Saturn Returns with Caggie - 9.1 Bryony Gordon on OCD, Addiction and the power of vulnerability

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

In this compelling episode of Saturn Returns to kick off the season Caggie sits down with Bryony Gordon, a celebrated journalist, mental health advocate, author, and voice of resilience. Known for her influential work with The Telegraph and her book 'Mad Woman,' Bryony's narrative is one of authenticity, challenge, and triumph. Journey Through Addiction: Bryony opens up about her battles with alcohol and cocaine addiction, offering insights into her path towards recovery. Her candid discussion around identifying as an alcoholic and the impacts on her personal and professional life sheds light on the nuances of addiction. OCD and Motherhood: Dive into Bryony's experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), how it has shaped her as a mother, and spurred her to share her story. Her honesty brings a relatable and humanising perspective to living with mental health challenges. The Role of Privilege in Recovery: Explore the intersection of addiction, mental illness, and the societal structures that influence recovery journeys. Bryony shares her thoughts on the class system's role in treatment access and the importance of reframing addiction as a health issue, not a moral failing. Confronting Stigmas: Bryony reflects on the stigmas surrounding alcoholism, especially as a high-functioning individual in a demanding career. Her journey to sobriety and the realisation of addiction as a response to trauma offers a powerful narrative on resilience and self-discovery. Embracing Spirituality: The episode delves into Bryony's embrace of spirituality and 'witchy magic' as tools for connection and recovery. Discussing the gender health gap and the societal need for deeper connections, Bryony's story is a testament to finding strength in vulnerability and the unconventional. Finding Community and Belonging: Bryony emphasises the importance of community, belonging, and the supportive networks that have been pivotal in her journey of recovery and self-acceptance. Her story is a beacon of hope for anyone facing their own battles with addiction or mental health. Bryony Gordon's journey from the depths of addiction and OCD to becoming a leading figure in mental health advocacy is not just inspiring; it's a call to action for compassion, understanding, and the embrace of our authentic selves. Her blend of humour, wit, and raw honesty makes this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of mental health and the beauty of recovery. This Episode was made possible by our friends at Wild Nutrition. Experts in women’s nutritional health. You can use my code SATURNRETURNS for 15% off your first order at wildnutrition.com. Get your ticket to our Online Workshop: Belonging & Finding Your Tribe here. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and receive more empowering insights and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. My career had never been more successful and yet personally I was like unravelling. I remember asking Prince Harry to come on my my podcast Mad World. I was running the marathon and raised like 60,000 pounds for Heads Together and my book was number one and it was like and everyone was like you're amazing you're amazing and I was like going home and just drinking. Today I am thrilled to be joined by the wonderful Bryony Gordon. For those not familiar with Bryony's work she is a self-described accidental mental health and body positivity advocate. She's a journalist who writes for the Telegraph. She is an author of many books including Mad World which is a book about OCD

and she is a brilliant blend of humor, wit and vulnerability. If I had to describe Bryony in one word it would probably be electric. When she came into my flat I knew what I hoped she would be like but she was so much more and in this conversation we cover some really heavy subjects but she does it in a way that is just filled with humor honestly listening back I was chuckling giggling along even though we're talking about OCD and living with addiction and alcoholism but she is just wonderful in her approach to these subjects I don't think she realizes how wonderful she actually is and this was one of my favorite conversations and why I think this episode is so important is because we do touch

on things that are very hard and often people will message me after listening to the podcast saying I love that you are able to approach heavy things but always inject a lightness and a humor and Bryony does that so much that it's it's wonderful because it's my favorite way of approaching these things and I learned a lot in this conversation about alcoholism, about living with OCD. And the prevailing theme for me in this conversation was around belonging. So I hope that this episode finds you when you need it, whether you are battling with some of these subjects yourself, or living with someone, or have someone in your family that's going through it.

There's going to it there's going to be so much wisdom and comfort in this conversation for you so enjoy brianie welcome to the saturn returns podcast thank you for having me i feel like you've come in like a storm which i'm so happy about because you are exactly the way I thought you would be in the most wonderful way yeah I I'm feeling really mad like I was it's so nice to be here and sitting in your peaceful flat because I've come from this is I mean this is so dreary to to be retelling you this but to even to be putting this on a podcast that i'm living on a house renovation and everyone's like please do tell us about your house renovation it's like hearing people's dreams but i kind of don't realize how

discombobulating it is until i leave the house yeah and i come somewhere else and i'm like oh it's all really chill well it's quite i feel like here's like quite a cocoon so hopefully if you don't mind can i live here until it's finished i'll bring all my stuff around i'm the 10 year old child and my husband you won't mind that will you it's absolutely fine but aside from that like how are you at the moment i'm good i think i'm overwhelmed i try and um i'm really trying to do that thing of like just allowing myself to be how I am without kind of judging in any particular nasty way I'm overwhelmed but I'm alive um which is nice um I've got a book that's about to come out so I'm very nervous about that

but right now in this moment sitting in your living room I feel calmer and for the audience that doesn't know would you be able to explain a little bit in your own words about who you are and what you do yes so um my name is Bryony I'm an alcoholic in recovery uh I um I'm a writer I'm a writer so i started as a journalist um but i'm also through journalism i started sort of 10 15 years ago writing about my own experiences of my own of mental illness um really because i was desperate so i was a feature writer on the telegraph and i was quite successful but behind it i was battling addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder. And when I had my daughter 10 years ago, I started writing about it really.

