Robyn Flemming is a phenomenal woman. Smart and well travelled, she is a sought-after editor and super social, gathering groups of like-minded people wherever she goes. She is also 10 years and eight months sober. Now approaching her 70th birthday, she has her recently had a memoir published. Skinful: A Memoir of Addiction is her story of addiction and recovery, a good chunk of which is set in Hong Kong. When she first approached publishers with the manuscript she was turned down because her personal story wasn’t bad enough, but that’s exactly what makes Skinful relevant – it is the story of everyday social drinking that slides down the slippery slope into “grey-area drinking”. “This is a disorder, it’s on a spectrum like autism ,” says Flemming. “There’s this area in the middle – grey-area drinking – where you’re drinking enough to worry yourself, even if you are still under the radar of the people around you who love you. Pandemic-related stress, isolation driving more to drink “If I could still work, still be presentable and pay my rent, have a conversation with a friend and show concern then I couldn’t be an alcoholic, because an alcoholic is a bum on the street. So I could keep drinking until it became really bad.” Understanding her addiction has taken a lifetime and the writing of this book – and she is still learning. In 2015, after she started the memoir – which she thought would be about funny travel stories – she attended a writing workshop in New York. The group was asked to write about their childhood. Only then did she realise she had felt very alone as a child. Her parents married young and had four children in five years, and Flemming was the eldest. Her mother was overwhelmed looking after the kids and her father was unpredictable, sometimes vicious. “It was at that workshop that I realised there were no hands in that family for me to hold. There was no sense of being sufficiently nurtured as a child. Love was withheld.” While writing the book, she read the work of addiction expert Gabor Maté and so much of what he said rang true. One of Maté’s best-known maxims is: “Trauma is not what happens to you, it is what happens to you on the inside as a result of what happened to you.” Once you finish work for the day you have a drink – it was a drinking culture. I never thought twice about that. It was exciting and vibrant Robyn Flemming Maté argues that addiction is often the result of a lack of nurturing during childhood, trauma, and/or the experience of loss. In addition to a lack of nurturing, Flemming shares a traumatic incident that happened when she was about nine. Someone came into her bedroom, put his hand under the covers and touched her inappropriately . Terrified, she froze. The placement of this incident in the book – in italics, seemingly out of the blue – speaks to the confused imprint that childhood trauma stamps on a person. It is difficult to process, hard to integrate into your life, and almost always lays its imprint on your body. “I froze, pretending to be dead,” says Flemming. “That emotion is imprinted on me in terms of the way I use addictive behaviour. Sex for me became a way to look for love, you think love is on the other side of the behaviour.” Flemming’s 40-year on-and-off relationship with a man she calls “Tom” in the book speaks to this search for love. For the reader, it may seem clear that Tom isn’t going to change and the pair are caught in an unhealthy codependent relationship, but for Flemming, immersed in the cycle, it is difficult to see. Her relationship with Tom began in her native Australia and, when she announced her plan to move to Hong Kong in 1986, he drove her to the airport and said goodbye – with no indication that he was sad she was leaving. And thus begins Flemming’s memoir – she arrives in Hong Kong bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to make a life for herself in the city as a freelance editor. “Once you finish work for the day you have a drink – it was a drinking culture. I never thought twice about that. It was exciting and vibrant,” she says. ‘Sober shaming’ and how to avoid it when you give up drinking She had plenty of work as a freelance editor and her social nature led her to establish the Women In Publishing Society (WiPS) in 1990 . Life was good – until changes at work put her under a huge amount of pressure, and she became dependent on a drink at the end of the day. She later combined this with the anti-anxiety medication Xanax. Her tipple of choice was white wine, and she needed six glasses a night to be able to get to bed and rest easily. It all came to a head one evening when a panic attack because of her drinking landed her in hospital. She returned to live in her native Albury, in regional New South Wales. Immensely capable and social, her life back home was good initially. She got dogs and began a dog’s breakfast group, bringing together other canine lovers. To help manage her addiction, she took up running. If she knew she was getting up at 5.30am to meet her running buddies, she’d have just a couple of light beers the night before “to take the edge off”. One day, a young thug shouted out to her on the street, calling her ugly, and the insult cut to her core. It’s never too late to make a new path to a different future Robyn Flemming “I took it so personally because I was so ashamed about how I was on the inside with my relationship with alcohol,” says Flemming. “I took it as an indication that I was coming apart at the seams. “My solution wasn’t to seek help or go see a counsellor. I said, ‘I’m selling my house, giving up the dogs, and going travelling’.” After 16 years back in Australia, she hoped that by becoming a global nomad she could create new, healthier habits off the booze. Fifteen months into the new regime, she knew the time had come to stop drinking because she was no longer willing to trade off her dignity and self-respect. It was her first stretch of not drinking , but it didn’t last. “I tried not to drink, the first time in 11 months. Then I thought if I tried hard to drink like a normal person I would be OK, but then I’d get drunk at the funeral of an older friend and it would freak me out,” she says. Running became a central focus of her life – she enjoyed goal-setting and training, running marathons around the world and making friends wherever she went. ‘One day at a time’: how a Hong Kong alcoholic gave up booze In 2011, after years of debating with herself about her drinking and trying to hide it from friends and family, she’d finally had enough. She had her last drink on Sunday, August 28, 2011 – and the following day went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Many of the friends she made at AA in her early years of recovery remain close friends today. An osteoporosis diagnosis means Flemming is no longer running, but she walks regularly and has taken up street photography as a personal wellness practice. “If I’m feeling a bit squirrelly, I go for a photo walk, it calms me. I’m looking for something visual that gives me pleasure. It might be something beautiful in itself or the way the light falls.” More recently, she has been working with a counsellor. And now, as she approaches her 70th birthday, she is again setting off to be a global nomad, travelling and working. If her story resonates with you and you are wondering whether you’ve slipped into “grey-area drinking”, Flemming suggests you ask yourself this: “Do you wake up some mornings and think, ‘I won’t drink’ and then you do? “You will know if you have a problem before anyone else will. It’s never too late to make a new path to a different future.” Skinful: A Memoir of Addiction is published in the UK by Lantern Publishing and available through Book Depository and Amazon. Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here .