I would drink a bottle of rosé during ultra marathons – and still tell myself I wasn’t an alcoholic - Allie Bailey

Allie Bailey would leave a drop bad at the halfway mark of an ultramarathon with a bottle of rosé wine in it. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Giving up drinking never seemed to be an option, even when I knew that it was likely to kill me. It took losing everything for me to change.

I got sober in 2021. In the years prior to that, I had run more than 200 marathons and 80 ultra marathons and became the first woman to run the length of the Panama Canal. All while battling depression and alcoholism.

On a 100 mile (160km) race, I would leave a drop bag for myself at the halfway mark containing a bottle of rosé wine. I called it “sports rosé” because it was only 12 per cent alcohol, which I considered to be barely stronger than cordial.

Other runners would usually keep water and snacks in their drop bags. But I thought the wine worked as a painkiller. Plus, it was part of my USP on the running scene. People would say “Look at Allie, she’s crazy”. I liked that.

The truth was more grim. I was depressed and thought that running might save me. What I didn’t realise back then was that all I needed saving from was alcohol.

I grew up in a very working class home in Dorset in the Eighties where everyone around me drank. But this never seemed dangerous or bad, it was more like party drinking. From an early age I thought that if you weren’t drinking then you weren’t having fun.

I started drinking aged 14 and found out quite quickly that it helped to stop me from worrying. Back then, I only had little teenage worries but it was so easy to make them go away with a couple of little beers.

My worries got darker when I was 16 and my dad left us. Being abandoned made me feel as if I wasn’t good enough, that I was somehow unloveable. I felt sad all the time but, in my family, the motto was, “If you haven’t got anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all.” This meant I didn’t tell anyone how I felt and just tried to hide it. I craved affection; I thought that sleeping with loads of people would make me feel better about myself. The easiest way of meeting those people was to get drunk. I felt as if people loved drunk Allie more than sober Allie.

I had always dreamed of working in music and in my 20s I managed to land a job at a record label in London. Looking back, I think one of the reasons I chose that career path was precisely because it would facilitate my drinking. In the music industry, everyone drank all the time. Going to parties and getting pissed was part of the job. It felt glamorous and fun. There was no sense whatsoever that drinking in the day was problematic because it was so normal.

I had tricked myself into thinking that I was choosing to live this way. But whenever I took a break from drinking I found my feelings very hard to manage. My mental health would hit rock bottom very quickly. If I drank, I was fine because I didn’t feel anything. These were the warning signs that I ignored.

I was always trying to numb out anxiety and depression and I didn’t want to face the fact that alcohol was part of the problem. Nothing else seemed to work. I sabotaged relationships with men because I was always scared of being abandoned. I tried medication but that didn’t help me either.

Someone suggested that running might help me feel better. When I first got into it I quit drinking for 40 days. I completed the London Marathon but still found myself feeling depressed afterwards. So I started learning how to drink and run. I could finish a race, go out drinking all night, not eat anything and still manage to run again the next day. As long as I wasn’t drinking in the morning then I could tell myself I wasn’t an alcoholic.

When marathons didn’t make me feel any better I decided that I needed to run further. I started trail running, which has a very big drinking culture. In the evenings, there were social gatherings and I would go from one running club to another, having beers with all of them until I was totally drunk.

I got a reputation for being the runner who openly drank during the race. But I wasn’t completely unique. Booze is a painkiller. Jagermeister was developed by the Norwegian army to help soldiers withstand physical pain and mentally prepare for battle. Lots of races reward you with a beer at the finishing line. It’s mad.

You’d never drink so much that you were stumbling or falling over. Just enough to help numb you a bit. But as my tolerance increased, I could drink more and more during a race without it harming my performance.

I eventually graduated to 100 mile ultra marathons. But no matter how far I ran or how many races I won I still felt depressed. I knew I wasn’t addicted to running because I could stop whenever I needed to — if I was injured or exhausted I could take a break.

But with alcohol, stopping was never an option. I remember flying to Thailand with a Russian airline who banned alcohol on the plane. I bought a litre of vodka in duty free and decanted it into my water bottle so I could drink it on the flight. Not drinking, even for those few hours, just didn’t seem possible to me.

Eventually, I left the music industry, got a new job and moved away to a different part of the country to be with someone I’d fallen in love with. But he abandoned me and I was left alone in an unfamiliar part of the country, completely isolated just as the second lockdown started.

I was so depressed and had concluded that nothing would ever make me feel better. I completely gave in to drinking, knowing that it was likely to kill me. I wanted to die.

I told someone at work that I needed help and they came and got me. They drove me down to Somerset where my ex-boyfriend and my mum lived, and they left me there. I said to myself, “Right, you can either sort your shit out or you die.”

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It took me three days to get some clarity and understand that I needed to change the one thing I’d never had the courage to address: my drinking. I had lost everything: my boyfriend, my career, my home and my mind. Drinking had been a constant throughout. So, I thought, “I will try and stop but if I still feel awful without drinking then I will kill myself.”

I didn’t go to rehab but I made sure I was always with someone throughout those first weeks of sobriety. Either my mum or my friend was always watching over me.

I focussed on the basics: eating three meals a day, making my bed, drinking plenty of water and sleeping. We did jigsaws, read books and I started writing everything down. Slowly, I started to see an improvement in my mood.

Then I started thinking about the bigger picture: working out what my values were and trying to live by them. I worked out that I still loved running and I liked helping people. So I started coaching people to run.

I now have my own business, I have had my book published and I tour the country talking to people about running and sobriety. I have a wonderful life that is only possible because I stopped drinking.

It’s just a shame that it took me so long to understand that alcohol was the problem and that I always had the choice to stop.

Alcohol shouldn’t be a part of the wellness world. It shouldn’t be normalised in the way it is. I meet people all the time who are committed runners with drinking problems. It goes unnoticed because people assume that all alcoholics are homeless, unfit people who sleep on park benches. But it is very possible to function normally while drinking to a dangerous extent.

While the drink is often being used to cope with mental health issues, it often ends up making them so much worse. I was scared to stop because I thought I would lose an essential part of myself if I didn’t drink. I didn’t realise that I would actually find a better part of myself. I used to be a liar and a manipulator, but now my life is honest and, I think, good.

If you are feeling the same way as I once did, I just want you to know that you are not alone and there is a way out. But if you’re thinking to yourself “My drinking isn’t that bad yet,” then, chances are, it is that bad already.

There Is No Wall - Running Won’t Save You by Allie Bailey is out now.