And so I've sort of become an accidental mental health campaigner, I guess, but also kind of body positivity campaigner. So I love exercise. It's been completely transformative for my mental health um but i'm also like i live in a larger body but i sort of spend a lot of time trying to tell women especially women you know my age in their sort of mid-40s you can do this you can get out there you know exercises for everyone so i've done things like run marathons in my underwear as you do because why not but it's interesting that you you started that with alcoholic do you feel that that's quite a big identity piece for you I I do yeah I do I kind of I feel that if I describe myself I there are lots of people that are really funny about it as a term and they think that's not just who i am i i once interviewed gabble marty who yeah well you refer

to as the santa claus of trauma he is yeah yeah he's like he's just incredible and i he is incredible but i you know i said to him oh as an alcoholic and as an an addict your work is really invaluable and he said you're more than just an addict you know you're a person and that doesn't capture your character and i get that but if i don't wake up every morning and acknowledge that i am an addict and an alcoholic i can't be the rest of me does that make sense yes but would you be able to explain that a little bit okay so so basically if i don't do the work to stay sober i can't do anything else i can't be anything else i can't be a mother i can't be a wife i can't be a journalist i can't be a writer i can't show up

on time and and do this podcast with you you know because probably i'd be dead actually do you think then obviously we both adore gabriel martin all of his work but do you think then obviously we both adore Gabble Matty and all of his work but do you think that that saying that is someone speaking from the privilege of not being an addict I don't think so I think he I think his belief is that addiction is a kind of trauma response yeah and I also get that and I do think I agree with with him I don't I don't necessarily believe that you were born an alcoholic but also the kind of coping mechanism that I have chosen or the way I have chosen to sort of address my alcoholism and when I got sober I you know I was really I was really privileged to be able to go to a rehab you know which is something very few people are able to do because society in the UK government's

not set up to support people with addiction we still see alcoholism and addiction as like a character flaw rather than an illness or a mental illness which is what I think it is and you know as a mental health campaigner I can see that we've come a long way in terms of the way we deal with depression and anxiety but we're still sort of back in the dark ages when it comes to alcoholism and addiction it's very difficult if you are not an alcoholic to understand why someone can't stop drinking yeah or especially when it's damaging the rest of their life yeah relationship and you just think why you continue to do something that's harming you and everyone around you it's actually hard to understand why you're doing it if you're an alcoholic yourself it wasn't in that interview it was

with uh julia samuels and you said at the end a question which was i want to do what's good for me but i need to do what's bad for me or something along those lines and i i got what you meant and is that kind of the feeling of addiction that it's like you actually can't help it i think there's like an element of also you're used to a certain amount like pain is what you're used to you know so i used to think that drinking and taking drugs was a way to numb pain but it was also a really clever way of keeping me in pain if that makes sense and I realize now with having done a lot of work on myself that being in pain was something I was quite used to you know without sounding I mean normalized it but it was like it was what I thought i deserved like i couldn't imagine that

i deserved anything better and i can still now i'm nearly seven years sober at clean and sober you know but there are still other ways it's been a long time since i had a drink or took a drug but there are still other ways i will engage in that slightly addicty behavior like sabotagey behavior yeah and can be creative because you stop one thing then it's like whack-a-mole you're like i didn't see that could be a problem you know and like this book that i that i'm about to bring out mad woman a lot of it is about binge eating you know for me that's a really you know food is a i mean it's the first way any of us learn to control have any control when we're children and our parents give us some broccoli we can like throw it on the floor

you know it's it's the first time we feel powerful and for me food has been you know i didn't need to take drugs and drink to live but you do need to yeah that's why they say it's one of the most complex sort of addictions so to speak because you have to address it three times a day every day for the rest of your life. You can't just cut it out. No, you can't. You can't abstain. And I think that for me, it's the easiest way now that I can sort of self-sabotage and put myself in a place of shame actually is like binging and the shame was also something I presume that you experienced with the alcohol and the drugs it becomes a sort of like

self-fulfilling prophecy yeah and but you feel the shame and then the only way you know to numb the shame is to pick up more drugs or more alcohol or more food and then it's like you get stuck in this sort of cycle of shame because you kick the can down the road but it's like it's worse when you get there yeah it is absolute madness but I think the reason I talk about all of this really openly is because it blew my mind when I realized I wasn't a bad person I was just an ill person who sometimes did bad things because of my illness so if I go right back to how I've you know I ended up realizing I was an alcoholic it was only through writing about OCD which I'd suffered from since a child since childhood and opening up about that that I got to a place where I was like

I'm drinking in a way that isn't normal perhaps and it's only about being it's only by being open about these things that I've sort of been able to get better so I wrote this book uh 10 years ago called Mad Girl which was all about OCD um experiencing my experiences with OCD so you know I'm sure lots of you hear people say oh I'm a bit OCD and they're a bit tidy yeah yeah and they're like you should see my sock drawer I'm like why is it always your sock drawer like I don't have a sock drawer like my husband always jokes I wish you had the good type of OCD but there is no good type you know it's a disorder it's like and it can be a very crippling one it's that i mean it is it's hugely crippling and from childhood from from a very early age how early

so i think i first experienced ocd when i was about 11 and i became convinced that i was dying of aids which so at the time there was this hugely shaming public health campaign warning against HIV and AIDS and I can now look back and think god that was awful that must have been terrible for the gay community you know especially it was it was a really sort of horrible homophobic campaign shaming and very shaming right and there was no reason why as an 11 year old girl why I would have woken up one morning and gone I must have AIDS but the thing I've later realized is OCD is it's very canny it will it will kind of attach to like whatever the public hysteria of the age is

right and I remember waking up one morning I was about 11 12 and I was like I've got AIDS and if I haven't got AIDS I'm going to get it and obsessively just like washing my hands until they ironically started to bleed and I remember like being so terrified that I was going to infect my family I just had this feeling I was like I'm going to die and it was it was kind of around Christmas and I remember thinking I'm never going to have another Christmas again and you were 11 I was 11 12 yeah it was just really bizarre and I then I sort of had to say phrases that I thought could collect control so I you know I'd say I make sure I'd be negative I make sure you know I'd have to but I'd have to say them again and again and I'd be worried I hadn't said them right and this was just to yourself in private yeah so you

didn't tell anyone no and then it was really strange that as quickly as it sort of came on it went away again but then a couple of years later it came back and there was this other real public hysteria which rightfully so about pedophiles and i became convinced i was like maybe you're a serial killing paedophile and you've blanked out in horror. Bear in mind, I was a child myself at the time. As in you blanked out the experiences of doing it? Yeah, yeah.

