These Seasons Of Mine🌷

The hawthorn blossoms in the hedgerow looked like fairy skirts as I walked by. And I viewed them that morning through the soft silver light of acceptance. For I had come to realise that life felt more manageable, joyful even, when I was drinking to attain some ephemeral high. Since the age of 13 it was what the damaged kids did, and I felt at home among them. This, I grudgingly accepted, was a problem I had to face.

To say: “There’s no point in drinking on a problem ~ that doesn’t achieve anything” is actually not true. Drinking alcohol achieves a lot of things that those who drink it don’t know other ways to do. For example, it instantly relaxes the mind and body, numbs pain, brightens reality and makes huge problems seem manageable in the balmy haze it creates. Honestly, my only question is, who wouldn’t want that? Which is probably why it is the number one addictive substance on the planet. Easily accessible, legal and socially acceptable, in some cases even expected. I saw something on Instagram once that said: “We are all on a floating rock paying bills”. When faced with the insanity that is life, I am consistently surprised that we are not all raging alcoholics. And then I remember that radically more numbers than we realise are, they are just quiet ones. 

The Number One Thing You Need To Beat Addiction

I am now going to say something that some of you may read and think, “Well yeah, that’s obvious”. So I will just say this now ~ this never was obvious to me. I learned it after 14 years of drinking almost every day and six consecutive years of therapy, and it is this: You actually have to want to stop. And I don’t mean that thing that happens when you wake up with the mother of all hangovers and groan, clutching your aching head: “I’m never drinking again”. You can do that too, repeatedly, but it won’t get you very far. It might, but in most cases it won’t. It is not a morning after phrase or an easily broken promise the next time things get tough. I actually have done both of these things so many times I lost count a long time ago. No, what it is is a turning in the stomach, a rising tidal wave of anger that says: “No. I want more than this from life. I demand more than this for myself. I am worth more than what this gives me”.

Mine came the night I finished an easy shift in the restaurant, and thank goodness it was easy because my head was all over the place. It came the night after I had downed almost an entire bottle of pink Prosecco that was left over from Mother’s Day. As I walked to the sink in my waitressing clothes, black leggings and a black satin shirt with a massive hole in the armpit, my mind swimming with jagged thoughts, suddenly I felt something. It is what I imagine a mother may feel in the last flushes of pregnancy. It literally felt like something had turned over and kicked outwards inside me. Like a chick turning and hatching from an egg. It was the feeling I had never thought would come. It was me, fighting back. It was me, the defiant inner child or the encouraging higher self demanding more. And I couldn’t ignore it anymore. She was new life. And I knew in that moment I would not accept the life drinking had laid out for me. And I knew it would get easier. Because I wanted sobriety. I wanted it more than alcohol. And for someone who has always been very good at pursuing what they want, I knew I would achieve it. 

Doing things that repeatedly break promises to ourselves erodes resilience and destroys joy in life. And I do not believe that we should be deprived of joy for too long. According to the Internet, “the primary condition associated with being deprived of joy—or the inability to feel pleasure—is anhedonia. Anhedonia means “without pleasure.” It is the inability to experience joy, interest, or satisfaction in activities that were previously enjoyed.” I had used alcohol and smoking to get from A to B. It wasn’t good for me and I will never propose that it was, but it did serve its purpose, which was to keep me alive. I remember, on one of my many tens of forays into the world of smoke-free sobriety, saying to my therapist that I couldn’t believe how much I had smoked and drunk in my lifetime. She smiled sagely: “But can you have compassion for yourself for having to do it?” This question stayed with me, up the M1 to West Yorkshire where I now live. Because the thing is, addiction and bad habits don’t arise from laziness or pure self-indulgence and weakness as I think those less afflicted believe. They arise from the fact we need to do them in order to feel normal. And why do we not feel normal in the first place? Ah, that is where the magic happens. That is the crux, the pain point, where the real work begins. Ask yourself this question or better yet ask it with a trained professional to guide you and stand beside you. For so long, I searched for just one thing to save me. And everything I held up to the light was cast aside the moment I saw the crack in it. “Looking for a silver bullet” my therapist called it. Luckily for me and for you, there is no silver bullet, although, as my therapist remarked, “it would be nice”. Instead, you have to do things that make you feel you are worth fighting for, looking after and protecting. Creating things that are an expression of your soul in art, writing, music, business, friendship, surroundings that reflect back to you again and again and again: “This is good, this is good, this is good”. Relating to big emotions as a gentle caregiver would ~ not clutching onto them, simply witnessing and noticing them. What is it like to let that horrific feeling be there? What is it like to tell yourself that it will pass? To misquote the 13th century poet, Rumi: You are the ocean, the feeling is the wave. Ride the wave. 

