Caning Heineken zeros at da festival

This is Laura Willougby co-founder of Club Soda and me..….enjoying a cheeky heineken zero….
Grateful for the selfie as Laura was running around like a blue arsed fly to make another successful event.
I was just chilling…sampling the booze free drinks and scoffing vegan food 🙂

When I first joined Club Soda FB group (3 years ago) ….it was the height of the christmas work boozy party circuit. office do’s were where some of my most hideous drinking escapades took place. It was only a week after, what was to be , my final booze binge.

I was in an office building which was made up of a number of  separate companies..
Was the Friday before Christmas, and they decided to have a drinks party for everyone starting at 12 noon. It was located smack in the middle of the foyer.

If I wanted to go out for lunch… I had to walk right through the party.
Back then, the thought of saying the words ‘I don’t drink’ …seemed utterly impossible. 

The b’stard social anxiety was so intense … that just being in an office with people was hard af…let alone in a social gathering.  I drunk to quell the social anxiety.,.it was my false feck of a friend.

But my last binge was so devastating and dark, that boozing was no longer an option
I felt trapped in that office.  I felt trapped full stop.

I posted on the Club Soda Facebook group. Some kind folks responded with their support.
That meant a lot to me . Any group where you have a connection and there is peer support… is a great thing.
The responses,  gave me some impetus to get out of my chair and walk confidently through the party , politely declining offers of drink and out to get ma vegan sarnie.

Ok that’s bollocks…  I had my hoodie up… head down…and speed through the party avoiding any eye contact ..(same for going back in )

It was early days in sobriety…and a long way from dealing with the mental feckery.
After a months sober time, my mental health reached new lower lows. A special kind of fecked up.
I posted some stuff about how I was feeling on club soda….

Someone recognised the dark shit i was saying. They contacted me directly .. They understood…..and they helped me with an emergency plan..
-have a shower
-get dafuq out for a walk

-tidy my pit of a room up.
-eat and drink some green healthy shit
-listen/read some Pema Chodren
-go to some recovery/mental health/buddhist kind of meeting… anything to make a connection
-make some long term plans to sort out the feckery once and for all…….and ask for help
….
Sound feckin advice.. This person didn’t have to contact me…a true bodhisattva.. always grateful for this persons kind help…

1 year later , I went to Club Soda’s drinks festival in Bermondsey,. I was 1 year plus sober and had done a shit load of work on the mental health wellbeing front .

The darkness had mostly gone …but the anxiety bollocks was still rife .|
Sometimes it was so heavy, that not only did I experience the usual suspects; pounding heart..dripping with sweat and feelings of panic..(.feck it was terror!).
I would also feel like I was tripping… with weird arse disassociation and visuals going one…intense shit.

At the festival, was okay saying hello and a quick chat to folks I’d recognised from the FB group. …. But I couldn’t do the sitting down in a group , having some friendly banter thing.
I did try… but then things got a bit heavy … I was ‘,mindfully aware of a full on fecked up anxiety attack taking place..
You know what I did?….
I got the feck out of there .

No words.. Just got up from the bench…and got my arse into a park space over the road.
There I just stood …getting my shit together.
Slowing the breathing down…maybe some mantra or summink… anything…. If you feel like that… just getting out…is always an option

Been to 3 Club Soda festivals… each one has been better than the last one…
And so has the state of my noggin…
I have no worries about saying I don’t drink anymore..
The social anxiety is gone.. Neither seemed possible three years ago.

It took some ‘wellbeing graft’… but sometimes that’s what you have to do.
Thing is its not really graft as such… its finding activities that you enjoy and help your mental wellbeing..

Then sticking with it.

Wellbeing maintenance I calls it.

Thanks club soda for being part of ma….erm, ya know…’journey'(and all dem freebies 😀)