As the second month goes by...but not in a blur!

Am not at work tomorrow so today I will be mostly celebrating…2 months dry. Yay!!!! So, to all those who did doubt that my resolve would last (and there were some naysayers both overt and secret – you know who you are!) I can truly, honestly, 100% confirm that I have not touched even a drop of alcohol since 26 April. Now, if I am truthful, it feels like it’s been longer. I suppose that may have a lot to do with the fact that I started once on 16 April and only had a brief relapse around the 26th. Another bit of me, though, can’t really recall what a drinking life was like. It’s almost as if it’s either someone else’s reality or part of my dim and distant past. I have definitely cast aside all the ritualistic elements (Friday eve, Sunday lunch etc no longer equate to booze) and have also stopped thinking automatically about an occasion as to whether or not alcohol will be involved. I am not foolish enough, however, to imagine that I am home and dry (pardon the pun): whilst the initial battle is over I have far from won the war. I still have so many areas to work on regarding the issues that drove me to drink too much in the first place. I haven’t reached this milestone and considered doing anything less than a year of abstinence still. The marker was laid in April and it aint about to be moved! But I am proud to have got this far without falling off the wagon and believe that I am heading into month 3 a stronger, happier and more determined person than ever.

I watched a very interesting documentary last night, concerning the effects of extreme dieting (2 journos trying to drop from a size 12 to a 00). The psychological changes were the startling bit and it made me realise how much abusing substances (be they drugs, alcohol, tobacco or junk food) all fall into the same arena. The mind starts to play tricks on you the minute you go from too much to too little of anything – the key is hitting the ever elusive middle ground and being as normal as it is humanly possible to be around anything that brings pleasure.

What did amaze me, though, was how frank people are about having an eating disorder. Unlike alcoholics or drug addicts who will go to great pains to deny that they are in trouble, eating disorders are almost like a war wound – as in ‘I was bullied at school and comfort ate to make myself feel better’. Or ‘my mother put me on a diet at 10 and I’ve been vomiting on and off ever since to purge myself of the binges I was forced to go on’. Were I to say ‘I sank 2 double G&Ts then a bottle of wine home alone last night and awoke on the sofa with dribble on my chin and a hole in my sofa from an un-extinguished cigarette’ my friends would be signing me into the Priory forthwith or at least expressing deep concern for my state of mind. A girl who sits twiddling her fork in a side salad rather than ordering a main meal (and rushes to the ladies at the first opportunity) gets sympathy for her inability to eat like everyone else. The one falling off a bar stool at 11.30 on a Tuesday eve in Soho with her eyes rolling unattractively in her head is sneered at and scorned. At the end of the day, an unhealthy relationship with anything needs rectified, but the approach to it will vary enormously. Some people are intelligent and strong enough to handle someone needing to go into rehab. Others are only too quick to castigate them as weak-willed and self-pitying, whilst stuffing their face with a muffin which the laxatives they take later will surely expunge.

So what’s bothering me about this? Why should I care? Why does the uneven-handed treatment make me angry? After all, they are both sick in their own way, the problem drinker and the problem eater. I think what makes me most annoyed is that my family were so quick to judge someone who has fessed up to and is currently conquering a drink problem. Had my brother’s ex-wife been revealed as bulimic, my mother would have admired her skinny figure! If K didn’t have his alcohol issues, my mother would adore him as his thyroid condition results in him being exceptionally lean – ooh the irony. In other words, as long as it goes on behind closed doors, and doesn’t impact on their heavy-drinking lifestyle, he can have whatever issues he likes. That’s what’s got my goat!!!! Until Monday…