About Honestly Abi

My Story

I spent years pretending everything was fine. Smiling at work, falling apart at home. When I finally admitted I had a problem — to myself, not to anyone else — I was sitting on the bathroom floor at 2am wondering how I'd got there. Not dramatically. Not cinematically. Just quietly, completely lost.

The addiction crept up on me the way it does for most people: slowly, then all at once. First it was a coping mechanism, then a ritual, then the only thing that felt like it was holding me together — even as it was pulling everything else apart. I told myself I was in control right up until the moment I very obviously wasn't.

"Recovery isn't a straight line. I've relapsed. I've gained weight back. I've had days where getting out of bed felt impossible. But I kept going."

Recovery wasn't a single decision. It was hundreds of tiny ones, made over and over again, often badly. I relapsed. I gained weight back. I had days where getting out of bed felt like running a marathon. But somewhere along the way, I started writing about it — honestly, without the Instagram filter — and I realised that talking about the mess was helping other people feel less alone in theirs.

The depression was the hardest thing to name. Because unlike addiction, it didn't have a substance or a behaviour I could point to. It was just a greyness that settled over everything, making the world feel like it was behind glass. I could see other people living their lives and I couldn't work out how to join in. Getting help for that — admitting that my brain wasn't working properly — felt like the biggest admission of all.

"Somewhere along the way I realised that talking about the mess was helping other people feel less alone in theirs."

This blog and podcast exist because I needed them to exist. When I was at my worst, I searched for someone who'd tell me the truth — not the clinical version, not the motivational poster version, but the real version. Someone who'd say "yes, this is as hard as you think it is, and also you can survive it." I couldn't find that person. So I decided to become her.