The Life Of Bryony - "Every Time I Thought I’d Hit Rock Bottom, I Grabbed a Shovel and Kept Digging" Abi Feltham on Surviving Addiction, Loss, and Finding Strength in Sobriety

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Welcome to The Life of Bryony, where we explore life’s messier moments. GUEST: ABI FELTHAM In this deeply honest episode, Bryony Gordon sits down with content creator Abi Feltham to discuss her journey through alcoholism, sobriety, and a recent cancer diagnosis. Abi shares her experience of addiction, the impact of childhood trauma, and the challenges she faced as she moved from place to place, seeking to escape her inner struggles. She opens up about the moments that led her to sobriety and how she’s using that same resilience now to face a life-threatening illness with grace and grit. Abi’s message is powerful and uplifting: no matter how dark life may seem, there is always hope, and recovery is possible. This episode offers insight into the importance of community, vulnerability, and self-compassion on the road to healing. Follow Abi: https://www.instagram.com/abi.feltham/ Get in Touch 🗣️ If you want to get in touch, I’m only a text or a voice note away! Send your message to 07796657512, starting with LOB. 💬 WhatsApp Shortcut - Click Here 📧 Or email me at [e-mail]  Don’t forget to share this podcast with someone who might benefit from it! Bryony xx For More Information and Support: We discuss suicide, addiction and recovery in this episode. If you’re struggling, you’re not alone. Here are some resources for support: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): Visit alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk or call 0800 9177 650 for support with alcohol addiction. Mind: Call 0300 123 3393 or visit mind.org.uk for information on mental health support. Samaritans: Call 116 123 or visit samaritans.org for free, 24-hour support if you're feeling overwhelmed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Life of Brian E, a podcast where we explore the messier parts of life. Today I'm joined by the incredible Abby Feltham. Abby's story is one of resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship. After battling addiction and finding sobriety, she's now facing terminal cancer with a strength that's truly inspiring. And in that moment, it made absolute sense to me that I couldn't drink anymore. It was like solving an algebra equation that I've been trying to solve my entire life.

If you're struggling with your own battles, Abby's story will remind you that it's possible to find hope even in the toughest of times. The Sephora Savings Event is here. World in my hand, I'll take this and that. And that. Ooh, and this.

Oh, it's true. Find everything you want on sale at the Sephora Savings Event. It only happens twice a year, and it's on now through November 11th. Find brands like Rare Beauty, Glow Recipe, Valentino, K-18, and more, all for less. Shop at Sephora today. Limitations apply. Must be a beauty insider. See terms at sephora.com for complete details.

Celebrate all the little moments of cheer and togetherness at Starbucks. Pair your peppermint mocha with a cozy game night. Sip your chestnut praline latte at a holiday movie marathon. Or take your caramel brulee latte along on your impromptu catch-up. These are sips worth sharing. So come together and find your holiday magic. Only at Starbucks. My guest today is Abby Feltham. She's an inspiring advocate for mental health and sobriety who's faced incredible challenges with both grace and resilience. Abby's story is one of

transformation. After battling addiction for nearly two decades, she found sobriety. And now she's navigating life with a terminal cancer diagnosis. So if you're looking for a conversation filled with honesty, inspiration and the courage to keep going, you'll love my chat with Abby. A gentle warning, there are references to suicidal ideation in today's episode. As always, there are some great links in the show notes to help you if you're struggling. Abby, your content has made me howl with laughter. You're like getting sober content.

There's obviously a serious element to it as well. And so I'm so grateful that you're here. I'm really happy to be here. Now I've done that. I'm going to say, Abby, when did you realize you were an alcoholic? Well, do you describe yourself as an alcoholic? Big time alcoholic.

Because I, at first, I don't know if this resonates with you, I was like, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm an addict. Because that just sounded cooler. It does. It does sound a bit cooler. Yeah. And then I realized after a while, I'm like, no,

no, you're just a common or garden alcoholic who happened to take drugs so you could continue to drink. Yeah. No, I'm also completely garden variety alcoholic. I don't know. I try to be a bit more exciting and add lots of different other descriptive words onto it. But at the end of the day, I'm just a bog-standard alcoholic. I'm like powerless to alcohol. I can't control it. It makes me miserable. It makes me destroy my life.

