whole life has been sucked into a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

I used to be so fearless, so ambitious and optimistic. I travelled through the Far East

for months on my own at nineteen, and was on the board of a major advertising agency by the

time I was thirty. Yet now, I feel anxious all the time. And the booze, my trusty old pal,

that used to take the edge off and make me feel invincible, I suspect is only making things worse.

The obvious solution is to cut down, to drink moderately and sensibly.

But I've been trying to do that for years. I've done dry January—well, most of it anyway—I

started a bit late and stopped a bit early. I've done sober September. Each time I manage a short

stretch without alcohol, I swear that I have now recalibrated, that I've seen the light

and completely changed my relationship with booze. From now on, we will have a perfectly

healthy and functional relationship. But like an abusive partner, the booze comes back fighting,

and within a few weeks I am back to where I started. Only more so.

I've tried only drinking at weekends, but the weekends start on Thursday and end on Tuesday.

I've done only drinking when I go out, then found I was going out an awful lot.

I've given only drinking beer, which doesn't count as proper alcohol,

and alternating alcoholic drinks with water. None of it works. Despite seeing myself as a strong

determined person, I'm totally unable to stick to any of my resolutions for longer than a week or two.

I have to stop completely. Maybe not forever—I can't possibly think about forever—but at least

for the foreseeable future. So, this glass I'm clutching is my last. Tomorrow is day one.

Is it possible to live without alcohol in a world where you're more likely to be offered a glass

of wine at a play date than a cup of tea, where Facebook is filled with references to wine o'clock,

where every social event is fuelled by gallons of booze? Is there life after wine?

I guess I'm going to find out.

Day one. How on earth did I get here?

I blame Bridget Jones. Not just Bridget. The sex and the city girls and their cosmopolitan

have an awful lot to answer for too, as have the absolutely fabulous Patsy and Adina,

constantly cracking open the Bollinger. I obviously don't want to blame myself for the fact that I

seem to have become a sad middle-aged lush and am having to contemplate a life without booze.

I didn't see Bridget Jones as caricature. I saw her as a role model. 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 fish. I loved Bridget, because I pretty much was Bridget.

So much so that when I was thirty and the BBC were looking for people to feature in a documentary

about the real-life Bridget Joneses, they called me. I reluctantly agreed to take part in a small

segment of the film, a Singleton'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. No one's ever had to offer me free drinks

twice. An hour later, nervous and tanked up with booze on empty stomachs, we were all flying,

or 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+ and CatchUp TV. You had to set a timer on your VHS machine,

which was far too much hassle. So imagine my horror, when, all week, on Primetime TV,

the BBC ran a trailer featuring only one person. 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 I can't these women find the one thing they really want.

A man!" Everyone saw it. Everyone saw me slapping female emancipation in the face

and being pronounced "un-hole." 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 one's

friends cool. She made drinking home alone while singing badly to power ballads durigur.

Back then, in the 1990s we saw drinking as our duty as good feminists. It was the era of the

ladette, of keeping up with the boys and beating them at their own game. The drinks companies

noticed this and rolled out the female friendly wine bars. All soft lighting, sophisticated menus

on chalkboards, and wine served in 250 ml glasses, one third of a bottle. And drinking was part of

the work culture as well as the play culture. In fact, in my creative industry we had a bar

in the office, where most of the important networking took place, and I had a huge expenses

budget which I was expected to use whining and dining my team and my clients.

I assumed then I would stop drinking with quite such abandon after I got married and started

having kids. But I was of the generation that had been told we could have it all,

and I was trying to juggle a big top job and small babies without a wife at home to stop the

ship from sinking. I would end up trying to change an exploded nappy while dealing with a call from

my finance director. I'd miss class assemblies so that I could be yelled at by demanding clients

and petulant creative directors. I'd run home from a day keeping hundreds of balls in the air,

and immediately have to switch into calm, happy mother mode to read the Gruffalo to my babies.

Only copious amounts of booze enabled me to make the switch from one persona to the other,

and provided a release from the inevitable stress and the knowledge that, for the first

time in my life, I was failing at everything. I realised that I was driving myself crazy.

