Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Abi Feltham - Wherever you go, there you are.

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Abi Feltham grew up learning how to suppress her emotions, a habit that would persist for many years. She never enjoyed school and simply wanted to follow rock bands and party. Throughout her childhood, she never felt like she fit in with her peers, but she had many friends. Her first drink, which she had at the age of 13, made her feel normal, and she felt more connected to the world than ever before. After travelling the world for a decade, she experienced what some might call rock bottom and returned home to the UK. Abi's story is a reminder that no matter where you go, there you are. This is her story on the Sober Motivation Podcast. ------------------ Follow Abi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abi.feltham/ Check out Abi's Journal:  Click HERE Follow Sober Motivation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation/ Download Your SoberBuddy App: https://soberbuddy.app.link/motivation More information on Soberlink: www.soberlink.com/recover

Welcome to Season 3 of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week is my guests and I share incredible, inspiring, and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. Abby grew up learning how to suppress her emotions, a habit that would persist for many years. She never enjoyed school and simply wanted to follow rock bands and party. Throughout her childhood, she never felt like she fit in with her peers,

but she did have a lot of friends. Her first drink when she had at the age of 13 made her feel normal and she felt more connected with the world than ever before. After traveling the world for a decade, she experienced what some might call a rock bottom and returned home to the UK. Abby's story is a reminder

that no matter where you go, there you are. This is Abby's story on the sober motivation podcast. Welcome back to another episode, everyone. it's Brad here, if you can't tell from the intro. I'm a little bit under the weather, but I wanted to get this episode out. Before the weekend came, this is incredible. You're really going to enjoy it.

And look, if you need some more connection and some more community on your sober journey, as always, be sure to check us out on the Sober Buddy app, your SoberBuddy.com, or search your app store for Sober Buddy, join one or all 10 of the support groups each week. Hope to see you there soon.

Getting Sober is a lifestyle change. and sometimes a little technology can help. Imagine a breathalyzer that works like a habit tracker for sobriety. Soberlink helps you replace bad habits with healthy ones. Weighing less than a pound than as compact as a sunglass case, sober link devices have built-in facial recognition, tampered detection, and advanced reporting, which is just another way of saying it'll keep you honest. On top of all that, results are sent instantly to love ones to help you stay accountable.

Go after your goals. Visit soberlink.com slash recover to sign up and receive. see $50 off your device today. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got my friend Abby with us. How are you? Good, thanks. How are you doing?

I'm well. I'm well. Thank you for jumping on here and joining. To share your story on the podcast, I've obviously been following you on Instagram for years now and I love everything that you do. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, of course. So how we start every episode is what was it like for you growing up? Well, I grew up in Berkshire in the southeast of England, and I grew up in like a sort of small town. It was a village, basically. There was about 15,000 people who lived there. And I didn't have the best start in life growing up. My first memory, well, just to get real, you know, deep and dark right at the beginning. But my first memory was my father committing suicide, which really really.

really set the tone like my entire childhood and then into adulthood. So that was like a pretty like traumatic start in life. And then that had a massive ripple effect as it does. Whenever anyone takes their own life, but in my case, a parent, it had a huge ripple effect onto my brothers and my sister and my mum. So we had quite a mutual, too, impuguous upbringing. It was very rocky.

But we never really. dealt with the loss. So I learned very early in life to escape your emotions. The way you deal with a feeling is to brush it under the carpet, get rid of it. That's how you do it. So when my dad died, all of his pictures came off the walls. It was pretty much like, okay, that happened. We don't talk about this person anymore. So growing up, we never spoke about him. To this day, I couldn't tell you when his birthday is. I don't even know the exact date of when he died. It was all kind of like, Okay, this person was here and now he's gone. So we deal with that.

We never visited his grave. So it's never like anything like, oh, your dad would be so proud or talking about who he was as a person. It was just a giant chunk of my identity that was gone. But then for my mother, who was left with four children, only a single parent's income, you know, is very, very difficult for her. So she really struggled to bring us kids up.

So it's very, very rocky. But I think, you know, dealing with loss is very difficult. I mean, as a family, I feel like the kind of lessons that we were taught from that experience or ones that were even more damaging. Like I said, it was when something happens, you don't address it, you don't process it, you just try and block it out, which is pretty much how I turned to drugs and alcohol. Yeah, I hear you on that. Wow, that's a lot, yeah.

if that's what you're learning and that's what you're seeing, when we're kids, there's different ways we do that, right? It's not necessarily when we're five, six. For me, anyway, when I was five or six, I wasn't drinking or doing drugs, but I was definitely, I didn't have anything like that happened, but I was definitely already seasoned at avoiding the way I felt. When I look back at it now through the recovery, I'm like, I was just destined for a path to find a way out.

And then when I hit drugs and alcohol, I was like, oh, my goodness, like, now everything makes complete sense. How old were you when that happened? When my dad died, I was four or just about to turn four. Yeah. Wow. And you have three siblings too. So yeah, and your mom holding down the fort, doing her best to do that. Yeah. That's a lot, right? Yeah. Yeah, it really was. My goodness. And where do you go from here? How did things look like for you when you started school? Like, were you plugged in and did you enjoy school at all? No, absolutely not. I hated it. It was a waste of time. the point. Same. Yeah. All my report cards say that like, you know, Abigail shows promise or she has so much potential, but she just doesn't put in the work and stuff. It's like, no, I didn't put in

the work, because I didn't care. Like, studies were something I just wasn't interested in. Now as an adult, like, I really like learning, actually. And I would do anything to have like all this free education. But as a kid, I was like, this is stupid. I could be going out and having adventures. I could be skateboarding. I could be doing anything. But, like going to school. My experience at school, although I had a lot of friends, I was quite popular at school. I was basically friends with everyone, all the different like little clips there were. I was friends with everyone.

