As the years rolled by in a blur of brilliant laughs, thrilling scrapes, and the inevitable crashing hangovers, a small voice, somewhere very deep in my psyche, began to question whether the ups were worth the downs. After all, the downs, if I was honest, were becoming unbearable. But I consistently chose to drown that voice out with another ridiculously strong homemade vodka martini. Not that I would ever have considered myself an “alcoholic.” I always had at least three nights a week off the sauce and never passed out or threw up from drinking. My career had gone from strength to strength, and my relationships were only enhanced by alcohol. But when I moved to New York and went freelance in 2012, there was a shift. Removed from my family and friends and stripped of the kudos that came with my fancy job as features editor on the Sunday Times Style supplement, I began to use booze as a crutch—a glittering yet precarious bridge across the “isn’t my life fabulous” gap—which worked a treat, so long as I kept drinking. I still thought my life was pretty fabulous. It was only on the grim and grimy mornings after that I became acutely aware of how lonely and displaced I felt inside. It was shortly after this that I began work on The Numinous, with which I intended to dust off all things “New Age” and give them a chic and aspirational upgrade for what I began calling the “now age.” After all, yoga and meditation were becoming more and more mainstream, and everyone in my magazine world was obsessed with the monthly horoscopes by Susan Miller—it just wasn’t very cool to admit it. Of course, this meant doing the yoga and the meditation myself. It meant experimenting with shamanic healing sessions, and attending workshops with names like “Family Constellations Therapy.” It also meant getting high as a kite—no substances required!—practicing something called breathwork. And slowly but surely, I began to feel better, about my life and my sense of self. Better, in fact, and more myself than I could ever remember feeling. By contrast, I began to realize that alcohol just made me numb. That the “high” I got from booze was largely a result of my having pressed pause on whatever was bringing me down. The “me” I refer to here being the “spirit” I identified earlier on—that part of myself that fuels my inspiration, my ability to connect deeply with others, and my general joie-de-vivre. A part of myself I realized I want to feel connected to as often as possible. Of course, as any habitual drinker will identify with, it wasn’t ever going to be as easy as simply stopping drinking. Booze is deeply interwoven into almost every aspect of our lives—both at work and play, and from our family time to our love lives. And while I still don’t identify with the term “alcoholic,” my research, both academic and in the field, has actually led me to believe that anybody who drinks on a regular basis is addicted to alcohol to some degree—the negative consequences of this addiction more acute for some, depending on individual life circumstances. In my experience, the “higher power” that has allowed me to push booze aside and restore me to sanity—or rather, my sense of self—has been an inside job.
