Adulting - BONUS! Why We Should All Be Curious About Sobriety with Kuchenga & Catherin

Episode Date: January 12, 2020

A BONUS EPISODE FOR YOU! This was recorded just before Christmas at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho. I spoke to Kuchenga and Catherine Gray about their road to sobriety, why alcohol is so pervasive and how to live a fulfilled life without drugs and alcohol! I hope you enjoy, Oenone x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello, poddlters. I hope your January is going well so far. Very excited to have this bonus episode of Adelting, which was recorded live on the 15th of December at the Boulevard Theatre in Soho. The two guests I have on are Catherine Gray and Kuchenga, two incredible women who are now sober and they go through their journeys to sobriety on this episode.

I really hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think. As always, this will be the last episode going up in season five. I'm now pre-recording all of season six. And hopefully we'll be back with you towards the beginning of February. So please do go back and listen to any episodes that you might have missed. Please do rate, review, subscribe and share the podcast so that more people can find it when I come back for the next season. Love you so much and thank you so much for listening. Bye!

Hello, how are you? Hi, guys. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming along to the second ever Adulting Live. I might get you to do a big round of applause just to the second ever adulting live i might get you to do a big round of applause just when you got the energy in the room thank you so thanks so much for coming i know it's very close to christmas but i'm really excited to have this chat with these two fabulous women um the first thing i need to say is i'm gonna have to look at my phone sporadically throughout because last time the podcast went on for two hours so actually an hour and 15 minutes so just to make sure that I

don't run over too much I might look at my phone I'm not checking my text messages I promise. Okay so today's podcast episode is all about sobriety, sober curiosity and kind of looking at the way that we can change our attitudes towards alcohol and drugs. And today I've got two women with me who both have had their own path to sobriety. I'm going to get them to introduce themselves, just who they are, what they do day to day, and then we're going to get stuck into the conversation. So Catherine, if we can start with you. Yeah, sure.

Hi everyone, I'm Catherine Gray, and I wrote a book called The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, which I was fairly sure that was going to sell 30 copies to my friends and family but completely astonished me and it became a bestseller because I think it just came out at that moment when Britain was getting really tired of drinking and more sober curious. So I've been sober six years now and the joy of being sober really was unexpected because I thought it was going to be total social suicide. I thought, you know, I'll be able to turn up for work and stop spending all my money on Jager bombs, but my life is going to be no fun.

So, yeah, it was the best decision I ever made. But I'm not anti-drinking. I don't feel that way about it. I just think that people should explore their relationship with alcohol and see if they'd be happier without it because I think a lot of people would be. So, yeah, that's my view on it totally amazing and Kachanga oh yeah evening all hi I'm Kachanga and I'm a freelance journalist and a writer yeah some people call me an activist but I think I'm a bit too lazy to like really claim it and um I actually started writing in rehab. I went to rehab in 2014 for my drug and alcohol addiction,

and yeah, I just started writing like a beast. I just, I got my dreams back, and I just felt like I had to get out all of the trauma and the pain and everything that was being stirred up by these really intense group therapy sessions and stuff and um yeah I really struggled to stay sober for quite a while I just couldn't see what um a life without drugs and alcohol would look like for me for um quite a long time but then by giving myself over to like a spiritual transformation um yeah I finally got um sober in 2015 and i actually was four years sober this week yeah thank you cheers amazing i think that um the idea of sobriety hadn't even occurred to me as like an option until very recently like i didn't i think that the idea there was a lot of

stigma around people who have addiction like for instance when i was't... I think that the idea... There was a lot of stigma around people who have addiction. Like, for instance, when I was younger, I would think that only people who were addicts were homeless people. Like, it didn't really occur to me that I could fall into alcoholism or that I could end up with an addiction to drugs because the way it's portrayed in the media used to be so dirty and as if it was such a shameful and as if it was, like, a failure. And I think that what's really helpful is that by stripping away that rhetoric

and saying that actually anyone could end up being in a place with it could be things firing out of control it could be that you just don't really like drinking where you need to turn to sobriety and I think that if we recognize it could be any of us that is going to help us change our attitude towards alcohol because I think even my own attitude towards alcohol thankfully has changed but definitely when I was younger I would drink much too much to make me feel more comfortable in social situations or because I thought that you had to and now I'm starting to I'm really starting to get to the place where I'm like actually I don't think I want to drink this much not not to the point where you get really drunk and there's

something I want to talk to you Catherine about because I think blacking out something you mention and talk about and like your actions when you're drunk are very different and I think that that's something which sometimes we're like oh but that's just what happens when you're drunk but actually I think it's not quite that simple is it no so blacking out people think when you're blackout drunk you're just passed out but you're not you're still walking talking and demanding a kebab you're just um you're like a very stripped back it's like you've devolved and they know why this happens in the brain it's basically because the prefrontal cortex which is the adult rational part of the brain that separates us from animals takes a back seat when you're blackout drunk so that's why all you want to do is shag or fight or eat fried chicken

you basically become a wolf on a night out um so I had loads of episodes like that where I would just lose hours of nights out and not remember what I'd done and then find out these horrifying things about what I'd done and how I'd behaved and I didn't understand why I was behaving that way and now I know it's because my brain had just yeah completely devolved back into the mists of time and I've definitely had that luckily the times I've done it has weirdly been with my friends when we've all blacked out so we've all kind of been together me and my girlfriends and then we went on location services and we had to trace where we'd been and you know how your phone tells

you and we'd just been in some weird bar and clapping but none of us would remember for like an hour where we were luckily we'd all been there together but I do think that's that really scary idea of like you can lose time and I think we normalize it especially at uni you'd go oh my god I can't remember anything from last night but actually that's so scary I have no idea what's going to happen to you and I think I also do think that it's nice to hear the fact that you're not it's not you acting because I do think sometimes you can do things when you're drunk which can make you feel really ashamed or feel like you're a really awful person. But as you just said, you're not actually really functioning then.