But I never felt the same. Like I never felt like I'd fit in. I kind of masked quite a lot as a kid. And it was true. Like I felt there was a kind of complicated darkness in me that other kids, it couldn't relate to. I had what was going on at a home, like the environment. There was a lot of alcohol in my childhood. I wasn't drinking, but the people around me were drinking and there was quite a lot of neglect. There was a very aggressive, unloving atmosphere at home. So I was dealing with that and then

I had like all this kind of like unresolved trauma from my dad's death and all this kind of stuff. And I just felt like I was so different. I got on with all the kids, but I was just like, I couldn't relate to them. I didn't think that they could relate to me. I just didn't. I I just felt very other. I just felt weird, man, just like, so weird. And I was pissed off. Like, I was so angry at everything. So resentful of my home life. And I'd see, like, my friends, their mothers were like their best friends. And I did not have that at all. And that really made me feel very different. And it made me feel like I couldn't relate to the world. For a very early age, like going through school, like, I couldn't interact with the world. I just felt like an alien. And school, for me, was a place for me to take out my anger. I'd go to school and I'd lash out my teachers. I wasn't allowed in my science class and I wasn't allowed in my French class. Those are the two classes that I was absolutely not allowed to set foot in the class. They used to have like a desk outside the door and my teacher would like chop me on this desk outside the class, like ostracized from the other

kids and give me a workbook because I was just so disrespectful. Like I'd bully my teachers because I couldn't really express myself. at home, there was so much anger. And with three eldest siblings, I'm the youngest, my siblings are fantastic. They always have been. But, like, you know, I was at the bottom of the pecking order. I couldn't really take up any states at home. So at school, I just exploded.

That was where I took my anger out. Yeah, my goodness. They had you out in the hallway doing a workbook. My goodness. Yeah, it's so rude. Like, I mean, I was a very difficult kid. I don't think that the schooling system was something that, as a kid that I particularly got on well with.

I don't know, a different type of learning or something. But for me and the stuff I was going through as like a kid and as a teenager, I didn't want to listen to any rules. Yeah, yeah. I hear you on that. I was the same way, a little bit different, but same way. I never did well in school. I got suspended in grade six and everything.

It just went downhill from there. I wasn't supposed to really follow the rules too. Did you think about or anybody ever reach out to you during this time? of like, hey, what's going on? Can we help you? Like, anything like that? Me and my mom had a counseling session because it was known by my teachers that me and my mom had this really toxic, rocky relationship. So we tried to, they tried to get us in counseling. I just shouted at the counselor. And then I think I had a couple of sessions by myself. And again, I just didn't engage. I just yelled. I just bullied the counselor like I was bullying my teachers. So I was surprised.

They kind of like wash their hands of me. And then also like this was the early 2000s. My nieces here in school now who are 1314, they have a mental health service in the schools. The students can visit and they can interact with. And they can like, it's like a drop in service, which is fantastic. But the early 2000s, it was not like that. I was very much labelled a problem child and that was the narrative.

And yeah, it was like you can't help her. Like she's beyond help. She's just a naughty kid. Just forget about him. Yeah. So where do we go from here? What is this high school too? This stuff carries on straight through probably into high school.

Yeah. Yeah. So I started drinking when I was about 13, 14. Drinking culture in England, well, the whole of the UK really is rice. Like you're expected to drink as a teenager. It's very much like a right of passage. A lot of like British culture is. Reliant on drinking, essentially.

So I kind of just went straight into that, you know. Drinking cider with my mates on Friday nights when I was like, yeah, about 13, 14. And it didn't ring alarm bells for anyone because that's just what teenagers do, especially in like a small town where I was from. I remember the first night that I got drunk was of these like sugary alco pops called WKD, their bright blue, that anyone who grew up in. the UK early 2000. I will definitely remember these.

Two big bottles and it'd get you like so drunk because you're a kid. And I remember drinking those two bottles and just thinking like I don't want to do anything else ever. This is it. This is what I want to do. Is there a job when you should do this? Like can I go to school to study drinking?

It just made me feel very normal. Like what I was describing before about feeling like an outsider and not being able to relate or not feeling comfortable interacting with the world. When I was drinking, that all went away. And I felt normal.

And I felt like, oh, okay, I am part of the world. I am part of this biggest thing that everyone else seems to be getting involved in. And yeah, that was it. It was a switch. A lot of people that I speak to who also have drinking problems. And it's very much like quite the classic story, you know, that switch goes off. And I just felt normal. Yeah.

Yeah. And that was your first time you got drunk. Yeah, I very much definitely remember that feeling. But then also I remember as the night goes on and like the nights after that, I remember getting to the point where I was drinking, I'd get quite upset. I didn't identify it at the time, but I know now that whereas my friends were drinking, I didn't have the off switch. Like I would keep on drinking, so they'd get drunk.

And I was drinking alcoholically, like pretty much from the get go. I didn't want to stop. I would drink to the point where I'd get really upset. and I'd be crying and people would have to console me and I wouldn't want to stop drinking. And there would be like a night out on a Friday, but I would want to go out on the Saturday and then the Sunday and then I'd want to drink on the Monday morning.

And then it was like at the time I didn't recognize it. But now looking back, I very much recognized the fact that once I started drinking, I couldn't stop. Yeah. I hear you on that. But going back to that first time, right? There was like that euphoric experience of that first time when we're drinking. I had it anyway.

and I've heard some other people talk about it. Do you feel like you ever got to that point again of what it was like that first time or you were just looking for that ever since? Yeah, I feel like I got that almost every time I drank. Obviously, in like the latter years of my drinking career, things are very dark and I was not having a good time at all. But I feel like there was always sort of feeling

where once they have my first drink, all the negative self-talk went away, all the anxiety went away, it all like my self-hatred kind of went away. And that definitely like carried on throughout all my drinking. Gotcha. Yeah. No, I mean,

that's what I get, you know, for most of us makes it so attractive, right? It's solving these problems for our life, our emotions until it doesn't. I mean, that's usually kind of how it goes.

It works until it doesn't. And then it creates monster, monster chaos that like, when I look back, I'm just like, this started out as a solution. Now this is causing all the doggone problems or making stuff a lot worse.

So where do you go have to? to high school. What do you do after that? Well, I ran away to London, as a lot of people do in England or the UK. Well, I ended up getting expelled from school. I had this habit when I was a teenager of running away with rock bands. I had this like groupie persona. When I was a teenager, I started going to like all these like local rock band gigs. And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever because you could drink and then you'd have sex with like boys and bands.