And I was like, what if you had done this and you don't remember? So it's like these really irrational, intrusive thoughts that just take hold, basically. And you can see why people never spoke, people don't speak about this type of OCD the way I describe OCD now is it's your brain refusing to acknowledge what your eyes can see right so that your hands are clean or the oven is off or the door is locked or the candle is out I used to take my iron to work with me because it's just easier why that you would leave it on yeah the bump in the road is just a speed bumper not a child-shaped bump do you know what i mean

and it's like even though you can see your brain's like but what if so i must be exhausted it's really exhausting um and then there's a sort of subset of ocd which which is kind of broadly speaking referred to as pure o although it's not that's not a fish it's just another form of ocd but it's regarding thoughts so we all have thousands of thoughts a day right we are not all of our thoughts right we're just the people that happen to hear them and we all have intrusive thoughts so i always say this we all have that thought we're at a party someone hands us their baby and it's like what if i just threw your baby on the floor whenever i say that i'm like i really hope do you guys have that thought like no i've never had that thought briny or you know like on the

train they think what if i was to just throw myself in front of the train or push someone or something just things that then make you think you're a bad person for having yeah but most people kind of dismiss the thought you know and go oh clearly i'm not going to do that but someone with ocd will become really distressed by the thought because they can't they think that they're going to do it they think it's a sign they're a bad person right and then they will ruminate on the thought to prove they are not the thought but of course and have to do certain rituals or things to counteract yeah and like neutralize the thoughts think you know and and so that's and it's incredibly common like what i didn't know was it was all over the country nay the western world

there were children who were scared they had aids who were scared that they might be serial killing pedophiles like this is so these are such common forms of OCD but nobody ever talks about them and that presumably creates a lot of or contributes to the feelings of shame yeah and the isolation within it because you're thinking I'm the only one that thinks these thoughts exactly I'm the worst person in the world yeah and I sort of had worked out that there was this thing called OCD and that all of my symptoms sort of matched it but they call it the doubting disease so it was like what if this is all a massive double bluff and I'm just using OCD as an excuse and I'm a terrible person and you know also in the 90s you know my mum did take me to the doctor because it was clear that something was up and I did get put on antidepressants when I was 17 then I got put on this like waiting list

for CBT and I don't know if I even ever got to the top of it do you know what I mean there was just nothing really available but the thing I did find that really helped was alcohol and then later cocaine you know that helped me to carry on drinking the alcohol without blacking out, basically. So the two things were really quite interconnected. Yeah, but it wasn't until my 30s that I really worked that out. You know, it's kind of incredible how our brains can sort of function in denial for very long periods yeah totally but I so I somehow managed to sort of carve out a life of of relative success you know and I and this was the other thing that I didn't look like someone who was mad quote unquote you know I wasn't rocking back and

forth in a padded cell or whatever so I was kind of like you're not mentally ill you're just a bad person Bryony and then when I had my daughter in 2013 2014 and the OCD started to sort of cling on maybe you've hurt her but I was like right I've got to do something about this because this is not this is not just affecting me now this is affecting the most precious wonderful thing in my life and I remember sitting at the offices of the telegraph and i'm like i've got to write about this i've got to write about this because if i put it down in black and white this type of ocd i have and then they print it either the police will come and take me away and then but then at least it's done it's done which must have been terrifying yeah but i was

like in a way i'm like it's done like i've called myself out or they won't and maybe people that also have this type of oct will get ocd will get in touch and then and it was the latter and i'll know that i'm i'm not i'm not bad or i'm not mad or i am mad but i'm not bad kind of thing and yeah and and and the latter it was incredible looking back that the telegraph published this thing really but anyway they know at the time no no latter, it was incredible looking back that the Telegraph published this thing, really. Did they know at the time? No. And it was incredible because hundreds, thousands of people got in touch saying, me too, if not OCD, then some other form of mental illness.

And how did that feel? It was such a pivotal moment in my you know without sounding cheesy like journey to healing because i always say this the thing that all mental health issues have in common is that they work by lying to you so from sort of anxiety through to psychosis and beyond they work by lying to you they tell you you're a freak they tell you that you're alone and they tell you that nobody's going to understand what you're going through. And that's just not true. Like not only does someone understand what you're going through,

someone is going through what you're going through right now. You know, I really hope someone right now is watching or listening to this podcast and going, oh my God, that's what I have. That's what I have. Because that's the moment. You're not cured obviously but it's the beginning of your road to recovery it was writing about OCD that got me better you know immersed me accidentally in the mental health community and you know out of

desperation I remember I started writing Mad Girl which was all OCD. And I remember someone saying to me, we can't put this stuff in about worrying that you're a paedophile. And I was like, well, if I can't put this in, I can't write this book. Because this is what, you know, this is what it's like for people. And I just really felt this sense of like, I need to break through this. I really need to break through this. And I really needed to connect with other people who were like me. And also for your own cathartic experience to

shine a light on the things that you'd kept hidden for so long yeah and it was like a revelation to me that there really were other people out there who felt this and so many people and I remember like obviously writing about mental illness doesn't make you feel great and I sort of forced myself out for a run and I remember I was running around my local common and I was listening to this podcast about this writer called Carson McCullers who she was an American writer and she wrote this beautiful book called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter she tried to kill herself many times but she eventually died of alcoholism I think in her 50s but on this documentary they had found this kind of archive audio footage of her and she said sometimes it feels like everyone is part of a we except for me and I stopped in my tracks I was

like that is what mental illness feels like and I sort of looked around Clapham Common and I saw like people playing football together or women pushing buggies together and the really strange people doing like military fitness together and I was like there's some you know something for all these people why is there nothing for people with mental health issues you know we know one in four people will experience a mental health issue each year we know that movement and getting outside is one of the best things for it like why why is there nothing so i set up this thing called Mental Health Mates, which was literally like, I just went on Twitter and was like, come and meet me for a walk in Hyde Park. And my husband was like, what if a load of nutters show up? And I'm like, that's the point.