Whenever I was at work, my heart was with my children. Whenever I was with my children,

my head was filled with work. Plus, I was paying a vast proportion of my salary to a nanny so that

she could do the job that I desperately wanted to do myself. Time was flying by in a whirlwind of

dropped deadlines and misdevelopmental milestones. I couldn't bear the idea of not being part of

my children's childhoods. So, when my third child was born, I finally quit the rat race in order to

be a perfect mum. My house was going to be a happy haven of freshly baked cupcakes,

craft tables and carefully planned play dates. How the gods must have laughed, because well

being able to stop work to bring up your gorgeous babies is obviously an honour and a privilege.

Anyone who's done it knows it's not a walk in the park. Or rather, it's endless walks in the park,

with wet wipes, breast pads and emergency rice cakes, pushing swings until your arms go numb,

along with your mind. After a year or two, I started feeling like I'd lost my identity,

lost myself. I was no longer Claire the Advertising Babe or the Group Head or Board Director. I was

only ever defined in relation to other people. John's wife or Evie's mummy. It was as if without

them I didn't exist. I even lost my name, as everyone now referred to me by my married name,

and my maiden name, which I'd used at work, was consigned to distant memory.

I was also starting to worry that I wasn't setting a good feminist example for the children.

I remember going to a Mother's Day event at Maddie's nursery when she was just three.

All the proud mums sat in a semi-circle on those teeny-weeny chairs,

made for teeny-weeny bum cheeks, while the children took turns telling us all what they

wanted to be when they grew up. "I want to be a fireman," said one, as we all went, "Aww!

Then there was a would-be doctor, a teacher, an airline pilot. I waited in suspense to see

what my little darling would come up with. Finally, it was her turn."

"I want to be a mummy and talk on the phone and go to the gym," she said.

I smiled at her encouragingly and clapped enthusiastically while thinking,

"No! You're going to discover the cure for cancer, broke a piece in the Middle East, or

invent the next had-run collider. Still, at least the other mums thought I was fit.

Ironic, since I hadn't actually been to the gym for months."

Wine was my oasis of sanity. A release from the stress of toddler tantrums and the boredom

of nappy-changing and monkey music. A glass of wine could put the zing into a late afternoon

play date with a girlfriend and the zen into post-children's bedtime. At the end of a long

frazzled day, I could pour a generous helping of shabby, dance around the kitchen, and think,

"Yeah, baby, she's still got it." I used wine to wind down, to rev up, to celebrate,

to commiserate, to socialise, and for me time. But then the day came when I realised that I

couldn't do any of those things (relax, party, de-stress) without the wine.

Like Helen Titchiner in The Arches—OMG, my cultural references are all so horribly middle-class,

I am a cliché! All my self-confidence had been slowly stripped away, to the point where I believed

that without wine I was nothing. Without the booze I was timid, boring, and anxious. And yet I knew

that it was the drink that had, slowly, insidiously, over a number of years, put me there.

So, here I am, at the end of a day one that has felt as long as a week, battered,

bruised, and still hungover, but fighting.

Day 3 Exhaustion

I've gone three days without booze on numerous occasions. I've given up for weeks, even months

at a time. But this is different, because I know it's not temporary. The light at the end of the

tunnel has been well and truly snuffed out. I remember breaking up with my first big love

when I was in my early twenties. I spent days sobbing, believing that I'd never be happy again.

I spent hours listening to our songs, trying desperately to rewrite the future in my head

without him in it. He was constantly on my mind as I replayed, in slow motion, every moment we'd

spent together, pouring over old photographs and letters. Yes, they were a thing back then.

"Was it really so bad?" I asked myself, and any girlfriend patient enough to listen.

Surely I was happier in that relationship, however imperfect than I am now.

Life without him seemed drearyly monochrome, where it had been gloriously technicolor.

And now, a quarter of a century later, I feel much the same.

I can't stop thinking about booze, my errant ex-lover. It's on my mind all the time.

I read anything I can get my hands on about alcohol. Amazon keep turning up with another

package of books about stopping drinking, which I add to the growing stash under my bed.

I am, I fear, turning into a madwoman. I've been cooking in the morning and leaving food in the

fridge for John to heat up when he gets home, because cooking, for me, is totally entwined with

drinking. Many an evening I've spent with a wooden spoon in one hand and glass of wine in the other,

talking to an imaginary camera crew as I juggled with herbs and channeled my inner Keith Floyd,

the drunken TV chef. As well as being mentally exhausted by my booze obsession,

I'm physically shattered. I feel like I'm wading through Play-Doh.

