Found My Rock Bottom

Alcohol left me physically broken most mornings. From hangovers to poor sleep quality, my body was slowly breaking down. I was emotionally drained from squashing my feelings down into a place where nobody could find them - even me. I was mentally exhausted from hiding the problem, getting lost in the planning, and the ex*****on of getting drunk. I was spirituality sick, lacking anything even mildly resembling self care. Alcohol was the self care - it was the reward at the end of the day - the one that was stealing me away, piece by piece by piece. There wasn't a single sphere of my life that it wasn't crushing.

Since removing it, my life has evolved into something unrecognisable. I am connecting with nature. I am connecting with my breath. I am connecting with myself. I speak to myself in a voice that once did not belong to me.

I am healing.

April 2023

This year, I had to do something that ripped into a deep fear I have carried my whole life - I had to confess.

My drinking did not become a problem overnight; it was a slow erosion of 'normal' that lasted years, and I justified it until the excuses I was peddling myself just became outright lies.

I have never had a normal relationship with alcohol, and I used to love 'cheeky' pints when my infant daughter fell asleep in the buggy as we were out walking. I would have an open beer when she woke up on a Friday night, so I'd put her in the buggy again, resentful that I was missing out on 'me time'. I'd end up buying a beer in the shop on my way past as compensation. We lived in a very small village, and I was a teacher at the local primary school, so how I got away with walking the streets with my child whilst slugging beer is unfathomable.

I then started to incorporate the cheeky pint into home life, buying extra beers, but leaving them in the car or by the back door so that when everyone had gone to bed - Boom! A cheeky four-pack! I graduated to bottles of wine that I would buy cheap and leave rolling around in my car until I could drink them on my own. Being a teacher meant a lot of marking that I would stay up late for, giving me so much opportunity to drink in secret. On more than a few occasions, I would polish off half a bottle of spirits when everything else had run dry.

And my wife knew nothing. Every slip that I made - not disposing an empty bottle discreetly enough, cans crunching in the kitchen bin - just made me better at hiding it. Because then I knew where the cracks would appear so I could cover them all more securely.

This year, I told her everything. The lies, the subterfuge, everything. She knew things were not right, but I had built an ocean of shame within myself that I was drowning in - had drowned in, repeatedly, week after week after week.

I will forever love her for innumerable reasons, but I felt unworthy of her forgiveness that day.

Today, I am thankful. I have come so far in such a relatively short amount of time, but I know this is a life-long journey. I have a long way to go, and I intend to enjoy every high, low, and bump in my road along the way.

Today, I am thankful.

I have just finished my first breathwork session with Josh Connolly . To say it was powerful is to do it a disservice. I had a crystal clear image of me sitting beside the sea with my arm around my younger self. He had his head on my shoulder as we watched the waves together. I want to care for that boy who never felt good enough. I want to show him that's it's OK - that even when we feel at our most lost, there is always a way to find home. He didn't want me to leave, so I asked him to wait, and I promised I would find him again.

I'm really looking forward to your course, Josh! I made a promise that I need to keep.

I am enough.

Sobriety is just the start. I have open wounds that need healing.

My sobriety has given me the clarity to explore the reasons behind my drinking. What was the pain that fuelled my addiction cycles? The first and loudest reason is my omnipresent feelings of inadequacy that I have carried for most of my life. I'm not slim enough. I'm not fit enough. I'm not clever enough. I'm not handsome enough. I'm not cool enough (whatever the f**k that means). I have hidden inside myself throughout my whole professional career, waiting for people to see me for the charlatan I constantly tell myself that I am.

The core internalised belief through all this; the message that I've fed myself endlessly, subliminally, like a twisted self- loathing mantra - I am not enough.

I'm done putting myself down. I'm done bullying myself into believing I'm not worth my own time. I'm done speaking to myself in a way I wouldn't accept from any other sphere of life.

Today, I am enough.

I feel like sobriety has peeled back layers of old wounds that have never had the light to heal. I have a lot of work to do on myself. Some of it will be uncomfortable, but I am worth my own love.

