Fronting up...

I keep waking up at 5am with my brain whirring… brain-noise-a-rama! It's about to kick off for me here with local media starting to prepare stories on me to come out when the book is released on July 2.

This week I have a magazine reporter interviewing me and their photographer coming to take a photo of me (and they're bringing a makeup artist YIPPEE!!!) and then next week I'm being filmed by a TV crew for a local current affairs show. Yes. Me the middle class alcoholic.

Just goes to show how few people front up and admit to having a drinking problem. But I do have a drinking problem. I am a respectable, middle class alcoholic.

I think that's the point.. and the reason media is interested in my story. I don't present as the typical alcoholic. I'm the nice, respectable housewife .. seemingly well put-together, high-functioning woman who seems to have it all going on.

Except I wasn't that. I was a habitual, heavy, steady, dysfunctional wine drinker. I filled myself up with far too much wine most nights. I was hooked, I was miserable, I was guilty most of the time.. and it was getting worse. I think that's why I stopped when I did.. I could see that it was progressing rapidly. One bottle of wine wasn't enough to fill me up any more.. I was needing those extra couple of glasses from the second bottle. And that was just on a Tuesday night.

I was talking to some mums on the sidelines of our kids sports games yesterday.. and saying to them.."If I were still boozing today you wouldn't notice much difference. I'd still look mostly the same.. and be acting mostly the same.. but I'd have a sick guts right now and a bit of a headache. And privately in my mind I'd be beating myself up.. feeling like I was a worthless piece of shit for having let myself down yet again last night by drinking more than I'd intended."

I hated that 'I'm a worthless piece of shit' thought. We're not worthless pieces of shit! Alcohol is addictive and it's bloody hard to resist it if it's got you hooked! Take the alcohol away and the 'I'm a worthless piece of shit' thoughts will go! (Eventually. It'll take some work but you'll get there).

I still think there are people around me who are surprised that I label myself an alcoholic .. and that I don't touch the stuff ever and never will again. And I can't blame them for that because at the moment in our society we look for the obvious, dramatic, outward displays of alcoholism. Jobs lost, cars crashed, lives falling apart.

Well.. as many of us know out here in the sober sphere that often isn't the case. Many of us look fine but aren't fine. I'm not ashamed to admit that was the case for me. So front up before the cameras I will (that's Yoda speak right there).

Thank god for the makeup artist though..! And I'm getting my hair colored and my eyebrows shaped before hand as well. How's that for a bit of personal grooming! Now… about that sugar binging….

Love, Mrs D xxx