It's kind of you in like beast mode. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Do you want to talk a bit about what kind of, you think, led you into falling into addiction? Because I think that's... Sure. I mean, in recovery,

I found like just reading up as much about addiction as possible to be really helpful and so I read Johan Hari's book and found out you know that the reason that I just couldn't stop using any substance was that you know I just fall into that 10th percentile category you know where I'm just predisposed to yeah not being able to stop and in terms of whether I was born an addict or whether I became one I feel like you know I went through so much trauma reduction therapy and and unpacking what I'm happened to me it does feel like because the because of um you know being a survivor and all sorts that there it feels like there was like a switch that was flipped you know and i when i went i remember

like going to freshers week at university and feeling like just so boosted you know i was like oh my god there's this culture and camaraderie I can really cloak myself in this I can hide away in the fact that this is something that we just all have to do you know we're just like British students you know but um in my final year because I was reading so much um feminist theory and going to um different groups and learning about you know why the world was the way it was and why I'd suffered in very particular and specific ways um I felt like just all the sludge of my growing up years was um piling up and I just could not stop in order to get the qualifications that I deserved um and, and so, yeah, my spiral, um, continued after I

left university and I just kept losing job after job, you know, the first few weeks I'd be, you know, the darling of whatever, how many I was in, you know, always after work drinks, hilariously funny, willing to do like, you know, five times what you're willing to do. Yeah. Judging you for like how weak your drinks were, you know, like we have to have doubles. But I would find myself waking up in terrible places, doing terrible things. And when I got into a relationship with a rich lawyer, it got so much worse because, you you know I was very much limited by I was about to say what was in my purse but it's actually what was in his wallet it goes but with him there was just so um the financial resources were endless so you could literally just buy drugs and alcohol bulk and there was never enough and so that's what propelled me to um go to um rehab at the age of 28 that was my intention I intend I intended to wait until I was 30 because I didn't want to stop

and I didn't because I yeah I relapsed soon after leaving rehab, like I think 90 days after leaving rehab. And I just, I really, my main problem with, um, like having a sober life was that I'd envisaged all of these moments and alcohol accompanied, I, how could I could imagine having a 30th birthday, birthday without a free bar and lashings of cocaine. And I was like it was just that's just what being 30 required you know and so and then also um yeah getting married like my idea of what getting married um was was you know me in like you know a strapless dress and you know with a flute of something bubbly and just you know just roaring laughter you know it goes like really I couldn't imagine getting married without bubbly like just uh you know there's so many things I want to talk on that so I don't if you guys don't know who Johan Hari is I actually really um really want

him on the podcast but he's he talks a lot about how addiction is the opposite of connection so when you're lacking a bit of connection in your life you may then end up looking to addiction and this is actually based on there's an experiment with rats which you might have heard about years ago where they give the rats i think it's heroin or water or whatever and um or food and the rat will always pick heroin i can't remember how it works but then they changed the experiment they did it years later where they had two sets of rats one sets of rats that were in like the control situation they were before which is like an empty cage nothing in it apart from i think you could they could either have morphine

or food and they would literally die to get the morphine and then the other rats were in like rat heaven there was like all these female rats they could get where there's loads of food and actually they didn't end up getting addicted to morphine in the environment which made them really really happy so what he talks about is how we often think that it's the drug in of itself that you're addicted to but um and that can be like that is an element of it but his school of thought is kind of like you're more susceptible to fall into addiction if your environment isn't protecting you in the way that a stable life kind of should i felt that because um i had my top wisdom teeth removed, um, when I was

in active addiction and my bottom wisdom teeth removed when I was out of active addiction. And, um, for my top, um, wisdom teeth, I was just in so much pain for months and months and was just using it as an excuse to like always have a bottle of brandy or whiskey in my bags. Cause you know, I'm just in so much pain and washing back the painkillers and stuff. And then for my bottom wisdom teeth, I was given like codeine, I think an opiate of some sorts, but I had to call, you know, my recovery community and I stayed in contact with people throughout that time but I didn't find myself slipping because my life had changed so much that you know that kind of cloudy feeling that was such a part of my everyday life it didn't I didn't need it it wasn't spiritually sustaining in the way that it once was it was this fixed drug used to help me deal with the pain until I got better yeah I think that's really

interesting and also thinking about we're planning, this is so true. So I used to be a full-time smoker, like 20 days, my favourite thing. I'd wake up in the morning, have one with coffee. I literally loved it. Have one before the gym, go to the gym,

have one straight after the gym, outside the gym, in my gym kit. It was great. But then I also envisage life with cigarettes. I'd even planned the idea that when I was like 40, maybe I'd like take it up again after I'd had some kids.

I don't know why. I just loved it. I didn't want to to stop and then one day I did stop and I know it's not the same thing but it is really fascinating how it's it's these perceived ideas and especially with alcohol I completely see that like it's the glamour of like a glass of rose or like I almost think sometimes the idea of alcohol is more enticing than the actual thing like I get more excited about going on a night out than sometimes when i'm there i'm like this is actually quite shit but the idea of going well like the getting ready is amazing and actually when you're in the club it smells like feet and men kind of touch you and you're like this is actually horrible i just want to go to bed but you have to be out

because you can't be a fun young person if you're not at every event yeah how how did you battle that thing that was one of the hardest things when you stop drinking is how do you get one avoid the peer pressure but to carry on living and not feeling like you're missing out on everything yeah well I think it's really important to cut through the glamorization of alcohol I went to the cinema last night and there was at least 10 adverts beforehand for alcohol brands which were all depicting scenes of like these perfect parties that I have definitely never been to but my parties never ended up like that they always ended up with me completely blotter

in the next day getting a McDonald's or whatever so it's it's just thrown everywhere and even if you go into somewhere like Oliver Bonus there's like coasters and greeting cards and it's just everywhere the message that drinking is fun and being sober sucks if you walk down the street it's on clapboards outside pubs it's on signs that we give each other and we hang up in our kitchen it's just bloody everywhere um and so you have to be aware of it and know that the difference between what they're presenting and dangling and the actual reality and knowing that it never actually was like that yeah that's so true yeah so it's yeah i just it's about reverse conditioning because we've just we've

just had this around us for so long and when you watch a film or a tv i mean hardly any show drinking in a negative light it's always you know the beautiful tumbler even it's now become almost synonymous with feminism in the good fight they're always drinking brandy or whiskey sours or um you know Olivia Pope drank drinking two bottles of wine a night on scandal and and how did she do that and function the next day because I certainly wasn't functioning the next day every single time someone's just drinking like a neat whiskey whoever I'm watching that thing with I'm like no one does this apart from my dad to be fair i think he does it to look cool and he doesn't actually drink he just kind of holds it but they're always they'll just get like a shot of something brown and they just neck it no i've never seen anyone do that in real life no nor have

i and that was definitely my life yeah oh yeah excuse me. Yeah, my romanticisation was really filmic. I always imagined myself as like Bette Davis in All About Eve, you know, but never like really slurring, you know, just kind of loosely hanging a fur off my shoulder and stuff. Oh yeah, and the French, they've got a lot to answer for as well, you know, particularly with the smoking. Yeah, I still think smoking looks so cool don't tell me yeah definitely but um I didn't I didn't actually begin to see um destructive use of alcohol and drugs until my late 20s it suddenly just just, I just started to pay attention.

I got, I remember I used to watch Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Yeah, like, and that was like Hollywood celebrities who were really at, you know, the like last chance saloon. But because it was in that context, it was always posited as this thing that you know that weak californians like you know succumb to you know i couldn't imagine that being transposed into like a british context where you just were like honest about the fact that you

weren't able to keep going without alcohol so what was the turning point like what was the moment when you actually stood back and thought that was healthy and now this is not healthy do you know what there was an exact moment or was it you just realized that you were using it as a crutch in some ways um i didn't really have a lot of compassion for myself and that's what um everyone used to point out i would you know be falling apart at like three four five in the morning you know everyone else is having a fun time and then I start you know pouring out just like it wasn't just inappropriate and it wasn't just you know being too sad or too maudlin I was you know just verging, like my, my talk became suicidal.