I was like, oh, this is amazing. I'm just going to do this now. So I kind of like turned that into a bit of a hobby. So I had this habit of finding rock bands and then just disappearing on tour with them for a couple of weeks at a time and kind of like reappearing at home and then going to school and then being like, where have you been? I feel like, I've just been touring Europe. Is that okay?

And they're like, you've got to stop doing this. Like you're going to get expelled. And then I was like, okay, cool. Expell me then. Like, I'm just going to be a groupie anyway. Like, that's going to be my career. I don't know how I was going to make any money from that. But, you know, those are my prospects.

I wanted to be a drunk. Kids who are like in their later teen years are concentrating on school and studying and getting the grades and they're looking at all these different universities they might want to go to. Whereas my priority is literally just lay in sex and alcohol. That was all I wanted to do. I was like, right, I just want to drink and fuck, basically.

And that's what I did. So I did end up getting expelled from school because I wasn't going. They used to look up all the rock bands that they knew that I used to hang around with and they'd like check their like tour dates. And they'd be like, right, we know that they've got this tour coming up. Do not like, we're watching you. You've got to come in. And I still didn't come in.

Anyway, so they expelled me. And so I got expelled when I was at, I think I was 16 or 17. And I ended up having to go to like the local like community college place. at the time anyway, the grades that you need to get into university are called A levels. Usually you'd need three A levels to get into a place. I ended up getting one B in media studies. That was my only qualification. I had this one B in media studies.

And I ended up getting into, I'd have no idea how, but I ended up getting into a university in London, in East London, and I moved there. It was, oh, I don't even know what the course was cool. It was something to do with media. Anyway, I think it was a new course. they were just letting anyone on it. Come on in.

Yeah, like, did you go to school at some point in your life? Come on in. So I ended up going there. And then, like, the campus, we call it halls in the UK. The dorms, we call them halls. The halls were in East London in a place called Shortett, which is now known for being very, like, trendy hipster nightlife area. And in the mid-2000s, when I moved there, it was like an up-and-coming.

It was kind of like, pre-gentrification, but it was like an up-and-coming area of London. Like, it was just full dive bars and art and warehouses, like warehouse parties and raves and like fashion and just basically everything that I wanted. It was kind of like this hedonistic hub of art and music and drink and drugs. So I was like, well, this is fucking fantastic. Love that I ended up here. So I was at this university and I went into the opening lecture.

And I enrolled. I signed in. I went to the open day. And then they were like, oh, here's your student loan. Here's tens of thousands of pounds. I was like, brilliant. And I never went to that university again. I've never set foot in an auditorium. I was just like great. Oh, man, I was just so fucking irresponsible. I still am really irresponsible. Yeah. I was just like, oh, I've got loads of free money. I've been in this like amazing like nightlight area of London where everyone's young and just wants to get drunk and have sex all the time and just like make up. and I'm here and I have money and so I'm just going to do this now. So I haven't actually started paying off my student loans yet. It's something that, yeah, I'm avoiding. I'm just like one mountain at a time, you know. I've conquered my alcohol addiction student loans is going to come next. I'll face that mountain when I get there. Yeah, so I ended up in London.

I wanted to work in the media. I started working for like a radio station. And then that led me on to club DJing. I did that. I worked in radio and like DJing in clubs for about four years. And as you can imagine, that was all cocaine and alcohol and just drugs and MDMA and just like everything. I just like fully immersed myself in that well. Yeah, the perfect environment for you. I mean, you said that's kind of how you wanted to live, right? So you kind of found what you wanted there. These four years and up till this point, I mean, was alcohol and drugs sort of like, were you identifying as being a problem in

your life or you were just party and having a good time? I was just partying and having a good time. Yeah. Like absolutely. I did notice that I would drink at home alone and none of my friends did that, really. When I moved out of the university halls and I moved into my own place, I remember the first thing I did was like buy some vodka and just like sit at home and drink.

And I just remember thinking like, I'm a fucking adult. If I want to drink at home, there's no one else here. Like I can do that. I can drink at home. Like, this is fantastic. When I was kind of like in my. early 20s, DJ and yeah, I'm very much realized that I would drink by myself and no one else wanted to do that. And I also noticed, and I noticed this because it used to annoy the fuck out of me.

I noticed that I would want to drink a lot more than my friends because I was always trying to like entice them to drink with me. And there was a lot of moments where I was the only person who wanted to drink, especially after house parties. Like we'd have a party and everyone was like hung over and wanted to go home. And I was like, no. Let's keep on going. Let's drink more and it's more bloke. Yeah. But I was in my early to mid-20s, you know.

I was like, this is life. I'm living in the big city. I've got all my life to make something of myself. I work in clubs and I talk on the radio. Like, this is amazing. This is all I've ever wanted. This is youth. This is what young people do.

You know, they make mistakes. Yeah, they get drunk. They party. I was like, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah. Well, for sure. And then, yeah, doing the clubs and everything too, probably becomes part of your identity, right?

So you're in the clubs and they get comfortable to do stuff. Yeah, I have a couple of drinks and the music scene and everything else. Yeah. So where do you go out to that? You're doing these jobs. What do you do on the radio? Do you do a talk show or music or? Music.

I did a radio show for a while that was broadcast in stores of a certain brand. I won't say the brand. But yeah, it was like a global design brand and they had stores all over the world. So I'd do a radio show that was internet radio, but then it was also broadcast in a these shops. And there was lots of like live music. They did a lot of live music events and stuff like that. Oh, cool. That sounds pretty cool. That was your daytime. Was that more of your daytime thing and then the clubs and everything was your evening? Yeah. Yeah. Like I started getting booked as a DJ because of my work in radio and then I really wanted to be like a professional radio presenter

and I wanted that to be my career. But the more I had played in clubs, like I was a radio presenter who did some DJing, but then I just turned into a DJing who, once a month did a radio show until I just stopped doing the radio. Like, looking back, there are just so many opportunities, like, I didn't carry out or so many doors that had opened for me that I didn't walk through because my priorities were going out and getting drunk. Yeah, that's a bit of the kicker sometimes. But whatever.

