Mandy's Recovery Autobiography

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  • Mandy’s Recovery Journey

    Mandy’s Recovery Journey is a real, ongoing story of healing from addiction and mental health struggles to a life of empowerment, self-respect, and freedom from cravings.

    This space is for honesty, hope, and the reminder that recovery isn’t about being perfect – it’s about not giving up on yourself.

    Mandy is living proof that recovery is possible, no matter how far you’ve fallen or how long it’s been. As a young woman, she was deeply caught up in the UK rave scene, alcohol, and drugs, chasing escape in all-night parties and chaos. What began as fun quickly became a trap that took a toll on her mind, body, and spirit.

    Forty years later, Mandy shares a very different story: a life of sobriety, self-respect, and real freedom. Her journey from alcoholism and drug use to healing and hope shows that it is never too late to change, to ask for help, or to begin again. Today, Mandy uses her experience to remind others that recovery is not only possible, it can lead to a life more honest, peaceful, and empowered than you ever imagined.

  • AA and Sober

    When I was in Poutama, I was being taken to AA meetings. Even getting down the slope at Poutama was a challenge — my vertigo made it almost impossible. Looking back, I should have been taken to the doctor, but at the time I just tried to push through.

    Despite those struggles, there’s something I’m proud of today: I’ve been sober for one year and seven days. It’s the longest I’ve ever been sober, and it feels like a milestone I’ve fought hard to reach.

    It wasn’t my first attempt at sobriety. Years ago, when I lived in Milton Keynes, I managed six months without drinking. But during that time, I was in a dark place and ended up taking an overdose of paracetamol and whisky.

    The next day I went to Angie’s, and the doctor thought I had jaundice. I ended up in a coma. I remember seeing my brother and his wife holding Shaun’s hands in the emergency room, though they weren’t allowed to come in. That memory still weighs heavily on me — one of my deepest regrets.

    Back then, I was overwhelmed by mixed emotions. I felt unlovable, unwanted, and completely lost. I’d fallen for someone named Peter, and when he rejected me, it hurt — but strangely, it also brought a sense of release. It was a moment that shifted something inside me, even if I didn’t understand it at the time.

    My journey with sobriety hasn’t been straightforward. It’s been messy, painful, and full of lessons I didn’t ask for. But today, I’m here. I’m sober. And I’m still moving forward, one day at a time.

  • Secondary School, Survival, and the First Signs of Bipolar

    My life at secondary school was fragmented. I missed huge chunks of my education, drifting in and out of classrooms and towns. I loved art, history, and English language — the subjects that let me escape — but I went to five different secondary schools and spent more time truanting than learning. That was one of the reasons I ended up in care. My mum simply couldn’t cope with me anymore.

    By then, alcohol had already become part of my life. I was still a teenager, but I drank like someone trying to numb something far older. I’d get drunk, play Space Invaders, Defender, Pac-Man — anything to fill the hours. I’d catch the bus from Braunton to Croyde, then hitchhike home, stumbling in around midnight. I’d throw up violently, then drink milk to settle my stomach. I don’t know if my mum ever realised how much I was drinking. Maybe she did. Maybe she couldn’t face it.

    As my friends grew into their late teens, they found new circles, new lives. I loved them with all my heart — we had so many fun times — but I always felt like the odd one out. Like there was something “wrong” with me. Something unlovable.

    The irony is that my name literally means lovable. I think my dad chose it. And I know my family loved me, but we were scattered across the world. My nephew once asked me on Facebook why our family was so spread out — Canada, Hong Kong, everywhere. I surprised him by asking if he still had as much tomato sauce as he used to. He did then. I’m not sure about now.

    Then came the man I was infatuated with — the first person who truly star‑struck me. I won’t name him, but he stole my heart completely. He’d left the RAF, he was stunningly handsome, and I was devoted to him. I used to skip art college just to go to his house every morning. His family liked me, and for a while, that felt like enough.

    I don’t have any photos of him. Just memories. He ended our relationship while my mum was away in Yugoslavia. She had put me into a guest house at the time, and when he finished things, I was heartbroken. I think I was too infatuated, too intense. I didn’t want babies then — I was still a late teenager — I just wanted him. He was 21, not ready to settle down. We met in a local café, and for a moment, he was my whole world.

    I dropped out of art college around then, and that was the first time someone told me I had bipolar. People with bipolar often recognise it in others — that’s been my experience, anyway. My care reports mention me coming back from discos “high,” buzzing with an energy I couldn’t control. Years later, I was diagnosed with Rapid Cycling Bipolar, CPTSD, OCD, Social Anxiety, and Double Depression.

    Pick a label. There were plenty to choose from.

    But underneath all of them was just a girl trying to survive a life that had already asked too much of her.

  • My husband, Shaun, and the Years That Shaped Me

    After my husband and I separated, there was a moment when he tried to pull me back into his life. I was in a bad place emotionally, not thinking clearly, and certainly not thinking about Shaun the way I should have been.

    I returned to Manchester later. I took the train up to Manchester to see him, and before I even reached him, some of his friends spotted me. They gave me a real scare — a reminder that I wasn’t moving through life as invisibly as I thought.