I didn't really realize that that was what it is, but you know, just that idea that I couldn't go on what was wrong with me. I feel so flawed. I'm not worth anything. And discussing some people around me would say, you know, what are you saying? Like, you're clearly very talented and you're very, and I just didn't really see any beauty in myself or my life um so that was like the first inkling other people like sitting me down saying you know you need to start loving yourself and I thought that was just so trite and disgusting like how dare you you know

like because it was always positive it's like you go from this um one location of like really hating yourself and then you just need to love yourself man and then you know like just yeah and i just couldn't understand what anyone why no one was telling me that um and it dawned on me um probably from around the age of 18 onwards i knew that my other friends could turn things off and they did't they weren't in love with drugs and alcohol in the way that I was that it they were my best friends you know I needed like I know I needed them like you know more than other people I needed to have a spliff when I got off the bus I needed to have a line on the way to work and you, you know, so the way that I was using was quite, it was quite evident to me that it was like destructive,

but I was kind of able to make it look okay for a while. So we briefly spoke before about how you said you go to NA and I was asking like, that's narcotics anonymous and even alcoholics anonymous. And I was kind of asking like, how do they differ? And you pointed out very rightly that alcohol is still a drug and it's very interesting that we separate the two things um and drug use is a lot more prolific than you would have believed I remember listening to radio 4 in the car with my

parents and they were talking about how they think that someone these people go to raves and they take drugs I was at half asleep and my parents I don't think anyone does too and I was like what are they on about they were born in the 60s at how 50s how do they not know that like when someone says they're going to rave the likelihood is they're popping a pill or most of the bankers that work in the city are sniffing coke and I think opening up those conversations and be a bit more honest about it is really fascinating but also recognizing that alcohol I think it's funny that we glamorize it so much when we are so disparaging about all the other drugs I mean caffeine obviously gets a great great great time um but when when you're using drugs obviously if you're doing a line on the way to work that's quite a lot but were your friends using drugs at the same time as you but

they didn't have an issue with it and how do you think that do you think that alcohol should be viewed as potently dangerous as drugs are um i, I did, yeah, I attached myself to anyone who was using as much at least. Yeah. You needed to be like close to me in consumption for me to consider you, you know, just vaguely worth hanging out with. And so that was definitely a thing. But what happened to me was that when I arrived at rehab, I, you know, just thought that they were just going to get me off the harder stuff. You know, OK, you know, I could I felt that, you know, abstinence was just too far. You know, that's ridiculous. But yeah, when I was being given the time and the consideration and just and the love, really, to be able to speak about what was going on with me.

And I tell you what I felt like. I felt like I was like Jon Snow in like the Battle of the Bastards and stuff. And like, so I'd gone there for like drugs and alcohol and that was like, you know, one or two soldiers. And then just coming over the hill is this deluge, you know, nicotine, caffeine, you know, shopping, internet usage.

And then like, yes, you have all of that like delusion on you and then above that is like the dragon and the dragon is like codependency you know you know so like love and sex addiction and you know childhood abandonment and neglect and all of that stuff and I just it was so much I think that's probably why I struggled to remain abstinent, just because it just felt like dealing with the issue of addiction in general and filling that void that was just so huge. I couldn't really handle. So, yeah, once I discovered recovery communities, and also took um Janet Mock um she's a fantastic writer trans rights activist um a writer and a director on Pose and I took her autobiography to me with um her autobiography to me um with me to rehab and because I had never really had a narrative

that chimed with mine in that way I suddenly begun to see that I could have a life worth living and that that was that's what I needed I didn't just need to get abstinent and to give up the drugs and the alcohol I needed to realize my purpose on earth I needed to realize what I was here for and also just have some bloody compassion for how awful the things I'd gone through were Catherine for you I think you're would you say that you were addicted what was your with your with your relationship to alcohol I feel like you've both been through similar things but in a very different way and I feel like maybe your relationship with drugs could change to some people would seem very extreme whereas maybe your relationship with alcohol to some people would be

like well that's really normal do you think oh no it wasn't normal no definitely not normal um so to chart my progress it was I started realizing that something was amiss when I was about 27 because my friends were starting to drink less on nights out and I was starting to drink more and trying to harangue them into one more bar and one more club and let's go dancing I didn't really want to go dancing I just wanted to go drinking and um I was finding myself kind of staying out late at night with people I barely knew I'd kind of make friends in the club to sort of line them up for later on because I knew that my friends were going to bugger off about 12 because it was a work night and I wanted to stay out till two so that started concerning me so I started this and also I worked on a magazine I worked on Glamour magazine so I

could go out every night and drink for free if I wanted to which was really dangerous because I did want to so I was going out all the time and not having to pay for it. And, you know, with the financial thing, that wasn't an issue because I could just go and have free drinks. And so I decided that I was going to start this mission to moderate. And I had this notebook and I wrote down all these things I was going to do. I wasn't going to go to free drinks parties anymore because they were the problem. It wasn't me. It was the free drinks. And I wasn't going to go to free drinks parties anymore because they were the problem it wasn't me it was the free drinks and um I wasn't going to drink wine anymore I was going to switch to cider because that's harder to drink but I just ended up drinking more cider and you know marking my diary three nights off a week and writing down how many units I was consuming and it just didn't work I mean I think

the best week I did was about 24 units, which is obviously over what you're meant to drink. And the worst week I did in those years was about 60 units. And so I stopped trying to moderate. And I just thought, I just thought, I'm just going to go with it. And then my boyfriend of three years, when I was 30, shortly after my 30th birthday, I thought we were going to get married and he dumped me very suddenly I was absolutely heartbroken and so I start and my drinking got a lot darker then and I'm sure like that's when it flips I find often when you're going through heartbreak or grief or something like that and I started instead of going out I was staying in because I was finding that when I was going out I was having blackouts and getting into really scary situations and waking up in strange men's beds and not

remembering what happened and you know waking up I once woke up in a bathtub in Soho um and I was meant to be at work 20 minutes ago and I had to go to Topshop and get some new clothes to go to work it was just my life was completely off the rails do you know what's so scary though because I have a lot of events with free drinks and stuff and that also stresses me out because I PRs will be like oh we I will be really not like relevant to the brand but the PR will say we invite you so I know you're fun and I think god that's not a good sign like I'm literally being invited because they think I'm going to drink with them so I've got better at having like one and then leaving but it is I do think that if you do go out every night