It's much like the early stages of pregnancy, but without all the excitement of, "Woo-hoo!

We've created a whole new life! How clever are we?"

I forgot my pin yesterday. A number I've been typing into Cashpoint machines and supermarket

pinpads for decades. The only thing that manages to cut through the fog in my brain

is the crashing headache that's been coming and going for the last two days.

But despite the exhaustion, I can't get to sleep. I'm used to being gradually eased into the land

of Nod by the anesthetizing effects of a few glasses of wine, but for the last two nights,

I've been awake for hours, brain-wiring, staring at the ceiling, while John slumbers,

snorting away like a happy warthog beside me. And now it's six o'clock, the most difficult time

of the day. I've cooked the children's supper, we've done homework, they've had their baths,

and they're happily sitting in front of the television. All the time, the booze is calling me,

like a persistent stalker, saying, "Give me just one more chance. We can make it better this time.

We won't repeat all the old mistakes. You know you love me. You're miserable without me. Just look

at you." But I know, deep down, that it's all lies. It's never going to be different. In fact,

it's only going to get worse, and if I don't walk away now, there's a danger that I never will.

I run myself a hot bath and light some aromatherapy candles someone gave me for Christmas many years

back. That helps, for ten minutes or so. I go on a cleaning frenzy, just to keep my hands occupied.

I'm usually a bit of a domestic slut, but after three days of not drinking,

my house is gleaming. I check my watch. It's seven o'clock, but I feel like I've done as much of

today as I can manage, so I round up the children and announce that we're all going to bed. Yes,

mummy too. The four of us pile into my bed, followed by Otto, the very enthusiastic terrier.

Otto does not know he's a dog. He is, as far as he is concerned, another sibling,

and his brother and sisters are very happy to play along with this misconception.

Otto inserts himself in between me and Kit, sighs happily and farts noxiously, causing howls

of anguish from the children. Before I had children, I'd imagined a little troop of mini-mes,

with maybe just a passing resemblance to their father. As it turned out, none of them look like

me at all, or like John, or even like each other. Right from day one they've been totally different,

completely unique, and I know I'm going to spend my whole life just getting to know them.

Evie is my eldest. Eleven is a magical age when you're past the childish tantrums but haven't

yet hit the teenage years. I wonder how long it'll be before she decides that climbing into

bed with her mother and her siblings—and the dog—isn't cool. Evie amazes me. She has huge

amounts of self-confidence and completely believes that she can do anything she sets her mind to,

whether it's coming top of the class in maths, making the netball team,

or baking an extraordinarily complicated chocolate cake. And usually she's right.

Then there's Kit. Three years younger, my little left-handed boy, who thinks in a completely

different way to me, has a wonderful turn of phrase and sense of humour, and teaches me something new

every day. If I'm occupying a space in the kitchen that Kit is after for some game he's playing,

he doesn't just ask me to move, he takes me by the hand, leads me to a different place,

and says solemnly, "Congratulations. You have been successfully relocated."

Although Maddie is now six, she'll always be my baby. Maddie has us all wrapped around her little

finger. She has oodles of charm and ever since she was tiny, total strangers have rushed over to

exclaim about her cuteness. At this point Evie and Kit tend to roll their eyes and say some

walks are castically, "Yes, she's just like a real person, only smaller."

If Evie wants something, she'll spend days over a fancy PowerPoint presentation,

quoting statistics and research and arguing her case with all the skill of a top barrister.

Whereas if Maddie wants something, she just starts to cry, "On demand!"

Big fat tears streaming down her face and dripping off the end of her nose

until all of us fall to our knees begging her to let us know how we can make her happy again.

All three children are obsessed with working out who is my favourite child.

I keep telling them that I have no favourite, and that choosing a favourite would be like

trying to decide between a strawberry pavlova, a chocolate roulade and an English trifle.

Each are equally delicious but in very different ways. This response is greeted with

howls of derision and leads inevitably to an argument about who is the pavlova and who is the trifle.

