Faith, Hope & Charity. The End of The Cupboard

A Special Secret Rare Celebrity Collectors Edition of the Sort Yourself Out 2024 ADHDvent Calendar from The Cupboard. Hypnosis. A reflection on middle aged Brat girl Autumn.

hey, why so gloomy?

There is another version of this Sort Yourself Out 2024 Advent Calendar that is hidden on Substack. This means it’s special. A collectors item. Largely because I didn’t edit it, or send it to anyone, and have written it in a bizarre format corner where no one can hear you scream. It’s there to be read. But not to be advertised.

Instead of calling the collectors edition of this post a shambolic wildly uncensored first draft, I am instead pitching it as rare. It’s all over the place with extra worry, chaos, late nights, sensitivity, dysautonomia, expensive drugs and sundry other dopamine seeking activities. It’s also very long. This is a truncated, safe version of it for everyone.

But before we pick up where we left off last, we are going to be naughty little kiddies and open the window at the end of the week I am going to post about here. Disappointingly it is a picure of a church.

Dec 16th

A wholesome good-spirited soiree in the company of Substack superstars.

Behind the window for 16th December is the lovely and very evocative of its period 18th Century St James Clerkenwell. As my mother would say, “feels a bit (whispers) low church.”

I went to a group reading in an East London church. The church felt well-kept, well-used, solvent and relevant. Its webpage mentions good news and the gospel a lot so I wonder if there’s a bit of an evangelical thing going on there? There was none of the frilly gothic stonework of some British churches, I can only assume it was originally what my Mum calls “low church”. Meaning a tad Lutheran, unfussed by dead languages, smells and bells and those sort of fancy churchy things. But we have started with a digression. This does not bode well for any planned restricted word count.

On this night there was no talk of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Instead we were happy clapping the word according to the big noises in London Substack society who were there to read to us on the theme of togetherness at the invitation of Farrah Storr, the former magazine editor tasked with getting big names on to the platform. She had hand picked her greatest conquests: India Knight, Hanif Kureshi, Nick Hornby, Jameela Jamil, Pandora Sykes, the DJ turned author and podcaster Annie Mac and the popular historian Dan Jones, who I confused with the other historian Dan. Dan Snow who married a Grosvenor. The aristo landlords, land lord literally, of Belgravia and Mayfair and of several hundred square miles of Northern Britain. That probably sounds like I am racist towards people of privilege (elitist? no, that doesn’t work), but I’m far from it. Some of my best friends are lucky buggers. Indeed, my lucky bugger friends’ kindness has verged on charity while I’ve been on my itinerant search for a post relationship solution.

Do I sound bitter? The simmering irritation I felt about it all had nothing to do with the event nor hard working, successful writers. It had everything to do with the version of me sat there hunched over my knees at the back with one leg wrapped twice round the other and willing on another hang nail to get my teeth round after a week that started badly, got better, and ended with a big night out and a small but terrible text message.

By the time I am sitting in that church, Cupboard Life had taken a turn. I was not only having a shit time, I was also on a comedown.

A year of all of this shit costs £35.

Dec 9th

A decision is made and a comfortable bed found

The ex and I have cohabited miserably for months (see multiple Cupboard stacks passim). At the weekend he was meant to move out but now he was saying he could not for some perfectly reasonable reason.

OK, I gave up.

I found an annexe to a house owned by one of my lucky bugger friends and as long as our dogs were able to get on, and mine unable to escape the garden, then I had an affordable and pleasant temporary home for a few months. It worked well. And was not grim or depressing. Nor remote and lonely. Nor incredibly expensive. I felt calm for the first time in ages.

I didn’t want to leave London, nor my own home, but I would make it work for a while. My ability to endure Cupboard Life had expired. The origin story of my move to The Cupboard way back in mid September 2025 will make it into my break up psychological horror film. But I am forbidden from repeating it here, though you can find it in the grim, murky corner of Substack where the horror accumulates.

There is a place on this platform like this. Very much not a church.

Don’t rely too entirely for the truth on my recent weeks’ howls of distress into the Substack void. The ex has many good attributes, and I many faults, and vice versa. There are two sides to every story but for the last three months I have felt powerless and afraid. I am desperate not to lose my home. I am desperate for continuity so I can recover my finances and my work, keep my wild dogs safe, while being near friends. I have lived in this part of London for a long time. Decades.