and drink no one I don't there's I think there's very few people that will actually go oh actually do you think Catherine's okay yeah because I think people just think you're fun yeah I mean one of my friends said when I quit because the most of my friends nine out of ten of my friends said you're not that bad just take a month or three months off. It was only my very best friends who'd lived with me for two or three years. Who'd seen it up close. Who said, great decision. You know, that's such a good decision that you've quit because everyone else thought I was okay. And one of my friends, this really stuck with me. She said, you were my big night out friend. I just didn't realize you were everyone's big night out friends that you were

having a big night out five nights a week. And I was, but I was, I was brazening it out. I was managing to patch up the hangovers and, you know, sort of be okay for work. Well, I think you can, because I found this, and this is what I found at Christmas, this is what I find quite stressful. I think if you drink, I don't know, if you ever go on holiday and you kind of drink every day, but after a while, you kind of are fine. So I don't, I tend ever go on holiday and you kind of drink every day but after a while you kind of are fine so I don't I tend not to drink in the week like any normally I would just go out for a meal and get drunk or like once a month have a big night out but when it comes to Christmas

or from away on holiday you might drink every day and by the third day you could drink a bottle of wine at dinner and you don't even feel bad the next day yeah and then I think when you do that you then wake up the next day and you think well actually I could have a drink of wine tonight I think basically the more you do it this is why I think it's so scary with alcoholism especially especially in London I see people that you just think you can just fall into it because without realizing I think you get into this habit of drinking and actually the hangovers are I think it becomes your normal basically yeah I think it does but then for me the hangovers just got crucifying so much so that I was I was fighting to subdue them.

And, you know, an English breakfast stopped working. Two strong coffees stopped working. And I even started getting the shakes very, very slightly. Not so much that anybody noticed, but I really noticed it. And that was when I was like, oh, my God, I think I'm becoming physically addicted to alcohol and then soon after that I started researching suicide which was just you know obviously you know a sign there was a problem and that's when I quit do you think that the the suicidal feelings were coming because of your dependency on alcohol being a depressant or was it the fact that you thought oh my god I'm a failure because I forgot or was it an amalgamation of your life changing because of the alcohol do you know what I mean yeah I

think it was both I mean I think it was a combination of the two but it is unignorable that since I quit drinking that has not even crossed my mind in any way so those two are completely interlinked for me the depression was caused by the alcohol I think and also the the absolute devastation the alcohol was wreaking on my life and I was wreaking on my life as a result of being an absolute nightmare so it was it yeah it was just a big snafu of mess of drink and bad decisions and failed relationships and depression. And, you know, the one magic thing for me was quitting and then everything changed slowly, but it did. So that's incredible. I mean, when I think about alcoholism, I think what is really hard to

recognise is that you have to stop. I think I hadn't really thought about this before, that like, if you have a problem with alcohol, you can just cut down like that's the end of it was that a long process or did you literally was it like a I mean I it took five months of stopping and starting and what I was finding was that I was putting three days together and then seven days and then it went up and up and up I don't know if you found the same and then eventually one day it just clicked and it was just random the way it clicked but I think with each time that I stopped and then started again I learned a new lesson and I applied that to the next time I was like oh okay maybe not a good idea to go on a press trip when I'm only 30 days sober and everyone's going to be getting rast so yeah I I found that you just need to

apply the lessons but um yeah if hardly anyone can moderate alcohol that's the truth i really don't know very many people at all i can count them on one hand who actually go out and have one or two drinks moderation is bloody difficult and we're told that it's easy and it's not it's an addictive drug so of course it's addictive people get addicted that was the other thing i want to say i think the setup this is going to be quite conspiracy theorist but we'll go with it um i think like capitalism i'm saying this bit to kachanga early like the way the world's set up it's kind of designed to make you want to work really hard because you need to have loads of stuff so the only way you can like get something out of life is if you go out on a friday and a

saturday and you're being seen to be out and you're drinking loads and you're having the new cocktails and i think it can be really difficult because of social media exacerbates this I find even with my friends I was talking with about some of my girlfriends from school we're like why do we feel like we've got to prove that we're out like sometimes on a Friday night I just don't want to speak to anyone but then I almost feel embarrassed but that's fine you can be tired like you don't have to want to do things and I think that alcohol plays into such a big part of this system where because we feel like we're so tired from our work and that I just need a drink because you know I've had such a long day and it's been such a long week and if you play into that and you let yourself go into that flow I think that can be really dangerous was actually

because I've I think I'm luckily because I got really into exercise when I was at uni I think if I hadn't done that I think I would have ended up probably drinking a lot, like having an issue with alcohol because I got really into exercise. I was like, I don't want to drink because I want to get up early to train. And luckily that's become my norm. So I don't really drink that much,

but I can totally see, I think I'm really aware of how much I was really drawn to like hedonism. I loved going out. I loved being the last one to leave the party. I was always the one that'd be like quick let's go out quick turn around in five minutes i've done like a full fake tan and an outfit on and we wouldn't have been going out um so i but i think that having

that it's creating a life that you don't need to escape from which is much easier than done and definitely created from privilege can kind of help you to put up boundaries around it and i think sometimes where instead of facing the thought that actually we might feel a bit better if we get up a bit earlier and go to the gym or it might be better if we just try and stay on top of our work like falling into this oh i'm just a party girl or i'm the one it feels easier but in the long run i think it's really well obviously very damaging yeah i mean yeah i found like the concept of like the rock bottom really I really struggled with like really eluded me because I had so many and then also I got to yeah when I was 27 I wasn't like

hoping that I would join the 27 club but like when I like got to 28 I was like oh god you know I really like you know I've got like no legacy you know not like Amy Wine God, you know, I really, you know, I've got like no legacy. I mean, I'm not like Amy Winehouse, I'm not Jeff Buckley. I haven't like an album and like, you know, some great work. And so now I've this need to tell everyone. Because I'd gone through life feeling like such an alien. And then finding a community of people who felt the same was really fundamental to me, like feeling like I could make it and so um like getting sober in the age of podcasts was really helpful i i discovered like glennon doyle

through oprah um yeah the um oprah soul sessions and um yeah she's american and spoke about um her alcoholism and her concurrent um anorexia as well and that was really important to me because I'd never because I wasn't um skinny I'd never had um the opportunity to have anyone see my eating as disordered or to um think that I was struggling in any way with food and you know body image and to be small for it and everything and I think having I mean we really do need to define the word holistic but at the same time I think having like that holistic approach to addiction where I felt like I was paying attention to how I filled that void in so many different areas that's what really helped me because I am I'm an addict for life it's not like I can um say that I'm ever going

to be healed or that you know I'm ever like you know not going to be an addict like I find myself acting out in various different ways it's like whack-a-mole like you have to you know I like put one thing down and then suddenly like I'm binging on um like Netflix or then you know I'm back to like eating loads of donuts or you know I'm um on all like three to five different apps you know trying to find the perfect one giant um yeah no I totally agree I think it's exactly that's kind of what I was trying to this consumption idea that you always have to be consuming something, whether that's like having amazing sex, having amazing clothes, going out for all the drinks. And actually, I agree, it's really weird you said that at the 27 Club. I'm so dramatic. I like write, write like fake memoirs on my phone where I like pretend to be someone else. I wrote this one about this girl called Nora when I was walking around the park. So honestly, who am I anyway in that I wrote a bit a similar thing like where it's like I basically think when it's a weird age so I think when you're around like in your mid-20s you kind of stop being the youngest in the room and I'm the youngest child as well so it can be quite unsettling when

