By Meg Undressed

It’s 10 am as I pour myself into the back of an uber. I’m still drunk after having taken myself round to a complete stranger's house at 2 am. I dial my best friend’s number and regale the events from the night before: “he asked to see me again!” “He’s going to become your boyfriend,” she said. I never saw this man before 11 pm or outside of his flat. And he never called me his girlfriend. 

A different man. A different morning. Same friend: “how was the date on Friday?” I reply that he’s still in my bed. It’s Monday morning, and I’m at work. Eyes bloodshot. On a horrendous come down but high as a kite from spending the weekend drinking, snorting, and fucking. This is ‘The One’, I say to myself.

I never saw him again. 

I have a litany of these tales. Weekends that were fueled by cocaine, cheap red wine, and strangers. Someone once said to me: “your first dates are so exciting. Mine are always so dull.” At the time, I was proud of that statement. Yes. Check me out. Exciting as fuck. On the outside, I was Samantha Jones; on the inside, I was suicidal.

I spent a solid seventeen years in active addiction: cocaine, alcohol, weed, ecstasy, uppers, downers – you name it, it went in the mouth or up the nose. I paired these with many different dating partners, many of whom had a shared interest in getting out of their heads and filling a void with another's physical touch. I fell in love fast with the heady dissonance created by a mixture of intoxicants.  I used Tinder like it was a shopping site that offered next day delivery. I did not care who they were. If they wore a backwards cap and liked drinking and cocaine, I was sold. 

I was so desperate to be loved. There was the time that I walked through the streets of Portugal to find cocaine for a boy who was waiting for me at his flat, asking a multitude of different men who (I thought) looked like they enjoyed the bag. I found some. I went down a dodgy alley with a stranger to get it. That’s how I thought I would get guys to like me: my naked body and drugs. 

It sounds like this conveyor belt of men was a choice. That I went through them like that bag of cocaine on a hazy summer night, but that is not true. Each time, I believed that this one was ‘The One’. I clung on like my life depended on it. Please love me. Yet two weeks later, I’d be onto pastures new. I handed over my self-worth, along with a card and a note, to these men and prayed they would validate the emptiness I felt inside. (Spoiler: they did not.)

After ever-worsening mental health, several hospitalisations, and many dangerous rendezvous (domestic and international), I decided enough was enough.

Enter: Sobriety (stage left). 

A whole new world opened up. I joined a 12-step program and began to look inwards at my demons, harms, resentments, and cycles of destructive behaviour. Holy moly, was it a mess in there. I reached in and said, no more, I can’t live with this pain anymore. My mental health and life got exponentially better. My self-worth began to grow. My STI tests got fewer and farther between. I got my life back. 

Then came the mountain that is sober dating. Without the cover of alcohol, how was I to navigate this minefield of flirting, first kisses, and sober sex? If my body count was my age, I would be awaiting a telegram from Queen Liz herself. If my sober body count was my age, I would still be in primary school. The early years. I can’t even remember the last time that I had sex sober. Sure, my dates started sober-ish. Most likely, I’d only have had half a bottle of wine before meeting them. 

What the fuck do you do on a date without alcohol? My tip: do it during the day. Parks. Walks. Zoos. Coffee. Set a time limit. Say that you’ve got somewhere to be after, and actually make plans. 

I know this now. I did not know this to start with. I hid my sobriety from my dates, then ordered a soft drink at the bar. Several dates didn’t care. Some did, and I had clearly wasted both of our time by omitting this part of my life. I tried to date how I did before but without my old crutch. It didn’t work.

I was still swiping on men I thought would complete me. I still wanted the edgy, emotionally unavailable party boy. I could fix them now, of course. Then I matched with a guy who wasn’t my usual type; he had no drinks in his profile photos, and he had a moustache and a cowboy outfit on. 

He then asked me if I wanted to go for a coffee and a walk. I was floored. What? People go on coffee dates? And in the DAY? We had a great date. Ultimately, we weren’t the right match, but the experience opened up my eyes to the world a bit more. Just because I spent years inextricably matching drinking and dating didn’t mean that everyone else was. 

I’ve now put on my dating profile that I don’t drink. Yes, I get fewer matches. However, I’m not putting out a false image to the world anymore, which is what I did through years of addiction. I was constantly trying to be this person that I wasn’t, thinking it would bring me happiness. In reality, it brought me the opposite.

The dates I go on are quite different these days. I no longer feel like I am auditioning for the role of ‘girlfriend’. Instead, I am seeing if this person is someone that I want to spend time with and potentially swap saliva and other bodily fluids with.  

They are the dates drunk Meg would have called ‘boring’. I no longer have sex on the first date or offer cocaine after the second drink. It’s gorgeous. I wake up in bed alone. I wake up remembering the night before.

I’m also learning more about myself. I’m realising that I have much more to offer than my naked physical self. Rejection doesn’t feel so crushing. Consent is much clearer; I can actually say no now. I’m understanding what it means to want to have someone in your life in an intimate setting.

That doesn’t mean I’m not mourning or grieving the hedonistic lifestyle I once led. I don’t miss the toxic bed partners or soul-crushing rejection chased with bottles of tequila. But I do sometimes miss the romanticisation of whirlwind love, drugs, and fucking. Then I remember the reality: it was sad, sweaty, and it sucked. 

My stories from those wilder days still exist in the ether and can be drawn upon when an anecdote is needed. However, whilst I and the person I’m telling them to laugh at my former antics, I look back and think how grateful I am not to be that girl anymore. I am sober now, and I am happier for it.

Follow more of Meg’s journey with mental health and sobriety on her blog and Instagram @megundressed