Writing can change your future

Writing can truly change your life. You have heard this before, right? Writing all of mine changed my life in very unexpected ways.  Hint - it wasn't ever about my bank balance.

So often we think the endgame of writing a book is becoming an author or having a bestseller. Well, most of my authors find the real reward is so much more intangible and subtle. One thing I do know after 20 years in the book business is that it is absolutely never about money. Writing is not often for other people; in fact, it seldom is. I want to share how writing and editing my own 2022 book, Love and Above, made me stop drinking alcohol after a 30-year bad love affair with it.

Is the book about alcohol at all? Hell no, it is about my crazy experience in a three-week-long coma and my near-death experience during that time. The alcohol was just a strange byproduct of the writing process. This is why next year I am launching my writing from the subconscious course (I will keep you posted)

I wrote about this strange story of stopping alcohol in a foreword for a recent US book The Bad Girls Club, and I wanted to share some of that foreword below.

Read on if you want to see how writing heals and changes lives.

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******* Foreword extract *******

It was only on my …. well, like my 50th time of trying to stop drinking that I read a statistic.

"It takes between 10 and 30 years to become dependent on alcohol."

That shook me.I wasn’t dependent. I wasn’t addicted. Was I?I just liked a few drinks—a lot.

I was a ‘social drinker’ and I had been drinking since I was 14. But the maths showed me that it was actually three decades plus a few years.Fourteen was the age I first went to a party and got black-out drunk on shots. Was it vodka, or sambuca? I forget, along with the many other nights like that over the next few years. My parents had a fully stocked bar in the house and allowed us to have a glass of wine over a meal as teenagers.

"It’s a good way to learn to drink moderately," they said as they finished a first scotch and soda, and then a bottle or two of wine with a meal every single night."They do that in Europe."We lived in South Africa and there was no shortage of beer, wine and events to consume them. They never got too angry when we teens took the entire bottle of vodka during a sleepover.

It was a bit of a party. Silly kids.

Alcohol was FUN. It was the way we celebrated, partied, relaxed and went out. It was also the way we spent lazy Sunday lunches, long weekends at the river, evenings on the beach, sundowners and late nights in clubs.On my 21st birthday party, I drank so much during the afternoon build-up that I threw up and passed out at 7 pm before the guests even arrived. Everyone thought it washilarious, and it was laughed about for weeks and retold at countless reunions with friends. I had ‘alcohol poisoning’ and couldn’t get out of bed for two days.

"Stop drinking’ I wrote in my diary as I moved into my 22nd year. Perhaps I did for a bit.

In our 30s, WINE was how we rewarded ourselves after a long, hard day of parenting toddlers. In our 40s, it was just what wedidat night over dinner and cooking. But it was becoming less fun. Not the drinking. That part was fun. What wasn’t fun was the hangovers, which were longer, and the restless nights that took their toll, along with the strange, anxious feeling for the entire next week.

It wasn’t aproblemin my life; it just made me sluggish and tired the next week I reeled into my third decade of ‘social drinking’ along with most of my friends.

But something strange happened. While writing my last book,Love and Above: A Journey Through Shamanism, Coma, and Joy,I had to go through all my old diaries. I sat on the floor with my life record in front of me, and as I re-read them for the first time, I saw a clear pattern. Fromthe age of 19 to 46, one thing was repeated again and again in those personal notes, in black and white.

"Hungover."

"I hate alcohol."

Every New Year, my resolutions have had the same priority for three decades.

"Stop drinking."

There had been entire years I had done just that. There was a two-year dry spell in my 30s, weeks, in each year. But it had always snuck back into my life. Each time it was nastier to me, and I was older, and the hangovers were worse. Even two glasses of wine meant a fuzzy head the next day.

"Not worth it," my diary read then."Stop."

I had watched friends who were ‘proper addicts’ over the years. Some kicked addictions fast in their 20s in AA or rehab. They were actually the lucky ones. But most others kept going quietly, never with a ‘big problem’, just a social drinker or ‘party only’. They managed it while still juggling work, jobs, lives, trance festivals, big nights out, and busy families. These were the high-functioning ones, and it was ‘not a problem.’

But alcohol is such a quiet thief. It robs you. What it takes away is honesty, self-development and rich intimacy. It becomes your friend, companion and source of joy. Glass of wine at 6 pm?Then the music comes on, and let’s cook a great meal. Another few glasses over dinner and then off to bed. Another restless night, more visits to the loo and then up at 6 am again for work, life and parenting. Years roll by.

When I had put all those diaries away, I washorrified. I finished my book and went on a book tour; but this lingering, horrible realisation was still with me. It was a slow-burning decision, but I knew what I had to do.

I woke up one random morning with a single and clear thought.

"I am done."

It had just taken me 30 years to get there.

I met Karen - she who wrote The Bad Girls' Club -  that very year on the island of Lamu, an exotic and otherworldly place off the coast of Kenya in East Africa. Wewere both at a literary and music festival, and it was rich in music, drinks, and spectacular people. Karen stood out of the crowd of hipsters and fashionistas as the cocktails swirled. It was a week of parties as we stepped onto magical dhow boats and sailed out into sunset cruises.

I also noticed she didn’t drink. Before I never would have noticed, but I was looking for people who were ‘clean’ as I was still battling to have fun without my faithful handmaiden of joy—white wine.

Her book is about her own struggle. In it she shares how she careened into her 20s with booze, drugs and reckless out-of-control behaviour. She was drinking and drugging, living with a coke-dealing boyfriend and crashing her life before she finally bottomed out and changed her life.

Karen was lucky because her addiction changed her life in a good way. Nobody wants to be in a recovery centre when you’re in your 20s. Nobody wants to be an addict, but she was lucky because that intervention changed her life and opened a door into the spirit and soul that was to grow and grow.

Getting clean was just the start of this journey. Karen’s authentic story takes us through the real hard work of growth. She describes her worldrevolving around a trifecta of T’s —Trade (jobs), Testosterone (men), and Treasure (money) —and how she judged her self-worth by her performance in each of those areas.

Below is a photo of the Bad Girls Club author, Karen Marginot, launching her book in Greece this year with me during myannual writing retreat in Greece