The four of us, and the dog, lie, limbs all entwined, taking turns reading from a famous five book

and a Harry Potter. I find myself wondering, idly, whether the butterbeer they sell in hogsmeade

is alcoholic, or if it's more like the lashings of ginger beer drunk by the famous five to wash

down their tins of sardines. Malek over to my left, to the empty space where my ever-present

glass of wine would once have been. It may have sat, quietly, unobtrusively to the side,

but I realise that the actual space it occupied was right in the middle,

sticking its elbows out and shoving everyone else aside. Because of that glass of wine,

and its many friends, I skipped over endless pages of the children's picture books,

and wrapped up years of precious bedtime routines as early as possible.

I gave up work so that I could spend more memorable moments with my children,

then spent the next few years constantly trying to run away from them.

When, I wonder, did I stop using alcohol for celebration and start using it for liberation?

Liberation from the mundanity of everyday life, and from the realisation that it had not turned

out as I'd hoped. But no more, I declare silently. It's time to do parenthood properly.

Adulthood properly. Life properly. I'm going to be the sort of mother who gets her children to

eat kale crisps, carries antiseptic spray in her handbag, and remembers to do her pelvic floor

exercises. After an hour of reading, and before John even gets home from the office, I turn out

the light, hoping that John won't mind moving three Komato's children into their own beds when he

gets home. Maddie leans over, and whispers right up against my face. "Namaste!"

Her fingers are entwined in my hair, as if to ensure that I don't leave her once she's fallen

asleep. Her breath is warm, and smells of strawberries and chocolate, revealing her

claim to have brushed her teeth as a big fib. "Namaste," I reply.

"Do you know what that means, Mummy?" she asks.

"No," I confess. "It means I see God in you."

"And I see God in them. And that's what will get me through."

Day seven. Is anyone out there?

I'm not sure I can do this on my own. I wish there was someone I could talk to,

but I'm far too ashamed. I've told John, casually, and in passing, that I've quit drinking,

but I don't think he's taking it seriously at all. To be fair, he's heard it all before,

and I'm sure he expects me to be back on usual form by the weekend.

I've made some pretty bad decisions over the years, but marrying John was not one of them.

I loved him the minute I met him, nearly twenty years ago in Scotland, on New Year's Eve.

He was wearing a kilt above a really nice pair of knees, and I've always had a weakness for

men in skirts. He made me laugh. A lot. And he was one of the kindest people I'd ever met.

We became best friends, but back then I was still in thrall to the bad, arrogant boys,

the ones who'd make you feel grateful for their time and attention, however begrudging.

So it was four years before John and I kissed. I felt my foundations morphe from sand to rock,

and wondered why on earth I'd taken so long. Since then, John has loved me patiently through

years of increasing overindulgence and bad behaviour. To be fair, he's not perfect either.

He has a terrible habit of leaving wet towels on floors, and dirty plates on top of the dishwasher

rather than in it. There is more tummy to love than there was fourteen years ago,

and a little less hair. He's Scottish, and plays to the stereotype of being somewhat

careful with money. He has been known to put gaffer tape over the central heating controls

to stop me turning them on in November. But I wouldn't have him any other way.

Whenever I've been in trouble, John has done his best to help, not always entirely successfully.

I remember once, a few weeks after Evie was born, when he came back from work to find me

sobbing uncontrollably as I had mastitis—boobs like rocks and a terrible fever—compounded by two

weeks of not sleeping for more than two or three hours at a stretch.

"What can I do to help?" he'd asked helplessly, as I wept and Evie howled.

I'd spoken to the community midwife, a nineteen-year-old trainee who had no idea what it felt like to

have a set of gums clumped to your cracked bleeding nipples for hours on end, and she'd told me

that putting cold cabbage leaves inside my maternity bra might provide some relief.

This sounded totally improbable, but at that point I was willing to try anything.

"Please, can you go to the shop and buy a cabbage?" I'd sobbed.

He came back, an hour later, with a leafless cauliflower, explaining that all the local

shops were out of cabbage. "What am I supposed to do with that?" I'd yelled at him.

"Eat it?" he'd replied, not unreasonably. I threw the cauliflower at his head and drank a

pint of wine instead, which seemed at the time to help both me and Evie.

So the point is, I know that if I talked to John and told him just how bad things had got,

he'd do his very best to understand and to help. But I can't. Maybe because I don't really want to

confess, even to myself. I've not emptied the booze cupboard or the wine rack, nor have I asked John

to stop drinking. I figure that if I can get used to ignoring booze in my own home, I'm much more

likely to succeed when I go out. But John is a considerate soul, so he is trying not to drink

in front of me. He is also a moderate drinker. Damn his eyes. He can drink one glass of wine and then

stop. How does he do that? And what is the point? One glass of wine has never, ever been enough for me.