And this was like, this is how, you know, and it was through that. And now Mental Health Mates is like, all over the country. There's like 150 walks around the country. You know, it's gone nearly 10 years on it's beyond my wildest dreams it's a huge peer support network but it all started with this desperate need to sort of connect with other people and to belong me yeah and then and then through that i sort of started meeting people in the mental health community doing all sorts of stuff and just realizing i'm like the way i drink drink isn't normal, you know, isn't healthy, isn't, you know, and through that. And then, you know, taking myself to rehab because it was, it became like, I remember Mad Girl came out in 2016, did really well.

And then I remember being invited in 2016 to the launch of this campaign called Heads Together which was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge now Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince Harry it was their mental health campaign because I'd been writing about it they invited me along to the launch and found myself offering to do the London Marathon and there was this really strange you talk about Saturn returns and the kind of moments where change is like this really strange moment where my career had never been like more successful. And yet personally, I was like unraveling. I remember asking Prince Harry to come on my podcast, Mad World. Prince Harry to come on my my podcast Mad World and I don't know if you remember when he spoke for the first time about all of his mental health issues in regards to his mum and that was

with me and it was like insane and I was running the marathon and raised like 60,000 pounds for Heads Together and my book was number one and it was like and everyone was like you're amazing you're amazing and i was like going home and just drinking you know and and so i looked like oh look at this girl she's like she's battled all her mental health issues but in a way i trust all that timing and i trust because i knew i was like if you don't deal with this you're going to lose all of this what because it's the sort of the self-sabotaging yeah eventually gone it was like i was like you know i'd always drank like that it wasn't like but if you don't mind me asking drank like what so my idea of an alcoholic was old man park bench paper bag drinking from you know from morning till night right and i was like i'm not an alcoholic i'm

a mom i i do reformer pilates i I'm running a marathon, you know, like, I don't drink all day. I don't wake up and think I really want to drink. In fact, most mornings I wake up and go, Oh my god, I'm never drinking again. Like I feel the shame. I was very much a binge drinker. But I would, even though I wasn't drinking all day, I was thinking about drinking all day. So really, my life was very much balanced around when i could have a drink so like if i had a big work thing on a tuesday morning i was like well i can't drink on monday night not that i wouldn't do you know what i mean so sunday night i'm gonna have to drink and then it was like i had all these rules i can start drinking as soon as my daughter

is in bed and it was like i had all these rules and then cocaine when did that come into the mix well cocaine had been like a massive feature of my 20s and my early 30s because it's a big thing that people don't talk about like yeah it goes hand in hand with drinking and i know i feel so old when i talk about drugs now because i hear young people and they're like we've been microdosing mushrooms and i'm like i don't know what you're talking about. I've got no idea what you're talking about. But, you know, when I was young, you'd go to the pub and you'd drink loads

and you'd take loads of coke so you could carry on drinking. You know, it's a very binge drinky drug. And when I went into rehab, I was like, I'm not an alcoholic I'm a drug addict because that sounds cool right I was like I can't be a communal garden alcoholic and I realized quite soon I was like no you you are just a communal garden alcoholic and you only took drugs so you could carry on drinking because I think it's quite hard for people to distinguish which you know the the one is that because they kind of go so hand in hand it doesn't

matter like really i remember like lots of people come in and go drugs are my problem not alcohol and then people say okay so it won't be a problem giving up alcohol then that's not your problem when they go oh shit you know that is a problem like but i think one's often the gateway to the other yeah yeah yeah so my drinking was on the face of it it was very jolly and I wasn't like an angry drunk and I didn't I always took it a bit further than everyone I was always the last person standing and it was really interesting because in my 20s I could just tell myself that I was a party girl yeah and also everyone loves the last woman standing do you know what i mean so it's like it becomes a thing that you kind of feel

liked because you make people feel better about their own drinking yeah and actually you know you asked earlier like why do you think there's still such a stigma attached to our views of like alcoholism and addiction and i think it's because people don't want to they don't want to hear it because they like their glass of wine in the evening and I'm always like your glass of wine in the evening is fine I'm not anti-alcohol at all I'm just anti us not acknowledging how harmful it is to some people I mean some people can tell because there are signs but you can have one person drinking a certain amount at a party and another person and one person will have an issue with it that they can't process it in the same way or that something in their brain is like right

i want to go to oblivion right now and the other person is like i only ever wanted to go to oblivion like even now like the extreme yeah like if i was to pick up a drink today if i was to say let's go to the pub you know back in your old horn it would be yeah it would be like it would be oblivion why do you think that is because i'm an alcoholic but what's the sort of desire to go to oblivion is it that sort of feeling of wanting to escape yes yeah absolutely it's like this is a ticket kind of out of what i'm experiencing yeah it's an easy way to kind of black out, blank out. So you were speaking about how, you know, you were having all this external success and yet unraveling sort of behind closed doors.

