The green shoots of recovery
Lots of people are telling us it's the most depressing time of the year. Is it? Let's ask someone who's had depression and has just emerged from rehab
Mark writes: These are the coldest days of winter so far. And although the garden is rock-hard, yesterday I spotted the first snowdrops of the year. Small, shivering things they were, too: but they were braving it out.
It struck me that this is what recovery must be like. It feels like a new you is emerging. Then you might go weeks getting nowhere and it looks as if this Northern Hemisphere winter will go on forever. It’s hard and cold and sometimes a bit bleak. But every day, it’s getting lighter – barely perceptibly, but it is.
I checked in with Rhys on Blue Monday, usually described as the most miserable day of the year. The ‘science’ behind that is seriously dodgy (see below). But as we saw last time, he’s in the early part of his recovery journey and still trying to get to the bottom of the anxieties that led to his drinking problems. That sounds like a recipe for a Blue Monday – and for other days of the week too. Is it?
RHYS: I'm actually doing really, really well. So, in and out of work I’ve been attending meetings, doing my stepwork, but at the same time practising self-care and making time for the little things – reading a book, keeping in touch with the people I love. My daily and weekly habits have grown exponentially recently.
MARK: That’s great to hear. I was on a Family Support group call last week. We talked a fair bit about our loved one finding a substitute ‘interest’ as an alternative to drink and drugs. How is your search for that going?
RHYS: At the minute I have been going on walks around Hinckley, where I live, listening to audiobooks at the same time, as that eats up so much time. My favourite at the moment is Matthew Perry's Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing – talking about coping with addiction amongst other things. And old-fashioned reading – a massive hobby of mine recently while at rehab and being at home.
I really want to get back into my photography also so I'm saving up for a new DSLR camera. Luckily, my phone camera will do just fine for now!
MARK: I’m sure there are people, somewhere, whose mental health hasn’t benefited from a regular reading habit. I’ve just never heard of them. It’d be interesting to explore where your reading takes you. I know you’ve always enjoyed fantasy – is that still a thing or are you more interested in the experiences of people like Matthew just now?
RHYS: The world of fantasy is still very much a thing still, I regularly reread Harry Potter and I’m eager to give The Lord of The Rings another go as I was very young when I tried it and I couldn’t get into it. But otherwise, I’m enjoying a book called When Things Get Dark. It’s a collection of short stories inspired by Shirley Jackson, who I mainly know of from her work on The Haunting of Hill House.
MARK: And it’d be great to see your experiments with photography when you’re ready to share them. Whose work do you admire?
RHYS: Honestly, I don’t follow any famous photographers on social media or anything, but I know a great deal of friends who I know are great at photography. At some point I’ll send out a Facebook post calling out for any photography friends to show me their best work.
MARK: Have you found yourself getting angry – over small stuff and big things? A number of relatives said their partners/children get frustrated and cross as they struggle to wean themselves off their addiction.
RHYS: No, not at all when it comes to irritability or frustration, everyday life. Of course, I get angry with situations at work, but that is just normal. When weaning myself off alcohol I never once felt angry or irritable because I had so much to do such as GP appointments, various charities etc.
Mindfulness really, really helps when I get overwhelmed. I practise it every morning whether it be 4:30am or later and in the evening. I'll just get in a comfortable position, close my eyes and just think of myself in that moment with my breathing. Anyone would think that is meditation: it's not. I do that for a good 20 minutes a session: 20 minutes for me makes any ill thoughts go away just like that!
MARK: Where are you on the Steps?
RHYS: I have completed Step 4! Step 4 is based largely on resentments and fears.
I'm not going to lie, that step got to me. It really made me emotional as a lot of it was based around my parents, myself and my old habits, just a lot of things. Finishing a single page nearly had me crying for the rest of the night because it does bring up so much stuff that you forget is there!
BUT it is done just in time for me to present to my sponsor when they want to give it a look. Every single step that I've done I've been so so proud of, so I'm confident Step 4 and eventually Step 5 next week will be even better.
MARK: At the risk of making you emotional all over again, would you share some of that detail? I think it’d really help our readers understand the kind of things you’re dealing with – and how you deal with them.