I am by no means a finished article but I am a work of f**king art.

2008-2011

This is the first school I worked at as a Teaching Assistant. I was in active addiction at the time and would spend every weekend on a cocktail of amphetamines and alcohol. Within two months of working here, I had been on an attendance support plan due to my punctuality, and I had made an absolute arse of myself at the Christmas Do. It was an on-site BYOB party for the staff, and of course, I couldn't keep it civil. I had to bring a pocket full of speed and crank it up to 11 by getting s**tfaced and having an... encounter with a married member of staff in the staff room. I then tried to take the open bottles home with me and smashed one on the school steps as I was leaving. I was well-known throughout the school for my shambolic lifestyle. I cruised along doing the bare minimum, so I have no idea how I survived.

I felt myself being spoken about in hushed whispers. I was a joke, and I played the clown with consumate professionalism. If they wanted a car crash, I'd give them a flaming 18-car pile up. If they wanted a train wreck, I'd give them a full-speed, nose-to-nose, head-on collision - twisted metal, burnt steel, fire and death. I was on a race with myself to the bottom, and I didn't even know.

Today, I went back to this school.

I had a supply teaching post, and I went back. So much had changed, but so much was the same. Mostly new faces, but the old ones looked at me like they knew me. I felt them whispering about me, and I was taken back to that race. I wanted to run around the school screaming that I wasn't that mess anymore, that I was done running from myself, but I knew I'd be arrested or, at the very least, es**rted off.

I'm left with this profound sadness about that part of my life, a deep shame that these people knew that version of me, but not this one. They don't know the pain, fear, anxiety, and grief that has brought me here.

I know I will not drink this away but rather sit in these feelings a while. Today has been a rock bottom. But it only confirms that what I'm doing is right.

Ten years ago, I'd have bought this simply because the thought of cooking with booze would seem cool and sophisticated. Now, it sounds absolutely revolting. Is it necessary? Am I a philistine in this? Is vodka a common cooking ingredient for pasta sauce? 🤢

I passed a significant milestone recently - 90 days without a drink - but it's totally fallen under my radar, as I've been dealing with this absolute nightmare of a situation. My two-year-old son was hospitalised this week for breathing difficulties. We had the full works - GP visit, 111, two trips to A&E, and a blue light es**rt to hospital.

This would have been the perfect reason to numb out the crippling anxiety I've had this week. Curled up next to him on the children's ward, listening to his ragged frail wheezing, I've confronted - with eyes wide open - a world in which his joyful, mellifluous laugh no longer rings. To confront the mortality of oneself is one thing, but to contemplate the mortality of one's children is an experience I would not wish on anybody. I am deeply thankful to whatever universal forces have kept this from my reality. He's home, and he's mending. ❤️

I passed 100 followers recently. When I started this, I expected to be shouting into the void for a long time. Thank you for your support and for reaching out. I don't feel like I'm screaming in my own little echo chamber. I feel seen and I feel heard. I love the sober community!

25th August 2021

Here we go...

This is me in Bath Hospital, having broken my leg in two places in the most absurd way possible.

We were on holiday near Shepton Mallet, camping with our two Smalls. Big Small had made a friend at nursery, and the two had become swiftly inseparable, so naturally, we met the parents. She got a best friend and I got a Dad Friend. Dad Friend was a big drinker and an ex-wreckhead like me. We'd compare war stories and beat our chests at how f**ked up we used to get, all while taking it too far with the booze. Our two families had come away together for the week, but that's what it was - a family holiday. Our last night there, I remember approaching it like it was a race - dive straight in and see how far down to the bottom you can swim before you drown.

Of course, I was the last one left awake, too. I've never known when the party's at and end and that night was no exception. I spilt the beer that was to be my nightcap in the tent so I thought I'd grab another and have a p**s while I was at it. As I left the tent, I lost my balance. I felt myself toppling and thought, I'm just gonna have to take this on the chin, and allowed myself to fall onto my arse.