And once I start, I can't stop. I'm just so ununique. It's such a devastating realization, but also quite a relief. Yes. There's a lot of comfort to it, because you're like, oh, I'm not a freak. I'm not alone.

I'm not the only person to ever experience this. So that means there must be, you know, hope. There must be something that comes after this because other people have experienced it and they've recovered. But also, it's a yeah, it's a bit like, oh, I'm just like everyone else. Can we go right back to the let's go, let's go, let's go back to the beginning. So you had quite a loss at quite a young age. I did. My father killed himself when I was three. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, it kind of sucks. It does. We've sat down, I've known you for 10 minutes and I'm like, my first two questions are just like absolute fucking humdingers. Yeah, tell me about your history of addiction and your dead dad. Thanks for having me. I'm sorry. No, it's fine. We can stop if you want.

We can just go and eat cake. I'm very comfortable talking about the difficult things I've gone through. Hearing other people's stories has always helped me with my own struggles. So I'm very happy to talk about these things because hopefully there's someone out there in the ether who will be listening or watches

my content or anything like that who will find a glimmer of hope. And you mean you don't remember that time? No, no. Hey, here's something sad. Here's something to ruin your day. My first memory is of finding out that my dad had died. Really? Yeah, I have a very, very vivid memory of my mum running through the front door in a pink dressing gown. And I knew something was wrong.

She was really upset. I know now that she had just found out that my dad was dead and she had heard from police officers. And so she came into the house, ran through the house and kind of grabbed all us kids. I've got two brothers and a sister. And we all just sat on the floor crying and howling. And I didn't really know what was going on. I'm the youngest. But I knew something was very wrong and something bad had happened. Was that a sort of sense that you had of your childhood? Was it a defining moment or is

it just, it's hard to know, isn't it, when that's your childhood? You don't have anything different. Yeah. I think it definitely, my dad dying by suicide was something that definitely shaped me into adulthood and changed my brain chemistry, really. It changed the way that I understood emotions and understood my own emotions and my own sense of identity. All of that kind of got skewed growing up.

It was the early 90s when he died and mental health wasn't spoken about. So did you know that he had died by suicide? Not until I was a teenager. Right, okay. Not until I was a teenager. It was very hush-hush, like there was shame surrounded about it. It was like a family secret. We sometimes spoke about it in the family, but as soon as he died, he was basically never spoken about again. Really?

Yeah. All the pictures came down. We never like went to his grave site. We never celebrated his birthday or any anniversaries. There was no like, oh, your dad would have been so proud of you. He was just a race because no one knew how to deal with it and I think just it being in a time where just mental health and all those kind of things were just so stigmatized, weren't talked about. And my kind of family way of coping was very British, very stiff upper lip, very, okay, we closed that book, we never speak of this again. Let's move forward. keep on smiling, like what will the neighbors say kind of yeah and then also my mum was left with four young children as well. It was very much like autopilot. We keep going. I think it would be very difficult to be in my mum's situation and be, I don't know, stop for a moment and mentalize and

think okay if I don't deal with this right now my kids are all going to become mentally ill alcoholics, and they're all going to be emotionally unstable. I think the forefront of her mind was survival and going to work and feeding the kids, rather than getting us all counseling, which would have been lovely, actually, thinking back to it. But yeah, that experience and learning from a young age, it's not that I was taught that, but those

were the messages that I received as a young child. If you feel an emotion, you mask it. You throw it out. If you feel a feeling and it's difficult, you do not keep on feeling that feeling. Like, you get rid of it. You turn away from it. You turn away from it.

You don't talk about it. And so I never really understood how to process emotions, or I never really understood how to process emotions or I never really understood myself and yeah that habit of mine kind of steered me towards alcohol because that was the easiest way to stop feeling. How old were you when you had your first drink? I was probably like 13 or 14. I hear a lot of other alcoholics talking about like when they had the first drink everything changed but I never remembered my first drink really.

Yeah. I just remember there being lots of drinks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At a young age, my drinking was also very British. So I've never had a unique experience ever. It was all like cider on park benches.