We instinctively crave love, comfort, warmth, softness, nurturing, and when a substance provides this for us, what are we to do, really? There was once a paediatrician who had particular success in treating illness and depression in young children. One day, a student who was shadowing him asked how he did it. The doctor replied, smiling, “Ah that is not me, I just prescribe Old Anna”. The student did not know what this meant. But one day, he found an elderly maternal woman in the children’s play area of the hospital gently comforting a sick child. She didn’t do anything special, but she was a source of warm affection and spoke tenderly to her cause. The student enquired as to her name: “Anna,” she said, quietly.

What do we do when, for whatever reason, we cannot do this for ourselves? When you give up an addictive substance, one of the best ways I’ve heard it described is like having potholes in your life that you eventually have to fill ~ where once you had temporary joy or relief from the fix, now you have to find the genuine pleasure to fill them with. And the discovery of this is a portal into yourself. It’s more rewarding than any glass of wine I’ve ever had but if someone had said that to me at the beginning not only would I have not believed them, I probably would have punched them in the face.

Not really. But I would probably have been like; “Okay, thanks for that, could you pass the red?”

And this is why we need others. We need each other to do this. We need to follow the paths lit by those who have descended before us. I highly recommend having sober icons, social media is actually helpful in this way. And as frightening or uncomfortable as it may be, we have to make a promise to ourselves that whatever our brain comes up with, we have to hold ourselves through it. Your brain will try again and again and again to overthrow you: “If I bring you this, if I bring you this, if I bring you this, now will you turn away?” You have to be the Mother who says: “There is nothing you can bring me that will make me turn away. There is nothing you can bring me that would make me stop loving you”.

You can get to a place where taking care of yourself feels better than killing yourself, when your own arms ~ no one else’s ~ feel best to hold you and rock you and witness your pain. I know because I have done it. I thought I would never be healed fast enough to outrun death, and yet I am still here, writing to you.

If we’re all just living it for the first time, it is inevitable we are going to make mistakes, so be prepared for it to be uncomfortable. Keep doing it clean, keep choosing to be awake even if you fail and relapse 100 times like I did, don’t give up. The neural pathway will eventually form and when it does, suddenly, life clicks into place. 

Some Things I Would Recommend Doing When Quitting Addictive Substances

1. Make promises to yourself that a) you can keep and b) you will actually enjoy doing. For example, in the middle of an alcohol craving, I can guarantee that the last promise you will want to keep is not drinking. Just thinking about not drinking for the rest of your life will make you want to crawl into a bottle of wine so fast you’d be ripping the cork out with your teeth if it wasn’t encased in glass, and even then you would probably try. So instead, take a breath, and think about something you would actually enjoy doing that is easy to achieve. When I was in the midst of my first big alcohol craving after I quit, I was running plates during a busy night in the restaurant, surrounded by people enjoying wine. All I could think was: “Fuck this for a laugh, I’m having a drink later”. My breath was short and my solar plexus was tearing up my stomach, always the first place I feel something. But I knew, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, how much I would hate myself when I woke up in the morning. And then I thought about the possibility of going to bed sober. With Plushie my toy seal, reading my Women’s Travellers book with two hot water bottles and a reiki session by my favourite ASMR artist, The Angel Alchemist. And then I thought: “What if I took myself for a coffee tomorrow in my favourite cafe after I drop my wages in to the Post Office and go for a walk up the hill? What if I can just get myself to that?”
   
   And I got through the night. And I had a non-alcoholic beer, which I took home with me, with my rigatoni pasta. And I had a cigarette under the stars and I thanked the night sky for my sobriety. And then I got in the shower with all my favourite shower things and did my skincare, and now I’m sitting in bed, writing this to you. It is possible. My advice is this ~ make everything that you can a comfort, make everywhere you turn a soft space, with something, even if it is just one small thing, to make it better. Have the non-alcoholic beer, or the shower with the aromatherapy oil you saved from Christmas, and the two fluffy hot water bottles in bed with your favourite book. Reward yourself with a future, easily accessible promise and do it. Drag yourself on your stomach towards it if you have to. These small pleasures, which in fact make up our healing, will be personal to each and every one of us, which is why you have to get to know yourself really, really well and try things first to figure out what they are, so go easy on yourself.
2. Record your journey, in whatever format feels most natural to you. Firstly, because you will want to look back on it some day. And secondly, because you never know who it’s going to help.
3. Keep going. I promise you it gets better. 

“Approve of yourself for a change, see what happens”

And

“I wish you self-esteem so high that you’re humble”

Are two things that have guided me. These aren’t me, they are the mighty Instagram, but sharing them felt right. I can almost guarantee you’ll build your own armoury of quotes to wield whilst you embark on this fight. The future isn’t orange, but it’s brighter than you think. And you’re going to be better than alright.

In Love&Light, FS XOX