Five Years Sober: Bryony Gordon On Why Sobriety Isn't A Cure

Bryony Gordon is a Telegraph columnist, the author of The Wrong Knickers, Mad Girl and Glorious Rock Bottom, the founder of Mental Health Mates, and nearly five years sober.

She takes Dave through it. Growing up scared, with what she now knows was OCD running untreated through the eighties and nineties. The first drink at 14 in a park with a friend, a litre of cider and a small bottle of vodka, being violently sick, and knowing immediately she wanted to do it again. The Telegraph noticing she was good at turning her chaos into a hilarious column. The cocaine years, the blackouts, the late twenties she now looks back on as sad rather than funny. The slow horror of realising that all the rules she had built around her drinking, no drinking before the baby was in bed, no spirits, no every-day drinking, were not proof she was in control. They were proof she was not.

Bryony talks openly about the type of OCD nobody drops into conversation. Not the sock drawer. The Pure O type, the intrusive thoughts that convinced her she might be a serial killer, that made her check the local papers for murders on the walk home from school. The way alcohol shut the OCD up for a few hours and then made it louder the next day. The rehab she went to. The counsellor she still sees. The friend Holly she met there who lived a mile from her with kids the same age.

Bryony and Dave talk about the recovery community, why she still calls herself an alcoholic, why she does not see sobriety as a cure, and what it took to start Mental Health Mates so that people experiencing mental health issues had somewhere to walk together.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Bryony.

@bryonygordon

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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