Yeah. And very, very teenage. Yeah. I don't know. Is it still teenage to do that? I don't know. I have a 16 year old niece and she had an Arches and Lemonade the other day. That's quite 90s. That is quite, yeah. I will say my sister's in her mid 40s so I think and she supplied the alcohol. She was like, right, if you're going to drink, you're going to drink under

my watch. So she was like, what did I drink when I was 16? Archers and lemonade. God. So I remember my first drink, I certainly drank alcoholically, but I just remember blacking out, you know, and then vomiting everywhere, like having like half a litre of vodka, you know, which was really fucking dangerous, you know. But I remember the thing that I look back on now as quite alcoholic is that objectively, you look at a situation that makes you vomit all over your shoes, your new shoes that you've saved up your pocket money to go and buy, and by the temperance fountain of all things

in your local town. And your mate's mom has to come and get you and put you in a bath. It's all quite humiliating. You would probably be like, I'm not going to do that again. And I was like, let's get back on it the next weekend, which was that kind of, I guess, like you speak to, which relatable for kind of a lot of people in Britain

is that the only way you're taught how to cope with stuff is have a drink at the end of the day. I'm not a mother myself, but there's that mummy wine culture sort of thing. You need wine to get through the day being a parent. And yeah, it's very, very deeply ingrained in our culture that to cope, you need a drink. To celebrate, you have a drink.

Yeah, to do anything, you have a drink. If you're sad, you have a drink. If you're angry, you know what, have a drink. So tell me, so you had your first, you started drinking in your early teens. How did it progress from there? Although I don't remember my first drink, I do remember that time when I started drinking

and really enjoying it. I was having a great time. Up until the point that I discovered alcohol, I really enjoying it. I was having a great time. Like up until the point that I discovered alcohol, I really hated myself. Like I guess you could say I was a kind of typical angsty teenager, but there was like a deep rooted self-loathing there. And my like internal monologue always was just like, you're not good enough. You don't deserve to be here. Very, very damaging things for a child to be telling themselves.

I guess that comes from self-esteem issues from my father dying at a young age, me not understanding myself, all those kind of things. But when I started drinking, it shut that voice up. It stopped me from feeling anything, really. I think it's a really interesting thing that, like, I don't know about you, but when I first got sober, I became quite vehemently anti-alcohol.

I was like, alcohol is really bad. It's evil. It should be banned. And I now realize that, actually, I'm quite grateful for alcohol, weirdly, because I don't know how I would have got through life without it. And for me, what I've learned in how I would have got through life without it. And for me, what I've learned in my sobriety is that, you know, and I think people don't

talk about this that often. It's like, actually, it worked. It worked until it stopped working. And then I needed something else. And that's what I found in recovery, you know. And so alcohol becomes our coping mechanism that kind of gets you through a certain amount of things. And I don't know about you, but I look back and go, what the fuck? How did I not die? Because some of the situations I put myself in were so fucking dangerous. Mm hmm. Yeah. Like, it's not really a question. I guess this is just us like, do you know what I mean? Like I just-

No, I was definitely off that camp. Like- Because you put up, you do do some really fantastic, brutal content on social media, where you really go there. You're not one of those sober influencers who's like, here's my beautiful life. And everything is kind of filtered and lovely. You're like, this is what alcoholism look like. This is what I look like in the grips of my addiction, you know, and to kind

of look at it, it looks quite shocking, but it's actually what all of us who are alcoholics went through. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely, I put a lot out there. In my content, there's a lot of pictures from when I was drinking and drugging. And I do talk about the really kind of gritty stuff. Can we talk about some of it now? Yeah. Because I think the gritty stuff is so important and not gratuitously. I think it's important because there will be someone listening who has tuned into this podcast because they want to know about, you know, like I remember when I first got sober, all I wanted to do was listen to the war stories because I was like, I could

not believe that other people had behaved in that way because all along the whole way through my drinking, I thought I was the only one that behaved like that much of a dick or did those shameful things. And it was such a revelation to learn that actually, no, this is what happens to all people who get addicted to alcohol. They don't cover themselves in fucking glory. And I think the gritty stuff is like, I remember writing about this thing that happened to me

just before I got sober, whereby I went to a friend's 40th. And one party trick was being able to seek out the person who was doing the cocaine. And I remember coming to in a kind of field. And my husband and daughter were asleep in the country house behind. And this guy was performing a sex act on me. And I remember being like, I don't

remember how this has happened. But I remember thinking, I can't ask him to stop, because he's been giving me cocaine all night. And I put it in my book about getting sober at Gloria's Rock Bottom. And people were like, oh, do you really want to do that? And I'm like, no, of course I don't really want to.

