Wezz’s Story

I’m Wezz, a transgender woman and also a recovering addict. From the age of 10 my obsession with alcohol started as I lived in a pub, but this wasn’t the reason why I started drinking alcohol. 

My drinking started like any normal teen and having my first alcoholic drink with pals on the park around the age 13. Then throughout my teen years and going through puberty and other life struggles I discovered that alcohol did something that I couldn’t do for myself, and that was to numb the way I felt. As I got older my drinking became far worse, and at the age of 18 I was a borderline alcoholic. I tried AA but I was far to young to understand so I continued the journey of chaos and self-destruction.

I do think being transgender plays a part in my drinking as I only came out as transgender in (2020) during the COVID pandemic. I started to feel a sense of confusion and frustration and many other uncomfortable feelings and emotions from the age of 4 (which was back in (1999)) and yes I remember being that age very well, as those feelings and emotions I’ve carried with me my whole life.

Alcohol gave me the ability to supress a lot of what I was feeling and allowed me to feel ‘normal’ - whatever normal is. But being transgender isn’t getting the full blame as to why I drank excessively, I had some childhood trauma that never got the correct treatment, in other words it never got addressed, and was brushed under the carpet. I moved about a lot and never felt that I had a stable home an also experienced some horrific traumas in my 20s. Not knowing how to deal with my feelings and emotions only left me with one tool that I knew that worked and that was to drink it away. Self-medicating with alcohol because I didn’t know how to ask for help.

I would say that alcohol had a huge impact on me, as soon as I discovered it had the ability to numb all those feelings and emotions that I tried so hard to supress myself, I was off and running with it, It got to a point where I was drinking first thing in a morning and the last thing at night, I normalised having a couple of glasses of wine before work and not seeing anything wrong with it. I would do absolutely anything to fund my habit with alcohol. It led me down some very dark paths and career choices, which also put me in extreme high-risk situations. I had deep depression and was always suicidal. In 2022 it got really bad and probably the worst it ever was, and I tried to take my own life. This led me to my journey of rehab and recovery.

My alcohol use impacted everyone around me, friends and family mostly, I was a liability, I was the one who would always be the first drunk at family or friend’s parties, I could get quite nasty with folk and embarrass myself. People would be hesitant if I was to be invited or not just because of how reckless I was. My relationship some of my family was very poor and they didn’t want to be around me when I was intoxicated. Its sad to think that I was so unaware of all of this and the ones that loved me were just on standby watching me slowly destroy myself.

In terms of environmental factors I would say living I a pub from the age of 10 played a huge factor in my alcohol use. I was so obsessed with it. 3 years on I tried it but I remember just thinking how fantastic it looked an all the colours etc. and the fact it was a grown up thing to do, at the age of 10 you don’t have the knowledge of the dangers and what situations alcohol can get you in.

From the age of 16 I would get served in some pubs and could get people to go into shops and buy the alcohol for me. The fact it’s so easily accessed didn’t help either because from the age of 18 I could legally buy it myself. The price has risen a lot from when I first started buying alcohol but if I’m being honest the price never bothered me I’d always get the cheapest with the highest percentage, I didn’t care what I was drinking just as long as it did the job.

I tried to reduce my drinking in the past but the longest I could go without a drink is one or two days the most, 10 years of alcohol misuse took me to rehab and that’s where I managed to completely reduce my alcohol harm, I found being removed from the community and put into an alcohol free environment had a massive effect.

Its poison. Have fun but drink as safely as possible, and speak with your GP if you think you’re drinking too much.