You're making the best of it now, right? Yeah, exactly. Doing what we can with where we are, with what we have, you know? I mean, that's it. I'm sure there's a lot of people who struggle with addiction that could look back. I mean, it's like there's so many wrong turns that I took that I'm like, oh my goodness, what was going through my mind. It is what it is.

All we got is, you know, all I got's really today to kind of move forward and try to do the best I can. So you did the DJ in for those four years. Where did things go after that? You're still in the big city? I was in the big city. And the thing is, with DJing, and I did a kind of DJing I was doing, and made a lot of money. Like, I found myself in a position where I just had fuck tons of money.

hadn't started paying back my student load by the way. Still not started that, but I did have loads of money from DJing. And I was like, shit, what am I going to do with those cash? And I just thought, do you know what? I'm just going to go to Thailand. I'm going to go fucking see what's going on

over there. I've seen the movie, the beach, and I thought that looked really cool. And I was like, oh, I'm fucking around in London. I could just go and fuck around over there instead. But I'll be by a beach instead of a tube station. So I went over there. It was supposed to be like a six-month trip, but six months turned into 10 years.

So I discovered I could use traveling as a drug, basically. I was using drugs and alcohol to escape from myself and escape my mind and escape my feelings and escape like coming to terms with me, basically. And I discovered that I could do that with traveling because I could just bounce from country to country. The first time I went to Thailand and then I trembled over to Lao. and I ended up getting a bar job in Lao. Yeah, I got there. I went to this one bar.

It was by a river. And then just like shotguned with the bar staff there and then started doing shots. And they were like, oh, fuck it, do you want a job? And I was like, I don't know, I guess I was like this young spring chicken who was just up for anything. And I just slotted in quite nicely. And then they were like, yeah, all we do is just get drunk. And we get our food paid for. We got our visas paid for.

We have a place to live. and then we just do this. And I was like, oh, what work do you do back at home? No, I'm like, oh, no, we don't go home. Like, this is what we do. And I was like, oh, my God, you're living the dream. Like, this is what I want to do. They offered me a job there and then.

So I did bar work around Southeast Asia for a few years. Yeah, literally just working for my keep, basically, for a place to live and food and drink, sometimes drugs. I've got paid in mushrooms for a little while, which was great at the time. Now I would not set that as a form of payment, but at the time it was fantastic. That was fantastic for me. I didn't have any prospects or responsibilities.

And life was very simple. And it was just like a matter of waking up and being a party rep, basically. Like just getting drunk and partying all day. I loved that. That was all I wanted to do. Like, ever since I was a kid, that was all I wanted to do. Like, I just wanted to drink for a living. I just wanted to party.

Yeah, I guess I did that with my DJing. but then being out in Southeast Asia where I didn't have any bills and I didn't have a phone and I wasn't worried about buying new clothes and I didn't wear shoes for about two years. Life was a lot simpler. I loved that life of no responsibilities. Yeah. Yeah, a trip of six months turns into 10 years. So this is like a tourist attraction place that you're working at with other people from the UK,

like other employees are from the UK or local people? From all over the world. Like there was also local people that worked in the bars also. But because this area of Lao is a town called Bangbien, which is up in the mountains. And at the time, it was famous for being a party destination. So basically any kind of young backpacker from like Europe or North America or Australia, if they were kind of doing that Southeast Asia circuit, especially the party circuit, they would stop off in this town.

So I did work with a lot of like locals and local fans. families who really looked after us, actually. Most of the other workers were like Europeans or Americans or Australians. You know, I can never speak for someone else's kind of habits, especially when it comes to drugs and alcohol. But we were certainly all there for a reason. Like we're all running away from something. We're all searching for something that we weren't getting from our regular lives back at home. Yeah. Wow. So where did you go from there? I saw in one of your post that you've been to Sydney, New York, Ottawa, and there was another place too. I can't remember the name. But your circuit didn't just end there, right? It did not, no. So I did some party work

in Southeast Asia for a while. And then I got a visa for Australia. And I went to Australia to work for a little bit where I worked in hospitality. I was working as a restaurant manager. And then working in bars again, hospitality was what I knew. And because I was traveling, It was something that you could do all over the world. So I traveled all around Australia and then lived there for a little bit. And then I did another stint in Southeast Asia. And I met a guy who was from New York and he basically took me home. And then I lived in a state.

Oh, to New York. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he took me back to Love Island. And then I just lived there for a little bit. And then I ended up in Canada. And I was basically astray. Like, I'd just go wherever, you know, earn enough money to kind of pay for my next plane ticket,

the next country. And yeah, I just turn up somewhere and get a job, find a place to live and just live there until I got bored and then I all kicked out and then I'll move on. Yeah. And while you were doing all this, I mean, where are you at as far as like joy in your life and happiness? I mean, is that part of this? I mean, traveling and everything or are you starting to see a little bit maybe differently of, hey, like maybe there's some things here that I should work on. You know what I mean? Like, are you getting that awareness throughout this? So the first like few years of my backpacking lifestyle, I was like living the dream. I was loving it. I was clearly an alcoholic. I didn't really know it right at the time. But I was like really severely abusing alcohol and was very dependent on alcohol and then also

abusing drugs as well. But alcohol is my drug of choice. Like alcohol is the one thing that I have absolutely no control over. I'm absolutely powerless to it. So although I had stints of other drugs like I had a pretty gnarly opium phase, been through like a pretty like, yeah, I went all big crap binge for a few months, whatever, but the alcohol is basically my, my sang, the one thing that just absolutely destroys me. I was very dependent on alcohol. And slowly my mental health and all my unresolved issues were kind of chipping away at me. I lived in Australia for two years and the first year I was like pretty okay. And then at last year, I was so suicidal. Like, I was completely depressed. And by that point, I'd say, this was in

2017, I think. 17 or 18. That's kind of when I realized that I couldn't stop drinking and that, oh, I am an alcoholic. That was something I accepted. I remember, like, the point where I kind of realized that I had a severe drinking problem. Like, I always knew that I drank really heavily and it was a massive part of my life, but I wasn't like, oh, okay, maybe this is a problem. But when I realised it was a problem, I was living in Sydney, and I was living with a couple who are actually, like, really good friends of mine still to this day. I was staying in their house and they went away for three weeks. And I was like, looking up to the house and the dogs. And the first day that they went away, I was like, oh, goody, I get to help myself to the liquor cabinet, which I did.