What was the turning point where you were like, I'm actually going to go and sort this out? We like to have those sort of neat narratives where it's like there's a moment where you go i can't do this it was a series of moments yeah and like in a way it was like millions of moments over a period of decades you know like never again never again never again um that all added up to one where it just so happened that on a saturday morning in august 2017 i'd been on a bender and i had come home at 10 in the morning which is not what a 37 year old mother of a four year old should really be doing you know but it wasn't like massively worse than some other things that had happened when i was like i can't do this anymore if I if I don't stop drinking I'm gonna

die I'm either gonna die because I fall off a balcony or something pissed you know what I mean or I'm gonna die because I choose to kill myself or kind of almost worse of all I'm gonna die carry on living in this kind of groundhog day existence and it was like i can't do this anymore i'm out i'm i'm an alcoholic i have a problem here it was like i surrender take me you know i really believe in the kind of timing i'd started to sort of meet people who were sober you know who had just by coincidence well yeah like i trust that yeah you've got i trust the universe kind of brings people like spirit guides people just kind of come into your path and they offer a bit of a lantern when there's otherwise darkness and you're like okay maybe i should follow that

yeah like there were there's like two or three people that were just really kind to me and i couldn't believe that and they were like decades sober you know and they take me to a 12-step meeting or something you know so I knew kind of a bit of the language of recovery and I knew and I'd been to my first 12-step meeting in like 2015 or something so a couple of years before I'd tried a few times and but I wasn't ready for it I remember thinking I was the worst person in the world like the worst mum in the world because who does this like I genuinely thought that pregnancy was going to do for me what like rehab does for everyone else which I've heard for some people it does

it does so like I remember someone saying oh some people do just mature out you know but I wasn't one of those people and it was a real like shock to me when two weeks after my daughter was born i just all i wanted to do like as soon as i was physically well enough from an emergency c-section all i wanted to do was drink and take drugs really um and it was such a shock to me because i was like how can you want to do this you have this beautiful little thing and you have this life you've always wanted and yet still you can't stop yourself like why are you such a fucking dickhead I had to bury that shame deep down and all sorts of justifications like of course I you know I'm a better mum because in the evening I have a drink or 18. And you know, the truth is,

is that if I wasn't middle class and I wasn't, you know, a broad sheet newspaper journalist, maybe I wouldn't have my, you know, wouldn't have kept my child. But I think about that every day. And it's important that I think about that. You know, I've been really lucky. I genuinely think I'm lucky to be an alcoholic. I'm lucky to have been able to go through all of these things and to still be alive and to be here on a dark winter morning talking to you is like such a huge privilege. And the least I can do is talk about these things in the hope that other people will kind of resonate with other people and they might be able to go and get some help because we all deserve we all deserve like that support and yeah you've mentioned about how it was a series of I guess rock bottoms it wasn't necessarily one moment but it's quite hard if you

have someone in your life that you're observing kind of going down that track how much do you think other people can kind of intercept or play a role in them getting to that stage or do you think it really has to come from the individual it has to come from the individual you can try and stage interventions and obviously if that's what you feel you need to do then one should do it but i think it's really important to know that addiction is so powerful I don't know why some people get it some people can get sober and others can't I think it's another reason why people find it an uncomfortable subject perhaps because people don't entirely understand it and I think uh Matthew Perry's recent I was watching an interview

with him and he was talking about his addiction and how it was from when he first tasted alcohol that he knew immediately it was having a different effect on him to other people. And I found that quite interesting because then of course we talked about Gabo Mate saying that it's connected with trauma. And I'm sure there are so many layers

to why certain people are impacted by it and why others aren't. I also think it's really interesting when we talk about Matthew Perry. And certainly I've noticed in that narrative of, oh, had he relapsed? My feeling in that is like, so what if he, you know, like, obviously, does it make it less of a tragedy? Yeah. That this man is dead? You know, like, I think that that's the subtle underlying yeah and i think we've really got to get past this actually with so many different

mental illnesses that sometimes death is unfortunately the end point of some mental illnesses in the same way that it is some physical illnesses and that's a really i i feel like quite weird saying that you know because people always think that it's a choice yeah and I think there's this kind of like obviously it would be wonderful for us to live in a world where nobody died from addiction or no one took their lives by you know by suicide or you know but I think it's really important that loved ones of people know that we're only in control of ourselves and even like and arguably not very much in control of ourselves. You know, we're all running off like little systems that were ingrained in us before we turned like four, do you know what I mean? Or seven months. I don't know what that's, you know.

And I think that if there are people listening who have lost loved ones to suicide or feel that they are losing loved ones to addiction, you know, there's that pain. And then there's the pain on top of it of like, why can't I help this person feel better? In that respect, it's really important to be able to say that like often with addiction, it doesn't mean that the person, the addict loves you any less. It doesn't mean that the person, the addict loves you any less. Because someone has taken their life, it doesn't mean that they love you less or that you were less. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That there was something wrong in your relationship or, you know, like if you were a bit more this or you were a bit more that, you might have been able to save them. Yeah.

Because I think that's what people think. Yeah. They're like, if I loved them more or if they'd love me more you know and children of alcoholics think if i was you know maybe if i was a little bit more easy and i was less me and i was less demanding then maybe dad would have been there more and it's like no babes that's nothing to do with you it's you know like dad loved you as much as dad was able to love anyone do you know what i mean but dad was an alcoholic and that's an you know it's it's an illness that robs people of you know some cases like common human decency what do you think some of the steps we can take sort of collectively as a society to alleviate some of these feelings or to bring about more awareness to these subjects I think we live currently in a very judgmental now

and i think that is i sort of feel like we're living in a time you know like sort of incredible judgment social media and mainstream media as well it's vicious yeah really vicious um and it all sort of feeds each other and i and i really do think that um less judgment is is the way you know when i'm when i'm judging someone i'm like oh dear i've got to go and do some work on myself today you know when i find myself going that person is such i'm like oh brian you need to go to an aa meeting or you need to you have the awareness to know that it's more about you than it is the other person but most people seem to not have that well i don't know i mean i think all i can do is talk about my experiences and in the hope that that encourages other people to talk about their experiences well it's like you say it's bringing it into the light because you know from your own experience doing it on such a huge scale how

