Ellie’s Recovery Story is from the excellent I Am Not Anonymous website, Kate King and Tom Goris. This website contains over 170 Recovery Stories… no you haven’t read wrong! A simply amazing piece of work. Congrats to Kate and Tom and all the contributors. [NB. It looks like the website may have been last updated in 2015 – and the introductory film did not work for me – but the Stories are as relevant today as they were then.
‘When I was drinking, my life was ruled by shame. It’s exhausting, living a double life. On the outside I was a put-together, active, intelligent woman. I made sure my outside always looked okay, so nobody would look too closely at what was really going on, at my dirty secret.
Inside, I was a crumbling mess. I felt less-than, unworthy and insecure. I strove for perfection in all things, which of course is unattainable, and this left me feeling empty and ashamed.
I drank to fill the cracks, the emptiness. I drank to numb out, escape. I drank to feel okay with myself. I found myself in my late thirties, a shell of a person, hollow and feeling desperately alone, even though I had a beautiful family, a job, and people who loved me.
The Recovery Stories on this website were written in 2012, ready for our launch in 2013. Some of these Stories were written by the person, whilst others I wrote after interviewing the person (or people) on a number of occasions. In these latter cases, the stories went back and forth across the world, as most involved people lived in the UK and I had moved to Australia.
My good friend Michael (Mike) Scott from Perth, Western Australia, last had a drink 44 years (16,060 days) ago today. This morning, I’m going to celebrate his achievement with a blog post.
Birthday greetings to my good friend Kevan Martin. I celebrated Kevan’s 60th Birthday last year with a blog post; it was the same day that I launched my eBook 
