Why mummy gave up drinking

Day 122. Sobriety is starting to become my ‘new normal.’ I hate that expression, but it’s the perfect way to describe how I feel. I’ve gone from ‘fish out of water’, to living a life that is beginning to look familiar to me. Being sober, is finally, not some wildly coveted accolade – it’s my reality.

One of the main reasons I couldn’t fathom how life could even be possible without alcohol, was the terrifying prospect of raising my children without alcohol; to numb the stress of what is already, a ruthlessly difficult job, even on the best of days. I’ve been drinking since I was 14. I never learned how to be a sober mum until now.

Society has long recognised that raising children is a tough, exhausting, and relentless task – we deserve, at the very least, to be able to take the edge off with a little substance. In the 1960’s and 70’s, Valium was dished out by GPs to stressed out housewives, affectionately known as ‘mother’s little helper’. Now, more than ever, we openly acknowledge that parenthood is one of the hardest jobs there is, and we actively encourage the use of chemical help as the antidote to cope with even the most the evil of activities – aka – the school run. Valium is now far less socially acceptable but conversely, alcohol, a far more harmful and damaging drug, is positively promoted on a global scale.

For parents everywhere, at 3.30pm, closing the front door behind the kids activates the mental countdown to wine o’clock; the socially acceptable time to open the Pinot. For me this was around 5pm when I was cooking dinner (because 5pm is wholly acceptable and absolutely past the hour which could be considered irresponsible ‘day drinking’). From the moment I got home, to the moment I heard the beautiful glug, glug, glug sound whilst pouring my first glass of wine, every minute felt like slow, anxiety riddled torture. I hankered for my first drink like it was a long-lost love.

Raising children is hard, and for stay-at-home mothers in particular, it is nothing short of a relentless full-time occupation. If I was a stay-at-home mum, I’m not entirely sure I’d be alive, let alone sober. Nonetheless, working and having a family is also seriously challenging. I feel guilty when I’m not at home with my children and when I’m at work I feel like I’m not doing my best because I’m mentally absent – planning the grocery shop, taking a mental note to pay the bills and to not forget to buy a gift for my son’s friend’s birthday party on Saturday. When I was drinking, I was stressed, anxious and as much I’m embarrassed to admit it, just getting through the time with my children as quickly and painlessly as possible so I could get them to bed and knock back my wine in peace.

Undoubtedly, there are many wonderful changes that have occurred in recent years, which support mothers and recognises the need for a work/life balance, so more women are able to manage a professional life alongside caring for children. Flexible working, breast-feeding rooms at the office, and positive action campaigns to recruit women into senior roles are all examples of an increasingly supportive and inclusive society that is in favour of working mothers.

What isn’t often spoken about though, is the sheer difficulty around ‘having it all’ (modern values and inclusion aside). We are living in a world where we’re being taught that we can do anything and become anyone we choose to. I don’t deny that this is wonderful time to be alive, but playing devil’s advocate, if everything is accessible, and we really can have it all, then why on a global scale, is our mental health in such rapid decline?

What I mean, is that having everything – working, becoming successful and raising a family, is a huge responsibility which takes a monumental amount of time, effort, and energy. We’re being raised in an era of ‘everything is possible’ – but how much work and stress does it take to actually achieve this – a lot! Think about it. As a species we’re designed to eat, sleep and procreate. I’m pretty sure the human brain wasn’t intended to process Facebook or Yahoo, let alone live a life which is almost entirely circumnavigated by technology.

Our world is developing and changing at a rate of knots. Look at how technology has transformed within the last twenty years. I spent my childhood during a time when getting online involved dial-up and a lot of waiting around, reading at the library, shopping in actual stores and my most technological achievement was keeping my friend’s Tamagotchi alive whilst I was in school lessons.

Now, I wake up to a barrage of e-mails (work and personal), messages (work and personal), endless social media notifications and news feeds. My brain deals with more information before 8am on a single day, than it used to deal with in an entire week. No wonder we’re all bloody stressed. Put simply, our planet has evolved far quicker than our minds; we are not designed to exist in the world we currently live in; and technology will inevitably continue to advance far quicker that we can actually cope with.