healing that was and how helpful that was that then if that has a knock-on effect and they can then do the same it's a sort of like trickles down shame dies when you expose it to the light you know that's the truth the way we live our lives isn't conducive to mental well-being like of course there's a shitload of addiction and alcoholism and mental illness out there because we live in this sort of society that what it values most is kind of money and status and all of those things and so yeah of course there's lots of unhappy people out there you know i think this is really interesting and i've tried to explore this in mad woman is basically that actually the thing i've come to realize in all the years i've been writing about mental illness and and doing the work on

myself as well is that actually i'm not mad i'm perfectly fucking sane and the way that I have responded to an insane environment in my life was really appropriate OCD depression anxiety all of these things they feel horrible but they are often very appropriate responses I always remember going on this retreat about five or six years ago and this amazing woman called donna lancaster who is donna she's been on the podcast she's heaven and i remember her saying to me you can you can so why is this the bridge yes and i i always called my ocd jareth the goblin king i don't know if you ever saw labyrinth like maybe you were a bit many years ago but yeah yeah and i always thought and jareth the goblin king was like david bowie and the silver you know and evil but ever so slightly enticing and that to me really

summed up ocd so i kind of gave it this name and um and i remember donna saying to me you can thank jareth and let him go now he doesn't he's not helping you anymore and i thought helping me what do you mean helping me like how has ocd helped me and and i realized that it was it was like an incredibly clever mechanism of my brain trying to protect me to try to keep me safe yeah it was like a skewed coping mechanism and that's what all of these things are i've experienced this in terms of i've been through a really early menopause and i've been just really shocked by how little we know about the link between hormones and and mental health and you know the only reason

i found out that i was going through an early menopause was because i had a complete breakdown and then it turned out my mom had gone through menopause at 40 she just hadn't told me she just hadn't thought to give me this information and and also my grandmother had gone through it at 43 my cousin had you know it was like what and we sort of pieced these things together and then realizing that the first time i got a very bad flare-up of ocd was just before my first period and you know like i don't think i don't think by all means that the hormones are the reason i've experienced mental illness but the fact that they would never looked at or even considered yeah but they certainly make it a lot harder

to deal with the mental illness that i think i was probably always you know predisposed to anyway but um when i was writing this book and i was i was thinking about about menopause and this process that and how just the the health gap the gender you know never mind the gender pay gap the gender health gap it's just so huge and the way I was like treated as I was trying to work out what the hell was wrong with me by the doctors yeah I was having these mad palpitations and I was fainting and I had it was really odd and and i was sort of being treated like i was mad i was mad yeah and it was all in my mind you know and um and it also you hear that with the fact that you had ocd you're like they're not going to believe me this is like yeah and this

is and this all culminates in actually earlier this year i i ended up so i was like i thought the palpitations were stress related or menopause related and i and then i thought i fainted but my husband was like you fainted one too many times you're going to the doctor and i got an ecg and and while i was having the ecg these palpitations went kind of struck up which i was very lucky that that happened because they kind of came every two weeks whatever and the person doing it was like are you okay and i was like i'm fine and they're like no you're not you're an atrial fibrillation we need to get you to hospital and it turned out that all along i've had this like arrhythmia this heart condition you know that i've that's just always been dismissed it's like oh

she's just being a hysterical woman you know or it's menopause or it's you know but like so and i was like so you're telling me this is they're like yeah this is a this is a proper heart condition but i also believe i really do believe it was like my body's way of going are you gonna look after yourself are you gonna listen to yourself you know i i really think life for me as a woman has been about learning not to dismiss myself that's what it's been and actually for me menopause and i and i and i sort of talk about this as well in the book about how there's a magic to menopause and all the shit stuff that comes up for you like some people sail through it great but the people you know the stuff that came up for me was very much i found my brain going are you going to deal with this

now briny because if you don't deal with this now you're never going to be free if you don't stop dismissing yourself now this is what your life's going to be for the rest of your life like do you want to live a happy healthy content next 40 years in your power as you deserve to? Like, well, then you're going to have to confront this stuff. And so I'm going to bring it all up for you. Do you know what I mean? Which probably is quite common for a lot of people going through it. Yeah.

And I do think there's like a witchy magic to it. And I do believe that that is what... Talk about the witchy magic. That's very on brand for this podcast. Well, I know. Well, I've always been very cynical. Very cynical. Like when people talk about woo-woo things, I'm like, stop. Stop. And now I'm like all about the woo. Like, I'm like the way of the woo is the way forward, you know. Possibly that's because as a woman, it's like, oh, the way society is set up is it's all been designed by men. Right. And for me, there's an immense comfort in going to that sort of more spiritual side. It feels more kind of feminine, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. More set up for the way that I would like to live my life. You know, not harrying around at 80 miles an hour. yeah yeah it's more set up for the way that i would like to live my life you know not herring around at 80 miles an hour well even the nine to five work you know week is structured towards a man's hormonal cycle it doesn't work it does not work so the menopause for me has been a time to really explore that like well what does work for me though do you know what i mean instead of dismissing myself and going which society often you know does for women yeah and going but yeah but hang on you you you're you're a grown woman now briny you're 43 you can live your life however you damn well want you know and that what are some of the things that you have done uh just just say no

like that doesn't sound that mind-blowing but no it does no i think a lot of people struggle with saying just putting down boundaries and going no i don't want to do that no that doesn't work for me and people go what i'm like bye like not abandoning my needs to try and meet someone else's that to me has been like the really key piece of the last few years of my life i really learning to trust myself has been the sort of the word yeah and trusting your intuition yeah and it's still really hard i found it really hard you know i found it really hard not to people please and not to kind of you know i find it really hard not to people please and not to kind of not to obsessively feel the need to be good and also because i wanted to ask you about this one