    I did try to get back with him. We spent the night squeezed into his single bed, and even in that moment, I remember asking him, “What about Shaun?” It was a question that hung in the air, unanswered, because neither of us really knew what we were doing.

    When I was pregnant with Shaun, I had been the healthiest I’d ever been. I can still picture myself walking from our house down to the beach, glowing, genuinely happy to be carrying my baby. It felt like a new beginning after so much chaos. I’d already been through a miscarriage at seventeen — His eldest sister told me it wasn’t the right time, and maybe she was right. I had just come out of care when I met him, still trying to figure out who I was.

    I remember leaving my mum’s house to move in with him. She warned him, “She’s not easy to live with.” After all my running away and teenage behaviour, I thought it was funny at the time. Looking back, I can see the layers of truth in her words — not as criticism, but as a mother who had already watched me survive more than most teenagers should.

    My fiance and I lived in Ilfracombe first, in a flat perched on a huge steep hill. I remember every inch of that place. Later we moved to Combe Martin, where I stayed up all night putting chipwood wallpaper on the walls and painting them bright green. I was trying to make a home, even if I didn’t know how.

    Our neighbours once told us that breeding puppies was harder work than raising a child. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that — I was already learning that motherhood was nothing like anyone prepared you for.

    My mum adored Shaun. Every Sunday we’d go to her house. I did love her, but our relationship was complicated, shaped by grief neither of us had processed.

    I was eventually converted me to being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The promise of seeing my dad again in the “new system” hooked me in completely. I still hadn’t dealt with losing him. I was carrying that wound everywhere I went.

    Those years were messy, hopeful, painful, and full of moments I’m still trying to understand. But they were mine — the beginning of my life as a mother, and the beginning of learning who I really was beneath all the survival.

    I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness now. I was disfellowshipped in my early 20’s for smoking cigarettes. Two witnesses have to see you before that happens. I went back to check it out but it was so square. Not for me anymore, that’s for sure.

  • A Childhood Marked by Love, Silence, and Loss

    My parents had a complicated relationship. Dad worked nights for most of my childhood, so I didn’t see much of him during the week. Weekends were different, though — those were our moments. We’d go on little trips to tourist spots, and for a while it felt like that was our version of normal.

    Before I was born, Dad had served in the war and spent time in Malta. He had a relationship there with a café owner, something my mum never truly forgave him for. I still have his war diaries, and when we eventually returned to Malta years later, he wanted to apologise to her. By then, she had already passed away. That regret stayed with him.

    Despite the tension between them, Malta holds some of my happiest memories. I remember the pool, the heat, and taking Scruffy with me. There’s a photo of Dad, Scruffy, and me that I still treasure. I’m gathering these photos now, hoping to turn them into an ebook one day.

    Everything changed when Dad got sick. He went into hospital for back pain and came out with a diagnosis of cancer. I remember watching him bend over to reach for a glass of water and hearing one of his ribs crack. That sound has never left me.

    Dad loved art and bird watching. He knew every birdsong and even kept a record of them. I miss that part of him — the gentle enthusiasm, the way he noticed beauty in small things.

    What still hurts is that no one told us he was dying. Mum and Dad kept the truth from us, maybe thinking they were protecting us. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral. I don’t even remember where I was that day — it’s just a blank space in my memory. Trauma has a way of erasing what it can’t make sense of.

    I do remember the date, though. March 1st. It’s etched into me, and it still matters every year.

    I was eleven when Mum took me to see him in hospital for the last time. I wanted to stay with him, but she couldn’t bear to see him so ill. He would have received a 21‑gun salute, but in the end he worked as a personal chauffeur for Sir John Mckay, and that was the life he left behind.

    The day after he died, Mum took me to the crematorium. She showed me the bronze plaque and let me look through the book with his name in it. That moment is strangely clearer than the funeral itself.

    Mum carried her own grief long before Dad died. She had lost her father to severe mental illness, something she was bullied for. She had also lost her first child, Margaret, who was born with a misshapen skull. None of us know the full truth of those early losses — they were never spoken about openly.

    Looking back, I can see she didn’t have the emotional capacity to comfort me. She was grieving her own history, her marriage, her partner, and her stability. I don’t remember her cuddling me after Dad died. I just remember lying on the floor watching one of my favourite programmes when she walked in. I looked at her and said, “Dad’s dead, isn’t he?” Somehow, I already knew.

    I still don’t know why they didn’t prepare us for his death. Maybe they couldn’t face it themselves. Maybe they thought silence was protection. But silence leaves its own scars.

    I miss him — the weekends, the birdsong, the warmth he brought into the small spaces of our life. And I’m still piecing together the parts of the story that were never explained.

  • Early Childhood

    I loved my dad with all my heart.

    When I think back, some of my happiest memories are of us going as a family to National Trust castles and gardens. Mum would pack a picnic for our days out, or sometimes when we went away for the whole weekend. Camber Sands was always fun – there was a sense of freedom there that I can still feel if I close my eyes.