I have had the hope that if I ride this out with civility then I will come out the other side and he will leave to start his new mess-free life, and I can continue with my mess-inclusive life. Here. At home.

In The Cupboard I’ve slept badly, doom-scrolled instead of reading at night, I’ve been physically very uncomfortable, existentially it’s been a proper struggle and the bursts of brutalising self talk deafening. I have a drink, not loads, but enough to take the edge off things almost every night. I can’t be arsed to eat. I’m concerned about how I will get by on my writer’s income. I need to diversify. I roll from bed to desk and back again. I am fight or flight woman. Combined with the dysautonomia of a person with ADHD it combines into a physical self that is depleted, and a cat on a hot tin roof nerves. All these things are causes of elevated heart rate.

I was given an Ultrahuman ring earlier this year. Snobs tell me they’re not as good as Oura, but I like the fact there’s no subscription after the purchase. I have really been fascinated watching the impact that the break up has had on various systems in my body. I have all the data there, the fluctuations are evident.

The ring has shown me a sleep score. It just kept getting worse the deeper into Cupboard Life I went. I went from an average of 85 or so to 70s, 60s, 50s, once night 40, even 38 once, then a 27. And I felt it. Insomnia is like a wretched cheap drug, it bends your mind. If you have fears, it compounds them mightily.

Better for me to give Zummerzet a pop. I’d be OK out west in cider country.

Having been accused of being a “medicated nightmare” by a very private man who doesn’t want me to write about him, I had dialled down my medication out of curiosity. Perhaps I am an overly attentive yet unreliable witness to my self. I also needed to spend medication money on an Amex bill, so it was win win to navigate the ADHD shizzle with holistic tactics for a while.

I’d sleep at my lovely friend’s house, in a comfy bed, with people who like me, I’d eat properly, listen to trance and weird binaural beats, exercise, caffeine, and visit my secret ADHD weapon, Leah McLaren, a hypnotist who is on here because she is also a pretty famous Canadian writer.

If all else failed I would just write at night while drinking and eating nuts, which is an awful way to write, but sometimes needs must. But Leah would not fail me.

Some exceedingly fine female writers have been alcoholics, including my favourite, Jean Rhys who wrote the brilliant Wide Sargasso Sea. I do not romanticise drinking at all. Not at all. Rhys’ prequel to Jane Eyre is a must read for every woman. The patriarchy fucks the first Mrs Rochester in Wide Sargasso, and it also fucked Jean Rhys in her real life, in every which way it can. Just as it was fucking with me now in a 21st Century lite way via the hopelessness of my prospects.

Stuck in The Cupboard I could taste the powerlessness of those poor women: terrified of penury, financially powerless, being dismissed for my madness, poor accounting, uselessness, my poor domestic skills and a misspent past, the accursed ADHD random behaviour traits (which back then would have just been considered one of the many flavours of female madness, and come to think of it, still are).

Lying in The Cupboard for months, I asked myself like the first Mrs Rochester in the attic at Thornfield Hall, “What am I doing in this place and who am I?”

It was during the bloodsucker days of the early Cupboard period that Leah had saved me. In a total state, I’d gone round to ask her for her help. I needed to focus, to be resilient.

I had to be able to move around this situation like water and get on with the task of rectifying my finances and keeping up with the writing and work, which, aside from suicide or crime, was my only escape route, my only life raft. Whatever happened, my liferaft could not spring a leak because I would drown.

I was, am, writing for my life.

But the bloodsucker event break up and its preceding events had shaken me and I was sickeningly preoccupied with his hatred, the cost of London property, my own value, the insanity of sleeplessness was starting to accumulate. I was obsessed with being able to stay in my home. It was bad enough feeling despised but what made it worse was considering what a great fall was coming. Homeless, two not undifficult dogs, bills, everywhere, HMRC.

Overwhelmed.

Leah said she had done a tonne of therapy and when she discovered hypnosis she realised her therapy days were through. “People like us, writers, can tell stories about our lives for days.” Her theory was that hypnosis works more like a psychedelic, a quick rewiring job rather than sitting telling elaborate trauma anecdotes to someone nodding at the end of a Corbusier LC4. “The vast majority (99.2%) of [studies] demonstrated positive effects,” of hypnosis in managing medical, mental and physical issues, including specifically pain and IBS.

Lie back and talk about your childhood?