It seems crazy that when I quit smoking fifteen years ago, I was able to tell the world,

proudly. All the non-smokers cheered, welcomed me with open arms and promised whatever help I needed.

My friends, still puffing away, looked at me enviously and admired my strength and resolve.

But now I'm ditching another addictive drug and I feel I can't tell anyone.

I'm doing an amazing thing, for me and for my family, and yet I'm scared that everyone will

think I must have been a bad mother, an irresponsible lush. And perhaps even more frightening, I'm

worried that now I've quit. They'll think I'm boring, and I'll never be invited out again.

But right now, I really need some friends. I need someone to hold my hand and tell me I can do this.

I need someone to tell me what to expect. I need someone to tell me that it's all going to be

okay in the end. Isn't that what Alcoholics Anonymous is for? Which brings me to the other

question that's been bugging me. Am I an alcoholic? This is not a new query. For at least the last

two years, usually after a spectacular weekend long bender, I've been googling "Am I an alcoholic?"

I then get offered a variety of quizzes, which is great, I love quizzes. I can always answer yes

to several of the questions. Have you tried to stop drinking for a week or so but failed after a few

days? Well, yes, endlessly. Do you drink alone? Of course, doesn't everyone? Anyhow, I'm not alone.

The kids are here, and the dog. Have you ever felt remorse after drinking?

Is the Pope Catholic? But reassuringly, there are always several questions that I can answer no to.

Do you drink when you first wake up? Have family and friends told you to stop drinking?

Do you have blackouts? After I've answered all the questions, I click the button for the magic

answer and it says, "You may have a problem with alcohol." No shit, Sherlock. I kind of knew

that. That's why I did your stupid questionnaire in the first place. What I want to know is,

"Am I an alcoholic?" The truth is that whether or not I am an alcoholic, I know I am addicted to

alcohol in the same way that back in the day I was horribly addicted to nicotine. Alcohol is an

extremely addictive substance, and if you drink enough of it over a long enough period of time,

which let's face it, I did, then you're bound to get hooked. And once you're hooked, as with any

drug, there's no going back. You quit, or eventually you die. But doing it alone is hard, and I'm sure

that AA could help. The problem with AA is that it's the polar opposite of Soho House. It's a

club that welcomes everyone, but absolutely no one chooses to be a member. Because alcoholics

have a terrible image. You immediately imagine tramps coughing methylated spirits in gutters,

smelling of wee, and mothers lying face down in pools of vomit while their children forage for

scraps. People assume that alcoholics are weak-willed and selfish, and even if the alcoholic manages

to quit, we see them as doomed. Sentenced to survive forever without the world's favourite drug,

taking one day at a time and reliving past misdemeanours in dusty basements

while drinking sweet tea from plastic cups. Alcohol is the only drug in the world where,

when you stop taking it, you are presumed to have a problem, a disease, while those still indulging

are viewed as normal. Yet many of the best people I know are overly enthusiastic drinkers or

ex-drinkers. With people who don't do anything by halves, who grab life by the shortened curlies

and throw ourselves in at the deep end. Okay, so we might have a teensy little problem with

moderation, but we are immoderate in all things, in love, in friendship, in work, and in motherhood.

In his temperance address in 1842, Abraham Lincoln said of habitual drunkards,

"There seems ever to have been a prowness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.

The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of

generosity." Brilliant, warm-blooded, generous geniuses. I'll take that, even from a man with

dubious facial hair. So, I'm sure I'd meet some incredible people through AA, especially in

the nearby Chelsea meeting which is apparently stuffed full of B-list celebrities. I'm sure

they'd welcome me, and I'm sure they'd help me. But I just can't make myself do it.

