Case

Jowita Dorota Bydlowska
I Was a Drunk Mom

 1. Introduction I’m a 35-year-old mom and a recovered alcoholic. Unlike many alcoholics (recovered and not) I have been fortunate enough to be able to give voice to this issue and look past the shame. I come from the approach that besides owning my challenges, I need to be adamant on sharing them with the world in order to help women like me. I believe that my ability to write and talk about my issues is not a gift but rather an obligation to give voice to those who can’t always express themselves. Sure, I have some challenges – I’m an immigrant, I work full-time, write full-time, take care of a 4-year-old and sometimes my partner who is often sick – but those are nothing in comparison to what women who are living with the shame and pain of addiction are facing. I believe I’m extremely fortunate to have been able to come out of the darkness of alcoholism and write about it and meet people who deal with similar issues.  

 2. Background I was a so-called “party girl” in my teens and 20s – happy to flit from party to party, relationship to relationship, place to place (I moved more than 20 times in five years). I was free and amazing (in my eyes). But my “fun” life caught up with me. I always drank a lot – I now identify myself as an alcoholic – but, suddenly, had to drink in order to do all those “fun” things. Because of my addiction I’ve lost jobs, friendships, relationships and apartments. I pulled out of it and became sober at the age of 27. I was sober for three years. And content being sober – I found that I could most of the things I enjoyed despite the fact that I had no alcohol to aid me. There was happiness there despite the challenges. I also became a little less diligent with my recovery. 

After three years of sobriety, I relapsed after giving birth to my beautiful son. And I didn’t talk about what was going on for the longest time out of fear of repercussions and because of guilt and shame. This – the shame and my alcoholism – almost killed me. It almost killed my son. Why did I not talk about it then? Because of that shame and stigma. There’s a significant stigma on women who deal with addiction. Perfection is a woman’s disease – we can barely keep up with all the expectations of family life and professional life and when addiction is thrown into the mix… very few come out okay. I almost didn’t. I deluded myself into thinking that I had the world at my feet – I had a cute baby, supportive partner, a job that was waiting for me, a promising writing career. And then, BAM! I crumbled.  

Because I wanted to be seen as perfect and because I felt as a failure as a woman – my drinking “helped” me forget that I was crumbling. It “helped” me forget how deeply imperfect I was. I drank for a year before I became sober – I’ve almost lost my home, my family and I had a very unsuccessful track record of trying to recover that included a rehab. None of that seemed to get me out of my state of total darkness and despair. Not even my son.  

I got sober after my son turned one. I was kicked out of my house, I was injured because of alcohol-related accident, I was bankrupt emotionally. But the important thing was that that was a breaking point for me: I was finally ready to stop lying and face the issue. So I faced it. I got sober. I then did what I loved the most. I wrote about it. I wrote about it for magazines and eventually I wrote about it in a book. I was terrified to write about it in a book. I didn’t want to be known as “Drunk Mom,” which is what I actually called my book. I wanted to be fabulous and perfect, not broken and full of fault. Yet, once I finished my book and it started making rounds with publishers, I realized that I wanted to use my book to help people as well. Especially women. That group of people that hides their alcoholism the most because there’s still this “lady-like” prescription of behaviour and alcoholism is dark and dirty and we shouldn’t talk about it. Well, I talked about it, warts and all. Because it needs to be talked about. And I stand by every little failure that I had to deal with and I’m proud of it.  

3. Professional issue Becoming sober allowed me to continue my career as a professional writer. My lifetime dream was to write and although I’ve lost hope many, many times I found myself hopeful again once my biggest demon was contained. I consider writing, despite its artistic inclinations, a kind of business – it’s how I make my money and I approach it the way I would any other job. But writing demands discipline. And sacrifices. As a full-time working mother who’s dealing with mental health issues (I’m also bipolar on top of being an alcoholic), I find that my time to write (aka develop my small business) is the biggest challenge. I need to be extremely disciplined with my time in order to manage all of my dreams and my recovery. But it’s possible – anything is possible if you have hope. And I want to talk about hope to other women out there who struggle. I want them to know that we can always pick ourselves up and make ourselves into what we’ve always dreamt of being.  

4. Personal issue I have many challenges outside of the ones I’ve already mentioned. Look, I’m not claiming at all that dreams come at no cost. I’ve suffered from depression and bipolar disorder and I’m no stranger to postpartum depression. Motherhood is tough. I write about how tough it is all the time – I don’t ever want to coast on my little successes and triumphs. I need to always remember where I come from.  

I deal with two main challenges. One:  there’s not enough out there about mental illness (alcoholism included) and workplace. I work in a very liberal environment, for a non-profit organization, but I’ve often hid the fact that sometimes I really need to go to an AA meeting or see my psychiatrist. I think that if we were to give mental health issues more exposure, there would be less shame about it and the channels to communication would open at workplaces. There's not enough education about addiction and mental health out there! We must do more in order to help women like me, in order to help people struggling with addictions and mental health issues in general. 

The second issue is more personal. I won’t lie if I tell you that my partner is not always happy with me being such a busy body. After work, I pick up my son and run home to feed him, bathe him, put him to bed. I try to be a good partner to my husband who himself deals with many health issues (he is an extremely dedicated father so I’m very lucky there). But my relationship suffers because I need to carve out that time to be a writer – I often feel guilty about sitting there and poking keys on my keyboard instead of learning how to cook properly or watching a movie with my husband. I mean, I do those things too but not as often as I would like to. My time to do my writing seems selfish even to me and that makes it hard. Even the lack of time is not as hard as guilt sometimes is. On the other hand, my career makes me fulfilled and happy and with sobriety as the foundation of all my everyday life, this is the best woman I can be.  I no longer feel like there’s a part of me missing which I need to replace with alcohol and I’ve come to accept just how imperfect I am.