How does one become an ‘ex-partygirl’?

If you’ve found this blog through my stickers and posters you’ll know I describe myself aptly as an ex-partygirl. Slightly cringe, I realise. But no other short amalgamation of words can really illustrate the mise-en-scène of this blog.

You know me as sober -not always perfect- but sober enough to complain about being sober.

You’ll know I preach that prescription drugs and alcohol ‘don’t count’ because I don’t abuse them. Even when using ambien for escapism, often times it’s to sedate myself out of harms way, so I can’t resort to something that’s actually dangerous.

I don’t take high doses, I’m not addicted to anything. I can easily go days without popping pills, I’ve got to in fact! Or else they stop working at their current doses. Developing a drug dependency is dumb. My prescription drug use is medicinal and over watched by a very fabulous, experienced -and expensive- psychiatrist.

Drinking is actually a relatively new endeavour of mine. I gave up hard drugs this past year and in their place begun teaching myself to adopt ‘social drinking’. My alcohol consumption is driven not by a desire to consume alcohol -I was never a drinker!- But as part of my self prescribed rehabilitation into ‘normal life’. It’s normal to drink alcohol. Not drinking -as I found out as a person who didn’t drink up until this point- is actually really socially excluding and embarrassing. Especially in your early 20’s! I know stats say my generation are drinking less, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. I always felt the social pressure to drink more than I ever had the desire to.

In part, my eating disorder was to blame for my disinterest and frankly negative perception of alcohol. I knew from age 13 just how calorie dense alcohol is. Back then the only liquid I allowed myself to drink was water. It worried me when my peers begun experimenting with alcohol, I knew I didn’t want to drink but I also didn’t want to fall short on hitting ‘normal’ social milestones… Maybe that’s why I welcomed drugs with such open arms into my life. Drugs don’t contain calories -although I’d be lying if I said I haven’t googled how many calories are in a pill- one can never be too certain.

Drugs in fact, stopped me feeling hungry and made me loose weight. A real win win for a teenage MyFitnessPal fanatic, with a 2014 tumblr ‘hashtag Proana’ mindset. Drugs filled a hole, so many holes in fact. They were hitting all the right receptors in my brain and made me feel great chemically as well as attributing coveted partygirl social status. In retrospect it’s like duh! Since it’s so common for those with undiagnosed adhd to abuse stimulants, as they satiate and calm our dopamine deficient brains. Meaning we don’t enjoy drugs because they make us ‘high’, but because they make us feel balanced - normal. Ironically. But it’s inevitable that you’ll overdo it. Don’t go looking for God.

At the time there was no context to understand my actions, there was only a never ending hunger for more. More drugs = more control over my body = more confidence in myself.

My relationship with alcohol was different, I only ever drunk to enhance the drugs I was on.

But I’d never drink on coke, every time an ex of mine did the combination would make him throw up - and I am deathly afraid of throwing up. So knowing this, it’s safe to assume I rarely ever drank…

And so it won, for many years it won and drugs changed me, they changed me into something unrecognisable. And then after becoming conscious and sober, the holes they left changed me for a second time.

For fucks sake, it’s nearly all I think about. Drugs are on my brain whether I’m on drugs or not. That’s reflected in my writing.

But how bad I used to be is all abstract, even if you knew me during those years, you were off your head too!

But there is an unbiased record of these times perfectly preserved in my hospital notes. I wasn’t aware that I was being documented like this at the time either.

But they are worse than even I could have remembered, as exemplified in the exert above.

I wrote this post to contextualise what a big deal my sobriety is and to exemplify my progress. I want to give hope to those who may feel stuck in a vicious cycle of feeding their mind /body / ego with chemical coping strategies.

I want to show that you can be sexy and sober! I want to be the hot-girl role model I never had. Partygirls get all the glamour, but you don’t see the other side of it all.

That’s why I’m sharing such a personal exert of my medical history on the internet for anyone to paw over and judge. I hope, like me, you can laugh a little at it and realise how silly all this really is!

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A final note, re the last line of that write up - I’d love to know what capacity they think I have to make any decisions re my health care. The nhs mental health care I received as an adolescent was appalling and I stress, if you need help -and can afford to- go private!!