I'm scared that all the tales of terrible rock bottoms will only serve to make me feel that

my bottle of wine a day have it is perfectly acceptable. I'm not kidding myself. I'm certain

that if I carried on drinking, all of that would be in the post. I know that addiction is progressive,

and that one day I could lose my family, my home, everything. But I'm not there yet,

and I have no intention of getting there. I'm terrified of bumping into someone from the PTA

while I'm going in or coming out. I hate the idea of surrendering to a higher power,

and I loathe the thought of all the rules. I'm not at all good at rules, that's why I'm in this

proper pickle. I just can't imagine standing in a church hall in front of a bunch of strangers

and saying, "My name's Claire, and I'm an alcoholic." Even if I can make myself say the A

word, I don't want to define myself by a negative. I want to stand up and say, proudly,

"My name's Claire, and I'm a non-drinker." I want to deal with it, put it behind me,

and get on with the rest of my life. So I type, "How do I stop drinking?" into Google,

and I find the most extraordinary thing. There are women all over the globe, just like me,

women who've quit drinking and are writing about it, writing about how their love affairs with

booze ended, about their hopes and fears and their day-to-day struggles, telling the world

all the things they can't tell their closest friends. I can't stop reading, a curl up in bed

with my laptop, gorging on the private lives of ex-drinkers. Now I know that I am not alone.

I leave a few comments on my favourite blogs, feeling like the new girl at school tentatively

offering the cool girls a maulbra light and hoping to be accepted into the gang.

Then I think, "Why not go one step further? Why not set up your own blog, make yourself

properly accountable? Tell the whole world-wide web what you're doing." Then there's really no turning

back. So I do. Me, the technophobe who has to call a husband at work to ask how to download an

email attachment. I find a programme called Blogger, which makes it all fairly easy,

and set up a simple, not very pretty, text-only blog. Then I write my first post, confessing to

all of it, telling anyone out there just what a mess I've made of my life. I type away,

feeling like a dumpy, middle-aged version of Carrie in Sex and the City, although I'm pretty sure

that Carrie didn't type with one hand while removing dried-up Rice Krispies from the kitchen

worktop with the other. Incredibly, when I check my blog stats half an hour later,

my post has been viewed three times. I get terribly overexcited until I realise that it's just me

reading and re-reading my own blog. I've double and triple checked everything to make sure I'm

completely anonymous. I've called myself "sober mummy" because I'm hoping that every time I type

out my pseudonym on the keyboard, it'll reinforce the fact that "mummy is now sober". Also, it means

I get to sign off each post with my initials. SM. Just one AND away from Fifty Shades of Grey.

Racy. I've called the blog "Mummy was a secret drinker" because I feel like there is a whole

dark side to my life that no one, not even John, is aware of. All those mums at the school gate,

who see me always organised, hosting coffee mornings, raising money for charity,

and volunteering for class rep, have no idea. They've never seen me drunk or out of control.

I rarely drop a ball. I'm probably pretty irritating come to think of it, which makes me think.

If no one knows my secret, then how many other mums just like me are out there?

Who else is standing at the school gate, stealing the kids' Harry-Bos to smother the smell of stale

booze? Day 14. Sober mornings.

Sunday morning. And what a difference a fortnight makes. I remember when I was a child,

thinking that if I dug a hole deep enough, I'd end up in Australia, where everything would be

kind of the same, except we'd all be standing on our heads. Well, giving up alcohol has been a bit

like that. Everything feels upside down and back to front. In the drinking days, I lived for Friday

and Saturday nights. I died on Sunday mornings. But now I dread evenings, which are only made

bearable by eating mountains of cake. But Sunday mornings are my reward. For years my nights have

been dark and full of terrors. I've been plagued by insomnia, waking up at 3am most nights,

letting my overactive mind turn small issues into insurmountable problems, with all the

skill of a prize-winning novelist. I've tried lavender pillows, homeopathic drugs, prescription

drugs, hot milk, aromatherapy baths, meditation and exercise. But I never thought to blame the booze.

But at last, now I've mastered the skill of dropping off sober, which took a little practice.

I am sleeping for a solid nine hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep. No more psychedelic dreams,

no more getting up to wee again and again, no more trips to the fridge for cold water

to combat the raging thirst, no more turning molehills into mountains.

This morning I drag myself out of sleep, like a butterfly clambering out of a chrysalis.

Note that this is the only way in which I resemble a butterfly. And initially I'm all muggy-headed

and heavy-limbed. But fifteen minutes later, and I'm bouncing around like the Duracell bunny on

speed. While the rest of the family is still sleeping and the house is quiet, I do some research.

And it turns out that the link between alcohol and insomnia is a well-proven one.

