Written by Seana Smith
This is my sober story…
I was 55 years old when I stopped drinking. It had only taken me 25 years of stopping and starting, stopping and starting, stopping and starting, before I finally managed to make the great mental leap forward which allowed me to say goodbye permanently to the poison which was damaging my body and my brain.
In the end, it was the wish to save my mental health which got me over the line. I wish that I had stopped drinking earlier in my life. But then again, I’m glad that I didn’t wait any longer.
Everybody has their own sobriety story, and their own personal reasons for stopping drinking. Lots of people read my quit lit memoir Going Under and ask ‘how much were you drinking a day?’ I reply that it wasn’t actually a huge amount, never more than a bottle of wine a day (except for occasional binge sessions) and not every day.
But still, the alcohol was killing me, destroying my mental health, and I have felt better since I stopped, a lot, lot better, every single day. Even on days when I am sick in bed, with flu or covid or even food poisoning, I never ever feel as bad as when I used to have hangovers.
How it all started…
Like a lot of people who end up developing a problem with alcohol, I grew up in a family with a problem drinker. My father was a huge drinker, this was not at all uncommon in Scotland last century, of course. Most men drank, and Scotland has a higher than typical number of people with alcohol use disorders.
My dad was also aggressive when he drank, violent at times. I knew as a child that alcohol was always tied up with his aggression; he was never a terrible father when he was sober. But at the same time alcohol was always present when there were good times too: at parties, Christmas, birthdays and celebrations. I grew up never seeing that you could enjoy a good time without alcohol.
I started drinking as soon as I could and, once I left school and home, I became a regular drinker, a binge drinker. In my twenties I went to university and then moved to Australia and worked in television as a researcher and a producer. I moved back to the UK and then back to Australia. Everywhere I went, I was drinking and drinking and drinking and getting myself into bad situations with men, as well as being pretty mean to a lot of blokes myself. I was a mess.
I decided to change my relationship with alcohol
My first successful efforts to cut down my boozing came when I was 30. I had a year of counselling in Glasgow, aiming to break my terrible emotional patterns. I was motivated as I had always wanted to have a family of my own and felt I needed a big life course change.
It worked! I stopped drinking for a few months and met my very kind and gentle husband then. We had our first son fairly quickly and moved to Pakistan, a dry country. I really thought all my troubles were over.
We moved to Australia where we have lived permanently for 25 years. We had another son and then, a few years later, late-in-life boy/girls twins came along. All through those years of intense mothering my drinking was not terrible at all. My oldest son was autistic and hyperactive and I just couldn’t deal with hangovers.
Occasionally on holiday or when friends came over I would drink a lot. I remember getting smashed when I had a 40th birthday party. But I did not get too deep into the mummy wine culture; maybe I was saved by having four kids and just being too busy.
But it turned out that alcohol was just biding its time, waiting for me to have more space in my life, waiting until the most intense mothering years were over.
But then it happened…
When the twins went to school, alcohol came back and pounced on me again. It sank its teeth into me and hung on. My efforts to moderate my drinking quickly became heroic. I would aim to only drink at the weekends. I would not keep bottles of wine at home. I would offer to drive when we went out.
But alcohol came creeping, and my cravings grew and grew. I would feel like crying when I woke up on a Monday or Tuesday knowing I had promised myself not to have a drink until the Friday. I would feel the physical cravings for booze around 4pm every afternoon.
One Christmas holidays, I felt awful after drinking wine every day for two weeks. Depression had come for me, I was bad tempered and had been shouting too much. I decided to stop for a whole year. And I did. For one whole year, I went to AA meetings and I did not drink at all.
My downfall was that I only intended to stop for that one year. As soon as day 366 came around, I ordered myself a large glass of red wine. I was sure that I would be able to moderate, have just one or two glasses. Many of my friends drink very little, I would be just like them.
Of course, things did not work out that way. Alcohol crept up on me again. I had another five years of mental torture before I finally, finally stopped forever.
My big realization
I had to come to the realisation that I was a problem drinker, and that moderation would never work for me. I had to choose. Would I keep drinking, \abusing myself mentally and physically, feeling anxious or depressed, or would I stop. Forever. And be free.
It’s been almost six years since I stopped. The freedom still amazes me. I feel so much better, my depression and bad temper have gone.
Tips and encouragement
Reading quit lit books and listening to podcasts helped me enormously in the first couple of years of sobriety. I’m a writer by profession and I knew I had my own story to tell. My memoir Going Under is about my family in Scotland, the terrible highs and lows of my childhood and about how my sobriety has laid to rest all the alcohol ghosts.
If you are struggling with your drinking, come and join the sober crew. It’s such a better life!
Check out Seana Smith’s website here, and Instagram here!
Are you interested in sharing YOUR sobriety story with me and my readers? You can do this anonymously or with your name and/or bio. If you’d like to know more, leave me a message HERE and I will tell you all about it. Izzy