I don't really want to fucking tell people about this incredibly shameful moment in my life. But I also really don't want women, especially, to be out there carrying this shame around with them where they're like, I did this terrible thing or this terrible thing happened and it's my fault and all of that stuff. And I'm like, what I want is people to get better because shame dies when you expose it to the light. The reason I put that in the book was because that's the reality where alcohol and drugs take us if we are in addiction to really shitty places.

And it was only by recognizing that I wasn't a bad person. I was just an ill person who sometimes did bad things because of that illness that I was able to move through it and get better. So let's talk about the gritty shit. Yes, let's do it. Yeah, no, you know, the whole shame thing, like that's that's really what stops a lot of people from it keeps us sick. Yeah, yeah. And it's it stops people from taking a step into recovery or sobriety because it's like, oh, I'll have to face all the shameful things I did all the horrible things I did. But yeah, I like to set them free and also show other people that, hey, look, you might have done all these terrible things

when you were drinking and drugging and doing whatever, but that doesn't mean that you're too far gone or there's no hope for you. You might have done things that you have been ashamed of, but there is hope and there is a life after the terrible things. And also, it's that thing of saying to people, yeah, you still are worthy of recovery.

Yes. Because I definitely had this thing where I was like, I don't deserve to feel good, because look at how badly I behaved. Yeah. I definitely felt the same. I did a lot of self-sabotaging, especially when I was in active addiction.

And that all stemmed from being like, oh, I don't deserve good things. So I better make everything worse for myself. So what would you, I mean, I don't want to like, yeah, gratuitously be like, what's the worst thing that you did while you were using active addiction? But are there some things that kind of stand out to you

that you think might help someone who's listening to kind of know that it is possible to go and get help. You know, you can be in this position and still be worthy of recovery. Mm-hmm. I think some of my behavior was really not on when I was in active addiction. I've done plenty of like embarrassing things like, you know like wetting myself in public and throwing up all over myself, all that kind of things. But it was the stuff that I'm really not pleased with myself about is my behavior

and how I treated other people when I was drinking. Towards the end of my drinking career, I basically annihilated my relationship. I'd moved to the States to be with this guy, and I was madly in love with him. But I basically destroyed everything with my rampant alcoholism and just my self-destructive behavior. And I wasn't very nice to him. And after we broke up, I crossed so many of his boundaries. I wouldn't leave him alone. I was texting him and calling him all the time and basically just harassing him basically because I was still in the grips

of addiction. Doesn't excuse the behavior, but I was out of control and having my own little breakdown. Yeah, the way that I've behaved and treated other people. Now in sobriety, I'm very in control of myself and I'm able to stop and think and I have respect for myself as well as others and I'm not just thinking about my next drink or where I'm going to get crack from, you know, I'm thinking about other people and how they feel and how my behavior can affect them. So you were for a lot of your drinking career, as you put it, you were living abroad. Yeah.

Which, you know, like getting crack in like Southeast Asia or? Well, I actually got a lot of mess in Southeast Asia. I had a lot of crack in Canada. Lots of opium in Thailand. I went through a huge opium phase. Basically, whatever. I was completely out of control. I didn't really care what happened to me.

Didn't care if I lived or died. So I would do any kind of drug that someone handed to me, really, because I was like, if I die, I die, you know? Yeah, and it was all running away. Like, I went abroad to begin with because I was going on a six-month backpacking trip to Thailand, but while I was away, I discovered that I could work in bars and support myself that way and get paid in alcohol and drugs by the owners, and they'd put me up and pay for my visa. I could basically live for free and be in this party lifestyle with no consequences, no responsibilities. And I was like, why would I ever give that up? Like now that is my personal idea of hell. I cannot think of anything that

sounds less appealing. But when I was in my mid-20s, that was the dream. I was like, oh, I can just run away from all my problems, not have any responsibilities, and live in the mountains in Laos and just get paid in whiskey. This is fantastic. I saw no reason to go home until I realized I had a massive drug and alcohol problem and that I was really depressed.