To feel refreshed, you should ideally have six or seven cycles of REM sleep.

After drinking, you typically have only one or two, which is why you feel exhausted the next day.

You're also likely to wake up several times to wee, because alcohol is a diuretic, and the

weeing and sweating dehydrates you and makes you thirsty. Plus, alcohol can make you snore,

or even cause sleep apnea, all of which adds up to just a few hours of poor quality, fitful sleep.

Not only does lack of sleep make you tired and unable to function properly,

but it's terribly bad for our health. It exacerbates depression and weight issues.

It's bad news for your skin, puts strain on your heart, and it increases your risk of colon and

breast cancer. God, I love sleep. It's the next best thing to chocolate. It's even making me

think that being sober might actually be a really good thing. Plus, a study by Amy Gordon and other

researchers at UC Barkley found that couples who regularly get a full night's sleep are more likely

to have happy, successful relationships. The other thing that's transformed my mornings is the lack

of a hangover. I've had some chronic ones in the past. On one memorable hungover Saturday,

I managed to reverse my car over a raised mini-roundabout that I couldn't see in the rear

view mirror. To my horror, the car stopped moving and I realised that I was balanced on top of the

roundabout, with all four wheels suspended in mid-air. I had to clamber out of my car,

still dressed in my pyjamas, to beg help from four security guards.

"Don't worry, madam," said one of them kindly. "People do that all the time."

"Do they really?" I asked, relieved. "No," he replied, as they all cracked up.

They actually had to cling on to each other for support. They were laughing so much.

"I realise now that one of the differences between problem drinkers and normal drinkers,

curse the lot of them, is their attitude to hangovers. I was always astounded by those people

who would turn down a glass of wine at Sunday lunch because they'd drunk too much the night

before and couldn't face it. Surely they realised that the only effective cure for a hangover was

to drink more. I was an enthusiastic proponent of Hair of the Dog." The expression comes from a

time when it was believed that the way to cure rabies was to put the hair of the dog that bit

you, presuming that you could catch it, on the rabid dog bite. Unlike this cure for rabies,

Hair of the Dog as a Hangover Cure does have a sound basis in science.

Alcohol it drinks contain methanol, which is a poison and makes you feel terrible.

And doctors treat methanol poisoning with ethanol, or, as it's better known, alcohol.

Another reason why alcohol cures a hangover is that many of the symptoms you experience,

the irritability, headache, shakiness, are caused by the early stages of alcohol withdrawal.

It's actually your body craving more. So when you give it more, they stop.

Simple. I share all of this with my blog readers. Are there any? In a way, it doesn't really matter

if no one ever reads my posts because it's like free therapy. I type away sharing my fears, my hopes,

and all the day-to-day struggles that come with quitting booze, and afterwards I feel lighter,

clearer, and more resolute. I press publish, and my words fly out onto the internet,

taking many of my woes with them. Then I spot something new. Underneath my latest blog post,

it says, "One comment. It's from someone called Whimsical."

Big bravo to you. Thanks for sharing your story. Kiss.

I feel like I've just been given a huge great bear hug by the World Wide Web.

I can see my grin reflected in my computer screen. There is someone out there.

Feeling buoyed up, I round up the troops for a trip to the local indoor play centre.

A soft play area with a chronic hangover is a special kind of hell. The combination of the

noise of a few hundred shrieking children, that indescribable odour—a mixture of fried food,

sweat, disinfectant, and dirty nappy—and an alcohol-induced dehydration, queasiness,

and headache is truly dreadful. In the old days I would hunker down in as quiet a spot as I could

find, clutching a cup of coffee and counting the seconds until it was all over. But today is different.

Today, all rested, sober and perky, I can see it all through the children's eyes.

Hundreds of over-excited small people charging around having fun.

A myriad of different colours, sounds, and textures. It's a veritable wonderland.

Until a breathless, eevee and kit come to find me.

"Mummy, Maddie's got stuck at the top. She climbed up there fine, but she's too

scared to come down. We tried to help her, but she wants you."

"Oh, great. I have to navigate four massive stories of inflatable obstacles—tunnels, ladders,

slides, rope bridges—all designed for an average-sized eight-year-old,

not a middle-aged mum with a pronounced wine-belly."

"Hangover or no hangover, there's only so much soft play any reasonable adult can take."