I was like, oh, no one else is here. This is fantastic. A whole house to myself and a whole liquor cabinet. And I was like, oh, just have a little drinky. had a little bit of the whiskey and then before I knew a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vodka was gone and then the next morning

I was like oh shit I need to replace that so I went to the local liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka and a bottle of whiskey took it back and then replaced the bottles and then I was like oh just have a little drinky and then I had a little drink of the whiskey and then by the end of the night that whiskey and that bottle of vodka were gone again

and the next day I went back to the same liquor store and I was like shit I need to replace this and then the cycle happened again and that happened every day for three weeks like i could not control myself like there was this alcohol in the house and i could not stop myself from drinking it like that's when i realized i was like i'm absolutely powerless like it was like living in ground hall day at the same day happening again and again the same bottles i was drinking replacing and not having the ability to not drink them just because they're there in a house so yeah that's when I realized like, oh shit. Okay, I'm in conflict. But I didn't think that was a problem that had a

solution. I'd never met anyone in recovery, especially like a young person. But I'd never met like another human who had gotten sober or who even referred to themselves as an alcoholic. I just had no experience of it. I didn't know that that was a thing that you could do. So I just accepted it. I was like, oh, okay, I guess that's my lot in life. I'm going to be a depressed drunk. Like, that's it. Like, no one's going to love me. I'm going to hate myself forever. But I'm just going to live my life that way and just see what happens. And what did end up happening was my mental health just continued sliding until every day I was waking up and just wanted to kill myself. I just waking up and being like, I just don't want to be here.

Hate this whole life thing is not for me. Yeah, well, that was in Australia. When that was going on to, you said for the one year, were you drinking every day at this point? Like every night and then you'd wake up and, you know, feel. Yeah, big time. And by that point, I'd been drinking every day. every day for years and years and years for that point. Actually, when I was like doing the party jobs in Southeast Asia, it was very much like a,

like I love being in that environment because it was normalized, like waking up and drinking all day. That was normal. And that was almost expected of us. Yeah. Yeah. It was very normalized. Yeah.

And then in Australia, it's the people you're living with these other people, they're probably, it doesn't sound like they're doing that every day, are they? And then maybe you saw a little bit, it was a little bit different vibe. Everybody wasn't doing it all day type thing, right? They weren't because they had jobs, but they were also heavy drinkers. I had met them whilst working in bars in Southeast Asia, so they also really liked to party, but they did have full-time jobs and responsibilities and that kind of thing.

So they weren't drinking every day, but they were also like heavy drinkers. Yeah, gotcha. So how do you get out of this rut you're in, this spot you're in, waking up every morning with these suicidal thoughts? How do you get out of something like that? Well, I decided to ignore it. And I thought that I know what's going to fix me.

I'm going to go back to Southeast Asia because I can drink there. And that's my happy place. And that's going to fix me. That's going to make me feel better. Really, I was just going back to just another location where I could drink as excessively as I was. So I went back to Southeast Asia. By this point, I had lost my job in Australia. I was working in a burger restaurant as an assistant manager.

but I came in like steving drunk, so they fired me. But I just, I didn't care because I was like, I'll just get another job in another burger restaurant. Yeah, but I ended up going back to South East Asia. So I was like, that's where I'm going to be happy. And I can continue, like, ignoring my problems. I don't have to deal with real life. Like, I won't have to go work in another burger restaurant because I can just work in a bar

and get fed or go home. And that's where I ended up meeting my boyfriend from New York. I met him and managed to turn him into a drug too. Was he visiting there? Was he working there? He was working there. Yes, I went to Lao and he was doing a lot of the same stuff as me. Like he was doing the party circuit and he worked in catering.

So he'd do like catering in the summer months and then in the winter he would go to Southeast Asia for a few months where he could like just party and then like get that out of his system and then go back to work. But I met him and I didn't realize at the time. but I kind of used him as another way to kind of distract myself from my feelings. We fell in love like really, like, really, like, passionate love. It was like a really, like, passionate love. And I just kind of, like, threw myself into it.

And I was like, oh, my God, this man has fixed me. I'm not a depressed drunk anymore because I'm in love and everything's great now. I'm going to have a happy ever after. But, yeah, I was just masking my, like, mental health issues and my addiction issues just with, like, the facade of being in love. Yeah. Did you sober up at all for like when you guys got together? No, not all, not all.

I did not change my behavior one bit. So we got together and we like drink together and do all that kind of stuff. And then he came back to London with me for a little bit. Then I moved back to New York with him. And then that's really where things took a nose dive. Wait, wait, what? Things took a nose dive? We were already at the nose dive, Abby.

Oh, no. We've got further to go. My goodness. Oh my God, there's like three more nose dives. Yeah, like nothing was a wake-up call. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I'm with you on that too.

So you moved to New York and this is your night in shining armor and things are going to be all fixed up here. Yeah, like I'm fine now. Yeah, so you're good now. Had you been to the U.S. before? Have you traveled there before this? Only on vacation. Like, I had been to New York once before. So how did they play out?

Well, he took back from where he lived and I moved into his house. And by this point, you know, we were a few months into the relationship and the kind of honeymoon phase was wearing off. So the suicidal ideation that I had had and my addiction issues were just creeping back in because I just like put a band-aid over them really with its kind of like passionate love. And yeah, the band-aid had come off really. And I was just left with my problems again. I was left with like all these suicidal thoughts and depression. And when I moved into his house, he had a catering company. So he was like, you can work for me, live in my house, and we'll just do that.

I quickly transpired that I was not, like, carefree, hippie chick, like this charming British girl that he'd met abroad. I was actually a severely depressed alcoholic. And he would, like, go out and do, like, I was working with him, but he'd go out and do, like, whatever he needed to do for work. And by the time he'd come home, I'd just help myself to his tequila selection. I'd just be drunk. Like, every day he'd come home.

