Is today the day? I think so. On a morning like this, a morning when you wake up nauseous and contrite – sorry because I let myself down again, and inflicted way too many glasses of champagne and wine, pure toxicity into my system. Nauseous because that is what poison does to the system – an unequivocal signaling of unwanted toxins desperately attempting to abandon ship. The party is followed by a night of dehydration, insomnia and hideously painful cramps, caused by a body deprived of essential fluid.

After almost 60 days of sobriety, not for the first time, the contrast is devastating. Up to then and during my almost 60 days of not drinking, I had been feeling well, sleeping well (despite having to to go off HRT after almost 16 years), all good. 

This time at least I did not embarrass myself by becoming too loud, obnoxious or aggressive, just me myself looking at this person ‘having fun like everybody else’. Look world, instagrammers, friends, I too am having a ‘gorgeous’ glass of bubbly like everybody else? Don’t I look the part? What is this desperate insane need to belong to a tribe I should have no business wanting to belong to? Is is a lifetime of being the outsider, different, and so wanting to blend?

All this tells me I have to rewrite my aspirations, become my own advocate for health and strength, by my rules.

I salute and still mourn my devastatingly beautiful and clever mother, who succumbed to the alcohol/barbiturate gods. I salute and still mourn my handsome and talented violinist father, who lost it all in the bars of Spain and Portugal. Mr Jekyll and Hyde – because of you, in spite of you.

So alcohol, I never liked you much, but there was always this pressure to hang out with you – not any more. You go your way and I go my way. 

The End