Day 21 The Wine-Belly

I haven't quit drinking in order to lose weight, but I have to confess,

the idea of dropping a few pounds is a major incentive. I weigh twelve stone, which at five

foot seven is at least two stone overweight, and I have a horrible wine-belly.

Over the years I've tried endless diets—the F-plan, endless fibre, the Beverly Hills diet,

lots of fruit, Skarsdale Medical Diet, detailed meal plans,

Hay Diet, complicated rules about protein and carbs, Cabbage Soup Diet, just what it sounds like,

the Cambridge Diet, milkshakes, Atkins, no carbs, Du Can Diet, more no carbs,

Loji Diet, only certain sorts of carbs, and the 5-2 Diet. Two days fasting a week.

Just writing that list makes me feel hungry. All of them would work for a while. I'd lose

up to around ten pounds in a month, but they were impossible to stick to long term,

and as soon as I started eating normally again, the weight would pile back on,

as if to punish me for my foolish optimism. I did the exercise thing too. Jane Fonda's workout,

Rosemary Conley's hip and thigh workout, stepping, spinning, running, large rubber band things,

blow up balls, calenetics, weights, body pump, body attack, and that funny machine that you stand on

while it vibrates. Just writing that list makes me feel exhausted. I did get fitter,

but not much thinner, and nothing seemed to shift the belly.

I'm not monstrous yet. I'm a UK size 14. I'm in denial about this, and try whenever possible

to squeeze myself into a 12. If God had meant us to be skinny, she wouldn't have invented stretch

fabrics. But as I sit here in my trusty jeans, a little roll of flab, like a child's rubber ring

in the swimming pool, is hanging over my belt. Lovely. If I lie down in the bath and grab my

belly fat with both hands, which I have done when I was feeling masochistic, it is, ironically,

about the size of a bottle of Vino. The problem with being relatively slim, except for the vast

wine belly, is that it makes you look five months pregnant, and there is nothing worse than some

poor woman asking you when it's due. Plus, if you're at a party, knocking back the Vino while

looking up the duff, you get some very hostile looks from the pregnancy police.

While I'm obsessively googling everything related to alcohol, I do some research on wine bellies.

It turns out that not only is it not the best look aesthetically, it's also really bad for your health.

It is, apparently, way better to be obese all over than to be relatively skinny with a beer wine belly.

A recent study by researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, published in the Annals of

Internal Medicine, showed that normal weight adults who carried fat around their middles

had twice the risk of early death than those who were overweight or obese but with normal

fat distribution. The reason belly fat is so dangerous is that it doesn't just sit under

the skin and wobble, like the bingo wings or thunder thighs, both of which I'm on more than

nodding terms with. It wraps itself around your vital organs and massively increases your risk of

stroke, heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. I decide to take all my measurements as a baseline,

so that when I find myself transformed into a goddess, I can look back at them and

shortle in horror. The only tape measure I have is one of those metal ones for DIY,

so I end up tying myself in knots, literally, with pieces of string that I then measure against the

metal tape. According to the NHS, a woman's waist should ideally measure less than 32 inches.

Between 32 and 35 is classified as high and over 35 inches is very high.

They also suggest that you measure your waist to hip ratio, inches around the waist,

divided by inches around the hips. For women, this ratio should be less than 0.85.

Now, despite the fact that my BMI is only just above the normal range, my waist measurement at

36 inches and my waist to hip ratio at 0.87 put me well into the danger zone.

I run the risk of being killed by my muffin top. I'm quite sure that the booze is to blame.

Alcohol has seven calories per gram, making it the second most calorie-rich micronutrient

afterfat. A bottle of wine usually contains at least 600 calories. That means that if you

drink a bottle of wine a day, you are consuming two extra days worth of calories a week.

There are two other reasons why alcohol leads to piling on the pounds,

which I'm certainly very familiar with. One is that drinking makes you lose your inhibitions,

so at the end of the meal you're likely to think, "Death by chocolate? It'd be rude not to.

Tiny dainty chocolates with coffee? Why the hell not? Just one more whiff of a thin mint."

The second is the dreaded hangover. Because your body is dehydrated and it needs energy

to recover from the previous night's marathon, you crave fat and carbohydrate-rich foods.

We hope you enjoyed this preview. To continue listening to this audio book on Google Playbooks,

use the link in the video description.

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