And I was, because by this point, like, as a. described before. Like, I fully, there was absolutely no control there to the point where I was, like, I didn't even try to stop drinking or to moderate my drinking or control it. By that point, I was just like, oh, whoopsie, just drunk a bottle of tequila. So this happened like every day, every day he'd come home. And then he'd just have this like weird British chick in his living room, drunk and yelling at him. And he was just like, this is not the life that I won. This is horrible. And I was like, yes, it is. Imagine being me. So he ended up. up kicking me out. We had a friend in Ottawa. So he, my boyfriend, packed my bag in the middle

of the night. And he was like, you're going to Ottawa to stay with our friend. And he drove me to Newark Airport in the middle of the night. And he just kind of like chucked me on a plane. It was like, just get out of here. And then I never saw him again. Wow. Yeah. With the friend in Ottawa, somebody you met from the. Yeah. Also from Southeast Asia on that party scene. So he was also of the mind of let's just drink all the time. Yeah. So, The thing with the boyfriend here, what's going through your mind when all this stuff is playing out? Like, how many months are we talking that you were there? Was it a while?

I was in the States for, I spent about six months. Yeah, okay. I did, like, a 90-day visa, and then I left for a little bit, and then I came back, and then did another 90 days on that tourist visa. Yeah, I mean, I was just so confused because I was like, oh, I'm a woman in love. Like, why are all these bad things happening to me now? Like, why am I still depressed? Why can't I stop drinking?

Like, I thought everything was to get out now because I'd found this man who had miraculously fixed everything that was wrong with me overnight. Yeah, and that really, like, took a toll on my mental health. I was heartbroken as well. I ended up in Canada and I was just like, heartbroken. I was pissed off that my dream man wasn't all he turned out to be and everything had gone wrong and I'd fucked up again and all this kind of stuff. And I was just like on a self-destruction path. And like, I certainly believes that you kind of invite into your life, the kind of energy that you're putting out. And then I met someone who actually, when I met him, he was my boss.

I went to go work for this fast food restaurant. And he was the first person that I'd ever met. He was in recovery when he hired me, you know, we were talking and stuff. And then quite soon to the conversation, he was like, oh, I'm a recovering alcoholic. And I remember just thinking like, wow, okay, first of all, that's a thing. And second of all, like, this man just said it so, like, casually. and that kind of like planted a seed in my mind. But then he relapsed and it turned out he wasn't just a recovering alcoholic.

He was a recovering craft addict as well. So he relapsed and he was like, hey, I've got all this crack I'm going to smoke. I'm going to like go on a fucking tear. Do you want to come along? And I was like, yes, absolutely. Like 100% want to fuck everything up. So that's what we did. We moved in together into this like tiny studio apartment in downtown Ottawa.

And just like smoke crack for like four months. And he turned up to work in this fast food restaurant just like high as far. But it was like just trying not to fall into the deep fat friar. And that was a really dark place. It was really shit. Yeah. Was it like a relationship or this was just like you're just using together or were you guys dating or? We were dating.

But then it kind of like it wasn't romantic because all we were doing was smoking crack together. Yeah. Like it wasn't like we weren't going. on like nice dates to a restaurant. We were just like staying up for days on end, like shaking in a corner. So that was a really dark time because, oh, it was just obviously really fucking awful. And then I kind of realized that this was a really kind of dangerous situation that I was in and I was like really in a dark place. So I go up and left again because that's what I do. When like reality starts to kick in, I'm like, oh, better move to another country or better

moved to another city. So I ended up on Vancouver Island, got a job working in a barbecue restaurant there, and I was miserable there. They absolutely miserable. And I couldn't stop drinking. I stopped smoking crack because there was no crack in Vancouver. I mean, I'm sure there is if you'd look for it. But I didn't know anyone who was going to sell me any crack.

So my drinking really ramped up. I still had no control of my drinking. So I ended up getting fired from that job at the barbecue restaurant. For drinking? Yeah. Big time. Yeah. I was the only person on shift, and the owner came into the restaurant, sorry.

He was on a trip or something. He came back from his trip and he walked into the restaurant and I was just like, there was just an empty bottle of vodka and I was flumped like over the bar. And he was like, what the fuck has happened? But before that, I was living in a trailer. Like my suicidal ideation was just like, it's a draw to try and kill myself. It just kind of really become too severe to put off any longer. and I tried to kill myself in my trailer.

The guy that I was seeing, so there was always a guy that I was seeing. He had come home, come to see me at the trailer, and found me basically on death's door, and he called an ambulance, and I ended up in a psych ward for a little while. Then when I got out of that psych ward,

I wasn't like, okay, I'm like, this is my wake-up call. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to get better. I was just like, absolutely no hope. No hope. So I just went straight to the liquor. store. Then it was after that, like a few weeks later that I got fired from the old barbecue restaurant. The barbecue. Yeah. I'm just picturing that here for a second. So in the

trailer, yeah, things kind of kept piling up, right? It sounds like throughout this whole time, right, you're able to get away for a little bit. I think people struggle with addiction. Like, we're really decent at putting together a month or a week. Like, we can really show up and do really, really well and really be what we need to be. But it seems like with time, the bottom just always kind of falls out of these situations. But you're distracting yourself for a little bit, but at this time in your trailer there, things are just overwhelmingly there. And things have kind of caught up and there doesn't feel or seem or feel like there's a way out for you. Yeah, absolutely.

Really, really tough spot to be in. So you lose the job there. You get at the psych word, what do they mention? Is there any mention to it about like, hey, like maybe it's drinking, maybe it's this, just try some medication, get some, any suggestions like that? And they put me on Prozac to help with depression. And they said, look, we think, because I spent like a few days talking to a psychiatrist and I said, we think that you have borderline personality disorder. And I was like, cool, what the fuck is that? And then, you know, they put me on Prozac and I was taking Prozac, but then also

still drinking. So I think anyone who has taken antidepressants and drank at the same time, well, no, they just turn to you fucking psychotic. I was out of control. You know, I was drinking to blackout every day anyway, but this was just like on another level. I don't know what my plan was at that time. I think I just still wanted to die.