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Like your kind of like thing that you can shout about suddenly you've actually got to have a bit of authority. And I remember writing this fake memoir about how if I died at 27, it wouldn't even matter. And that's really annoying. So you've got to actually start playing like doing life in the way that seems so boring. But putting boundaries up. So basically pushing against that consumption consumption so telling yourself that actually you can't just go and do that because you want to or you should all the things that i used to hate i hated the idea that having being organized was good for you i was like that's ridiculous having

a tidy room i was like no one needs that i'm creative and like going to uni i don't need to go like all the things that you think especially you think when you're younger and you're passionate about stuff you just think everything your parents tell you is bullshit but actually like getting up early drinking loads of water and going to the gym and saying no and putting up boundaries makes you feel amazing but the world will have you believe that it doesn't because that chaos of consumption is what keeps you kind of trapped and now i feel like i'm talking about like a buddhist idea i don't think there's anything wrong with that though i think that there is um something cultural retaliationary with um our attraction to um like minimalism and people like um murray condo and um cal newport

um his book digital minimalism um you know gambling is such a pernicious addiction yeah and i found it so scary when he was speaking about the fact that when they were creating um social media and stuff i always i thought it was like a glitch on my phone that um you know where you would like open the app and then it would be on something then it would like just skip like to the higher part and i was like why is it doing that and so i find myself scrolling through that was actually something that they designed because it um mimics um the what are those at vegas machines the um yeah yeah the slot machines and stuff so you find yourself like panting you know like gotta get back to that particular quote you're trying to remember like the colors and the face i forgot the name but you know i can kind of find it and stuff so yeah they are stoking our feelings

of addiction and and feeding that through our technology and so i think there is a retaliation towards that because we're waking up to you know the fact that we've been been duped into feeling like we can fill that void with feeling constantly connected and stuff and even like for me in terms of consumption i am desperate to have way more meaning like because i used to i used to like get drunk and high and then you know go around primark and you know and stuff like i it was really really bad there's nothing i love more than like just getting really high and just going around like a trolley and just chucking everything in and yeah like waking up the next day and I there was something about when I got back from rehab and I was just looked around

my room I just had so much stuff you know know, I was desperate to have, I wanted to have every perfume that I'd ever, you know, fallen in love with on my makeup table. And I finally got that and I was just so bereft. I was like, this is not fulfilling me. And like now I probably spend more time just like considering what i need in life i think it's so personally brought up social media and obviously loads my career with start of social media and i feel i'm really like antithetical in that on the one hand i think

it's amazing and then on the other hand i do think this idea that you can buy happiness in a lifestyle and i think you'll go through someone's page and you'll want to buy literally everything they've got on because there's something so attractive about the idea that if I have that outfit, I will have that life. And I feel like I'm so reformed in a weird way without having ever got to the full addiction. But my personality is so like that. I had a Mecca bingo account in my first reunion.

I got really addicted to it. I used to pretend that I was a mum and chat to the other mums in the chat room. I did my first ever stand-up the other week and that was like the opening gambit my housemates like what are you doing anyway and i've dabbled with trying to be that anyway but going into the gym got addicted to that had really bad relationship with food and it's taken me so long but luckily i don't know how i did it because i do think i'd like to save myself but through doing the self introspection of this work i realized that going for a walk just like with my boyfriend with my friends is the most wonderful thing in the

world just walking around a park or like reading a book and all these really basic free lovely things which you can't put onto a caption or onto a billboard or you can't sell anyone that so you kind of forget that it's at your fingertips and I don't know if you feel really empty sometimes if you binge watch like a whole thing on Netflix right I've wasted the whole day and basically I think it's because of capitalism trying to sell us all this stuff that it's really hard to access the wonderful things and lives that are just available to you and I think with alcohol sometimes we just waste so much time trying to create this fun because you're buying it whereas you could just have fun not doing that

yeah if that makes sense I think we give it too much credit as well so we tend to drink when we go out and do something fun so we tend to drink when we go out to a gig or you know the theater or I always used to go to those boutique cinemas that sell wine because I couldn't possibly go to the cinema and not drink wine and so therefore we give it too much credit we're like oh that was fun because we were drinking yeah but it becomes about the booze yeah it would have been fun anyway but you need to give it a chance to be fun without the drinking you need to experience it a number of times until you actually settle into it naturally and you get over your social anxiety because so many of us even though we're not addicted it's a

spectrum it's a one to ten spectrum I may have been an eight or a nine but so many of us are like a five or a six where we it's unthinkable to go to a party and not have a drink because we use that to settle into it yeah to get over social anxiety and it's such a crutch for that yeah no I totally agree and I didn't my parents have used to drink when I was younger I don't remember but then I I remember that as I was older like so we go to the theatre and they would never drink and it was when I got older I realized that people as you say like the drink is the fun bit when actually like you're going to a comedy show you don't need to buy like pints of wine because you won't be able to get in the interval any more drink like you're going to watch a comedy that's funny that's the point of the the thing yeah and it's such a british thing everything is around drinking but then on the flip side of it i have to i've

been a bit like you as well i'd be the one if my friends said they weren't drinking i'd be like what you are and i've actually had to retrospectively go back to one of my really best friends like last year and be like i'm really sorry because i used to do it to her all the time she just doesn't really like drinking so she just doesn't drink. I would fall. I'd be like, no. Because I wanted to drink. And it made me feel really uncomfortable. Yeah.

That she put these boundaries out. So how do you then become the person? Because when I have not drunk now, I would pretend I'm drinking. So I'd get a soda water and a lime. Yeah. And so it's a gin and tonic. It looks like a gin and tonic. But what do you do?

