TURNING to the smartly dressed man sitting on the bar stool next to me, I smiled and said: “I like your shoes.” Then, lunging forward, I threw up all over them. But rather than feel ashamed, I didn’t care.
“Crazy Chrissie” strikes again! Vomiting up the wine just meant there was more room in my stomach for extra booze. You might think I was a tanked-up university student, but I was actually a mum of two boys, then aged 16 and nine, and a successful businesswoman who worked on film sets and owned her own florists. I had split from my sons’ dad and ex-husband and, on the weekends when he had the boys, I would party from Friday night until early Monday morning.
I would crawl from bar to bar, drinking and drinking, usually with acquaintances. All I really cared about was the booze . By the age of 42, I’d been taken to hospital five times because of my boozing.
I can’t go into much detail because, to my shame, I can’t remember. I know bouncers, seeing me totally gone, would flag down passing ambulances on a Saturday night. Inside, paramedics would assess me to see if I needed to go to A&E.
I would shout: “I’m not drunk, let me go!” as they drove me to hospital. Falling over and face-planting pint glasses while dancing on tables in bars, smeared in blood, isn’t a good look. But it was my secret life and one I treasured — I never even bumped into anyone I knew and had to feel mortification.
And to be honest, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Yes, I was .