That's it. That's all I did. Fell on my arse on soft, hay-covered ground. The tension my bone was under, coupled with the impact, exploded my tibia and rebounded up my fibula. The latter cracked near my knee, and the former shattered into gravel inside my calf. I cannot use words to describe what it felt like; my memory of it is made of noises and pain.

I dragged myself into bed, where I refused to be made a fuss of and passed out. Next morning, Dad Mate bundled me into his car and drove me to the closest A&E to strap it up and get me home. When I eventually got into theatre, the surgeon said it was the worst fracture they had ever seen. There was not enough solid bone to insert a rod so he had to fit a plate, which meant six weeks of inactivity, four months of shuffling round the house like a dog with worms and likely permanent damage to my ability to walk.

People asked me how I broke my leg, and the honest answer is I don't know.

I have no f**king idea.

October 30th, 2012

This is a photo of me in the hospital, having broken both arms after a night out. I was going through a horrendous break up and had just moved back in with my parents the day before. In true clichéd fashion, I called up a couple of The Boys to take me out and get me drunk. We ended up back at Old Mate's house, where I found myself smoking a cigarette on the roof with my old flatmate from years before. Flatmate was eying up the distance between Old Mate's and the neighbour's roof.
"I reckon I could jump that," he said. Flatmate was always doing stupid s**t when he was p**sed. We created Drunk Acrobatics, where we would leap into sitting on each other's shoulders. That night, some small voice inside me warned me not to let him have this win. This one was mine. While he was putting his beer down, I ran as fast as I could towards the edge of the roof and leapt off over to the other side. The Boys later went back to Old Mate's and tried to jump the distance between roofs at ground level. Even with a run-up greater than the roof would allow, there was no way I was ever going to make that jump. I slammed bodily into the corner of the roof, breaking a rib and kicked the neighbour's window in, smashing it. I landed on my right wrist and then elbowed the concrete with my left. The Boys helped me up the stairs into a bed where I must've passed out from the shock of it.
The following morning, I woke up in agony. I knew a hospital trip was inevitable, and it was going to take all day, so I made sure we stopped off for breakfast first - a full English and two pints. Turned out, I'd fractured one wrist and the other elbow. I had to have x-rays on my spine, six weeks off work when I'd only been there two months, and there was a police officer at the neighbour's house as we left investigating a potential break-in.
I wore this night as a badge of pride for the longest time - just put it down to shenanigans. How I didn't break my back or lacerate myself on the way down, I will never know. Looking back, this should have been a massive wake-up. Sadly, I just carried on as ferociously as ever.

And this wasn't even the worst injury I gave myself.

Welp, today has been eventful, to say the least. I had my very first car crash.

Thankfully, nobody was injured, I was travelling less than 5 mph by the time I collided with this vehicle. There was zero visible damage caused, but the lady was visibly shaken. I felt awful, but the roads being what they are, I also feel immensely grateful that it wasn't worse. I'd usually use this as an excuse to get absolutely hammered tonight - then I didn't used to need an excuse, really. The fact that it's Friday was enough. I am looking forward to a cup of peppermint tea and an electric blanket, though.

Stay safe out there!

I had a dream this week. I can't remember the last time I had a dream. I can't remember the details clearly - such is the nature of dreams, I suppose - but I remember meeting a lovely couple who were asking about my sobriety. I woke up with the phrase 'rock bottom' in my head and I started to reflect on what that meant to me. What was my rock bottom? The more I thought about it, the more I realised it's more like rock bottoms. There have been so many over the last 20 years that it's hard to know which one was rock-bottomer than all the rest. Or did my dream-friends mean the last drink I had? What was that one final day that led to the decision to quit booze?

So I decided to explore this. I've no idea how to structure this as there's so much swimming around my head that it's difficult to know where or how to start. I'm just going to pick one rock bottom at a time and explore it because I must start somewhere. So, here we go. Day 1. My name is Cid. I've a long and complex history with drink and drug abuse. I stopped taking drugs 12 years ago. I am currently 65 days without a drink. Nice to meet you. 👍🏻