I haven’t been to a Christmas party in seven years. It’s not that I’m wildly unpopular – well, not quite that – more that in my new-found sobriety I realized they were no longer for me.
I remember my last festive appearance clearly, although I’m not sure the same can be said for the other people there. Because while it seemed like a perfectly safe option on paper – a small get-together at a friend’s house in south-west London, packed with other young parents and organized by someone who had been kind enough to call ahead to take my order for non-alcoholic to include drinks — it quickly turned into the kind of party Hunter Biden would have favored during his wilder years.
As I hovered over the bowl of Bombay mix, glass of elderflower syrup in hand, I watched many of my party members take turns using the chicly appointed downstairs toilet, sometimes in pairs.
They either had exceptionally weak bladders – that’s always possible after delivery – or something else was going on. When I finally managed to find the stall vacant, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the light dusting of white powder over the toilet cistern; almost everyone except me did cocaine.
I apologized and left, thanking the host for his hospitality. It wasn’t like I could take a moral high ground, since almost all my Christmases up to that point had been white. By that I mean filled with cocaine.
I was – am – an alcoholic, and the truth is that, like many people who rely heavily on alcohol for their so-called ‘fun time’, my drinking was enabled by this party drug, the use of which has skyrocketed in recent years . Britain is the cocaine capital of Europe and trails only Australia in terms of global use, with an estimated 117 tonnes of the drug snorted annually. Once seen as the domain of rock stars and city traffickers, a line of cocaine is now as cheap as a cup of coffee.
Figures released in October showed that deaths from the substance had increased tenfold in just ten years, with the majority of them being middle-aged Britons – so-called ‘silver snorters’, like the ones I saw at that Christmas party .
I was a recreational user of cocaine in my younger years, and I was shocked when, along with heavy drinking, it started creeping back in after the birth of my daughter in 2013
You may wonder why people risk their health when they use cocaine, and I’m here to tell you that’s because it goes hand in hand with the most legal drug: alcohol.
Unlike opioids and MDMA, which many people take on their own for their unique effects, cocaine has a “high” that feels like it’s sobering you up. It gets you back into the room and allows you to continue drinking without passing out.
It’s the perfect drug for a country that binge drinks, especially at Christmas, when otherwise law-abiding people find themselves overdoing it (and I don’t mean when it comes to mince pies).
Cocaine is pernicious and nasty. I used it from the age of 20 until I was 37, when, as the mother of a then four-year-old, I knew I had to quit my alcohol and drug use if I wanted to keep my family and my life. to live.
I was a recreational user of cocaine in my younger years, and I was shocked when, along with heavy drinking, it started creeping back in after the birth of my daughter in 2013.
So shocked that I buried this truth deep inside, under many layers of denial, and told myself it was okay, just the occasional return to my party girl habits that gave me a break from the pressures of early motherhood.
But by the summer of 2017, my drinking had become almost daily, and so had my pathetic and desperate texting to drug dealers as I sat alone in my garden drinking booze after my daughter went to bed.
I needed cocaine to drink, and I needed to drink to live. And yet, like many young mothers I’ve met in addiction recovery, I managed to mask this and convince everyone that I was “normal,” even successful.
I hid my drug smuggling by going to the grocery store for milk and eggs, and I lied to my husband about my late nights and told him I would come to bed as soon as I finished writing. But eventually the unfairness and fear became too much.
I was suicidal, not only because of the chemical reaction of the combination of cocaine and alcohol, but also because of the way I behaved with it and did shady, unspeakable things that I am still ashamed of to this day.
When I look back at some of the places I’ve ended up, some of the people I’ve ended up with, I can hardly believe I’m the same person. I was lucky not to have lost my husband or my child, and I think about that as I sit safely at home, decorating the tree with my daughter, consuming nothing stronger than a Brussels sprout.
I guess that’s why I wanted to write this column now. Because while it’s easy to forget about those booze- and drug-fueled days most of the year, Christmas is almost impossible to avoid, even if I decline all invitations.
Go into a restaurant or stay out a little too late on a Saturday afternoon to do your festive shopping, and you’ll soon see groups of people incapacitated by drink and drugs in the name of Christmas.
So here’s a Christmas message for anyone currently struggling with alcohol and drugs. I want you to know that no matter how bleak things may seem, there is hope.
Because seven years after my first clean and sober Christmas, I now know that I don’t need fake holiday cheer in the form of cocaine to have fun. I feel the joy of the season, without the hangovers or comedowns – and there’s really no better gift I can give myself than that.
Why on earth would Apple want to be a deb?
The internet exploded after seeing images of Apple Martin, daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, at a debutante ball in Paris. She rolled her eyes at the event, which she attended in a custom-made Valentino dress, prompting accusations that she was a “mean girl.” But who can blame the 20-year-old for looking a little tired? I thought “coming out” as a debt was something we left behind in the 19th century – along with dowries.
Apple Martin, 20, with her mother Gwyneth Paltrow, in the custom Valentino dress she wore to a debutante ball in Paris
Unfortunately, body shaming still exists, Kate
Kate Winslet has spoken out about the body shaming she experienced after being in Titanic, with one commentator claiming she looked ‘a bit melted and cast’ in a dress that should have been ‘two sizes bigger’.
“It was absolutely horrible,” Winslet said this week. “What kind of person do they have to be to do something like that to a young actress who’s just trying to figure it out?”
But the truth is that shaming public bodies was all too common at the time. I remember an older relative telling me that I could lose some weight (I was 17 and a size 10). And unfortunately it still continues: it’s just gone underground and takes place anonymously on social media, instead of face-to-face with people you know.
Kate Winslet has spoken out about the body shaming she experienced after being in Titanic, with one commentator claiming she looked ‘a bit melted and cast’ in a dress that should have been ‘two sizes bigger’
Trust clinic
Good news: Just four minutes of “high-intensity physical exercise” a day can reduce your risk of a serious cardiovascular event by 45 percent, according to new data. And you know what counts as ‘high-intensity exercise’? Carrying heavy shopping bags! Permission, as if you need it, to spend a little more on Christmas.
It’s official: I live in one of the happiest places in Britain. Wandsworth, in South London, is at number 19 on a new national list, which makes me wonder how miserable everyone else must be, given the endless missed waste collections and non-stop road digging…