by Beth MT
by Beth Mt
Shame is the main reason that I continued drinking for as long as I did. I was so worried about what others would think about my alcohol consumption, that I didn’t feel like I could ask for help. I was worried that I would be judged and labelled, and I was terrified of the repercussions of this. Now that I have a good amount of time in sobriety, I am so sad about this. If only I hadn’t allowed shame to hold me back. Sadly, a lot of shame is passed from female to female, from generation to generation. Women can be very quick to judge other females, from simple things such as having a dirty house, to life-changing decisions, such as leaving a marriage. Sometimes I think we are programmed to be in competition and shame mode. It’s instilled in us, perhaps to keep us down? Who knows. But who does this help? It certainly doesn’t help women. We don’t just stop at shaming other women though, do we? we also shame ourselves. It’s a destructive cycle that needs to be broken. And I am so proud that the Hola Sober philosophy is all about women lifting other women up.
Women who have had/have an issue with alcohol are often consumed by guilt and shame. We somehow feel that we have failed ourselves and we have failed our families because we went too far and became addicted. We forget that alcohol is an addictive substance, an addictive substance that we are encouraged to partake in, often starting in our teenage years. The very people that we fear will judge us for our alcohol issues are most likely the very people who encouraged us to drink in the first place. Women do seem to be judged in a harsher way than Men when it comes to addiction. Alcohol used to be portrayed as quite a masculine vice. In films and books, men were seen as deserving of a drink. It was a great way to socialise. Or if they’d had a hard day at work, they deserved a drink. In many of the old films the man comes home from work and the woman immediately pours him a whisky. Women only seemed to be offered alcohol if they have a shock and needed to calm down. Quite often when a woman did drink in the old films, she was portrayed as a bitter drunk. Messy and tearful, she wasn’t enjoying the alcohol, she was overindulging in it.
HOLA SOBER | MADRID
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