a bit earlier when we were talking about the ocd and this this really big morality piece that seems to come with it and i've spoken to other people one of my dearest friends suffers from it very badly and it's this I mean we all have an idea of right and wrong we want to be good people but for people that struggle with OCD it seems to be this huge humongous thing that becomes such a burden why do you think that is it is about it is a way I think when when you have ocd you create all of these kind of very extreme rules so that you don't you don't veer from your your line of good but where does the where does that stem from i think it's about feeling for whatever reason

in your formative years feeling like you're bad or you're in the way or you're responsible for other people's feelings i don't know like for me it was like i i've always had this kind of core belief that i'm just by existing i'm bad and i'm getting in people's ways and i'm responsible for everyone being in a bad mood and all of that and so ocd i think was a very good way you know to check to check that I'm being good, to check that I'm not, I'm not in any way ruining anyone else by existing. And what I've had to do is learn that it's actually okay if I am bad sometimes. And it is okay if people are cross with me. And it is really okay if I fuck up and I make mistakes, you it doesn't make you any less that's been the powerful thing i live in terror do you get this kind of i live in terror of people being cross with me am i in trouble like the fuck you're 43 you're good as shit do you know what i

mean like but it's like i'm back at school and and you feel like you are at school you feel like a child and then and then and then what everyone wants to do is say no of course people aren't cross with you but actually what i need to learn is that maybe people are and that's okay that is okay the world keeps on spinning like i very much i will underplay the positive effect i have on people and really overplay the negative effect like if someone says to me oh your book really helped i'm like dismiss that but if someone says to me um so book really helped i'm like dismiss that but if someone says to me um so you'll hyper focus on the negative basically yeah yeah i can do that as well yeah yeah someone says to me of this thing in your book like the fact that there was a full stop

missing from that sentence i'll be like oh my god well i think it goes back to you know the coping mechanism and i was thinking about this actually this morning, how we use putting ourselves down to drive us forward. But actually, we could pick ourselves up and be like, do you know what I mean? It would be more motivating. It would also be much easier. It would be so much easier.

And I think we all live under this mistaken belief that we have to be really hard on ourselves. And that is the only way we're going to improve and get better and it's like if we just say actually you're really cool you don't need to get better we're like oh my god we're all just gonna collapse and die and never get anything done but i've never thought about that before this morning i was like what if i actually felt like oh you know I'm doing things right like things are going well would I just dissolve into a puddle oh yeah my I actually just I always felt like I had to feel bad like it was almost like a preemptive thing like if I feel bad now then I'm there before anyone else to make me feel bad and I don't know some way I'm going to control the feeling of badness but also I can say

no it's okay you don't have to be cross with me i already feel terrible yeah now i'm very much into that thing of like always reach for the good feeling the thing that makes you feel better the thing that is going to make you feel happier that's not necessarily like a drug or a drink or a binge that isn't going to make me feel better in the long run because like everything i do has to nourish my soul. And I don't care if I sound like a wanker for saying that. Right. I want to nourish my soul. And I want to kind of just like, just, just put my ego in place. You know, and by ego, you know what I mean by that.

I don't mean like I'm the big I am. Like that bit that wants to, that the kind of, it's almost like the inner child in me that wants to go, but nobody loves you, Bryony. You need to prove yourself. I go, shh, shh, shh, sh to prove yourself you know and i want to nourish my soul what is gonna what is gonna make me feel better and what is gonna make that little child feel better i guess you know what i mean i don't know i'm not articulating myself at all well but it's also reaching for the thing it's that sort of pain pleasure it's like sometimes you might not want to go for the run because it feels like, oh God, what would I want to go for? But you know you're going to feel better

and you're going to do something for yourself that sort of fills you up rather than reaching for something that momentarily alleviates a discomfort but actually causes you more long-term pain. I do think exercise is like hands down the best way. But I think people always think that it's too simple. I, myself included, when I'm like in a bad headspace,

I'm like, I actually haven't done any exercise this week. Surely this can't work. And then I'm like, that can't be the reason. This is way more complicated. And then, you know, you go for a run or you do whatever class and you immediately feel better. Yeah.

My default setting is, it's like oh my god everything is terrible and the world is about to end that is my default setting right and i wake up and it's like oh my god like i wake up in terror so what i need to do every morning is just as quickly as possible flip that reset it and like prove it wrong what are the reset tools i just get up and i go to crossfit or i go for a run or something like that or uh you know i say the serenity prayer that's powerful you just look up at the sky and go let me be of use today you know just let just remove all those things that just that want to hold me back i do also think now the terror i wake up in it's the residuals of a contract i must have made

invisibly with no with i don't know who do you know what i mean when i was a kid of like you you have to make yourself a bit smaller you have to be you have to be in a bit of like you have to be in a bit of misery the whole time do you know what I mean you have to be stressed because otherwise you know like what yeah like also what would what like if you were just content and happy and going with the flow like the world would end I don't know what you think is gonna happen and and now I'm a bit more like no just go out and dazzle just go out like i used to think that i was too loud and i still think that sometimes i'm too you know people think about like oh i'm not enough i'm like i'm too much you know and i need to just be a bit smaller and a bit less a bit less like that and i sometimes

wonder if that feeling of terror is like my way of stopping myself from dazzling going and being like me on full wattage or whatever and now i'm like no briny it is your you just got to go and be on full full yeah full brightness 100 just got to go and do that like and all that other stuff stopping you is you know you're not a wallflower briny so just accept it and almost i think that was such a beautiful way of putting it it's the residuals of this sort of unconscious or subconscious contract that you made with someone or some part of you with anyone i mean i made it with like but i i think a lot of people will resonate with that because when they still when they've done a lot of healing work and they've changed their entire lifestyle and they've done it for quite a long time and they still have these things come up it can make them feel bad about themselves again but actually