RHYS: Sure, a lot of the resentments are based around myself, so my past deeds, behaviours, how I treated people in the past etc. Step 4 makes you focus on all of those things and list everything. How I deal with it it gives me so much closure and goes to show how changed a person I’ve become, who lives to regret my past actions.
MARK: As your father’s brother, I’d be interested in how you view your relationship with him, what, coming up to 17 years since he died. Funny, we never used words like ‘problem drinker’, much less ‘alcoholic’ about Glyn. Maybe that’s because he was such a big and funny personality, someone who was never happier than when he was down the pub. I guess that begs the question how was he when he wasn’t down the pub…
RHYS: Now, that’s difficult as I can only just remember spending time with him, like flashes. [Glyn died in 2007, when Rhys was 16]. I only remember the good stuff, none of the bad. But now that you mention drinking when he wasn’t at the pub I would be surprised to see him with a drink that wasn’t alcohol, so even outside the pub he would be drinking at home. In his last year or so obviously due to his cancer [oesophageal, which may have been related to his alcohol and tobacco use] he did cut down quite a bit. I know people that knew Dad might disagree with me there for his late years, but I lived with the man during that time, I knew his habits for sure. Just like I knew Mum’s.
MARK: We’ll talk about families and what runs in them again, I’m sure. Let’s just say – I think he’d have had real difficulty acknowledging he had a problem, which makes the strength you’re showing all the more amazing.
So…what is the worst time of year for your mental health?
Mark writes: The physician and science journalist Ben Goldacre has been calling out suspicious surveys reported uncritically and (too often) as fact in the media for a couple of decades now. He exposed the truth about ‘Blue Monday’ – like so much of the hype he uncovers, it was a press release sent out in January 2005 to promote a travel company dressed up as proper research. I have a kind of reluctant respect for the said PR company: nearly 20 years on, Blue Monday is a fixture in the calendar and it’s usally described as ‘officially’ the gloomiest day opf the year.
But it’s worth reading a follow-up piece from Goldacre where he reviews the research on what time of the year really does make us more depressed. Spoiler alert: there isn’t one.
As for Blue Monday, he writes:
Making stupid stuff up about the most depressing day of the year…doesn’t help anyone, because bullshit presented as fact is simply disempowering.
You said it, Ben.
Anxiety Role Model: Billie Joe Armstrong
RHYS: Billie Joe is a massive role model for me, not just for Anxiety but for anything. His band, Green Day, have been a staple in my musical taste – the first ever band I showed any interest in listening to on repeat…and I still do!
Being a punk rocker Billie was obviously thrown straight into the punk lifestyle which regrettably would involve getting s**t faced on whatever was going. As far as I know it wasn’t the hard stuff. It was mainly alcohol and weed.
During a performance on September 21st 2012 at the iHeart Radio Festival, Billie Joe suffered a meltdown towards the end of the band’s slot. I watched the whole of the performance and it was difficult to watch. He just seemed different. After being told they had one minute to wrap things up, Billie Joe started effing and jeffing. “I'm not Justin f***ing Bieber! Let me show you what one minute is!!” he shouted, then started smashing his equipment onstage. His bandmates joined in for solidarity. Shortly after, it was announced that he’d go to a rehab. He stayed sober for five years.
However, he opened up in a recent interview about the upcoming album, and a particular song that raises a lot of eyebrows about whether or not he is still, in fact, sober. He opens up to say that during a recent tour and during the recording of the upcoming album, he did relapse. He said his mental health was going down the drain, his body didn’t feel right, and he is getting the help he needs again, attending Alcoholic Anonymous groups, which he finds hard as he’s hardly Anonymous.
Having had been sober for two years, I relapsed a few months ago. They say in NA, AA etc that your current relapse is worse than the last. This being my first – and last – one I resolved to fix my mistake and attending rehab it was astonishing how similar my story was to others. And when I found out that Billie Joe F***ing Armstrong himself is going through the same thing… that blew my mind.
Here’s what he told People magazine:
I ended up being around a bunch of really good friends that don't drink. There's a lot more sober people — I've noticed that, and maybe because I was the only one that was hammered before, that now I notice that people are more sober now…
For me, alcohol gets in the way of everything, from my relationship with my family to just trying to get a good night’s sleep. It gets in the way of my happiness…
And then the next day, I wake up ... I'm just tired. Now there’s no shame and hangover and all that s---. I feel really good.