When did you realize that? Probably about five years before I came home. Because I just got it into my head that this was the dream. This is what I wanted to do with my life. Which was destroy it. Yeah. Yeah. And just not live in the real world and not... I just wanted to drink. I just wanted to drink and drug. And that, yeah, that was as far as my ambitions went, really. Alcoholism is often described as a disease of denial. Like it's one of the few illnesses whereby the symptom is that it tells you you don't have it.

So it can be a long, old, drawn-out process before you realize you have a problem. And the reality is some people never get there. And I don't know why some people do, and I don't know why some people don't. It seems to me sheer dumb luck, and that's partly because we don't talk about this stuff. It shouldn't have to be that way.

Were there any kind of rock bottoms situations where you were like, I really need to stop this because if I don't stop this, I'm going to die? I had many rock bottoms. There's one after the other. Like every time I thought I got to the bottom, I grabbed a shovel and just kept on digging. But I thought that was just my lot in life. I thought that's what I deserved, was to be a depressed drunk. Like, I kind of, I got to a place of pure acceptance.

And being sober never came to my mind, because that meant that I couldn't drink anymore. If I got sober, then I'd have to stop drinking. And that didn't even compute. It wasn't an option. So we have rock bottom after rock bottom. But none of them were a wake up call. Do you have rock bottom after rock bottom, but none of them were a wake up call. Do you feel able to talk about some of the kind of things?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it does can feel a bit gratuitous, but like, people know that it's like really powerful to hear that, like, people have experienced this thing and then come out the other side. Yeah. So I think the downward spiral, which eventually led to my sobriety, so that's positive, probably started when I was living in Australia and I had come to this place of acceptance that I was an alcoholic. Like I literally couldn't stop drinking. I was a morning drinker. I was at work drinker. I lost like several jobs and like all this kind of business. I put vodka in my chamomile tea. Really? How did that taste?

Yeah, like hot vodka, really. Like chamomile tea does not mask the taste of vodka. It just makes it warm. Did it take the edge off? Well, I think my... Well, I started doing it because I didn't have any other mixes in my house. And I was like, well, I have to drink this vodka somehow. And chamomile tea was the only thing that I had. And then I was like, oh, actually, this drink this vodka somehow. And chamomile tea was the only thing that I had.

And then I was like, oh, actually, this is quite nice. And also chamomile wellness. So I just carried on. It was my little relaxing drink. The levels of delusion that we are under. I always remember, like, if I'd been out and I hadn't slept or whatever, I was like, I can't have a coffee because that's going

to make me feel really bad. What the fuck? Like we've just been taking cocaine for three days, Bridey. Anyway, so you're drinking A-Wire with your vodka and chamomile tea. Yeah. And I came to a point where I could not control myself. I remember I was house-sitting for some friends of mine and they were gone for a couple of weeks. And as soon as they left me with the keys and got on the plane, I was like right to the liquor cabinet.

Went straight to the liquor cabinet and started helping myself. On the first day I drank like a bottle of vodka, a bottle of whiskey. And then the next day I woke up and was like, oh no, I better replace that because I've drunk their alcohol. That morning I replaced those two bottles and drank them both immediately. And that cycle carried on for a couple of weeks the entire time they were away. By the time they got back, I was a wreck.

I was just a mess. And then I told them I had the flu. That realization that I could not be in a house where there was alcohol without drinking it, I was like, OK, I definitely don't have any control over this. I'm definitely an alcoholic. By that point, I knew that the kind of definition of an alcoholic would be someone who couldn't stop drinking even when they wanted to, someone who was really powerless to alcohol.

And I was like, oh, wow, that's me. I can't control this. But I accepted it. And I was like, meh, I guess that's my lot in life. I'm destined to be a depressed drunk and I don't deserve anything else. So I guess this is just how I'll live. And I carried on that way. And as I did, I just got more and more sick and my mental health got worse and worse and worse until I was incredibly suicidal and I was like planning ways to do it. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I thought about it all the time. I met a man. Always the solution. And he a man. Mm-hmm. Always the solution. Yes, and he fixed me. A drink.