Not that I wanted to die. I just wanted the pain of living to stop. I was stuck in depression, and I was stuck in hating myself, and I was stuck in drinking. And I just didn't want to do that anymore. Then the pandemic hit, and everyone else who was like backpacking,

and everyone else who was in the kind of tourist town that I lived in, who was from abroad. Everyone was going home. Everyone was flying back, and everyone was also losing their jobs. So I lost my job because of drinking, and then two weeks later, everyone else in the bars and restaurants were losing their jobs

because of the pandemic. So I flew home, and I kind of used the cover of COVID to try to sneak in back home and be like, ha ha ha, ha, nothing's happened. I'm fine. And I moved it back in with my mum in that house that I grew up in. And I carried on drinking. I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life, but it was pandemic time, so no one knew what they were doing with their lives.

And all of a sudden, I was still drinking, but I was kind of left with a lot of time and space, time to think and to reflect, and just to be with myself, which I hadn't done in years by that point, because I was always running around, running away and doing anything but I could so it meant that I didn't have to face up to myself. I remember very, very vivid. I remember one day I was like sat on my childhood bed and I just cleared up all the bottles that I drank over the previous days. There were a lot. And I put them all into a bag and I put the bag down by the bed and I sat down at the end of the bed

and I just like heard a message. Like some sort of message just got through to me at that point. It just said like you don't have to do this anymore. You don't have to keep living like this. in that moment I kind of realized that everything really that had happened in my life that was just like my adult life anyway that was caused so much pain and chaos. It was down to alcohol and that alcohol was a massive problem and it was stopping me from being happy or progressing in life or having anything like having a relationship or having a job or a stately place to live. Like it was alcohol that was always the block. And then it just all made sense to me.

It was the weirdest thing. It kind of felt like I just solved an algebra question that had been bugging me for years. And it just everything made sense. Like, you know, that meme of that woman, and she has like the equation kind of like hovers over her face. Like, I felt like that woman. If I just figured it out, I was like in Rain Man or something.

And I realized that I had to stop drinking. Like, if I didn't stop drinking, I was either going to live this miserable life that I thought I was destined for, but realized that I didn't want. want to live that life or I was just going to die. So what do you do after that? You have this moment in the bedroom there.

Did you talk with your siblings or mom or any other family while you were on this trip too? Or did you just kind of show up after 10 years back at the house? I just kind of showed up really. Like my mom knew that I was in a psych ward for a little bit. And so my mom knew what happened there. And like I think it was pretty much everyone knew that I had addiction issues. I had substance abuse issues, you know.

It was very apparent. I don't think they knew how bad things had gotten because I was off gallivanting around the world and all they saw was kind of an Instagram grid of me on a beach in Thailand and having the time of my life. They only saw what I wanted them to see. So they didn't really know what had been going on with me. I mean, they do now because I talk about it on podcasts.

But they didn't at the time. I did tell my family and my friends that I was going to be. going to stop drinking. And they all said, like, sank fuck for that, like, good. Wait, was that the next day? Like, was it that quick? Or how did the next day after that moment where you're on the end of the bed, what the next day look like? Well, the next day, I had a drink as you do. And then after that, I was very irresponsible with getting sober. Like, if I was to get sober again, which, like, hopefully I never have to do. But say if I, like, rewound time and I had to do this experience again, I would have done things completely different. But no, I just, like, I told all my

friends and family that I was going to stop drinking. That meant that my mum stopped offering me alcohol. And then I just went cold turkey and I did everything by myself. Like, if I didn't really think about reaching out for support or joining any, like, 12-step programs or anything, I was just like, my focus is I just need to stop drinking. So, yeah, I kind of like detox by myself, which was fucking awful. I know now that you should never do that, especially kind of, The amount that I was drinking, I was like a really, really, really heavy drinker, and it can kill you if you just stop drinking alcohol. Yeah, so I spent like about a week in bed, having hot flushes and the first couple of days I was sort of like hallucinating and stuff. And like everything else in my life, it was very irresponsible.

Yeah. But I just knew my focus was just like not drinking. Like I didn't know the phrase one day at a time back then. I do now. But that was what I was doing. I was just like one day at a time, just not drinking, waking up the next day and deciding not to drink. And in that first week anyway, like my brain didn't work.

I think nothing worked. So I just watched Netflix for a week in bed, which worked for me. Yeah. Yeah. And especially during the pandemic, that's what probably a lot of people were doing anyway, right? Yeah. No, that's incredible. When was your sober date?

First of April, 2020. Wow. Yeah, so it was April Fool's Day. some of my friends I did tell them that I'm going to stop drinking on April Fall Day and they were like, ha ha, April Fool's. And I was like, ha, no, I'm actually really depressed and I can't stop drinking and I'm definitely an alcoholic. That really takes the fun out of April Fool's Day.

Oh my goodness. That's just your luck though. I mean, I don't know if any other day would be more suiting for you, honestly. Exactly. Yeah, that's incredible. So where do you go from here? You're not plugging into any supports. And it's, you know, hindsight's always 2020, right?

Looking back, we're like, oh, my goodness. I mean, we could have changed up these things and stuff. But that's incredible that you go through that, especially with the amount you're drinking, like that must have just been terrible too. And then where do you go from here? How do you keep this thing going? Well, because it was COVID times.

And in the UK, were locked down for the first three months, I think, or something like that. So nothing was happening. Could only go out of your house for like an hour a day, pretty much, was the rules. I kind of committed myself to getting better. I did all the things you're supposed to do was like mindfulness and wellness.

I really like tapped into that and I kind of had like a strict sort of schedule of breathwork and journaling and yoga and exercise and because I guess part of me is like quite grateful to have the time and space to do that because we were in lockdown. I don't know what my sobriety would have looked like

if I decided to get sober like when it wasn't the pandemic. Yeah, so I've committed myself to like a life of wellness. Like I do everything to the extremes. I did drinking to the extremes. Then I was sober. I was like, well, I'm going to be the most sober person there ever was. There you go. Now, that's incredible. I mean, but like how do you dig deep and make that switch, that commitment, right? Because you're in the pandemic help because not much stuff was open. But I mean, if you want to drink, you're going to get a drink whether stuff is open or not, right?

How do you switch it from this complete like traveling, avoiding everything, feelings? How do you switch it to like, now I'm going to do this for myself. And when did you start to notice some benefits, like for your mental health, for your depression? How did that look too? Two questions, sorry. I think it was definitely a gradual process. Like, self-reflection really worked for me.

