Begin Again Moments: Hitting Rock Bottom And What Comes Next

In this episode of Begin Again Moments, two powerful conversations explore what happens when you hit rock bottom and how you begin to rebuild your life. Sarah Hiscox and Trinny Woodall open up about their experiences of addiction, the moments they realised their lives had become unmanageable and what it really took to choose recovery. Sarah reflects on losing her marriage and children as her heroin addiction took hold, while Trinny shares her experience of rehab, relapse, and finally reaching the point where she was ready to get sober. Together, they explore why hitting rock bottom can look different for everyone, why you have to be ready to change and the difficult journey of rebuilding your life after addiction. To hear the full conversations, watch the complete episodes on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  I remember waking up in an ambulance and the paramedic saying to me, "Who's the Prime Minister? Who's the Prime? How many fingers am I holding up? Who's the Prime Minister?" And I didn't know what had happened to me and told me, "You've overdosed." And this fear gripped me of, "Oh, my God, am I gonna die?" Because I had no control now. I'd taken the drug. I didn't know how it worked. Like, "Am I gonna die now?" And they took me on a stretcher into a room where I think I was injected with adrenaline or something. And the doctor there was quite harsh with me. I was wasting their time.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Like, there were people who are really sick and need them, and here was I, some stupid junkie, overdosed, and they were having to... That's how I felt. Like, I remember saying, "I'm sorry," to him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And I was crying because I was frightened. I was crying because I was frightened. And I thought, "How have I let it get to... How is it? How has it got to this? Like, how? Like, nobody else is doing this. Nobody else is making me do these things. I'm doing this." Couldn't understand how I'd let it get this far. And he was very sweet and said, "Do you really want to stop?" "Yes, I really want to stop." You know, he gave me some pamphlets or something.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  And I came out of the hospital and remember sitting on a bench and just feeling so utterly hopeless, looking at the pamphlets, thinking, "It's too late." You know, "It's just too late." And then going off and scoring again. I mean, the insanity of it, the absolute insanity.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  But it did give me a fright. And, you know, a couple of other things happened, but I'd sort of come to a decision. Even, I can't re-explain it. I didn't have this epiphany. I didn't fall to my knees and have some spiritual awakening where I thought, "I've given up, you know? I've stopped." No, I never had that.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  But I think you just don't stop trying. I didn't stop trying.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Even though there were times of hopelessness.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  There was still... I always think of it as like I was on this merry-go-round. It was like a misery go-round, round and round, on the misery round. And these exit signs flash up. And you either take them...

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Or you don't. But you don't know when the next one's coming.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Or if the next one's coming.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  My God, that's a very, very good visualization.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  I put it in a book. And I kept missing those exit signs, being seeing them, but just missing them. And I just took one and I stopped. And one day turned into... I didn't go to treatment. I did go to meetings. I did go to one of my meetings. And at that point, if somebody had said to me, "You need to stand in the corner..."

• 3:44Speaker 02

  I was the same.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  "...upside down in a bucket of pigswell for 48 hours to stay clean." And I'd be like, "Yeah, okay, I'm doing it. That's whatever it takes."

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I was the same.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  When I was ready...

• 3:55Speaker 01

  When you were ready.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I'd have done anything.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  But what's so weird, Div, is why I was ready then and not earlier. I don't know. I just don't know. But I do know if you just keep trying...

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Keep trying. Never give up.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  It does work.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  So what happened then? Because you obviously had had no contact with the kids.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Wrencher had given up on you.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Wrencher had given up on me.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  So how did you start to rebuild the trust with Wrencher?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Primarily from staying clean. Yeah. And like you said, you know when somebody's clean or not. You know. And I was allowed to come and say goodnight to the children and read them a story when I was three months clean. And when I got to that three-month stage, I was allowed to come and read the children a story. Sometimes I'd stay for supper.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, like, wow. So the love was still there, but there was... The trust needed to be earned.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  It was damaged.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  It was damaged, exactly. And then it slightly changed because then they were allowed, after, I can't remember how many months, six or nine months, they were then allowed to stay with me. So he would come around and read them a story. Now, bear in mind, I hadn't been out for about three years, you know? My going out involved going to a meeting. And somebody had called me up and said, "Did I want to go to some kind of sporadic event, the VNA?" And I said, "Yes." Terrified, terrified. And I remember getting all dressed up. I didn't know... I hadn't dressed up for so long, I didn't know what to wear. I didn't even know what I liked anymore. I was like, "Oh, God, I look ridiculous."