There are no large studies on ADHD and hypnosis, but this article is good at explaining why it can be helpful, and this October 24 study suggests that both CBT and hypnosis are helpful at managing symptoms but hypnosis has the edge.

Leah is part of my social circle but we are not close friends, I don’t think I could have gone to her in the state I was in earlier in the Cupboard era if she had been a big pal.

We are a little bit different. When we both did a mushroom and san pedro ceremony once, she laughed at it while I took it seriously because it came at the end of a four year period when I had been using big doses of psychedelics every six months to try and correct the course of my mind, my life, and, yes, always, my focus and self belief. I AM FOREVER TRYING TO GRAPPLE WITH THOSE SLIPPERY EELS.

eels are slippery buggers just like self-esteem and focus

I have plenty to say that is very critical of how we must access these psychoactive substances that can help us change our mind, and who administers them on the illegal health underground; some of the drivel they try to indoctrinate you with and some of the bad results that can arise sometimes. This will also be in my domestic break up psychological comedy horror film. But I take large doses of psychedelics seriously. It can be fun but for the most part it’s gruelling work being caged with the mind-manifested monsters of your thoughts, fears, love and loss.

Leah didn’t take the whole ceremony thing seriously and that - in my mind - was not a wedge between us exactly, I get it, but something a difference in our mindset. The other thing that kept Leah and me at arms length was her extremely difficult ex husband who I have known for a long time and who has always made me feel unsafe as the kids say. I can handle most people. I love men (despite what my friend Jonathan says about this Substack). It’s only recently I’ve become such an epic men are horrid wailer. But her ex made me want to run into another room and lock the door. His superpower was to make people feel uncomfortable. Since they split, Leah and I have become closer. But at the point where I rang her, we were separate enough for me to feel comfortable to let her hypnotise me.

In a maelstrom of post break-up confusion, panic and fear, I rang her crying for help. She lay me down on a couch in the rotunda where she does her hypnotic thing. She trained under Tim Smale, who a few people I know are devoted to. And I was very grateful. After 45 minutes under her spell, I woke up the next day and just cracked on with things.

Last week I went back to Leah for something I could use daily, something that would work like the pricy medication they prescribe you to manage ADHD symptoms. And this, below, is what she gave me. A 40 minute hypnosis, that can be used over and over to increase focus for anyone, but especially for me. And now you. I like listening to it best in a hot bath, but that’s probably potentially dangerous so I’d better not recommend that. Happy Christmas.

Leah McLaren, hypnotist, coach, author

So this is what’s behind the little window with a 9 on it. Beautiful Leah, hypnotising you to increase your focus. For free.

https://www.leahmclarenhypnotherapy.com/

Dec 10th

A strange bedifice and an unexpected announcement

I slept in The Cupboard because I was writing til three am. It was a poorly paid feature about hangovers that took me many hours to research and write because my focus has crap but after the session with Leah I sat down and wrote the thing in one go. Seven hours straight through, my back hurt. I desperately didn’t want to sleep in The Cupboard ever again in my life but at 3am it was all I could handle. I didn’t want to walk up the hill to Sigrid’s big house.

At 6am I was conscious of him leaving for work. Wonderful. Another refreshing three hours sleep.

In an attempt to soften the body blow of the Cupboard mattress I constructed an extraordinary arrangement of sofa cushions on top of it so that I lay high on a narrow tower of cushions like those effigies of dead knights on top of their sarcophagus in Medieval churches. The dogs slept beside my raised bedifice confused by the tetris of cushions. I croaked to the light in the hall that I would go and live in Somerset, I’d pack a small bag at the end of the week and buy a shit car and do rural until the flat was free (well, not free, quite expensive, but you know what I mean) again.

Is it me, in my new fangled Cupboard bed or Sir John de Lyons (1270-1312), St Mary’s Church Warkworth. Photo Adam Kucharczyk.

I was told this was not necessary. The other person left the flat that morning. My sleep had been so diabolical that the day would be completely useless with neither medication nor rest. Once the flat was vacated by the only male mammal above the size of a mouse that lived there, I crawled upstairs and slept two hours more in the soon to be MY BED. It was blissful the sleep and fed all my bodily tissues so that I woke on a the day with hope in my heart.

“It’s OK. I’m going today.”