knowing that having more compassion for yourself because like you say it's just the residue of that and over time it will just kind of dissipate a little bit more and more and the final thing i wanted to ask you about because i feel that it's quite a big theme for what we've discussed but also because I heard you speak about it on someone else's show about this sort of concept of belonging and feeling part of community and I feel that that's something that has been slightly lacking in today's world for many people whilst we're super connected I don't think I think people often feel like you say other I think you know we feel really connected but actually we've never been more disconnected because we're not like meeting up and you know actually connecting like they're

looking in the whites of each other's eyes and yeah feeling each other's heartbeats and that sounds a bit weird like i don't go and go like let me fill your heart you've gone full woo do you know what i mean like connection is the opposite of addiction and how does that look for you on a sort of day-to-day so i instinctively want to isolate and disconnect you know and that's and that is when jareth is in charge and it was really interesting actually because and i think you know this is really important i think the pandemic we kind of is like oh it's done it's over it's but the effect of living like that i think that's going to take years for us all to get over. So for me, I don't instinctively find it easy to connect.

I find it really hard, which is why I have to force myself to do it. Because you'll talk yourself out of it. Yeah, I guess I know this may sound really kind of ridiculous, but I'm quite an anxious person. Like I have to really stay connected. It's the same as like the working out thing, right? It's like when I'm sort of spiraling and then I think I haven't seen anyone in a week I haven't actually been out you know like just just going outside and going to like the the corner shop and like chat or going to Sainsbury's and just chatting to the cashier and

they'll be like are you okay why are you talking to me uh for me so um i love crossfit that's like a real community and 12-step meetings as well that's really important for me and then the communities you've created online as well well yeah i mean like yeah so all of that sort of checking in i have to be quite careful with social media because i can use it in a slightly kind of addictive way yeah like it you know you can see how many people like unfollowed you in a day and i'm like oh my god it's because i'm a terrible human you know my brain will just go jarrus will jump on it and go come on come on look how many people look 57 people hate you it's like the bots like who cares like um so i have to be quite careful it's all a

bit of a tightrope i think we're all kind of learning at the same time you know percent you know i can see people consciously choosing to kind of block out their social media a bit more and do things that are a bit a bit more sort of mindful or um i don't know like i'm not ever going to go on tiktok no i am not i've not done it yet i don't think you can no but there was i saw that great there's a great interview with adele when her last album came out and she was talking about how the rival companies were saying to her you know you've got to get on tiktok you've got to get on tiktok you know and and you know you've got to like appeal to the tiktok generation and she was like that's not my generation she's like why what what about

the people that aren't on tiktok who are like my people like women in their 30s and their 40s who you know don't want to be on tiktok yeah i don't want to be on tiktok i haven't got enough time what is about staying true to yourself isn't? And finding the things that work for you. Yeah. As a final thing, I mean, it's always quite a broad thing to say, but is there anything that you'd like to share as like a sort of final note? Okay, the thing I always like to share, because it's really important, is it's like a little biology lesson.

You may have heard it and you do it before, but like you are like just to let you all know that we are all miracles the chances of any of us existing like one in 10 trillion billion zillion like there's more chance of like dinosaurs roaming the earth again so like when your biological parents like had it off if your dad had said something to annoy your mum you know or the someone had knocked on the door or whatever and they'd ended up having sex five seconds later you could be like a completely different person that's so weird so like millions of sperm are released into the woman's body and the woman's body is like i don't want any old sperm so it releases acid and the acid kills the weak sperm like duh so all those versions of you gone

yeah and then the sperm has to like go on like an uphill iron man sperm wise yeah and get through like membranes that are like your eye punching through those walls okay lots of them get tired so all of those versions of you gone and then they get to the fallopian tubes right and they're like am i going to go left am i going to go right is there even an egg in either of them because there's only an egg there for like one calendar day of each month right half of them go i'm going to go right all those versions of you gone right so the ones that get and they're like oh my god there is an egg there and they go towards the egg and then the egg is surrounded by white blood cells which act like nightclub bouncers like you're not coming in so the one that that fertilizes the egg and gets through is like fuck me and then well yeah and then and then

like not only you know as we know not all fertilized eggs go the distance you know the day we are born is the most dangerous day of our lives often doctors say and then every day after that you've stayed alive to this point listening to this podcast me wanging on about god knows what like you are a fucking miracle like the universe wants you here exactly as you doesn't want you as kim kardashian or i don't know like beyonce or taylor swift the universe wants you as you right so just go and dazzle and be unapologetically you because you're a miracle i love that i was not expecting that but that was fantastic i have a pep talk i give myself each day like wake up in the morning my daughter's like oh not this again mom but it's true i think we take for granted the fact we're here and we shouldn't well thank you

brianie for joining me on the saturn returns podcast i've loved this conversation thank you for having me thank you for listening to this episode with me and brianie i hope that you enjoyed it and as i touched on at the beginning you know this this idea of belonging we spoke about gabriel martin he talks a lot about authenticity versus belonging and actually her journey with alcoholism and OCD I feel that there is this really strong need in all of us to feel like we belong and I love that she's created that in such a powerful way with the meetups that she does you know helping people that are struggling on their own journey and I guess that's what we're really trying to create here at Saturn Returns it's about having those really raw and honest conversations and realizing that you know the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself that are circulating in your mind that you feel you're the only one that's experiencing

and therefore you have this internalized shame the reality is there are so many other people that are thinking and feeling the exact same way and that alleviates so much of the pressure so much of the isolation and you realize that we're all we're all sort of flawed similar beings trying to navigate this strange thing called life and if you can go through it with an open mind and an open heart and humor it's just a wonderful thing so thank you again Bryony for being so vulnerable and talking so eloquently about these about these subjects that are tough for us to to talk about sometimes and for those that have been affected by it and it's helped in some way I would love it if you could share it with someone you think might

find it useful or just share it online on social media because that really helps us get discovered by new people and thank you so much for listening and as always remember you are not alone sending lots of love