Beautiful Hangover

I'm still learning to process pain without alcohol.

When I first quit drinking, I had no intention of stopping for good. I wanted to have a break, to sort a few things out in my life.

Believing you don’t have a drinking problem is one of the defining features of having a drinking problem.

My experience of living with a drinking problem was that it was a bit like having two personalities.

My subconscious did a fantastic job of keeping information about alcohol away from my consciousness.

Three things absolutely not to say and what you can try instead.

Until I changed my thinking around alcohol I couldn't break my dependence on it. 1. I’ll stop tomorrow/after that birthday party/next...

Melancholia, my old friend, threatens to swallow me, and I wonder if I should be on anti-depressants (again).

When I first started learning about addiction I couldn’t see how I was powerless over alcohol.

Why do I write about my most shameful experiences? If nobody noticed I had a booze problem why am I online going on about it?

In a time obsessed with image crafting, public vulnerability feels dangerous and damaging. Honestly, the opposite is true.

It’s a May wedding and I am so freshly sober that I don’t even know I’m getting sober.

And if so, how do you live in reality without alcohol? When I was six I found a pink and featherless baby bird that had fallen from its...

eighteen months sober, I arrived in the wilderness. September 2017 I travelled to Svalbard for a writing residency. For three weeks, we...

There is almost no evidence of how my drinking was destructive outside of my own psyche. This is not the same as saying there is no evidence

Seeing my words in print, beautifully illustrated and then receiving compliments for them Now this was a way I could interact with the world

Hangovers aren’t the only thing you lose when you quit drinking. Here’s how I learned to focus on what I could gain instead. It’s easy...

How do you know whether you love alcohol or have become dependent? It seems strange to me now, given the grief it caused me, how much I...

This time three years ago, I woke, dehydrated, with a sickening feeling of doom. It wasn’t the first time, or even the first thousandth...

If you've ever worried about your drinking, I invite you to try my foolproof and unassailable test. Number of times googled Am I...