The pill that fixed my drinking problem

Plus: My transgender chicken, and other recent disasters

Dear Jasper,

Readers: you have to scroll past the initial free part (below) to reach the bit about the pill that stopped me chucking back a bottle of wine a night, which I was doing regularly for many years. So if you aren’t yet subscribed, now be the time.

I was basically drunk for a decade

Jasper, I’ve been low recently, to be completely honest. Your father works away for six weeks at a time, and that’s just the deal, but for some reason this stretch has been very difficult.

Here’s a list as to the contributing factors, because I always find lists a good place to start:

• Your nanny who, though she was good to you, was always unreliable and a source of drama for your parents, dropped out on us, with no notice, again, on the very first day your father left again last month. So I had to spend a week apologising to editors about pushing deadlines back and frantically searching for childcare with you nipping at my heels.

• I really thought I was pregnant with your much-wanted sibling last month, but it turned out that I wasn’t and it made me cry a lot.

• I missed a few doses of the antidepressants which keep my brain stable, and have done for about a decade - so that organ promptly fell to bits. There’s been lots of sad staring into space.

• I have had a very frustrating setback on the production of my moonsuit; the onesie company (with a bum zip for easy bathroom breaks) I’m starting which I care a lot about and means I can’t launch before Christmas, as was my fervent wish.

• Our dog Laska got ill, repeatedly, so there were plenty of concerning dashes to the vet.

• One of the four fluffy baby FEMALE chicks we acquired earlier this year (it was very important that they were checked to be female) has turned out to be a rooster. Yes, that’s right. ‘Tabitha’ now goes by the name ‘Tarquin’ and they wake us up at 3am, 4am and 5am cockadoodadoodling.

• You, my dearest darling Jasper, have decided in earnest that you’d like to start breastfeeding again (I’m not letting you; you’re mad about it) and also that you will go to sleep no earlier than at 10.30pm every night.

• I currently have eight newspaper articles to write that are all overdue, and I have also been neglecting this Substack.

• I have 3,374 unread emails in my inbox.

• A giant cockroach crawled out of a bowl of pasta I’d been eating the other night, and I was so tired and beaten up that I didn’t even care. Worse, I finished the meal.

Tarquin, handsome but loud

It’s all been a bit much on my own, and I’m usually very good at being lonely, but recently I have tanked.

In the last week, though, I’ve solved or at least eased most of these problems. We have a new nanny, who is lovely and seems to be working out really well. So I’m wading through my to-do list. I’m still depressed, some days more than others. Laska got diagnosed with a uterus infection which is being treated. Tarquin doesn’t cockadoodledoo if I close him into the hen house at night. The rest of the time the chickens are all free range. The moonsuits WILL launch, it’s just taking more time. Jasper, I’m going to try and shorten then cut out your daytime nap because I will lose my fucking mind if I don’t get my evenings back. I’ve submitted two articles, and look, I’M WRITING THIS SUBSTACK. Most of those thousands of emails will probably never be read and I’m making my peace with that.

The moonsuit, which we shot in Utah last month

Now, onto the pill that fixed my drinking problem. Everyone who drinks too much alcohol (like I did, for many years) at least needs to know about this wonder drug…