So how do we cope with this world, that is so much more advanced than we’re created to deal with, and also manage a full-time job plus raising children – we drink. We block out the constant information and noise with a chemical hit that instantly removes the tension and stress – and who can blame us?! It’s borderline essential to modern survival! We’re not constructed to live in the modern world, so we need an antidote to the symptoms it causes – and alcohol is a quick, almost instantaneous fix. And how easy a resolution it is – accessible, acceptable and readily available.

We’re all animals at the end of the day – but look at the animal world specifically, and how they still live as intended. I’d love to be a cat. Eat, stretch, go for a walk, climb a tree, chase a mouse, sleep and repeat. Fucking hell, that sounds good. Right now, I’d welcome a broken limb just so I could rest in hospital and have my food brought to me – incapable of looking after children and nothing to do except scroll through my phone and furiously masturbate (which I never normally have time for). Either that or commit a low-level crime – just so I can chill out in prison for a couple of months and get some well needed rest and sleep.

So here I am, like many of you, working full-time and trying to raise a family as a single mum. Wine for me, was an essential crutch to shake-off the workday and improve the weekend; navigating soft play whilst a just little bit pissed (yep – they serve wine there too). In fact, using wine as a stress antidote is not only tolerated, it’s normalised, and more than that, positively encouraged. Wine has become the socially acceptable cornerstone of parenting. Alcohol is necessary. We deserve it. Motherhood is now affiliated with drinking. And being a drunk mum has become cool.

Shit.

Think about that last statement. Everywhere you look, mothers are supported to drink alcohol to cope with raising children. How is this ok? Our entire society has been brainwashed into believing that being intoxicated is a necessary component to parenting – and more concerning – we think it’s actually funny. Personally, I think it’s easier to accept the notion that mums’ have gone wild (Bad Mom’s the movie is a good example) in an amusing way to cope with life. It’s far more palatable than acknowledging that we’re so stressed out, burnt out and mentally struggling that we’re all simply addicted to a very dangerous, addictive drug and failing our children. If we’re all doing it, it can’t really be a problem right?

Think of it this way – would you have any sympathy for a heroin addict mother whose child died in the night, because the mother was in a comatose state and didn’t hear their child fall down the stairs? How many times have I put my children to bed and then drank more than a bottle of wine? Most nights since they were born if I’m honest. Would I have heard either of them fall down the stairs? I sincerely doubt it. We have a world-wide social acceptance for drinking once children are asleep – because they don’t actually see anything. Does that mean they’re any less at risk? Of course not.

Now I’m sober I sleep easy. I will also be ready to drive my children to A & E if there is ever a wait for an ambulance. This is probably the thing I’m most happy and proud of. I’m here for my children – even when they can’t see it.

As a single mother of two young boys with a massive mortgage as a result of my recent divorce, I need to work full-time.  ‘Having it all’ isn’t a choice – it’s necessary. But what I’ve realised since getting sober, is what I needed was not to block out the difficulties of life with wine – but learn to be an adult; to process stress and difficult feelings instead of opting to numb them out with alcohol – just to avoid dealing with horrible emotions.

So, what is the secret to quitting alcohol and handling parenting like a pro? There is none. Drinking alcohol is what has made it so much bloody harder. Alcohol is the cause. Quitting is what will make it easier! That’s it. Being sober is, by comparison, a damn sight fucking easier. Believe me. Just think about the lengths you go to, to sustain a life involving drinking, and I promise, quitting is going to feel like giving up a low paid, shit job for a life of ease and luxury by comparison.

If you are a daily drinker, you have developed an amazing skill already – you are just applying it to the wrong things. From the moment you wake up, you’re currently on the back-burner. Hungover, tired from a restless night of poor sleep and night anxiety, you’re dehydrated, grumpy, feel like shit, your head is banging, and you’ve been woken by the sound of screaming children. No wonder you start the day wishing it was 5pm! From the moment you wake up, you have to battle through your busy day, and all whilst trying not to vomit. Cudos!

