The Monday Club
With Geraldine from Serenitytenx
Hi local women readers,
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a very grateful recovering alcoholic, in sobriety over 8 years.
Addiction is everywhere, there are so many forms of it, anything that you are using in a negative way to escape reality can be harmful.
In my case it was alcohol. Women in addiction is my passion because it’s such a taboo subject. This results in us hiding away looking for answers we will never find at the bottom of that glass.
We are so ashamed at the very thought we could be alcoholic, we keep hidden, reluctant to seek help incase anyone finds out.
We don’t seem to mind anyone seeing us at the off-licence clinking our bottles.
If only you could see that it’s not about giving up alcohol, it’s about living without it.
I’ve spent years studying this and my aim is to remove the stigma and get talking.
What is an alcoholic?
What do you see when you imagine the person behind the word?
You see I thought an alcoholic was someone who was down & out had lost everything & there was no hope for them.
The guy oh yes it was always a man in my imagination that lay on the streets drinking out of the bottle hid inside the brown paper bag.
How wrong was I.
This version was what I wanted to see, it was what I needed to believe, so that all those fearful thoughts that were creeping into my head, that maybe just maybe I was drinking too much.
Of course I’m not drinking too much, I would tell myself this each evening as I penned a new bottle of wine.
I’m no different than any other women I would tell myself.
Life is hard & stressful and this is all normal, everyone has wine every night, don’t they ?
Looking back this was my period of grey area drinking. All the warning signs were there but i just couldn’t see them.
I drank daily and in control for years, I even use to joke that maybe I was a functioning alcoholic, I thought on this like a badge of honour.
There’s no way alcohol will ever get a hold on me, how could it, I wouldn’t let that happen.
I was a respectable mother with a happy marriage & 3 beautiful children, things like that doesn’t happen to people like me, right ?
How wrong I was, alcohol doesn’t differentiate between male & female.
Between classes of society, between rich & poor.
The sad thing is by the time you figure all this out it’s too late, you’re hooked.
When I say hooked I mean it’s like a demon possessing you & you are totally helpless.
Each day you get up and you say I will not drink today , if you are lucky you get to 8pm, now that’s if you are having an ok day.
8pm gets earlier & earlier, it’s then acceptable in your head that 6pm is ok.
Then 5, then lunch time, & before you know it you are opening a bottle & pouring your first morning drink.
Believe me when I say once you reach the morning drink there is no going back
I mean it’s not going to be just the once, before you know it you can’t think of doing anything or beginning your day without that drink.
So how do you know if you are drinking too much ?
It’s called Grey area drinking where you are in danger of being out of control
Each month I will be talking about the reasons we get addicted & what it’s like to live without alcohol.
I will also be discussing my Monday Club where we provide a support for women everywhere to navigate there way through life one day at a time, dealing with all the emotions that can make us crazy.
This is just a little of what we cover in our club.
We have rooms set up loaded with information you can visit at anytime.
Workshops
Live speakers & meditation.
The club is not an addiction group, we cover living more peacefully from within.
Inside our club we have a separate area for addiction called the sober club.
Quote of the month
See you all next month
Love GiGi
@Serenitytenx
Instagram @serenitytenx