Warning: there are no easy answers in this blog

And it's been a tough one to write. But we try to ask the right questions as Rhys fights anxiety, unemployment and addiction after rehab

Water or vodka? It’s not always clear. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

MARK: Before we start, we need to correct something we wrote in a recent blog. Our exchange went like this:

MARK: And I have to ask this: are you drinking again?

RHYS: Of course not. As of today which is the 12^th of February I am 80 days/two months and 23 days clean of alcohol

That wasn’t true, was it?

RHYS: I had started drinking again. My social anxiety overcame me on my first night away from rehab, seeing my family again. My first night away from a ‘safe place’. It broke me. Which I’m really ashamed to say, as I was perhaps the most resilient person at The Chestnuts.

MARK: I guess some people’s reaction might be – why bother spending all that money on rehab? What would you say to them?

RHYS: I’ll answer that with a fact one person shared while they ran a meeting at rehab. Apparently rehab only has an 8% success rate – 8% . The room went completely silent after they said that, me being me I had to puncture the silence with a joke. Merely saying “Well, that went down like a lead balloon.”

I’m not saying that rehab didn’t work. My present circumstances don’t help.

MARK: I’d like to talk about secrets, lies and addiction and the effect they have on families and friends. But first, I want to know more about the stress you must be going through. I am guessing that lapsing is one thing…but admitting you have must bring with it a whole different level of anxiety.

RHYS: It felt more... freeing, in a way, to admit it. I called my very close friend Luke about it first and broke down over the phone. It’s not an easy thing to admit. I called my family not long after. With every single person I told I felt a weight lifted so if anything it helped my anxiety.

But the person I had the most trouble telling was myself. I felt so ashamed.

Why we hear what we want to hear

Credit: KC Green

MARK: Is that what they mean by denial? If I deny to myself this thing happened, it’s easier to deny it happened when I speak to others?

RHYS: Smiling and saying everything is fine to other people is one thing, lying to yourself is another thing entirely. I told myself that it was just a phase after Mum passed away. That I was doing it to make myself feel “normal”. Then I was living in my rented house, and then I bought my own house, and the “problem” continued. That’s when I noticed.

MARK: Do you admit to yourself you’ve gone back to drinking… or do you put it in a corner, thinking it’s a one-off? So, when you said you were clean of alcohol maybe some part of you thought that was so?

RHYS: I think the worst part of recovering is you have your GP telling you it’s dangerous to just simply cut yourself off from alcohol. You could have a seizure or just simply make yourself unwell. They tell you to maintain the amount that you drink and gradually wean yourself off it. Which is a very dangerous way of telling something to an addict. They are coming to you for help and you give them a “Day Pass”, in a way. Basically, just keep doing what you’re doing for now, and wean yourself off by yourself? It’s almost impossible.

MARK: So, complete abstinence. Zero tolerance. Is that what we’re looking at?

RHYS: Complete abstinence. I’ve gone through it all. Three weeks in hospital during Lockdown #3, a month’s stay in rehab, and then another relapse. I don’t have any more in me. We’ve tried every which way, I need to do this by myself now.

MARK: Help me out here. I reckon it takes two to make a lie or keep a secret. If I ask you “are you okay?” I desperately want you to say, “I’m great!” and when I ask, “are you drinking again?’”Of course I want you to say “no’”.  So, in fibbing, you’re giving me what I want – as well as getting me (or anyone else) off your back and avoiding an awkward conversation. And of course, we all want to avoid those.

RHYS: Generally, when I say I’m okay, I genuinely am. I typically don’t like to talk about myself anyway. That isn’t me being secretive I genuinely would rather listen. I’m extremely self-conscious so when I have attention on me it makes me uncomfortable – I quickly find a response that takes the attention off me.

MARK: Okay…that sounds to me that while you might generally or typically be truthful, if scrutiny makes you uncomfortable you’ll say whatever it takes to make it go away. I guess that’s what I’m doing here – scrutinising. But I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. This blog is about helping friends and family, not just the person suffering anxiety and the rest. But when mental health issues tip over into addiction, then these questions take on a new urgency.

RHYS: I think that is the tipping point with anxiety: you don’t want to be scrutinised, but that is what you need. Take it from someone with anxiety – that is a lot to admit. I really do want to get to the bottom of what makes me want to pick up and what makes my brain go into an anxious state. And that is where my head is at currently.

MARK: I am sure we both had conversations with parents which went something like ‘how’s everything at school?’ ‘Fine’. When it wasn’t… .

RHYS: I was pretty honest with my parents with how things were going at school. Sure, some other students were absolute pricks, but I never let it bother me. In later years when things were not fine especially with my anxiety, it was easier to say, “Everything is fine”. Because mental health is harder to explain to someone who will not and cannot comprehend it.

MARK: I had a conversation with a friend and a keen follower of the blog, who had just such a conversation with her daughter, who is bipolar. She just had a feeling that everything wasn’t fine. It wasn’t, of course. Her daughter ended up in hospital in a really bad way. I say ‘of course’ but it really wasn’t an easy thing to effectively tell her own child she wasn’t telling the truth. Not an easy thing at all.

 RHYS: I haven’t experienced bipolar, but it just goes to show that mental health is nothing to be trifled with. Sometimes people don’t like having a light shone on it, but it is extremely important to check in. Especially if it requires a hospital visit. It is my own fault that it’s taken people to realise how bad things were at the beginning, but I was fooling myself and masking it.

MARK: That’s probably enough for now: not an easy blog to do. But anything you’d like to add?

RHYS: So, the last few blogs have been about substance abuse, rehab, and the aftermath. This blog is about Anxiety, and helping others who suffer with it, and helping others understand it. I do genuinely look forward to sharing my experiences with it.

I am taking a break from work at the moment, not an easy thing to do but it’s proven to be a necessity for mental health as I’ve never felt better and haven’t touched a drink in two weeks (ish).

Chapter and verse

AA suggests 10 reasons why alcoholics lie.

Anxiety Role Model: Maurice in Secrets and Lies

Maurice (left), played by Timothy Spall and Monica (Phyllis Logan)

MARK WRITES: Mike Leigh’s film about searching for the truth and the things we do to keep it hidden was shortlisted for an Oscar in 1997. It didn’t win, but in my book it’s one of the greatest British movies – for the very reason it gets to the roots of a very British condition: our addiction to mantaining ‘everything is fine’ as the layers of not-fine stuff build up and calcify over the years.

Here’s the moment when Maurice cracks. The truth comes out:. Where’s the thunderbolt? he asks. It’s something I’ve felt, Rhys feels, we all do when we finally confront something we’ve been avoiding. You wait to be struck down by a bolt of lightning. But there’s nothing. Only a sense of relief.

It can be a tough watch, but this is also a Mike Leigh film and hence very funny and just KIND and sympathetic and human.

We’ll leave you with little sequence of life as it plays out in a south London photographic studio.