He fixed me a lot with that. Well, I was very, very depressed when I met him and that kind of initial rush of love made me feel happy momentarily. And I was like, oh, this man has fixed me. I'm fine now. All that alcoholism and depression stuff. Like, forget about it. I'm in love. So nothing can hurt me now. It turns out like that kind of initial spark of falling in love only masked my problems for about a month until I was back into the throes of alcoholism. But this time I was in New York. Right, okay. And I was like, oh no, now I'm a depressed drunk in New York. Like what?

So he ended up kicking me out of the house because he would go to work and I'd drink all of his tequila. He'd come home and I'd shout at him. Right. And we met in Southeast Asia. Okay. And so he was like, where the hell did this random

drunk British chick come from? Why is she in my house shouting at me? So he chucked me out. So you were twin sisters. Yeah. And I ended up in Canada. And then I was heartbroken and really like, I was like, this is it. This is the most sad I'll ever be. Heartbroken, suicidal. And I was like,

oh, how can I make things better? So I started smoking crack. Right. Okay. Yeah. And how did that work out for you? Well, surprisingly, it made things worse. Really? Yes. In a surprising turn of events. That is surprising. things worse. Really? Yes. Surprising. Yes. And yet things got worse. My suicidal tendencies were just like, yeah, exacerbated tenfold. And then I was just in a dark and dingy flat

with some Canadian bloke like just smoking crack all the time. And I was like, well, this didn't go to plan. This is not what I envisioned. So I did the alcoholic thing and I moved. Yes, I went to Vancouver Island. I was like, hey, if I leave this city, I was in Ottawa at the time, if I leave this city, I will be fixed. Basically, I was trying to find anything to fix me, but changing my behavior.

Yeah, anything that fixed you as long as it didn't involve having to give up alcohol and drugs. Yeah. And as long as I didn't have to change or do anything or confront myself, yeah. Wouldn't do it. Yeah, and then I ended up in Vancouver Island. I was working in a barbecue restaurant,

and I drunk a bottle of vodka on shift. That was an appropriate thing to do. And also, it was kind of like drinking, I was like, I need this vodka to live. This is survival, so if I don't have this, then I won't be able to function. So in my mind, it was justified to drink a bottle of vodka at work.

My boss came in. I was very, very drunk, hit on him. He decided not to hook up with me, this drunken mess of an employee. And the next day he called me in for a meeting and sat me down and he said, I think you've got a problem with alcohol. He said, I think you should really sort that out and obviously you don't work here anymore. I was like, yep, fine, that's cool. And then I went on an almighty bender and it got to the point where I just I gave up. And I've been thinking about killing

myself for years by that point. This wasn't immediately after the the firing. The fact that I lost my job was not really the catalyst for a suicide attempt. But I did. I did. I was living in a trailer at the time, and I tried to kill myself. It just got to the point where I'd had enough. I just didn't want to be there anymore. I didn't. It was full-blown depression, and it's not something that I wanted to do.

It's something that happened. I felt like I wasn't in control of it, just like my drinking and driving, it was kind of like I didn't sort of wake up one morning and think, oh, it seems like a good day to kill myself. It just kind of happened, like almost like out of body experience. But for once, the guy I was seeing stepped up

and actually saved the day, right? Destroyed the day, right, and destroyed the day. Yeah, he came into the trailer and found me and called an ambulance. So I ended up in a psych ward in Canada. Nice little grippy sock vacation, as they call it. Yeah, you kind of like wake up in the psych ward and you're in these weird pajamas with like non-slip socks on.

How did I get here? What is this? But yet again, not the wake-up call I needed. When these things were all happening, not at one point did I have the self-awareness or the ability to reflect on my experiences and go, oh, hold on. Maybe something isn't going right, or maybe I need to change something.

