I QUIT DRINKING BUT FELL OFF THE WAGON FOR AN ITALIAN HUNK
For 50 years, top writers have shared life-defining moments with Femail. Here, we reveal what happened next...
I spent ten years battling the demon in a bottle that could turn me from a lively attention-seeker into an aggressive monster. If there was a party in Chelsea, I was there. I was hanging around with a fast set, and my friends were the daughters of judges and lawyers.
though I was educated privately in Fulham, before I had reached my 17th birthday I had gained a reputation as the girl who was all-too-willing to take off her clothes — and was then ill in the bathroom.
When I was drunk, my behaviour was outrageous, and everyone loves their own private court jester.
But behind the drunken party animal was a desperate young girl. My party mates didn’t see me hungover and shaking, unable even to stomach a glass of water.
I’d often wake up the next day covered in bruises and hear my family downstairs discussing whether I should see a psychiatrist — though they never made me. every time I promised I wouldn’t get drunk, my mother would shake her head and say: ‘Kate, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ And she was right.
then, a few days after my 26th birthday, a concerned friend told me I should go to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I was shocked. I’d known for years the seriousness of my situation; now, for the first time, I realised there was no alternative but to give up alcohol for ever.
WHAT I DID NEXT
When I wrote this article in 1999, I was still gritting my teeth through the pain of giving up alcohol.
Fast-forward to today and I am so grateful to be sober. It is part of my identity.
In the first few months of sobriety, I didn’t tell anyone — I didn’t want to let people down. But, when I finally told my sister, Louise, she was over the moon. the last time we’d gone out, I’d abandoned her in a dodgy London club and woken up the next day with a group of strangers in Brighton.
now my parents could finally sleep at night, and family holidays were happier affairs.
nevertheless, it has not all been plain sailing. Falling off the wagon was probably inevitable. Fortunately, it only happened to me once — in Italy, with an impossibly handsome guy. I accepted a glass of cool, crisp pinot grigio to please him.
Many glasses later, I was dancing topless and he was nowhere to be seen.
What it did do was yank me back into reality. Who was I kidding? I was a full-blown addict. And the only thing between me and oblivion is willpower.
not everyone has been so quick to embrace my sober status. part of me, after all these years, still dreads telling people I am teetotal. I know they will think: ‘Oh dear, will she be a bore?’ After Friends refuse to believe I’m teetotal all, alcohol is an enhancer. One man who had been flirting with me at a party walked away when he heard I was teetotal. Another refused to date me because he said his friends would find it weird.
On the flip side, there are those who refuse to believe I am teetotal. ‘sorry, I don’t drink,’ I told a friend I had known for a few months when she offered me a glass of wine recently. ‘Yes, you do,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve seen you drunk many times.’
As someone who is already exuberant and larger than life, I don’t need a livener to socialise. so I can see why my friend thought I acted drunk.
I don’t mind, but it does get tiresome when people don’t believe you.
Worse are the drinkers who, while happy to down pints of beer, resent my healthy lifestyle. One friend sarcastically called me ‘clean-living Kate’.
Giving up drink is the best thing I’ve ever done. When people say how well I look, I feel a smug inner glow. It’s the best diet there is, and cheaper than any beauty cream.
nowadays, I am healthy. I eat, exercise and sleep well. I don’t mind not partying till dawn; I am happy to see friends and go to bed early.
I know that if I had kept on drinking, I would be a mess by now: a middle-aged drunk with a face ravaged by years of alcohol abuse.
either that or I wouldn’t have been around to tell the tale.
A few weeks ago, I dreamed I was drinking again. When I woke up, and realised I am still sober, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.