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And he came around to say goodnight and read the children a story to my flat. And I opened the door and I was all dolled up. And he was like, "Bloody hell, where are you going?" I said, "Well, I'm going to this, you know, sporadic event." And he said, as you know, he loves motorbikes. And he said, "Do you want me to take you on the bike? Because it'll be a nightmare, the traffic, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I remember thinking, "Oh, God. Oh, my God, huge part of the story I missed." The day before, the decree absolute had come through.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I remember calling and saying, "Oh, my God, the absolute's come through. That's it. It's over. That's it." So bear in mind...

• 6:16Speaker 02

  The divorce.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  The divorce was done.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yesterday.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  It was dusted yesterday. Today, that's why I went out. I thought, "I cannot sit in my flat being miserable. I've got to get it... I've got to try and start pulling a life back together that doesn't involve Wrencher for myself." So he comes around, "Oh, do you want to lift the VNA?" "Yes, okay." And we walked in, and I just remember being met by this kind of sea of glamour. And I just thought, "I can't. I just kind of... I cannot deal with this. I'm not ready for this yet." So I said, "I can't do it, Wrencher. I can't do it." And he said, "Let's go out for dinner." I was like, "Why would we do that?" And he said, "To celebrate the end of our marriage, to celebrate the divorce."

• 7:02Speaker 01

  And I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I can do that." But I just wanted to be with him. So I was like, "I feel a bit weird about it, but okay." And he went to this restaurant that we had a relationship with, but, you know, birthdays, anniversaries, we would go to this restaurant. So we walked into the restaurant, sat down. I felt very sad, you know? Because I wanted to be with this man, and here we were, celebrating our divorce. And he said something, "I need to tell you." And I was like, "Oh, my God, he's met someone else, you know? Some like supermodel and..." You know, still those old messages, "You're not good enough.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  You're not good enough." I thought, "Oh, God, here we go. I don't know if I can cope with this." And he said, "Do you want to try again?" And I was like, "What? What?" And he said, "Do you want to try again?" And I said, "Yes."

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yes. But I said also, "Do you think that we'll be able to? So much has happened. There's so much from water under the bridge. Can you forgive me? You know? Can we forgive each other in some instances?" And he was like, "Well, let's try."

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yes, Wrencher!

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. So that's what we did.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Self-employed is convenient when you have a drug problem because you kind of don't always get up at eight AM to go to an office. And so, you know, in those, in a few of those times, you know, my using affected things and I wasn't consistent. And it was slowly eroding my ambition. When I was about sixteen, I was quite ambitious. Yes. And I had been really bad at school. And then my parents, I could go to America if I came from twenty-three out of twenty-four in the top ten, so I came third. So I knew a little bit was focus and attention. Yes. And I, I, it was in me and I felt it was in me. And then from sixteen, I started using intermittently. And then, you know, by the time I was twenty, I was using fully. And then twenty-six, I stopped.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  So I had ten years where, you know, I was sort of habitual use. At what, at what point did it become really unmanageable? I think a few things happened. I think it depends what people use. Friends of mine who used smack, you kind of, you know, you can't sit in a chair and not look like you're using. Yeah. And you look different. And you look different. And yours, you're blurry and, you know, everything. We, we know that. We have friends who've been in that position. And also, you can die. And quite a few of our friends died and overdosed. Um, with coke, it's different because you sort of think, I'll just use it the weekends. It's recreational.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  You start in a recreational use, then your weekend comes a Thursday to a Monday. And then the rest of the time is just you're trying to recover so you can use again. So that was my using. I had a few years of that, but I felt I presented as a together person. Hmm. And I, and it was still important for me to look nice and to put on makeup and to make an effort. I had very bad acne, but I still, you know, there was really like what you present to the world and how you feel inside. And we know this thing of fitting in your own skin. You know, my skin and my body were so far apart and, um, you wouldn't necessarily see it. But then my parents began to notice and then my dad was like, what's happened to you? You've just changed.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  And then one day I just thought, it's going to be easy for me just to say, look, I use. It was just, it was actually a release to say it. And I remember exactly when I said it and I was probably twenty-one. And we were sitting around the kitchen table in my parents' flat and my brother was there because I remember my dad said, now you've told me, you can stop. And I remember my brother saying, um, like that was the biggest. Yeah. And I remember my brother saying, I think it's going to be harder than that, Daddy. I think she'll have to do, you know, go to rehab or do something. You were twenty-one at this point, right? Yeah, twenty-one, twenty-two, maybe twenty-two. So then I went to rehab, but I wasn't ready.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  And we talked a bit before about this sense of what a rock bottom is and, and how much has to be removed from your life for you to think, I want, I will do anything to change my life, you know? And there, there's a lot of damage that's done. There's a lot of things that happen. But you have to have had enough of that old life and want to let it go to be able to successfully get clean. And that first time, I came back to London after a few months and I remember going to meetings and I remember when I went to meetings, I would arrive late, I'd sit at the back. I wouldn't get to know people.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  And then I felt, um, because I wasn't finding a grounding there, that my old life was appealing because it made me feel less lonely. And one night I was out with friends and somebody said, do you want a line? I thought, why the fuck not? There wasn't that barrier of look what's going to happen if I do again. You couldn't pull it forward. Couldn't pull it forward. So then I relapsed. And then that time of relapse is when, and anyone listening who has or been through this knows this one, when you know there's a solution, the joy of using disappears. So I had three or four years of just very knowing this was never going to go anywhere, seeing at this stage friends not making it and just thinking at some stage, I will not

