The Outrun

by Amy Liptrot

I was a physically brave and foolhardy child. I climbed up stone dykes and onto shed roofs. I threw my body from high rafters onto hay or wool bags below. Later I plunged myself into parties – alcohol, drugs, relationships, sex – wanting to taste the extremes, not worrying about the consequences, always seeking sensation and raging against those who warned me away from the edge. My life was rough and windy and tangled.

I had been walking through the city for so long that I didn’t know where I was. I’d walk towards any light, towards the highest point. I wanted to reach up above the buildings, following the part of me that needed cliffs, and the air to be clearer.

I HEARD IT SAID THAT in London you’re always looking for either a job, a house or a lover. I did not realise how easily and how fast I could lose all three.

I was in a dangerous loop, now consciously drinking to ease the shame of what I’d done while drinking the night before.

When we drink, alcohol, or more specifically ethanol, is absorbed into the stomach lining and enters the bloodstream. In the brain, alcohol confuses messages between neurotransmitters and acts as an intoxicant and a depressant or relaxant. For those of us susceptible to addiction, alcohol quickly becomes the default way of alleviating anxiety and dealing with stressful situations. Through repeated use of the drug, our neural pathways are scored so deeply they will never be repaired. I will always be vulnerable to relapse and other kinds of addiction.

I’d left my job to go to rehab, so when my three months in the treatment centre came to an end, I found myself unemployed again. I was treating my sobriety with great care, as if I was a delicate, newly hatched chick and I was not going to let myself be shaken or squashed. I was trying to pay attention to my needs and emotions, anxious, tired, lonely, hungry, which previously I’d usually dealt with by an unsubtle and ultimately unhelpful application of booze. I was going to AA meetings and avoiding some old places and people, while applying for jobs with a new hard-to-explain gap in my CV.