Bryony Gordon
‘I was like a spider caught in a web’
On a muggy, overcast day in July, a friend lured me to a café in a smart area of west London under the pretence of meeting her for a coffee, where, before I could even order a flat white, she announced she was taking me to meet a man who ran a treatment centre for people with alcohol and drug problems. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I had just managed 35 days of sobriety – my longest time without a drink since I was pregnant – but had fallen off the wagon at a wedding and was now experiencing that familiar feeling of anxiety, hopelessness and regret that had come to define so much of my adult life.
I went with my friend, a recovering alcoholic, to the centre, where this tall, knowledgable man with letters after his name listened to my story and nodded intently, as if he had heard it a thousand times before.
I hoped that he might tell me that I had nothing to worry about, that most people found it hard to stop at one, or two drinks, or in my case, five or six or seven or eight. But, instead, he used words such as “alcohol use disorder”, which I didn’t mind because they sounded vaguely medical, like something that wasn’t my fault. And that was good, because whatever this was, it was totally of my doing – nobody forced me to drink until blackout, after all.
Then he told me I had a choice: I could either choose to live the rest of my life in active addiction, or I could choose to live as a recovering addict.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Addict? Me? I went home via the Co-op where I bought seven very large bottles of Peroni that I somehow stuffed in my backpack, clinking all the way home. I didn’t know it, but I was stockpiling, preparing for the end. A strange kind of survivalist who wasn’t really living.
That may seem odd to read. You wouldn’t look at my life over the past few years and think that I had anything to moan about. Columnist on a national newspaper, bestselling author, mental health campaigner, mother of beautiful daughter, wife of wonderful husband, owner of house, interviewer of royals, runner of marathons. Even writing that,
I am aware of what an ocean-going irritant I sound like.
And things were great in my life. I had, quite literally, run through 2017 with gusto and vigour and I had achieved things I could never have imagined. But something wasn’t quite right. Every now and then, maybe once every two months, I would go on a prodigious bender.
I would disappear for a night, leaving my husband fretful and distressed, unsure of where his wife was or if she would come back in one piece. I got myself into situations that I don’t really want to go into here – I put myself in danger. Then a couple of days would pass and everything was OK and I would tell myself I didn’t have a problem. I wasn’t drinking every day – I could go three, maybe four days without a drink! I wasn’t pouring vodka on my cereal
– I didn’t even drink vodka, just beer, and champagne if I was feeling flash. I didn’t hide bottles in hedges or under beds – I was very open about my drinking. By all popular definitions of alcoholism, I didn’t have a problem.
So why did it feel like I did? Though I didn’t drink every day, when I did drink I wouldn’t stop until I passed out. Ninety per cent of the time this happened at home, without any consequences other than a crashing feeling of anxiety every morning. But that was becoming increasingly hard to handle, especially when I was spending a good amount of time writing about mental health. I was realising, as I was exposed to the world of mental illness and recovery from mental illness, that I didn’t drink in a normal way. I
‘I could either choose to live my life in active addiction or as a recovering addict’
drank when I felt bad, I drank when I felt good, I drank any time I felt anything at all. Sometimes people would say: “Why don’t you just drink moderately?” as if this was as simple as tying your shoelaces or brushing your teeth. I think I would have found it easier to be an astronaut.
I remember reading that scientists were trying to develop a pill that would make you only ever want to drink one or two. “Wouldn’t that be good?” I said to myself, but then I realised that it wouldn’t. I didn’t want one or two. I wanted the sweet clarion call of oblivion; I wanted to block out the OCD and depression that had plagued me since I was 12. Of course, in doing so, I was only making them worse. But I was like a fly caught in a spider web. I couldn’t get out.
I wanted to give up drinking but I found that I couldn’t. Over the summer, the prodigious benders started to become more and more frequent. I would find myself in some dark places, and then, in the cold and sober-ish light of day, when I had got back home, I would wonder how on earth a mother could behave like this.
I thought a lot about killing myself. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to die; just that I would rather any pain than the type I was in at the time. By the end of August, I was like a duck: calm above water but paddling furiously underneath to stay afloat.
I had a week where things got out of hand. I called the treatment centre I had visited two months before. Four days later, they took me in as an outpatient – but only on the condition that if I picked up a drink, I would go into a residential centre for 28 days. I realised then how serious things were.
I had a lot of misconceptions about rehab, I suppose the same ones I had about alcoholics and addicts. Just as not all people with a problem are sitting on park benches with needles in their arms, not all rehabs are luxury spas where you pad around in a robe and get your chakras read.
This centre dealt with people for whom going into residential rehab was not an option – people like me who were “binge-pattern” addicts (this is around 60 per cent of people with addiction, a surprisingly high number), with families and jobs who didn’t need to dry out under medical supervision.
It also offered places to people returning from residential centres who needed help readjusting to normal life. And so it was that the day before my daughter started reception, I started rehab. It was to be the best decision I ever made.
I can’t go into too much detail about my time at this centre, because I have an overwhelming sense of duty to protect the people I have met there – people like you, people like me, people who are a long way from the usual portrayal of someone with a problem. We all come from different places and have different stories, but what we have in common is that we are alcoholics and addicts. I am an alcoholic and an addict. That was something I could not say until relatively recently, but now it is as central to my identity as my name or my age. I feel it in my bones; it exists in my DNA. And I have never felt better for admitting it.
Next week, when I finally “graduate” from rehab, I will be four months sober. What has happened in those four months feels absolutely extraordinary. It has not been easy; far from it. But it has been worth it. Worth it for the friends I have made, for the sense of belonging, for the daily joys of being completely present for my daughter. I am endlessly grateful for my friend’s intervention back in July.
It is still early days, and I do not plan to bang on about it endlessly in my writing – not, at least, until I have a decent amount of recovery behind me. But what I will say, in case there is anyone reading this who thinks they have a problem, is that back when I heard the word “addict”, and the term “alcohol use disorder”, I thought it was the end. In fact, it was just the beginning.