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365 Days.


One year.

I started this year (as in May 2018-May 2019) in Homerton hospital, surrounded by drips full of fluids all determined to get me back to health. I was single, emotionally low but unsure as to why and feeling like I was living through Groundhog Day.

I ended this year, watching two of my favourite people Tim and Nathan get married, having just flown back from an incredible two week trip to Bali with one of my best friends Ben. Emotionally stable but coping with a dull ache, an ache for a real reason and doing all that I can, to healthily tend to that grief.

My giving up alcohol and drugs was a choice not a recovery, yes my relationship with drink and drugs for me personally, wasn’t healthy or helping me to move forward in anyway. I wasn’t addicted to anything but I was repeatedly completing a cycle which was making me feel, ill, bored and low a lot of the time. Of course I was having fun too, but the negative results of the fun were outweighing it the majority of the time.

Over the last year I learnt that:

Going out sober really can be just as much fun, just the other week myself and Ria were dancing on tables and chairs to Beyonce in our local, as basic as that sounds - it was so funny and gave me life that night!

I had my first sober birthday party last week surrounded by people that I love- and I laughed so much that night, that my cheeks hurt. It’s honestly what you make of it, dancing on those tables felt all the better knowing I wasn’t going to wake up with a cracking headache.

Sobriety = cold hard cash.

When I go out now the most expensive thing I'm gonna spend money on is my Uber. My sober app tells me that as of today I have saved £9000. That’s approximately 8 pug puppies or 15 pairs of Miu Miu shoes, or 1 and 3/4 boob jobs or a third of a deposit for a house, or travelling for about 6-12 months, anyway whatever floats your boat, my point is - that’s a lorra cash.

Friendships will change, both for the better and the worse. I’ve never been as present for the people that I love as I am now. Your change in choices leads you to different situations and you end up meeting people you may never have met. Party friends aren't a bad thing but removing alcohol from my life has simultaneously removed some people while adding others. Time is VITAL, and spending it with party buddies unless close pals isn't really deepening any bond or making me grow or closer to any personal goals.

You find an inner confidence that you maybe didn't even know was there.

When tragedy strikes you’re in the best mental place to deal with it, nothing can prepare you for tragedy and being sober hasn’t magically made losing one of my best friends any less of a devastation to my everyday life, but I have to work through it and feel it, there is no submersing it with booze until the next day when it inevitably hits back with vengeance, I’m thankful that I’m going through this with the clearest headspace I can possibly have.

Love is all around.

I have been on and off dating during this year but tbh there has been no one that I’ve truly wanted to fully share myself with. I’ve learnt that sober or not sober - dating.is.hard. It’s also hilarious though and makes for great story telling to friends (belle - I’m mainly looking at you here).

But I’ve learnt even more so, that the loves of my life are my friends, both family and chosen family. Being sober and getting to the stage on my life where I’m at, I finally feel ready to share it with someone. I want it but don’t NEED it, which is a good place to be.

You can still celebrate. In our culture we do this a lot ‘I lost my job come drink with me to commiserate’ ‘I just got the job! Come drink with me to celebrate’ ‘we broke up, come

Drink with me to drown my sorrows’ ‘I’m getting married - let’s crack open the champagne’ ‘I’m another year older, yay! Shots?’

You get my point. I’m no way dogging on these things, but I did learn that you can celebrate all of the above sober and STILL have a really really good time.

Work is better, now this one, I won’t budge on, sobriety DOES make work both better and easier. Working a full day through a hangover, is pretty fucking horrible - and there is no two ways about it, when you choose not to drink anymore - you get more done. Fact.

Shares in Ubereats have crashed since my chosen sobriety, I still use the app, and I’m still partial to a cheeky cheeseburger from time to time BUT I was a top customer before and now, well, I actually deleted the app about a month ago. My diet still needs a lot of work and I’ve recently slipped into old bad habits when it comes to food, but it’s next on the list! I have a session with a nutritional therapist this week so...watch this space. Those of you that are close with me will know about my terrible eating habits which consist of biscuits and a cuppa for dinner.

Booze clouds your emotions and creates drama where there is non needed: When I was drinking I'd often find myself moaning/crying to friends about stuff often or just generally feeling down, emotional or angry about situations. Since giving up alchohol I rarely have a breakdown, I think up until Harley passed away my emotions were pretty much in check, this doesn't mean burying them, it just means that I felt everything and dealt with it in the manner that was appropriate for whatever hand I was being dealt, the drama fades away and is replaced with a pretty rational response to things. Of course we all have our moments but they are few and far between these days, and usually for a pretty valid reason.

I'm currently reading a book about habits, breaking them and making them, it's called ' Better Than Before, Mastering the habits of our everyday lives' It talks in depth about habits, how creating a habit simply removes choice. I just chose to remove the choice, 'not drinking' now has become as routine as brushing my teeth, making a morning cuppa or going to the gym...it's just a habit now.

This year has shown me that, anything is possible, if you want to do something, you can do it, there was a time when the idea of quitting drink and drugs felt like a totally unachievable task. Once you have broken the habitual drinking, lost the crutch of it and realised that all the things you thought you 'needed' booze to do, you can do totally sober, it begins to get easier. I'm thinking that I may stop writing about this and this will be my last blog post (at least for now). Thanks for reading and replying and giving me feedback, all the messages have been massively helpful and touching. Maybe I'll start to write about year two when something really stands out.

For now, it's a been an amazing year, probably the biggest of my life, I've had more happen in this year than any other, I gained a new perspective, time, new friends, a new flat (renting not bought, calm down everyone, renting on your own in London is an achievement though!), a new found confidence, a true inner calm, a healthier bank account,

I've lost some party mates, weight (although probably gained it all back with this sugar addiction!), the ability to stay up past 4am and sadly, the hardest thing of all, I lost my dear Harley. Sometimes I think the universe had some secret plan to prepare me mentally to be able to cope with the things that have happened, who knows.


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