I had tunnel vision on self-destruction. Like I was just on this path and there was no time or space for me to stop and look at myself and think like you are out of control. When I got out of the psych ward, I went straight to the liquor store. Wow. Bought my vodka. I didn't stop and, like, okay, maybe something needs to change. So how, in the end, I don't know about you, but the question I get asked quite often, people send me DMs and they want to know, like, how did you get sober? How did you do it? What

changed? And for me, there were lots of really awful things happened and I didn't get sober. For me, there were lots of really awful things happened, and I didn't get sober. When I talk about my rock bottom, my last night, my last bender, it was awful. But again, it wasn't as bad as a million other things that had happened. And I just described that thing of just being like, if I don't do this, I am going to die. I'm going to die by either choosing to take my own life, or I'm going to die by choking on my own vomit or almost worst of all, I'm going to die by having to live in this groundhog day existence whereby it's just the same thing over and over again. And actually that was the worst fate in a way. That's a very similar place to where I got to

by the end of my drinking. I decided to get Sober. It was rather less of a decision, more of my only option. It was that or death. Yeah. Like what had happened was COVID hit. So all the other kind of expats and backpackers around the world kind of all scattered back home.

Yeah, everyone moved back in with their parents and that forced me to move back to the UK and move in with my mum and the place that I was avoiding all these years of kind of when I was on my almighty bender of self-destruction, drinking and drugging around the world. The UK was the place I did not want to go back there. I didn't want to confront my past. I just wanted to keep on going, keep on going forward, keep on traveling, keep on moving countries, keep on drinking.

Never stop, never feel, never experience an emotion. Because if I kept on going, I can go another day running away from my problems. But when COVID hit, I can go another day running away from my problems. But when COVID hit, I was forced to go back home. I had no money, no other option. And I got home and I carried on drinking. You know, it was locked down, so there wasn't much else to do. But I think there was something about being in my childhood home, back where everything started, back where everything started, back where, you know, I had that experience of my mum finding out that my dad had died.

And like I was in the same house where we all sat on the floor and cried over my dad's death. Like it was almost like being back at the scene of the crime, this place where I'd grown up as a teenager hating myself. It kind of really forced me to look in the mirror and I became very reflective. Something that I had no intention of doing. Like I didn't think, oh, I'm miserable, maybe I should look at my life. It was just being confronted with my childhood and my teenage years in that house. I had the realization, I feel very, very lucky that I had this sort of epiphany. But one morning, I was cleaning up all the bottles from my room.

I'd been on this almighty bender just drinking bottle after bottle after bottle of wine at my mum's house. And I'd stashed them all at the top of my bed, which is what I used to do when I was a kid when I was hiding my drinking from my mum. And one morning I was clearing up all those bottles, very hungover, and I put them all in a black bin bag and I sat at the end of the bed and I remember putting the bin bag down and I remember all the clinking sound of all the bottles. And I remember just sitting on the bottom of my bed and then just coming to the realization that I didn't have to live this way anymore.

It was almost like a little voice that just kind of told me, you don't have to do this anymore. You can let go now. And in that moment, it made absolute sense to me that I couldn't drink anymore. It was like solving an algebra equation that I've been trying to solve my entire life. I realized that alcohol was at the center of everything. All your problems. Yeah, and alcohol was the block that was stopping me from progressing and growing and feeling better about myself.

It was very clear to me that I had no future, no chance of being happy if alcohol was still in my life. That's when I realized I did actually want to be happy. All this time I was like, oh, I don't care if I live or die. If I die, I die. Then I think at that moment I realized, oh, I do want to be happy. Maybe if I can be happy, then I'll want to live. Maybe I don't want to die. And then the realization that I did actually want to start enjoying my life, I wanted to stop torturing myself and I wanted to stop making myself miserable. And that meant giving up alcohol. So I gave up alcohol.

And obviously, I mean, I feel like we need to do like several podcasts with you because I feel like very much this discussion is about the depths of despair that one goes to in alcoholism. Obviously, getting sober is a hard process, but I always think it's not as hard as the alternative. You know, there are lots of organizations in the show notes that can help people in terms of recovery, if that is what they want to do. And also for family members, if there's anyone they feel they need to support and how to have these kind of conversations. But I want to kind of come to you, Abby, before we finish, because the other extraordinary thing to your story is that a couple of years into this new wonderful life of sobriety,

you find out you have a brain tumour. Yeah. Yeah, in May this year. Wow. And so how many years sober were you? Four. Four years. Yeah. So my sobriety day is the first of April. Everyone thought it was an April Fools joke. And I was like, haha, no, I'm actually a depressed drunk. I'm a full blown alcoholic.

Yeah. It's not a joke. And then, oh, everyone took me seriously after that. So, yeah, first of April, I turned four years sober. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And then I found out I had a brain tumor in May. Wow. Yeah.