How do you genuinely say to people, like, I don't want to drink? it doesn't make me feel good because I think that's that's one of the things maybe lots of people don't want to drink but yeah the peer pressure is so great well I think I mean the way I started doing it when I first quit was I was very sincere and I said you know I started researching suicide and people were just moving away from me at parties and I was like maybe not let's line it up a bit so now I tend to like tell a story like for instance once I woke up in Brixton police station having been arrested for being drunk and disorderly and when they gave me back my belongings I was like oh at least I've got my bag you know it's fine um they were like this this is what you had on you this is the only thing you had on you it was a tiny pink child's hairbrush and that was it no keys no phone no nothing

and so I tell them that story and then they're like okay no drinking for you or I'm like oh there was the time when I got into a hot tub topless at my work Christmas party and the next day my boss heard about it and they're like okay no no drinking for you so I find if you make light of it then people tend to I don't know they respond better to it but then I've had some really lovely vulnerable conversations when I've been gentler and much more sincere about it as well so I think you just read the situation if it's a group I tend to tell a shocking story if it's one-to-one and I can tell that the person's sober curious I'll tend to be like oh well actually I'm just much happier and here's how I was feeling when I was drinking so yeah I think it depends on the person and the situation totally what about you how do you do you

still go into those party environments or have you completely left that chapter? I think, yeah, I have. I transformed my life to the point where I don't really go out in that way anymore. But yeah, when I do dip in, it's for like a finite amount of time. Like I know I'm going to be there for, you know, half an hour to 45 minutes.

And my personality is such that I can like just take part in my own way um yeah because what people are really looking for is to be engaged and funny and tingly and bright and stuff so I just kind of do that but in like a more concentrated fashion and yeah like coca-cola just has so much bloody sugar in it I'm just I do find myself just like just bouncing off the walls and yeah so I can do that for like half an hour but I really want to go home that's the weird thing you do just want to go to bed when you're not drinking you're like I'm so tired whereas when I'm drunk a bit like you I'm like I can stay out till five absolutely great and it's weird I don't know I don't know what it is that like the attractiveness about this darkness and I found like as I'm getting older I would rather just go for a nice meal have maybe some wine but the idea

of actually getting drunk I think that is so weird when you think about it like we're going out to get drunk yeah I don't think like no other countries do that really we're the only place where it well but like in Europe they kind of like accompany something with a drink so you're there and the drink is like a side note of what's going on yeah it's not the centerpiece we go out you can't even hear each other you're just stood around there's like beer everywhere like you don't there's nothing going on apart from like just trying to get blotto yeah absolutely it's so bizarre and I think it is something that's, it's definitely endemic in Britain, but I think also in America as well. It's quite bad. So yeah, it's something that we... new orleans or hawaii and stuff and you can drink in public and drink in the streets and everything so yeah it is a cultural thing like that you find if it's not okay in your immediate

environment there's always that place that you can go to in order to just blend in and like make sure yeah make it seem like everything's normal what i think is interesting in your two stories is that with with katherine and i'm gonna i'm gonna make assumptions and you guys can correct me but it sounds like with you there was you were kind of in the perfect environment for this to happen and do you think had you maybe lived in a different place so you weren't looking at glamour and those weren't available to you you may have never ended up with this relation with alcohol whereas i feel like kachanga you're saying that something you went through traumatic experiences in your youth and as you're growing up that led you to to seek out like self-medicating would you say that's true or do you think that no I think I think no matter what

would have happened I would have ended up getting addicted and having to quit I just think it would have taken longer to do it so in a way it was accelerated which it did me a favor that boyfriend dumping me at 30 kind of did me a favor because otherwise I might still be drinking now and you know it might take longer for me to reach that place where I'm really like no I need to leave this so I think it would have happened no matter what because it is it's to do with um if you have a bad childhood you're seven times more likely to drink um heavily later in life if you drink before you're 15 you're four times like more likely to become addicted

i started drinking at 12 and then when you add in uh well yeah because i got white lightning when i was like 14 yeah i had my stomach pumped my parents were there i started clubbing when i was 13 because i met some older friends and they'd kind of smuggle me in. Yeah. These really dodgy clubs. My first nightclub was Mahiki when I was 40. Oh my God. I don't think I can get in there now.

That's really interesting. So you think it is kind of like, it's more nurture, more nature than nurture. I think it's both. I think it's both. I really do. I think it's,

but yeah. And then you add in social anxiety. I really anxious yeah when I was a teenager and then when I found drinking I was like oh my god here's the answer yeah here's what's going to allow me to become an extrovert even though I'm an introvert and you know dance and talk to boys I like and whatever this is the magical elixir that I need in order to become what I want to become and so I just completely embraced it and threw myself into it so I think it was quite inevitable yeah so do you think now I think the the like final thing I want to posit to you guys before we open up to the floor also sorry if you have a drink we're

not judging I did it for 21 years no judgment is life because I know the answer to this but I kind of think we all want to hear it it's like there is so much more to life than needing to go out yeah have you found that your life is just as full well your book's actually called the unexpected joy like is it even fuller do you think that you can access so much more if you're not drinking yeah I mean I go I go out all the time as well it's it's just that I do more interesting stuff I'm not going to the local to sink a bottle of house white and you know I'm just not doing that anymore I'm going to comedy nights and theater and interesting experiences because I've got a lot more money frankly because I can go to a gig and spend one pound 80 on a

pint of lime and soda and that lasts me all night whereas before a night out was like 20 quid on drinks so it's yeah life's just much more interesting yeah totally but you can have just as rich a social life I go out I've I've danced till 3am when I'm sober if the music's really good yeah and you really get into it and you're with mates and you feel comfortable you can have an absolutely rocking night out I mean that was last year to be fair normally I'm in bed by one but you know it it does happen yeah once you really settle into it so I mean there is no loss do you have any advice for anyone that or both of you actually that say you think someone might know someone who's struggling or they're struggling themselves what is the first move that you think is helpful i mean

especially coming from the drug side because i think if that is a bit more taboo and someone's struggling i feel like almost sometimes with drugs you can hide it more depending on what you're kind of addicted to whereas alcohol sometimes i think can be more visible or obvious or i don't know i think any decent addict is going to be able to put a lot of effort into concealing yeah what they're taking and stuff so um there's going to be a period of denial and concealment like no one wants to be an addict no one like you know like wakes up at you know the age of 10 and thinks oh yeah you know alcoholic yeah that's the one for me but um you know i just got so much from reading i think i read um conquest by andrea smith um she's a indigenous american academic who spoke about the um higher rates of alcohol in the indigenous communities

because of what they'd gone through as a society, you know, as a, how do you know, so that trauma led to, you know, a collective and destructive use of alcohol in order to, you know, like palliatively deal with so much assault being committed against them and, yeah, all of that violence. And then I really took to... I've forgotten how to pronounce his name, I think. It's Gabor Marte. Oh, I didn't know. Yeah, and he's based in Vancouver,

wrote a book called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and works with those addicted to heroin in Vancouver. And, you know he um is a i mean his approach is a lot more modern i think he does a lot more in the um like he he'll actually use certain substances in a session order to um unearth trauma together so that whether that would be MDMA or ayahuasca or whatever so I think there's such a wide range of techniques and practices associated with getting people into recovery what I would say is for myself I wasn't ready until I was ready and so if anyone had um you know foisted too much information on me i had so many people told me about um local alcohol services maybe you should do this you know um i wasn't able to do that until um the pain became so acute that i had to right and so what I think the issue is if you identify someone in your

environment if they're not able to admit to you um if you try and put um if you try to aggressively to force them they're probably going to run away from that what I think you need to do is to make sure that you've got all of the resources all the information so that when they come to you, you're going to be able to help them and assist them getting into recovery. But then, you know, if that's someone who's younger, who's more vulnerable, I think you need to go and get professional help in order to deal with the fact that, yeah,

the rates of addiction for all of us are probably on the increase. Yeah, that's really good to know i think it's always hard to know where to stand in a situation but i also have to say i love the way katherine that you said it's on a spectrum because i think this is where thankfully we're getting to this position where we're all starting to address i certainly am like what is my i definitely don't have an addiction to alcohol but i definitely am that person that will just go out until three.