    Mum was a good cook. I remember being told off for putting my elbows on the table. She was strict with me. I wasn’t allowed to be angry; she didn’t know how to handle me when I was upset or overwhelmed.

    I used to slam doors. That was how my feelings came out. She could be violent with me – she would slap me around the face when I was scared. According to my brother’s wife, I was actually a lovely little girl. That makes me realise the problem was never that I was “bad”; it was that my emotions weren’t welcome.

    My dad had already lived a whole other life before I was born. He served in the Army in World War II, and my brother has his medals now. When the war ended he became a policeman.

    But at heart he was an artist. He made crystal jewellery, and I used to love going to the crystal shop in Tunbridge Wells with him. In my mind it’s still there. Mum would invite her friends and neighbours over in the evenings, talk about the crystals and sell them. Dad spent most of his free time in his shed out the back, quietly creating.

    He was amazingly artistic – he could even write the Lord’s Prayer on the back of a postage stamp. I wish I still had that stamp.

    I’ve got his war diaries here with me. He served in Malta and Egypt. Later, Mum and Dad took me to Malta for a couple of weeks on holiday. Sometimes Mum would wake me at 4am with, “Get up, Mandy, we’re going on holiday.” I can still hear her voice when I remember that.

    In retrospect, my childhood was good in many ways – there were holidays, picnics, castles, gardens, crystals, and parents who worked hard and were involved in the community. But my mum was also violent toward me and my sister. I don’t know about my brother; he moved out before I was born.

    Then Dad got sick.

    That’s when the grief really began. I’ll write about that in my next post.

  • Kidnapped

    When I was 14, I had already learned to touch type and saw it as an asset. In my teens and early adulthood, I would temp in London and later in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Before that, when I was still living at home in Knowle, Devon, under the care act, I used to knock on the doors of local businesses looking for work. One man who ran a sawmill offered me a job and asked if I wanted to go to Ilfracombe, a nearby coastal town. I trusted him.

    He drove in the general direction of Ilfracombe, but then turned off onto another road. I remember thinking it was strange. He took me to a pine forest: the opening by the gate had been cut down, with trees still standing in the distance. Looking back, I can see all the warning signs, but I was 14 and I wanted to believe I was safe.

    In that forest, he asked me to slap him around the face and offered me ten British pounds for each slap. I was frightened, but I did it six times. Then I told him I was scared. He gave me sixty pounds, drove me to Ilfracombe, and told me not to tell anyone because he would deny it. I was terrified, so I stayed silent and carried that secret alone.

    Years later, I got my care reports and my counsellor advised me not to read them on my own. When I eventually did, they brought huge clarity about my time in care. I learned that even my mother had “checked him out”. According to the reports, she had told my social worker, Mr Spicer, that she felt this man had “alternative expectations”. Her intuition had picked up what I, as a child, couldn’t fully name at the time.

    Much later, a dear friend told me that this incident was the beginning of my Complex PTSD. I don’t see it that way; it wasn’t the start, but it was a significant part of my trauma timeline. It was one of those moments where an adult abused my trust, twisted a situation under the guise of “help” and “work”, and left me to carry the shame and confusion. It sits there in my history as a painful but important piece of understanding how my Complex PTSD developed over time.

  • Genetic Vulnerabilities

    This story begins before I was born, with a grandfather I never met. In fact, I never met either of my grandfathers and I have never even seen a photograph of them. What I do know comes from fragments of family history and a newspaper clipping.

    My maternal grandfather drove across the country with the intention of ending his life. He put a gun in his mouth but was found alive. According to the newspaper report, there were no financial troubles or obvious external pressures.

    My grandmother was pregnant with their fifth child at the time, and family stories suggest he had been experiencing what was described as “morning sickness” alongside her pregnancy.

    The more I learn about my family’s history, the more I wonder about the impact that event had on the generations that followed.

    Suicide carried a much heavier stigma in those days than it does now, and I often find myself wondering what life was like for my mother growing up in its shadow.

    She was bullied at school because of what happened. What I do know is that my mother struggled with depression, anxiety and OCD, and I have long suspected she may also have had bipolar disorder.

    My sister and I both have bipolar disorder, while my eldest son lives with depression. My youngest, of both I love dearly, I suspect has Complex PTSD and grief issues.

    Looking back across the generations, I cannot help but see a thread connecting mental health challenges, trauma and resilience.

    Some parts of the story are known, while others remain unanswered questions, but together they form an important part of my family’s history.

  • Birth

    I was born in Fant Hospital near Maidstone in 1966. The day after I arrived there was a fire, and everyone on my mum’s ward had to be evacuated; somewhere I still have the old newspaper clipping about it.

    My mum was 40 when she became pregnant with me, at a time when that was considered unusually old and risky. Looking back now, I can understand her desire to seek to end the pregnancy, and how overwhelmed she must have felt.

    She told me that when she went to the doctor, he said that if she was supposed to have me, she would. It all happened just a year before the UK law changed, when safe, legal options to end a pregnancy were extremely limited.

    My beginnings were tangled up with fear, uncertainty, and chance, but also with survival: a difficult pregnancy, a hospital fire, and a baby who arrived for a reason.