'Going to work drunk every day' - BBC Stories

i would wake up in the morning swig some vodka just to get myself up go downstairs make breakfast and just let me have another sip god having a bit of a stressful day you know just pick up some drink on the way home getting ready to go out the house definitely need more i would sit there and i would be clockwatching is anyone going to notice that i'm missing from my desk again it would just get louder and louder and louder and louder and the only thing that could shut this voice up was to just d

rink a functioning alcoholic that's what i was when people say the word alcoholic they instantly have a vision of an old man sitting over a park with a paper bag with a can in it i don't think of a top pa working for a ceo in the city a young teenage girl with her whole life ahead of her a mum of two amazing children who they wasn't enough for me to be able to stop in the uk we have a drinking culture here so it's normalized across the board so it's very difficult to spot who has a problem and w

ho doesn't [Music] a lot of my friends at the time could have several drinks and stop and go to bed and go to sleep i never wanted the party to end i used to go out all the time to all the pubs and bars down here half price drinks i felt so good when i drank and i'd have this intense craving for more the next one the next one and when i was coming to the point where i would be running out i would start to panic and think right where am i going to get more [Music] the very first job i ever had wa

s in media the whole drinking culture was not just accepted but expected i always managed to get very very good jobs sometimes part of being an alcoholic is most alcoholics are actually naturally very charming people to start off you know i see this this party girl that had lots of friends and was very sociable and seemed to be making it in the world that facade kind of quickly faded i did drink socially a lot because you know i have a lot of friends that drink it would take all my anxiety away

i'd be able to talk to people more when everybody had gone home and was suffering with a hangover i was going back to the shop and buying two bottles of wine and sitting indoors on my own i would get into work and i knew that at 10 o'clock there was a shop around the corner that opened that sold alcohol so quite often i would put a meeting in my diary that would give me a reason to be out of the office for half an hour i would come back and there was a disabled toilet and i kind of had my supply

kit there was like a little hiding place and i would go and put my bottle of vodka in there there was a toothbrush and toothpaste and mouthwash and perfume i would have chosen alcohol over someone i love you know alcohol and drugs were more important to me than my marriage i used to look at both my kids and think you've got to do it for them now i just couldn't control it sorry get upset alcoholism destroys families and relationships it's the process of having to hide your problem away from you

r loved ones from your families well that is such a painful place to be essentially you feel that you can't go on living by that point i had pretty much lost everything i had to move out of a beautiful flat that i was living in i'd lost my job an extremely low point was one new year's i was away with some friends and i didn't have a good time i was walking along the cliff tops and i just genuinely did not want to be alive anymore i just wanted to take myself out so i didn't have to go through th

at shame of telling people what the problem really was and i just looked out to the sea and i really just thought this is my life i'm miserable i'm losing people around me and i took a lot of tablets my friend came down to my room and found me unconscious in my bed and the only thing that i do remember is hearing my mum's scream and that was several months before i got sober [Music] i had no idea that this year that i thought was the worst year was going to be the best year [Music] as scared as

i was to break out of that relationship it was becoming a matter of life or death i just remember sort of waking up and i'd kind of been on this like weekend bender it was like a a spark had been lit inside of me and i realized that i wanted to live i wanted to live a life free of these chains that i've been shackled in there is help available call a helpline speak to somebody people aren't alone you're not the only person it's about for the first time actually coming out of isolation and being

in a community where you can express what's truly going on for yourself and addressing those problems i often refer to it as my ex-husband and he was the most gorgeous thing in the world this person still loves me and wants me even after all these years it is like it talks to you it sounds crazy but it is it's like you know if the day ends and why it's a reason to drink i took my daughter into a supermarket before she's had a tantrum and someone would turn around and say oh but you can't wait fo

r that glass of wine when you get in it's coca-cola the alcoholic has just gone through treatment and going back into society it's a massive problem being surrounded by alcohol because it's so normalized and legal society is flooded on my instagram you know things come up you know adverts for vodka and they make it look really glamorous and all these funky colored gins and beautifully decorated boxes of champagne and it plays into the whole romanticizing that people do around drinking [Music] wo

men especially find it very difficult to admit that they've got a problem with alcohol mums even more so because no mum wants to say i have a problem with alcohol and some people do and it's okay as a cow each day now i can get up in the morning and i can concentrate on my family my children i live for them there's still parts of me that are vulnerable but i'm completely different i'm sort of like a phoenix that's risen from the ashes sometimes the best days are the days where it's been absolute

ly shocking and awful and the worst day ever and i haven't picked up a drink there's not a day that i don't think about alcohol it's in my mind every day but it is no longer at the forefront and i will continue to do each day at a time the strongest that i can