'I was arrested for drink-driving at Christmas - what happened next changed everything'
Stephanie Chivers had her first drink at the age of 11 - slugs of Babycham nabbed at a family party. As a teen Stephanie would steal spirits from her family drink cabinet and concoct a nasty mixture to drink with friends at her local youth club. Even though she was sometimes sick from drinking, Stephanie, now 55, didn’t realise she had a problem. While she only drank with friends, she had no ‘off switch’ and no awareness of the risks she was taking.
By the time Stephanie, from Devon, hit her early twenties, she found herself feeling lonely and depressed, so she would binge drink.
"I would make myself incredibly vulnerable and have unprotected sex. I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening to me. Alcohol was, and still is, socially acceptable. It’s legal, so you don’t think there is anything wrong with it.
"I would get drunk, loud and aggressive, sleep with men, put myself in vulnerable situations, take risks, climb up scaffolding, cause fights and basically be a complete t#@t," she remembers.
By the time she hit her thirties, she was downing two bottles of wine a night and more at the weekend. Then, the night before Christmas Eve 2005, Stephanie was arrested. "I was having a very difficult time with a separation, was in a pretty bad place and had been for some time.
"I had been out with friends until 4am, got in my car and drove one mile home, getting picked up by the police after going the wrong way at a junction. I was taken to the station and put in the cells," she remembers.
Stephanie admits the arrest didn’t go well. She couldn’t believe the officers’ audacity to have taken her in and she was aggressive, shouting and swearing at them. They kept her in a cell to cool down and sober up, and it was sitting alone on that cold, padded bed that gave her the time to assess her decisions.
"The reality of the situation hit me and I had an epiphany. I thought about all the things that had gone wrong in my life and still were going wrong. I felt trapped and powerless, but I realised there was no need to destroy myself. I realised that I was the common denominator of everything that had gone wrong in my life."
It was this point that she realised that she was 100% responsible for her choices and that she could do something about it.
Later that day, she was released with a potential three-month prison sentence hanging over her. Her close friend Richard picked her up, held her, listened to her and let her cry, telling her he was glad she’d been arrested as she was out of control, and it would serve as a good wake-up call.
Stephanie decided to give up drinking straight away and be honest with everyone about what had happened to her. "I felt guilt and shame, it was very embarrassing. But I decided to just front it out, tell people what happened and explain that I had been arrested, that I really wanted to sort myself out, that I didn’t want to drink and asked people to support me with that."
Stephanie didn’t have a choice; there was an article about her conviction in the local paper. Luckily, she escaped a custodial sentence and was given a driving ban and a fine instead. "Getting arrested was the worst thing and the best thing to ever happen to me. But even though I was really clear things needed to change, I relapsed massively ten days later and 18 months later, but got back on track, never went back to daily drinking and have stayed mostly alcohol free." Her last alcoholic drink was in 2017.
"Being alcohol free has given me a new lease of life, it’s like night and day. The clarity of thought and knowing my own mind is intoxicating," she added.
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