Veronica Callanan

I was asked to take part in an ITV documentary being filmed called ‘The truth about binge drinking’, by the same people who made ‘The truth about size zero’ with Louise Redknap earlier in the year. Michelle Heaton from Liberty X was presenting the programme and had to undertake a commitment to binge drinking for 1 month. Michelle has a reputation well documented in the tabloids for enjoying a drink or two and falling out of clubs at 2am, she confesses to being a former binge drinker who still enjoys a drink or two but has calmed down considerably since meeting her husband (Andy Scott-Lee). Michelle was charming and professional and very willing to talk about her experiences, she was already half way through the experiment when I met her and beginning to feel the pain, although she loved going out and enjoying herself she was finding it heavy going and suffering from hangovers. Michelle is typical of any attractive 27 year old, she had a job she loved (singer, performer, presenter) she enjoyed a drink but in no way saw it as being a problem, she saw it as being normal and something that most people her age did.

The focus of the programme was to see if Michelle changed her views about binge drinking by the end, Michelle was drinking 7 or 8 times over what is considered low-risk alcohol use in one session (80-90 units), over a week her alcohol consumption was massive. Michelle said this is more than what she drinks normally but is reflective of what she was drinking when she first joined Liberty X. Michelle’s’ drinking as dangerous and risky as it is typical of a lot of young professionals and the only reason that they aren’t worrying about it is that ‘everyone’s doing it, we’ve normalized abnormal drinking.

Luckily Michelle has had no adverse consequences from her drinking apart from some stinking hangovers but just imagine if she was a regular girl from Newcastle who had never become famous and worked in a call centre and whose highlight of the week was going out at the weekends as it is for thousands of young women. Unfortunately there are always consequences to what we do and these young women are paying the price, these are the ones who are who wake up on a Sunday morning with their dignity and integrity in tatters at the very least and worse wake up the victim of a sexual assault or rape, involved in a brawl or in casualty. And underneath this is the time bomb of what they are doing to their physical health risking liver damage and endangering their fertility not to mention mental health. I see a lot of ‘normal’ young women as clients who can’t figure out why they’re dissatisfied with their lives. Depression and anxiety is one of the leading consequences of drinking (alcohol works as a depressant), there’s no coincidence that doctors are prescribing more and more anti-depressants every year, generally speaking these people aren’t depressed they’re just drinking too much leading to depression and dissatisfaction. We are an anaesthetized generation. A generation who doesn’t feel anymore because there is a chemical answer to all our problems.

We are a nation of binge drinkers that’s for certain, that’s why major television companies are making programmers about the problem; will it be enough to change the opinion of young women like Michelle Heaton? Who knows? Because we have a problem bigger than the drinking, its our denial, England is in denial about the level of our drink problem we all think its happening to someone else and it isn’t. We can’t drink the way we are and expect to get away it. There is a price, and we’re paying it we just haven’t woken up to the fact yet.

I was coming back from London and picked up the Evening Standard to read on the train, I came across an article about Meg Matthew (formally married to Noel Gallagher from Oasis); she was talking about her new wallpaper line and her life in recovery. Apparently last year after a trip to Ibiza she realised she had a problem and checked herself into rehab to get help. It was interesting reading her story because in many ways she’s had such an amazing life, rock and roll lifestyle, parties, famous friends, rich, successful, pretty, she basically had the best this world had to offer and she still wasn’t happy.

She spoke of her dissatisfaction and unhappiness, in particular just not feeling ‘good enough’, although she says she doesn’t regret it most of it she says she’s lucky to have a second chance at life.

Whenever I read of a celebrity who is getting sober I relate so much to what they’re describing. My life was as opposite to Meg’s as it’s possible to get, there was absolutely no glamour and no rock stars to speak off. So that part I don’t relate to in fact I used to envy. Yet here is a woman who supposedly ‘had it all’ and was still not happy, still felt dissatisfied and not good enough which is exactly how I felt.

It seems that it doesn’t matter what you have on the outside, if you feel empty on the inside then nothing can change that, all the money and glamour in the world just highlight the incongruence of your ‘insides and outsides’ not matching, and just how painful that is.

I remember feeling worthless, no confidence, unattractive and my friends told how attractive I was, how any guy would be lucky to have me (like Meg I couldn’t get a date for love nor money, and had resigned myself to singleness). I knew they meant it and weren’t just being nice as they were genuinely shocked that I could feel that way about myself. But it didn’t matter that they were incredulous and my lack of self belief, it didn’t matter how many people told me how great I was, or pretty etc, I didn’t feel it myself, I didn’t feel good enough and there’s something about believing that about yourself that makes it manifest itself in your reality.

Because I felt and thought badly about myself, I became that person. We are what we think we are.

No wonder we use alcohol to numb that.