And I won't necessarily be the one that's like, we should leave. And that for me is something that I want to change. And I think instead of feeling shameful, it's a really positive thing. And even like sitting down with your friends, I did with my girlfriends, and we all were kind of like,

actually, I were kind of over it. And we don't have to keep up the camaraderie just for the sake of looking like we're having so much fun because we're going through this weird quarter-life crisis. But I want to open it up to the floor. Do you guys have any questions? I wanted to know what impact your addiction

for both of you had on your careers at the time. Did it have a really negative impact or was it something where you were in a stage of your career where you could take a step back and allow yourself to recover and and then get back into it yeah that's a great question um I think my drinking sort of helped my career at first because I was going out a lot networking a lot meeting a lot of editors and magazine people that then would put me up for jobs so it was like a networking thing and then um I started you know people started giving me nicknames like bad Santa that was one nickname booze hag um they

started instead of saying that they were going out to get smashed they would say I'm going out to get cast tonight so yeah I mean there was a point where it turned the other way and I started becoming notorious for being an absolute drunken wreckhead and so that was the point where things took a turn and that was about 30 as well so that was a real key age for me but until then I got away with it even though I would call in sick and I would literally call in sick I allowed myself four or five six days a year when I was just hung over or you know had woken up on somebody's sofa over the other side of town um I still got promoted and still rose through the ranks it was after 30 that

things started going back down but now in sobriety my career has gone somewhere that I just couldn't have ever imagined because I work a lot more because I'm not drunk I hung over so you know to answer your question yes it did impact but it took a long time to impact and I got away with it for a really long time yeah I had the opposite experience like I had a really haphazard approach to work um you know I was in hospitality I was in retail um you know I'd get these like yeah just these like bursts of you know I'm gonna become a makeup artist you know like just dedicate myself to that for like um seven weeks and then like yeah just throw it away but um towards the end um I was working in various bars and restaurants and stuff and yeah I just kept

losing jobs it would be cool at first you know fun times for the first um um couple of months and then you know I'd miss a shift I'd you know not like coming drunk or you know like you know there'd be some problem like with the till i wasn't necessarily stealing i was just like a fuck i was just a mess so like yeah i just i just became a liability and so um yeah i think after i lost my third um bar job and yeah they really like you know there were so many talks beforehand you know like where they where they like sat down and say, you know, you really got to get yourself together. And then the alcoholic, I mean, would just say, you know, really got to hide my drinking more. You know, so I would do a thing where, you know, you like make a drink on shift that just looks like it was a soft drink, but it was actually, you know, yeah, like a spritzer and stuff.

Yeah, just like just way too much lime in something and stuff like trying to disguise it and i've really i really struggled with employment um afterwards because um i i just i I had no, no one had asked me, like, what I wanted to do. No one had, and no one had any compassion for my situation. Like, people were just like, oh, God, Kachanga's just such a mess. What's wrong with Kachanga? When's Kachanga going to get their act together? You know, that sort of thing. So it wasn't until I developed that compassion for myself

and could communicate that and carve out a path that didn't require me to be the life of the party that didn't require me to acquiesce to things that I didn't want to um so yeah I think in Subrite I found um the independence and been comfortable enough with my autonomy and got comfortable just with not being that likable yeah it's yeah I think that's something that you know really women really struggle with like you don't have to be you know dedicate yourself to um niceness in order to get on I think I've got a book that I haven't read but it's um I like putting it in front it just says nice girls don't get the corner office so yeah that's become my dictum but you know I like I'm a freelance writer and I work

from home so yeah no that is that is so true you don't have to be nice all the time that is really hard to do it's so nice jokes um do we have one more question if anyone has one. Oh, sorry. If it's cooking, I'll be able to do two. Hi. I don't know if you've been doing dating so far, but I was kind of just going through the apps every day, and loads of people's bios were things like, there'll be, like, the question, like, how do you know if you're wine? And you say, if you can out-drink me.

When it comes to, like, organising dates with someone, you say, well, I don't drink, and they maybe suggest some they suggest drinks if then they're a bit I'm not saying put off but they don't know what to do because you're naturally more nervous do you ever kind of get like things pop up at that yeah I mean I don't put it on my profile that's for sure although Bumble have now added a thing where you can put that you don't drink and i did put it on there actually because that felt less you know i didn't have to put on the actual bit that you write doesn't drink or sober um but actually i think you would be surprised there was this study that showed that when people have alcohol in their main profile picture

they were less successful so it actually puts people off but I just hard swerve the people who mention like wine and bottomless brunches and stuff I'm like no you're not for me clearly um but I think I've dated sober people I've dated drinkers heavy drinkers and not for me definitely we just we're not compatible um but I think I don't think this is as big a deal as people think it is and I've only had maybe three guys ghost me when they found out that I don't drink I tend to drop it in later you know after a couple of days of chat because I text them for a few days just to make sure they're not insane um and that's when I drop it in and then you know by then normally you've got a rapport and it's fine anyway but there's so many more things you can do that

don't involve drinking you know take a dog for a walk borrow my doggy um or go climbing or just this there's so much out there go to an art gallery there's just you know and you can truly connect with that person and find out if you actually fancy them rather than having wine goggles and then you know snogging someone you don't really fancy which I did about 8 000 times yeah so yeah I think I see it as a really positive thing now because I just cut through the people that I don't really like and um yeah if you can't relax with somebody sober then they're not the guy for you or woman yeah yeah I have had it on my I've had I've not had it on my profile and then right now I do just because I've got like a really like militaristic approach to things

yeah just like filter I'm looking for models like several ones but yeah I do and um it hasn't impacted my dating life I've not yeah I date so much more now um and I find that I'm so much more engaging like my dates are just better like you know I just I just yeah I can really feel the butterflies and I really like no um and that's been really fun um I love going on dates and changing people's perceptions of what yeah so life is like yeah they're not expecting you to be as fun they're not expecting to have as much fun um and and I yeah I just do I also find it really interesting interesting, like going on a date with someone who drinks sensibly and like, yeah, just has one. I'm like, you are fascinating.

