One MONTH sober!

After a few sobriety false starts earlier this year, I think I was reticent to write anything until I returned to steadier ground this time around. Instead of chancing becoming the Boy Who Cried Wolf (Woman Who Cried for Vodka?), I decided to hunker down in Sobrietyville until it started feeling a little more like home again. It didn’t harm that I’ve spent the majority of the last month horizontal with Sertraline side effects, but we’ll get onto that.

For arguably the first time in my life, I’ve been taking responsibility for ALL of my shit. In the past, it was all too easy to look at my mouldy spaghetti of a brain and immediately want to reach for a bottle, to avoid unravelling its seemingly endless issues. Putting down the drink is never the full answer; it’s just the beginning. I had the PMDD, the ongoing processing of my autism diagnosis two years ago, my tendency to use romance to escape reality… to name but a few.

Being 33, single, living alone in my (arguably quite shit) hometown for the first time in fifteen years and pivoting into self-employment was stressful enough. Add in the PMDD that insists on destroying any progress made each month and renders me emotionally volatile and bedridden with fatigue? Untenable.

I saw a lovely gynaecologist who urged me to try the SSRI Sertraline again, after having a bad reaction to it as a teenager. Instead of throwing me onto a standard dose, as doctors tended to do before my autism diagnosis, she prescribed a teensy sub-therapeutic dose of 25mg to be taken the two weeks before my period to target the PMDD. I was hesitant, but keen to try anything, and having ruled out other SSRIs and the combined birth control pill (due to risk of stroke, as I have aura migraines), this was the next logical step.

As alluded to, the side effects have been brutal. Physically: bone-deep fatigue, elevated heart rate, headaches, the complete inability to stand up without feeling dizzy. Mentally: enveloping apathy, periods of uncontrollable crying and a sense of doom that became so bad that I reached out to my family and stayed with them for three days, as I was worried about my mental state.

Whilst this was all ticking away, there came the pervasive battle between my self-compassionate, neurodivergent coach/counsellor self, and the internalised ableism that loves to show its face in times of mandatory rest. I am not ashamed to say that I Googled “Am I actually recovering or am I just lazy?” in one particularly bad moment.

People with addiction issues want answers - yesterday. It makes us brilliantly resilient in the long run, but it can make periods of necessary respite feel like failure. As someone who’s been running the whole mental health recovery gamut as far back as being a fourteen-year-old anorexic, it can feel like a truly endless slog. This is a common reality for many late-diagnosed autistics who end up collecting myriad co-morbidities through the trauma of trying to live a neurotypical life.

But I realised: there is no bloody wonder I kept returning to the temporary salve of booze. I’ve been dragging around a system that is still unwell. Just because I am used to PMDD doesn’t mean that’s what I should expect as my baseline. I recently watched a YouTube video that showed a woman being interviewed on TV about living with the disorder. The female presenter looked absolutely horrified by the severity of what she had experienced. The woman was living my life.

I wouldn’t tell myself to just crack on with everything if I had a broken limb; I’d get it treated before expecting myself to be able to function properly again. So, I’m no longer trying to change the world and become a hugely successful coach/counsellor/writer/musician merely months after:

• Giving up an 11-year corporate career

• An ended relationship

• Moving back to my hometown after four years of living in the Netherlands

• A cancer scare in May

• Getting sober again

The client base that I’ve built up is the perfect amount for me to continue working on a very minimal basis - a way for me to still feel ‘productive’ and ‘helpful’ - without running myself ragged with the idea that I need to do more, more, more. The meds are due an increase, which I’ve decided with the doctors to do during my luteal hell week, as I don’t work then and can hopefully ride out the side effects without affecting my scheduling.

I hope that talking about these little accommodations and strategies helps you think about the areas where you can do the same in your own life.

Of course, to realise that, at thirty-three, I still have a long way to go before I am thriving on healthy foundations sucks. But knowing that once I’ve gotten there - by myself and by advocating for myself - it will be the true new beginning I’ve waited for for literal decades? Worth it.