When I was making my first shaky, shame-filled steps to sobriety over a decade ago, I really wish there had been someone as brilliantly brave as Ulrika Jonsson out there, speaking openly about what it is like to be a mother with a drinking problem.
Because listening to the TV presenter talk this week about her decision to get sober, I was taken straight back to those awful last days of my drinking, when I looked at my lovely home and my gorgeous child and thought: ‘What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I stop drinking?’
Ulrika went on Spencer Matthews’ podcast Untapped to discuss her year of sobriety. She spoke about how defensive she used to get when her teenage son would come home from school and ask if she was planning to drink that night.
It took me back to the evenings my husband would beg me to have a night off, or to ‘just have one’ and go to bed early.
But as much as I tried – and I really, really tried – I could not ‘just have one’. And if I did have a night off, it was only because I was still so wrecked from the evening before (that may or may not have carried on well into the morning).
What really hit home, however, was when she spoke about the strange twilight zone you exist in, as a middle-class alcoholic, whereby everything looks perfectly presentable on the outside, and yet feels apocalyptic on the inside.
‘My house was impeccable, I was on top of everything,’ she told Matthews, ‘apart from not remembering a lot of things. Then [there was] the whole justification thing of “it’s not every day”.
TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson speaking openly about what it is like to be a mother with a drinking problem on Spencer Matthews’ podcast Untapped
Looking around my house, which is beautiful and maintained. There’s not a problem here! But when the drinking started earlier in the day, and I found myself kneeling into the cupboard under the stairs where I kept my rum and just necking the rum from the bottle, I would say to myself . . . “look at you”. That was the voice in my head. “Look what’s become of you.”
‘And the other one was “you know there’s a problem here”. But I would drink on that, because if there was a problem I had to drink on that to kill those feelings.’
Oh, how this chimed with me! I remember telling myself I couldn’t have an issue because I lived in a nice terraced house in south London with a Cath Kidston oven mitt. I wasn’t sitting on a park bench, swigging from a paper bag, as I had somehow come to understand all alcoholics did.
And yet three or four nights a week, I was drinking until I blacked out, often snorting cocaine in a desperate attempt to sober up.
It was bleak. It was miserable. It was, most of all, very lonely, not least because I had never heard another mother speak publicly about being this way. I felt like a terrible human, and, as Ulrika explained, that shame – and my inability to deal with it – made me drink more, not less.
I wonder how different things might have been had there been a mum speaking publicly about alcoholism, and all the many different ways it can show up in your life.
Would I have got sober sooner, and given my daughter the mother she deserved earlier? It’s impossible to say, but what I do know is that, much like Ulrika, as soon as I plucked up the courage to go to a 12-step meeting, where I finally heard my story spoken back to me by other women, I started to get better.
I understood that I wasn’t a bad person, just an ill one, that my inability to drink ‘normally’ wasn’t a moral failing but a disease called alcoholism. Armed with that knowledge, and that compassion from other women, I am now able to say that in just a couple of weeks, I will be eight years sober.
All of this is only possible because of people like Ulrika, alcoholics who are now in recovery and remind me on a daily basis of what happens when we pick up a drink.
It’s why I was so grateful to hear her story – and so disheartened to hear that, instead of focusing on the insightful and moving things she had to say, many people went to the comments section to lay into the 57-year-old for looking . . . well, 57.
The trolling was so bad that Ulrika felt compelled to speak up. ‘I understand that an over-tanned, imperfect and AGEING face offends you,’ she wrote on her Instagram. ‘But try to listen to the words rather than constantly judge women’s appearance. You might learn something.’
I’m glad she’s hit back. Because as much as we think celebrities talking about alcoholism are two-a-penny, the truth is, very few feel able to do it.
It is simply too exposing – what if they were to relapse? – and it is not encouraged by 12-step fellowships, where anonymity is at the heart of everything. But without vocal advocates for sobriety, the notion of the park bench drunk persists, the misconceptions about addiction continue, and fewer people are able to get well from it.
Young people miss out on childhoods, while the health system gets put under more pressure (it is estimated that alcohol costs the NHS £3.5 billion a year in England alone, and society as a whole £21 billion).
It’s almost impossible for women to show up as themselves in the world, without masks or make-up and filters, let alone with the courage to talk about their most vulnerable experiences. We should be whooping in applause at Ulrika, not tearing her down because she forgot to wear foundation.
I pity the poor trolls who believe they are contributing anything to society with their mean little comments and casual cruelty. May they one day display even an ounce of the bravery that Ulrika has: to reflect on their behaviour, and actually do something to change it.
I’d like to see trolls go toe-to-toe with Lionesses
Lioness Chloe Kelly and other England players have been called rubbish at football by online (mostly male) trolls
While we’re on the subject of trolls, let’s take a moment to call out the idiots (mostly male) who have set about trying to criticise the Lionesses for being rubbish at football (despite the fact they’ve got to the finals of this year’s Euros).
I’d like to watch each and every one of these armchair experts be made to play a match against Chloe Kelly and the other England players, and see what they have to say about our national team afterwards.
Enjoy magic age of 12, while it lasts Kate…
Happy birthday to Prince George, pictured in a photo posted on Kensington Palace’s social media, who turned 12 this week
Happy birthday to Prince George, who turned 12 this week. My daughter is the same age, and though many parents have warned me about the awful adolescent experience I must surely be having, I’m finding 12 the most wonderful age.
It’s lovely to see her grow up and become her own person while maintaining those childlike qualities that mean she still – every now and then! – wants her mummy and daddy.
I hope that the Prince and Princess of Wales are savouring this time as much as my husband and I are, fully aware that as soon as our babies turn 13, we’re in for the full teenage treatment.
Almost half of children are on social media while eating, while 64 per cent of parents admit to using WhatsApp, according to a new study.
I despair! How can we ask children to stay away from screens if we can’t even manage it while having our dinner?
Sharks have got a good PR!
I’m loving the new ITV series Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters.
There’s Lenny Henry, and Amanda from Amandaland, but the real stars of the show are the sharks themselves, great big hammerheads and bulls who appear to have about as much interest in the humans as an agent might after a showbiz scandal.
Then there’s Netflix’s brilliant Shark Whisperer, where a diver and conservationist who is genuinely called Ocean cuddles up to Great Whites. Fifty years after Jaws, sharks are finally getting some good press.
