My son says I should go back on the booze to find a man
Troubled star turns life around as wellness guru
FORMER catwalk model Alison Canavan has revealed how her young son wishes she would go back on the booze – to find a man.
After a fractured past the 39-yearold has overcome alcoholism and is jetting to Los Angeles next month to study neuroscience and mindfulness.
Speaking to the Irish Sunday Mirror, she said: “James is constantly trying to set me up, he’ll pick out anyone on the street and say, ‘Do you want him to be your boyfriend?
“He’s like, ‘Mum if you drank and went to the pub you’d probably find a man. It’s the only place to find one’.”
The Dublin beauty told how she has been sober for almost three years and insisted would never go back to her painful past.
She said: “I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to drink now.
“I knew I had a problem as I never wanted to go home, I always had to get wasted and I never remembered anything. I didn’t know who I was without alcohol.
“The whole idea of giving up alcohol was like, ‘How am I going to talk to people, do I have a personality?’
“Since I was 15 I was the life and soul of the party but only because I was great at partying. So when you took that away from me, who was Ali?
“That was a massive identity for me, ‘Oh, Ali the Irish girl, she’s the best at drinking, she’ll drink everyone under the table’. It was a tough process to quit, a very lonely time.”
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The mum – whose son James turns seven next month – realised she had a serious problem when she struggled to drink in moderation and told how she has fallen off the wagon in the past.
She said: “I tried being a moderate drinker for years and that was very hard work and I really had to put a lot of effort into it.
“When I was out my whole night would be consumed trying to not drink too much and that’s a nightmare in itself, there’s no enjoyment in that.
“I’ve a very addictive personality, it’s all or nothing, I’ve been sober 15 times in my life, this is not the first time.
“I spent many years in AA in New York and every time I got sober it was always a challenge because I felt I was missing something and I felt like I would never be able to enjoy life without alcohol.
“Now I know that it’s just not true because I’ve done the work in other areas, so I’d never go back there.”
The award-winning wellness coach never stops working on dealing with her “emotional pain” and when we meet she is fresh out of a 10-day silent sanctuary.
Hidden away at the dhamma.org retreat in Drogheda, Co Louth, was like “torture” for the wellness guru. She said: “The thing I thought would be difficult was the NOBO, silence of speech, body and mind, so no eye contact or hand gestures, no phones.
“However, you are meditating for about 10 hours a day and you are sitting. So the really difficult part is
when you’re meditating for this long is you’re sitting with awareness and with an equanimous mind so that you’re not leaning into cravings or aversions. “So to help you to bring that into your life, live life with more equanimity so that you’re not craving more of the good things or wishing the bad things to go away. “You need to create more balance in your life but what happens when you’re left with your mind on your own for 10 days, it’s torture.” The pain from her addictive past surfaced during the retreat enabling her to accept it in order to move on.
She added: “So I was in a lot of pain because your emotional pain comes up but it teaches you everything passes, so even if you’re feeling really intense pain, this too shall pass.
“So you’re sitting with it knowing it will pass and understanding that it’s the nature of life and how we