In my mid-twenties, I became a functional alcoholic. Kind of – I wasn’t physically dependant on alcohol, I was mentally dependant. I won’t go in to why, but there had been a severe incident which believe me, gave me every reason to try and blot the pain each night.
For nearly a year after said incident, I was drinking a bottle of strong wine a night. Sometimes, if the especially intrusive thoughts bubbled up, I’d have two. It also wasn’t unusual to have two on a Friday night. I’d drink it alone, at home, in my bed.
Obviously this isn’t a great lifestyle to have, and I knew it. I just wanted the pain to go away. But after wallowing for a few months I decided I needed a big change in my life to fix everything – I needed to move to London. And that wasn’t at all because my ex had just got a job there and I wanted to feel as successful as him, no sir definitely not except maybe a little bit.
“Obviously this isn’t a great lifestyle to have, and I knew it. I just wanted the pain to go away.”
So I started throwing out job applications. Sometimes I’d do it at work while nursing a hangover (because absolutely no one in that office gave a shit what I was doing) and sometimes I’d write them until late into the night.
I really did know my stuff about SEO. I was absolutely a walking encyclopaedia on the subject. Being buzzed on four quid-a-bottle wine while filling out the applications certainly made me seem more outgoing and confident on paper than I am in real life, and the interview offers poured in. One of my friends in the industry suggested I should apply to one of the most successful and industry-recognised SEO companies in the word. He himself was a bit of a superstar in the SEO world and had worked there, so he could put in a good word.
One day in particular had been especially bad, and wine was a given. But on this night I was an absolute idiot by grabbing a box of wine on my way home rather than a bottle (or, indeed, any food). I must have thought I’d be able to make a box last three nights, which was some very wishful thinking. What a joke.
A good bottle and a half in, and I’m gleefully filling in the application form on this big famous SEO company’s website after my friend’s recommendation. It’s one of those “whimsical” digital marketing companies that has questions like “would you rather fight a horse-sized chicken or 100 chicken-sized horses”, which in my utterly smashed mind gave me permission to make my answers not so…professional.
“A good bottle and a half in, and I’m gleefully filling in the application on this big famous SEO company’s website.”
I woke up the next morning about 15 minutes before I was due to be at work. I didn’t remember anything about last night, and my laptop was open on the pillow beside me. An article about urban exploration (why?) glared at my poor, sore eyes. I nearly fell over the instant I stood up, but I did manage to make it to the bathroom to chuck up. Into the bath, mind, but that was still better than the carpet.
It’s not until I get to work that I remember I did indeed fill out the application. I spewed about 3000 words into the whole thing, and I did indeed submit the bastard like an absolute drunken loon.
So I’m there at my desk just trying not to make it obvious that I am currently trawling through my personal emails, desperately trying to find some evidence of exactly what I sent to this company’s poor HR manager. After all, I knew I tended to exaggerate my talents when drunk (once I told a colleague I was halfway through building a video game. This was utter bollocks; in reality I had written a basic text adventure in C# and had no fucking idea how to export it outside of Visual Studio).
In my inbox were two emails from the company I had applied to – they were two confirming receipts of the job application. For fuck’s sake, I had sent the frigger twice.
All I could remember writing was trying to convince the reader that I was some sort of pro Borderlands player. Which was 1. not even true and 2. absolutely not listed in the job description. Now I thought of it, didn’t I slip in some argument about why the PlayStation 4 is better than the Xbox? I didn’t even have a PlayStation 4.
I was absolutely mortified. For a wild moment I scrambled to work out how to recall the submission somehow, and frantically researched recalling an email sent from a website’s input box. Which is of course, not possible, but I spent all morning trying to do it anyway.
And then I got really angry that it couldn’t have been a company that just takes your pre-written CV – you have to rewrite the entire sodding thing into their onsite form. What kind of bullshit is that? My actual CV didn’t have anything about Borderlands in it. Now because of making applicants scribe their employment story via input boxes, someone in the company’s London office was likely sat at their desk wondering what the shit was this rambling bollocks in their in-tray.
“Now I thought of it, didn’t I slip in some argument about why the PlayStation 4 is better than the Xbox? I didn’t even have a PlayStation 4.”
When I got home that night, there was still about a bottle left in that box of wine. It was perched on my bedside table. Inviting. Friendly.
I drank it in its entirely, then decided the best thing to do would be to re-write the entire job application and submit it again. That’s what I did, starting the whole thing off with an explanation that the application I had sent previously was the ‘draft’ version (read: blackout drunk version) and this was the proper one. Clicked submit, passed out.
So now this company of my dreams had two applications from me – one written when I was utterly fucked, and one from hungover me who is getting drunk again. #employeegoals.
You know that feeling where you want to fall into a hole and never come out? I wanted the earth to cover me. But not in that fun, millennial way – I mean literally I wanted to die.
Despite all this, I kept drinking. I was constantly in a state of drunk or hungover. Every morning I’d lumber into work half an hour late, likely reeking of booze since I never had time to shower. When 5pm came round I would casually wander to the pub with my co-workers, head pounding, never letting them know that when I eventually said goodnight I’d grab a bottle of wine from the corner shop.
If I ever let myself get into that spot of soberness between the hangover and the day’s first sip, the reality of what had happened to me to cause this drunken hell smashed my body like a train. Sober me was so deeply miserable my chest would hurt. Sober me missed my ex so deeply I wanted to jump on a bus and knock on his front door. Sober me laid on the bathroom floor sobbing, in the same space I had done just a couple months before.
Sometimes life fucks you over. And then, the very act of surviving fucks you over. I was living pay check to pay check, I knew I couldn’t stop working to recuperate. Bills needed paying. So I kept bumbling along, but I wasn’t living. I was barely existing.
A week after I sent the drunken job application, the company emailed me to set up a date for a telephone interview. I was so humiliated I ignored the email. And sunk back in to my pit.
“Sometimes life fucks you over. And then, the very act of surviving fucks you over.”
When I have talked about this period in my life before, and the fact that the dependence on alcohol would continue for a good couple years after the traumatic incident I mentioned, I have received some pretty shitty responses. We have this strange culture around alcohol – it’s okay to got blotted each night with workmates, but when you do it alone you’re a pathetic alcoholic who can’t handle the real world. Bonus shit-points if you’re a childfree female.
Well yes, at that time in my life I couldn’t handle the real world. But that doesn’t make me pathetic.
I do still occasionally use alcohol as an alternative to cutting myself. It’s not anywhere near the level that it used to be during the above time in my life – because now I do have a support system in place. Plus, I have pets that are everything to me, and viewers and supporters to keep me alive.
Back when I was wine-soaked and hungover, I had nothing. I was alone. And what made me even more alone was this idea that people who use alcohol to stop themselves throwing themselves off a bridge should be derided and made fun of.
For a while, there were a collection of trolls on Twitter who spread a rumour that I had been thrown off a panel at an expo for being too drunk. This did not happen. But if it ever did, I hope people would be supportive of me getting help rather than telling me I am worthless.
I already feel worthless. I don’t need to be told.