Like, I did a lot of journaling. I did a lot of reflecting on, like, what the fuck had happened in my life all those years. And just learn about myself, really. And as far as benefits going, like, I stopped feeling sick after the first. like week and a half, but there wasn't a point where I was like, oh, I feel amazing now. But what I did see was that, like, gradually over the months, my mood was better. My mood had improved. I was starting to find joy in things that weren't drinking.

Like, I found joy in writing and exercising and speaking to my friends, like, not about addiction or anything or just being present with people. I think gradually over time, things in my life that had never been there before. started showing up. I started getting opportunities for work and I started to not want to kill myself. That was really the main kind of change in moods that I realized. I kind of just gradually every day, the desire to die kind of like lessened. But yeah, I did all the kind of like wellness stuff for a while and then the COVID restrictions and gradually lifted and ended up working again and kind of went back out into the real world. I just kind of like,

knuckled my sobriety for like first two years really. And then I kind of had a bit of a mental breakdown, which was when I realized that perhaps all the techniques I'd been using to kind of better myself were, although they were effective, it was like a little bit superficial in a way. Like, I was doing all the stuff that would make me feel better, but I wasn't like digging deep into emotional sobriety or learning about the reasons why I drank or kind of exploring spirituality and stuff like that. Wow. Yeah.

For the first year, I think it's incredible that we stay on course. It might even be a good thing to kind of wait a little bit of time before we dig into, you know, all that stuff. So how do you do that? What are you doing now to look after all those other areas? Well, the biggest change and the biggest like development for me was joining 12-step program. Yeah, I did like two years of just focusing on not drinking.

That was it. I was like, I'm not drinking and doing yoga. like that was just how I lived my life and then it was almost like what I'd always done though it was like I'd just put a band-aid over something you know I just kind of temporarily fix the problem I temporarily fix the problem by not drinking and that worked for a little bit but these things

you know the wounds open again and then a friend of mine was like hey do you want to come to a meeting with me because I just had this absolute emotional breakdown like I stopped functioning I was like I almost lost my job but I'd been sober for two years, but I almost lost my job. I don't know, everyone in my life is pissed off at me. I felt shit again. I felt out of control again.

And I was like, why is this all happening? And like, I'm sober. Like, this stuff isn't supposed to happen anymore. And then a friend of mine was like, oh, do you want to come to a meeting with me? And I was like, yes, please. I need something. Like, what I'm doing isn't really working anymore. I have to change something.

So I went to a meeting and now I work a 12-step program. Like, I have a sponsor and it's really important to me. That's incredible. Yeah, it's always so true. Like what got us here won't get us there type thing, right? Like there's levels to it. And it's the same thing I think with sobriety too is that we've got to constantly reevaluate what we're doing and how we're living and how we want to live. And things might change. Our tools over time might change. It might be therapy. It might be a fellowship. It might be church. It might be whatever it is. It might be CrossFit. So many different things, but we have to look at it to maybe make adjustments. Look, this has been incredible. I appreciate you so, so much for jumping on here and sharing your story. I have two things before we finish up, if that's okay. What would you say to somebody if they were struggling to get her stay sober right now? My advice always now is to find a meeting, even if it's just a stepping stone, even if it's not actually joining a fellowship and kind of working the steps,

even if it is just to kind of get some other input and to hear other people talk about their experiences, even if it's just a little kickstart. you don't have to commit to anything, but that's always my advice. Any advice that I give people now, I learn in the rooms. Like everything I know, pretty much everything. I mean, I know a lot, so not everything. But just kidding. When it comes to recovery, pretty much everything I know is from being in a 12-step program.

So there's nothing that I can ever teach someone that they can't learn in a 12-step program. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, and the community and connection that you can, get with other people, right? And a lot of times when people first start out, it's the denial. It's the denial aspect. I'm not that bad. It's not me. Go to a meeting here. What helped me when I first started is I went and I heard my story. A little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. And I was like, okay, there's got to be something more here, Brad. You're not this innocent person in all of this. There's actually something there because these people are sharing a little bit here and there of your

story. And it really helped me out with that denial piece. I mean, it took years, took years to figure that out, but it helped me out slowly but surely to realize I wasn't alone. There was other people who struggled with this and, you know, my story was unique, but it wasn't unique. There was a lot of people who shared the same. So that's incredible. I love that. I also wanted to ask, where could people follow you? Where can they check you out? Is there anything that you want to mention that you're up to? Yeah. You can find me on Instagram. It's just the Abby Felton. It's A-B-I-S-E-L-H-A-M. And then TikTok, my handle is Abby.comte-Felton, just to make things complicated. I'm up to lots of bits and pieces. I'm a full-time content creator now. I work for myself, so I have a lot of

projects going on. But one project that I'm really proud of is my recovery journal. I basically, you know, I mentioned before that I did a lot of journaling in my kind of early sobriety. And it's something that I feel like has really, really helped me. It's, I don't know, the prospect of journaling is a bit daunting sometimes. It's like, what are you supposed to do to write shit on a page? Like, what do you have to do? So I created a recovery journal. It's all prompted and guided. And it's the kind of stuff that helped me, the kind of stuff that I wrote when I first got sober and entered recovery. There's a page that you write in the morning and then one in the evening. And the morning is all about kind of assessing your emotions, how you're feeling and then like creating

direction for that day and kind of committing to a day of recovery. And then in the evening is all about reflection. You reflect on your day and how you handle things and how things were. Wow. That sounds incredible. I'll drop the link to that too in the show notes. So if anybody wants to check out, I'll drop all the links for Abby, where you can follow her and send her a message. If you guys enjoyed this episode as much as I did, send her over a message, tell her. Thank you. And yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today to join us. Oh, it's fantastic. Thanks, Brad. Well, there it is. Another incredible episode. And look, I'll put all the links.

for Abby down in the show notes. So you can be sure to give her a follow. Tell her you love the episode. Check out her journal that's on Amazon, I believe, and everything else. Thank you so much for the support. And if you haven't left a review yet, be sure to jump over to Apple or Spotify. Drop a review, five star, of course. And I'll see you on the next one.