What is that? You're not doing it right. So what is that like? Wow. But I think a really good indication is that reality show Millionaire Matchmaker. Yeah, Patty String, I think her name is. But yeah, basically, yeah, she'd have like, you know,

these mixes and like introduce people. And she has a two drink maximum. And I think that's really quite clear. Like, you know, after two drinks, things can get really sloppy. Like, you know, you really shouldn't, you know, have no inhibitions whatsoever with like an absolute stranger you know you deserve protection you deserve to keep yourself safe and preserve your peace and that sort of thing so yeah i've found so nothing has been better for my dating life than my sobriety and also i

think it's quite lazy to go for drinks for dates so if you posit the idea that this person you've got a date it's got to take you somewhere that's not drinking and that's quite lazy to go for drinks for a date. So if you posit the idea that this person you've got to date has got to take you somewhere that's not drinking, I think that's quite a good litmus test to see how fun they are. Because if they can't think of anything, you're just like, well, you're really boring. And if they're not fun, then what's the point? Yeah, that's true. It's such a great idea.

I've really got a boyfriend this year. Okay, well, do your last question quickly, because you put your hand up. So my question was in regards to, like, friendships. Just because I feel like myself personally, like, getting drunk and things like that, I feel like I basically might be more likely to say things that aren't true to yourself. So first of all, just, like, how has drinking or addiction to drugs and other things that affected your friendships, like, during those periods?

And then afterwards, did you lose any friendships because maybe you're not as fun or whatever because I feel like friendships are really important and maybe if you're vulnerable as well then actually they're more important and just yeah what's like the relationship between friendship and addiction great question yeah um I did lose friends but it wasn't actually too harrowing I just had way too many going out friends and just friends who I was we were only friends because we drank the same and he did the same amount of drugs and stuff and so afterwards um it was just like a natural divergence and I like to like you know friendships are so precious and it's hard as you get older to make new friends and stuff so I really invest and I found that since um I got into recovery that

um the quality of my friendship has just gone through the roof I depend on them so much more I call I buy much better presents you know because you're listening you know throughout your conversations you're like hearing like okay like you know she wants that Fenty you know she wants that you know she likes this she doesn't have um you know a brown handbag you know and stuff so yeah I think um for me my um yeah I've just my um I've just really concentrated my affection and so those who are in my circle now um really value me and something that I always um hold dear is that when I got sober my sister um yeah came with me to my recovery meeting and stuff and at the end on the bus home she said you know I just I'm just so thankful because I really feel like I've got my sister back and so yeah that's something that yeah is just always going to motivate me to keep

on going that's lovely um yeah so my answer about six months ago to this would have been very different I thought that I hadn't really lost any friends apart from like the people who are 10th on your list when you really want to go for a drink um because I had no connection with them other than wanting to drink but I found out recently because I got a message from a friend who had completely turned her back on me about nine years ago and she sent me a message saying oh my god I just heard you on a podcast and I had to stop the car because I was in tears and I didn't realize what you were going through and so I met up with her for a drink not alcoholic drink

I drink no I really don't that's another me we met up and she told me that because I thought that we hadn't we'd parted ways for different reasons and no it was my drinking that was what was the deal breaker and she said there was this one night when I mean they're the ones who gave me the nickname bad Santa and I was literally wearing a bad Santa hat that night because it was near Christmas. And her boyfriend was lying on the floor because he was also drunk. And I thought he needed, he looked like he needed a hug. So I got down on the floor with him and spooned him. And she was like, oh my God, what are you doing?

And she said, that was the point where I was like, no, I need you out of my life. Because there'd been so many times when I'd been messy and a nightmare. And that was what was the straw that broke and so we made up and she sent me a message just a couple of days ago saying you're way more fun now and that was so lovely so really but then there's another friendship which was the best friendship um you know she was she would have been one of my bridesmaids where I've had to walk away now because she's really in the grip she's like two bottles of wine a night and I lived with her for a spell and it was just it was just so awful and she'd just become a darker version of herself and I'm sure that we'll become friends again if

she ever quits but right now I can't be around her she's just too dark is it triggering for you or you just you it's not the same person no it's not triggering for me but she's become I mean and I did too she's become a darker version of herself the the girl that I love has been lost a little bit she's still there but she needs to make some changes to come back out um but in general my friendships have become much deeper and much I mean there was a bumpy period where they're like what do we do now because we always went for drinks before what do we do with Kath but then you you fall into new habits where there's one friend that I always go for we go spinning and for brunch and you know there's another friend oh yeah yeah brunch is amazing you don't need drinks yeah um

just non-alcoholic drinks and um there's another friend where we love going to immersive theater you just fall into new lovely rituals and you know the ones that are good stick around and yeah can i ask you quickly sorry i was gonna stop with your friend, do you agree with Kachanga in that if someone's in the throes of addiction, you kind of can't, you have to let them want to change? Yeah, I mean, you can't. She asked me for help a few times, and I bought her books and tried to give her advice, but she doesn't want to change.

She's not ready yet. So, and that might take a year, it might take 10 years. She may never change. And it was just too heartbreaking for me to continue to watch her. And I try. I mean, it was this was over four years that this was going on. So, yeah, I think. And that will probably have if she ever does get sober, she'll think back to that and think actually Kath did me a favour because it that

was a real shock yeah and you know that was a rock bottom of which people have hundreds not just one so and one of my best friend my and my real best friend tried to dump me one night um and then she took it back the next day but even that was a slap around the face and it really made me think about my drinking and think about where I wanted my life to go well you two are complete success stories like sitting with you here right now you'd never ever know that you'd been bad Santa that you were doing a line on the way to work so it is a really wonderful thing to have you sitting here and telling us and I think no matter what you are on that scale which I love that analogy I'm going to take that with me everywhere I think we can learn so much from you I'm really grateful that you came on to this podcast thank you so much for you guys for coming along um it is the last

podcast of 2019 and I hope you've enjoyed it so thank you so much to you guys and thank you so much for you guys for coming thank you thank you one last little bit which i just forgot do you guys have anything that you need to plug that you're doing that's coming up that people can come and see or anything oh yeah i've got a new book out i think you should have on your seats oh yeah yeah you're all sitting on it or or you've moved it you're sitting on my new book um which is yeah it's all about gratitude and finding and joy in the everyday which sounds super oprah but i promise it's not it's it yeah it's all about gratitude and finding and joy in the everyday which sounds super oprah but i promise it's not it's it's it's approaching a very british rye way um so that's out boxing day amazing cool yeah and i'm in a book too i'm in um an anthology

i'm curated by scarlet curse is called it's not okay um it's okay to it's not okay to feel blue excuse me sorry yes i was just like trying not to trim with like a double makeup or something so yeah i'm i'm included in that and i talk about um my mental health and yeah my mother's um alzheimer's diagnosis and how that coincided with um yeah my my path to sobriety and stuff amazing well thank you so much guys um i'm going we're going to leave the stage but i will actually come outside for a little minute and say hi if you want to say hi but yeah thank you for coming Thank you. Unfeeling. Winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Daily Jackpots.

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