My name is Bryony, and I’m an alcoholic. I know, I know. As opening gambits go, it’s hardly top notch, but I am afraid there’s more. Much, much more.
I am also, in no particular order: a reformed drug addict, a recovering bulimic with a history of binge eating chorizo, a life-long depressive who frequently takes her iron and hair straighteners to work for fear of house fires, and a larger lady who likes to run long distances in only her bra and knickers.
Oh, and there’s one more thing: I am your new Mail columnist.
Now at this point, you might well be reaching for the smelling salts, or thinking ‘why on Earth would I want to read the words of a 43-year-old drug-addicted alcoholic with a history of eating disorders and — hang on, did you say running in only your bra and knickers?’
It’s a good question, one I should probably answer before I settle in and start getting too relaxed round here. This is your home, after all, and it’s hardly the done thing to barge in and start shouting about alcoholism.
Meet our new effervescent columnist, Bryony Gordon
You might think me mad. Then again, I am a bit. Mad, that is. I have written two best-selling books about my experiences with mental illness, rather aptly entitled Mad Girl and Mad Woman, and before those, there was a book called The Wrong Knickers, where I candidly explored the craziness of my 20s, which involved lots of bad sex, and not a lot of sleep.
One critic described it as ‘Bridget Jones on drugs’ — not a compliment given that
Bridget is entirely fictional and I am, unfortunately, entirely real.
Some might say a bit too real. Then again, that realness is why you should read on. It’s why you should stick around. It’s why I am your new columnist.
Because in a world where people filter everything, from their photographs to their thoughts, I like to tell the truth.
Are you sitting uncomfortably?
Then I’ll begin.
Like many people who experience mental health issues, I was born into a loving family who only ever wanted the best for me.
I grew up in a lovely house in west London, with a friendly labrador, an Aga and a reliable Volvo Estate. I went to a good school, had ballet lessons, minded my
Ps and Qs. And yet, I would go to bed every night and wake up every morning in a state of terror that the world was going to end.
As a young girl in the 1980s, it was going to end because of acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer, and as an almost-teenager in the early 1990s, it was going to end because I had Aids.
I woke up one morning, just before the Christmas of 1992, convinced of it. No matter that I was a 12-year-old girl who had never even kissed a boy — my brain told me I had this terrible illness that was all over the news, and my brain couldn’t be lying, could it?
And in the unlikely event I wasn’t HIV positive, then I would get it, from the air I breathed, toilet seats I sat on or just by existing.
To keep myself safe, I started washing my hands, again and again until they cracked and bled. This created a new terrifying possibility, that my hands were now weapons capable of killing my little sister and baby brother via my undoubtedly tainted blood.
Bryony’s cheeky pose for the camera on the starting line of one of the many races she does for charity – and, yes, that is her running gear!
I slept with my toothbrush under my pillow so I wouldn’t infect anyone. I remember decorating the Christmas tree with my mother and thinking how awful it was that I would never do this again. My life was over, before I’d even reached my 13th birthday.
It wasn’t until I was about 17 that I learned the illness I had was mental, not physical: that I was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), not Aids. But even when I knew this, rationally, I was overcome with fear — OCD is often referred to as the ‘doubting disease’, because sufferers so often question their memories and sense of self.
Plus, it is so very misunderstood, and seen more as shorthand for a tidy and organised person, someone obsessed with keeping their Diet Coke cans in a neat line or their pens straight.
In reality, OCD is a debilitating mental illness whereby sufferers are left in a considerable amount of distress because of their obsessions and compulsions.
And mine had nothing to do with tidiness or organisation. I was a mess. There was no order in my mind, only chaos. As well as the fear I had Aids, I feared I might have killed someone, or hurt a child, but blanked it out in horror.
Intrusive thoughts clouded my brain in the same way other teenagers thought about snogging, or boys. I couldn’t imagine ever having a relationship, or a job, or anything other than a life in which I constantly feared other people dying because of me.
I chanted phrases under my breath that I hoped would keep my family alive. I considered going to the police, and asking them to lock me away in prison.
AT age 18, my scalp was covered in bald patches, my hair falling out from the stress of believing I was a serial-killing paedophile. But the alopecia made a strange kind of sense: now my outsides matched my messed-up insides. I resolved to fight harder, in the hope of gaining back some control over my body.
Throwing up my food, becoming thinner: that would do the trick.
People often ask me if my parents noticed what was happening, as if they might somehow have been able to sweep in and save the day. But like many young women in the grips of mental
illness, I got good at masking it. I got good at achieving — brilliant grades and outstanding school reports provided a cover for what was going on in my mind.
In a world where people filter everything, from their photographs to their thoughts, I like to tell the truth, says Bryony
There’s an unhelpful belief that all mentally ill people are rocking back and forth, their heads clutched in their hands. But I have found that more often than not, we are out and about, dressed up in the millions of defences that we have built to appear normal.
My primary defence was alcohol, and later, cocaine. They were like putting on a sparkly dress, enabling me to get out of bed and appear like any other carefree twentysomething. These things didn’t just help me survive; they helped me thrive. With booze and drugs as a crutch, I was at ease in my skin for the first time ever.
I went into journalism, an effective place to hide in plain sight. I was surrounded by hardened reporters who would think nothing of walking into a war zone off the back of a boozy bender.