Getting the kids ready for school is probably my least favourite job on the planet. Correction. It was. I’d snooze my alarm clock until the last available second, drag myself downstairs and basically throw breakfast together and repeat myself over and over, telling the kids to get ready until I found myself screaming at them and running out of the door in my gym kit, so I could at least create the illusion of an amazing mother who drops her kids of at school and then goes for a workout – as oppose to hungover as fuck with no time to shower.

I’d leave the school gates feeling like I’d already done a day’s work before I would rush home to log on my laptop, and then try to sort the bomb tip of a house out in-between meetings. Office days were even worse, as I’d get home to a total shit pit and then try and fix the house whilst I was starting to get drunk.

If you start your mornings like I did, then like I said, you already have an amazing skill – resilience. If you can get your body into a state where your kidneys are screaming, your head is falling apart and still get your kids to school on time, then just imagine how much more you could achieve sober. High-functioning alcoholic is often a term used to describe incredible productivity in spite of an alcohol abuse problem. Just imagine how high-functioning you could be when permanently sober. You’ll practically have a super-power!

I woke at 6am this morning. Turns out, I’m more of a morning person than I realised! I woke to my alarm, got up and made pancakes – before my kids were even out of bed. I made sure their school stuff was organised last night so after breakfast I could help them get dressed instead of screaming at them to do it whilst I got on with other things. I talked to them about what their day would look like, and what we could do when they got home from school. We left the house with no shouting and no drama. When I drop my kids at their classrooms, every day I tell them I love them, I will miss them and I can’t wait to see them later – because now, I actually mean it.

Of course, my kids still have moments where I want to bury them. I said quitting alcohol makes parenting easier – it’s not fucking magic. But now I genuinely want to spend time with them – I used to embark on a daily mission to block the world out just enough to take the edge off, to get the kids to bed before really hitting the booze hard once they were asleep and then I could scroll through my phone whilst simultaneously watching Netflix.

I avoided my children to avoid stress but in truth, I’ve come to realise that it’s the avoidance that causes most of the strain in the first place. My children (all children for that matter) only want two things. Love and attention. Once they have both of these things they are fulfilled and happy. Once my kids are happy, I’m happy. Now I’m sober, I’ve become a mum who is present. I’m so much better for it – and so are they.

Initially, I had to find various ways to combat counting down the minutes until my trigger time of 5pm. My go-to-method that works better than anything else I’ve tried is so simple and easy. It will be just as easy for you….

Play for 10 minutes.

Get off your phone and play games with your children. If you play with your children, even for 10 minutes each day after the school run, your stress will reduce, you’ll feel far less inclined to drink and your children will appreciate this more than anything else in the world. Because all they care about, is you, your love and your time. Invariably, you’ll lose track of time and 10 minutes will become however much time you can spare – but it’s the daily decision and effort to stop what you’re doing and actually play that your kids will notice…and remember.

Play, get involved and talk to your kids more. Kids are desperate for our attention – even if it’s negative. If we give them attention in the first place, they tend to be a lot less demanding. Think about how much time you really engage and play with your kids? When you want to open a glass of wine, try a jigsaw, boardgame, go to the park or do some crafting or baking with your kidlets. It’s a tonic! Getting off screens and social media helps combat the influx of the stress hormone (Cortisol) to the brain – remember – we’re not designed to live like this. Put the phone down and live as the universe intended. You’ll thank yourself for it.

I’ve recently realised something very important. Jokes about mummy needing wine to deal with kids, are not funny. It’s sad and actually quite scary how manipulated we’ve become, into believing that poison has a place in raising a family. Society endorses drunken motherhood in particular, by labelling it as hilarious – just look at the gift card section in the supermarket and how many of them relate to mummy needing wine. It’s pretty grim. We need a change. We need to support our mothers to be able to work and raise a family, in a healthy and sustainable way. Mums are warriors. If you’ve ever been a hungover mum then trust me, you can do sober parenting with your eyes shut!!

I am happily sober and proud that my children are young enough that they won’t remember me ever having a glass of wine in my hand, because I am far too busy having fun with them for that. Do you question if you can get to this stage too? Of course you can – you’re a warrior remember?

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