bottling out - by Vicky Edwards

The effects of binge drinking and alcoholism feature heavily in today’s media. Less frequently reported, however, are accounts of recovering alcoholics who live positive, useful and sober lives. People like Emma…

At 42 Emma is happily married with a gorgeous baby daughter and a job that she loves. With an infectious love of life, only a somewhat black sense of humour hints that her life might not always have been so sunny.

‘Absolutely,’ agrees Emma. ‘There was a time in my 20s when it unlikely that I’d live to celebrate my 30th birthday. My liver was shot to bits and I was as low as I could go, emotionally as well as physically.’

But while Emma doesn’t want to gloss over the grim details of her drinking, she does want people to know how far she has come since then, thanks to love and support of those closest to her and the help of a fellowship that, she says with a grin, ‘can be found right at the front of the telephone directory’.

‘I still wake up in the morning and marvel at how incredible my journey has been,’ she says. ‘Even my worst day sober is better than my best day drunk, because now I can function without alcohol; my crutch, my saviour and my darkest enemy. For me sobriety is maintained a day at a time and through meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous [AA]. In AA we share our experience, strength and hope with one another and it is only here that I feel fully understood. Today live is joyous, where as before it was a paranoid and miserable existence, full of fear and self-hatred. Being understood by people who really knew what motivated my drinking was key to my stopping. It’s the staying stopped that’s the harder part. All my life I dealt with problems by drowning them in booze. Now I have to live life on life’s terms, without the prop of alcohol, and there are still times when it’s bloody hard.’

One thing Emma didn’t expect to hear in AA meetings was laughter. ‘If you had told me a few years ago that I would be laughing until tears ran down my cheeks and trashed my make up into oblivion, in a room full of ex drunks, I would have called you a nutter,’ she cheerfully admits. ‘But we do laugh a lot in AA. We laugh out of sheer relief that we are no longer slaves to the bottle and because sometimes the madness of our drinking entailed stuff that was so awful that if you didn’t laugh you’d shoot yourself. Mostly, though, I laugh because I’m alive. Towards the end of my drinking I suffered constant backache, which was actually my kidneys battling against the booze, and then there was the incontinence that happened when I was so out of it that I failed to get to the loo. Classy or what? I was a professional woman and yet I reeked of booze, had the shakes so badly that I couldn’t drink a cup of tea without spilling it and was so ashamed of what I’d become that the only thing I could do was get pissed.’

Sober for 9 years and now counselling other alcoholics, Emma says that wallowing in regret is something she tries to avoid. ‘I don’t mean that I should make light of or deny my past, but I think it’s more productive to work on being positive and to look forwards. I try not to get too bogged down in what other people think of me. What other people think of me is none of my business,’ she says, firmly. ‘Ultimately drinking was about trying to make myself feel better by filling up what felt like a massive hole in my soul. Now I have the chance to live, love and laugh and I intend to make the most of every sober second.’

There are 3,600 weekly meetings in the UK and 500 English-speaking meetings across Continental Europe.

Alcoholics Anonymous 0845 769 7555 (See local telephone directory for regional numbers) www.alcoholicsanonymous.co.uk
 
Al Anon - support meetings for families and friends 020 7403 0888