In contrast, I was only battling OCD, which, while pretty awful in my head, outwardly appeared comical. I would often turn up at work with my iron in a plastic bag, as it was just easier than spending the day worrying if it might have burnt my rented flat down.
I inhabited this crazy party girl persona with gusto, because it felt safe — safer than facing up to the fact that I was utterly miserable.
My 20s were drunken, debauched, and devoid of decent men. My most enduring relationship was with a packet of Marlboros. It was seedy, shameful and sad, and I yearned for the stability that my school friends seemed to have found so easily.
I was 31 when I met my husband, Harry, through work. He was sensible and kind and — unlike some of the men I often found myself entangled with — single. I couldn’t understand why he liked me, but like me he did. He was the first person to accept every last bit of me, even those very messy ones.
When I found out I was pregnant ten months later, it simply didn’t occur to me that I would ever return to the drinking and drugging that had characterised my late teens and 20s.
In my mind, a baby and a man would do for me what rehab and AA did for others. It was a shock, then, that just two weeks after my lovely daughter Edie was born, I was back on the rosé, downing a couple of bottles of it a night.
Fizzing with positivity and personality – our columnist promises her new audience of Mail readers: ‘I am real and I am honest but I will never, ever judge’
Bedtimes were rushed so I could get to the one true priority of any alcoholic in denial: sitting in the back garden alone, chain-smoking over several bottles of wine. I remember thinking: ‘how could I still want alcohol when I have this gorgeous, baby girl? How could I not be able to stop for her?’
It was a shame so huge that I buried it deep under layers of booze and self-justification — a few (hundred) glasses of wine in the evening would make me a more relaxed mother, surely?
But of course it didn’t. A new, awful type of OCD began to consume me, one that told me I might have hurt my own child while drinking.
Four years later, I was taking cocaine again, largely to sober me up, and though on the outside I appeared to be a respectable middle-class mum living the dream in south-west London, on the inside, I was at breaking point.
There were two, very different versions of me, battling it out in my head 24 hours a day, seven days a week: Good Bryony, who just wanted to bake banana bread with her daughter and husband, and Bad Bryony, who just wanted to numb all the terrible intrusive thoughts with booze and drugs.
Against all the odds, my husband believed more in Good me. He told me time and time again that I wasn’t a bad person — just an ill one, who sometimes did bad things because of that illness. But I had no idea how to get better.
All I knew was that if I carried on this way, I was going to die. I was going to die by choosing to take my own life, or I was going to die by choking on my own vomit.
Worst of all, almost, I was going to die by living in this Groundhog Day existence, whereby I woke up and immediately wanted to knock myself out again.
In the summer of 2017, I tore off all my masks and filters, took myself to rehab, and began the difficult process of getting sober.
It was hard, but I kept reminding myself that it was not as hard as the alternative, which was losing my daughter and husband and everything else I loved.
I have not had a drink or a drug since. My continued sobriety is one of the greatest achievements of my life. That, and setting up Mental Health Mates, an organisation that puts on walks for people with mental illness.
Oh, and running the London Marathon in 2018 in just my underwear, to show people that exercise is for everyone, no matter their shape or size.
A year later, I got almost 1,000 women, including my late friend Dame Deborah James, to run 10k in their pants through London. After a lifetime of loathing my body, publicly embracing it has become not just a passion, but an essential part of my recovery.
I love crazy running challenges (I’m planning to do the New York Marathon in my pants this November), because I think it is absolutely pivotal to show women the transformative power of exercising for your mental health; for the way it makes you feel, rather than the way it makes you look.
It hasn’t been smooth sailing. I am an author, but I have learned that life rarely has a neat beginning, middle or end, that it is more often a series of messy ups and downs.
Bryony with husband Harry on their wedding day
Though I long ago stopped drinking, or throwing up food, I developed a binge eating disorder during the pandemic, finding myself eating raw, cooking chorizo in the middle of the night, in a strange attempt to numb out the madness of the world.
And while I initially saw it as a failure, I soon realised it was just another negative thing I had to turn into a positive. So I wrote about it in my book Mad Woman. I wrote about it, and I went on television and I spoke about it. I did all of this because shame kills people, but it very quickly dies when you expose it to the light.
So yes. I may be an alcoholic with a history of eating disorders and OCD. But I am also, after a few false starts, a sober runner, a mental health campaigner, and a bloody good mother. My daughter, who is now 11, has no memory of my drinking, and I intend for that to continue.
My husband and I live a pretty contented life, where the biggest drama is what we’re going to watch on television of an evening. But every day, I remind myself that I am lucky to be alive.
I take nothing for granted, including this new job, which will mostly involve me reaching into the hidden recesses of my brain, and writing about all the things that have made me feel bad about myself, in the hope that they might make you feel good (or at the very least, a little better).
And that, in a nutshell, is why you should read me. Because I am real and I am honest but I will never, ever judge — I know that all people, even the ones who have behaved in the most appalling ways, as I have, possess the ability to go on and do the most incredible, brilliant things.
And when you are in darkness, I will take your hand, and remind you that brighter times are always on the horizon. That however bad it feels, you are never, ever alone.
Read Bryony’s first column on Friday
in a sparkling brand new section