There's probably some people listening who are like, that might have derailed sobriety for a lot of people. We talk about recovery, don't we, like life on life's terms. And actually, I'm really amazed when I watch your content on Instagram, I'm just so in awe of you and how beautifully you seem to be navigating this huge obstacle in your life.

And I wondered if actually being sober and the tools that you have developed through being sober, would you say that those have been sort of crucial in helping you to deal with this diagnosis? Definitely. Definitely. All the mental health struggles, all the substance abuse, alcoholism, all those challenges and overcoming

those challenges just proved to me that I can go through hard things and I can experience difficult things and come out the other side. And it's happened time and time again in my life. So when I was diagnosed with at first a brain tumor and then brain cancer, my immediate reaction was like, okay, it's another thing, it's another obstacle, and it's going to be tough.

It's going to be really tough, but I am going to be able to cope with it and see I'm going to come out the other side. My life might not look like how I hoped it would be. It might be very different, but I have evidence that I can go through all these very, very difficult things, survive, come out the other side and live a life even if it looks different. Because I think there's that thing where in difficult times I can be quite grateful I'm an alcoholic Because I have this 12-step program. I have this design for living that Enables me to deal with really shit things. I have been in 12-step programs in the past I joined I joined 12-step program when I was two years sober

Okay, because I had a mental breakdown because I don't tell you when you get sober that... But life just gets really fucking easy. Yeah. That's what I thought would happen. The bad things continue to happen. Yeah. I'm like, what the fuck? I didn't realise that.

I thought it was going to be puppies and kittens. That's the thing. I didn't realise that after I quit drinking, I would have to live with all the reasons that I drank and then not have anything to protect me from them or to help me cope with them. I thought it was all going to be a fairy tale afterwards, but it turns out it's not because it takes away your main coping mechanism that's masked all these things over the years and now you've got to face them head on. And so I had just a complete mental breakdown at two years sober. I didn't drink, never touched a drink.

In fact, I never really considered drinking. I was never at risk of that, because by that point, I knew that I did not want to do that. So I joined a 12-step program in order to cope. And it helped me massively. I don't go regularly anymore. And I wouldn't say that I apply it to everything. I have a sponsor, and she has helped me so much. It's about finding other people like you, isn't it?

It's peer support and community. Through so many difficult points that have nothing to do with alcoholism, like through mental breakdowns and through depressive episodes, and now through cancer diagnosis, my sponsor is like at my door with soup and support and cuddles and just and now through cancer diagnosis. My sponsor is like at my door with soup and support and cuddles and just like someone to talk to. I haven't used 12 Steps to cope with my cancer diagnosis. But the hardness of what you've gone through in terms of your alcoholism is like, okay,

I can do this. Yeah. Or is that really fucking trite? You know, that question that when people are like, well, has cancer given you a new appreciation for life? And it's like, yeah, but I'd rather not have it. If I could choose, I would rather not have the cancer. But being diagnosed with cancer in sobriety, it made me very grateful

for my sobriety because pretty much everyone around me, their first thing that they said was thank God you're sober dealing with this. Like if you are still in the grips of addiction, if you're still drinking every day and you didn't have the emotional resilience that you have now and then you got this really significant diagnosis, God knows how you would have coped. But going through all those years of alcoholism, obviously still deal with alcoholism daily. All those years of active addiction, going through that and being on this self-destructive path and treating myself terribly and being very cruel to myself, and now having a cancer diagnosis, which will shorten my life

and give me a limited amount of time on this earth. It just makes me want to spend that time being kind to myself. Like I felt that way already, but now I have more of a drive than ever to treat myself and others with love and just kind of fill my days with joy and just kindness. And like, obviously I'm gonna have days where I feel crap about myself and I'll have a bit of negative

self-talk but I don't want to waste another day treating myself like a piece of poo really. Abby Felton you are fucking legendary. Oh thank you. So are you. A heartfelt thank you to Abby for sharing her story with us. Her ability to find purpose and strength, even in the face of terminal illness, is a reminder that we all have the capacity to face life's challenges. If you've been inspired by Abbie's story, please share this episode with someone who

needs a reminder that there is always hope. We'll see you on Friday.