• 12:55Speaker 03

  be able to do this anymore. And then it got to that stage. And then that time, I was twenty-six and I really knew I had to do it for me. There is something where if everyone helps you or puts you in, I remember my parents sold a table at auction to pay for my rehab and I heard about that table for two years. You know, they would always talk about that table they'd had to sell. And I just, it was a good table. But I knew I would have to, so I sold, I had some jewelry I'd inherited and I sold the jewelry and I paid for my own rehab. I think what happened to me aged twenty-six is I thought, because I felt I'd lived a whole fucking life, okay? You had.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  You know, and I felt I have to, for the first time, take responsibility of myself and do this for me. So that first step was, was doing, and I spent a year in rehab. You know, I did seven months at Farm Place and six months in Weston Super Fucking Nightmare. And it's quite funny, we've just got to explain that people in recovery that go to Weston Super, they call it Weston Super Nightmare. Yeah, Weston Super Nightmare. I'm so sorry, I really apologize to people who live in what might be now a glorious Weston Super Nightmare. Well, it is a gorgeous place if you're not in treatment, you know. But I was, I was in treatment and, um, and it was just, I remember I think I lived on thirteen pounds a week and that went on cigarettes.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  And then I worked in a garden centre, um, in January outside, just like, I remember always just being freezing and it's, you've got the wind and the sea and just, you know, and then I worked a bit in an old people's home. And it was very, I then came back to London and it was that feeling, and we know this, this conversation, when you feel everything has been stripped back from you so much and you have to build it up again. You have to really, for the first time aged twenty-seven by now, discover who am I and who do I want to be? And I think if I wind this movie forward for a second to the Trini tribe on Facebook and Instagram, the biggest thing. Can I just quickly ask you something? So this is your community? Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  How many people are in there now? A few hundred thousand. I mean. Yeah. But this is, this thing. That's amazing. That, that is, um, so important to me is to ask ourselves as women, who do we want to be today for ourselves? Not who does our mother, sister, daughter, husband, partner want us to be? And I spent so many years trying to be what all these people in my life felt I should be, or I felt they felt I should be. And so to have that choice and to develop that in myself of who do I actually want

• 15:47Speaker 03

  to be was something I felt when we, you know, all these people start this community separately, but there is this, I think the, the premise for me, the most important thing for a woman is to figure out, how can I decide who I want to be for myself today? And so that place, especially during COVID, when people felt they were living in family environments and feeling so lonely. Yes. Is how could I actually have a place where, you know, get online, Trini's having a chat, sorry, I hate to talk about myself in third person. I'm chatting with these ladies, but we're talking about these subjects. We're talking about who do you want to be today? And that does then transmit in, get dressed, wear colour, put on makeup, do your hair,

• 16:29Speaker 03

  decide to look after your body, think about what menopause might be for you. How do you, I don't want to grow all fucking gracefully. I want to have so much energy in my life. You know, these are things I want for me. And I really, the passion that probably drives me every single day is, is to, I spent many years in my life, Davina, compromising and being something for other people. And I don't anymore. I, like, I don't for one millimetre, even to the extent where some family relationships couldn't get their head around it, you know? And it's the most freeing thing I have done for myself.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.