There were a few scratchy return visits and concerns that I might forget to switch the gas off or leave the wrong light on or fail to fix the leak in the bathroom. “You can’t be trusted”. But in a space where the air was no longer charged with expectations of my failure, hope slowly climbed above the ruins of my life and gave me more perspective on the future.

Hope springs eternal. Picasso’s La Colombe de l’Avenir (The Dove of The Future)

That evening I dressed to go to a smarty arty pants lucky friend’s Christmas party and pulled out clothes I have not worn in years. Fish net pop socks, an old Calvin Klein gabardine dress. My comfortable Westwood heels are no longer comfortable because my body has changed but if I cycled there and back then the time on my feet would be restricted to standing not walking. Heels! I put on a coat to leave and the dogs didn’t look up and race to the door expectantly because they know I never take them out when I’m wearing a heel. I say I put on a coat but really it felt like I had taken off one made of lead. The flat was my own, I could start to recover my life and build a future. I cycled up the hill effortlessly, was I on an electric Boris? No, I was on wings of my own. I went to another big house with a charitable lady in it.

It was a jolly mix of people and instead of masking my dis-ease with practised jollity I radiated real organic good spirits. The hostess has only known me since the predawn of my break up and Cupboard Life. She has been one of the many among my luckier friends who have shown me very ordinary acts of charity in recent months. Lending me houses, putting me up, giving me pep talks. Yes, that’s charity.

She has never seen me feeling cheery. She said she felt she had met me for the first time all over again. “So this is who you really are!”

The joy of being old is people take great care to entertain you well at parties that last between the hours of six and nine. The canapés circulated and for the first time in ages I ate with hunger and could savour deliciousness. One conversation by the cheeseboard started with me saying, “I hope you don’t mind but I am going to eat throughout.”

I should have gone home to catch up on over three months of missed sleep but I was too full of dizzy relief. I cycled to the epic wine shop attached to the Golborne Deli where you can buy good wine retail, pay a tenner corkage and sit down and drink it with a snack. Ortiz anchovies in their oil with bread; comte and cornichons; olives; and what I chose as my celebratory meal that evening, a big bowl of truffle crisps.

But the wine there you REALLY need to know about is probably one of the most killer Spanish whites in existence at the moment. Vinya del Coll is a collaboration between a 500 year old Spanish wine making family and a senior sommelier turned winemaker. If you like good wine, you will have been long enjoying biodynamic farming methods. Great wines of Burgundy are made with little intervention without tasting like stinky sulphurous natural wines only 30 year old’s can tolerate.

And so it goes for this extraordinary white that costs around £40 a bottle but tastes like a £100 or more. “This collaboration was born in 2021 on a plot of only 1.6 hectare of calcareous-clay soils, specially chosen to produce Xarel Lo and planted in 1965, following biodynamic viticulture and only worked with the help of two horses.”

Fruity is the most basic thing to look for in wine, and hence it can be a bit, well, basic. And while this has an exotic citrussy note (Yuzu, they say), it’s full of far more elegant mineral qualities and the sunny scent of hay. It’s a winner and only around 1300 bottles made. I drank a glass of this to toast the end of the misery. I chatted for ages with the wine guy there, put together a case of wine then went to pay and forgot that I had no money. DECLINED. Ah well, I couldn’t have a whole day pass without a little shame.

Behind the little window on Dec 10th, a bottle of Spanish white wine called Vinya del Coll at one of the friendly long tables where I sat that night at Golborne Deli with a glass of white wine made from the Xarel Lo grape and a big bowl of crisps.

Bloody good Spanish white wine

Dec 11th

“I’m so sorry you’re having to write about your life for money like this,” said a lady I know vaguely as we left a Christmas party together with a view to going somewhere for a small glass of acquaintances wine. I don’t want to spend any time with her now. She’s judging me. Rollover tired from months of Cupboard sleep and fearful of the future, I planned to cycle home from this drinks thing in Belgravia to Ladbroke Grove. In just two days, and two decent sleeps, my energy is completely different. I feel strong.

The Antelope Eaton Terrace. A satisfying public house

Walking took us past The Antelope, a time worn proper pub that was used by the staff of smart townhouses in ye past around that part of Dickensian Lucky People’s London, Belgravia. The floor undulates with the wear of centuries of feet. I was trying not to break into a run/walk to get to there and away from the woman who was pitying and judging me for writing about personal stuff on Substack. I was pissed off, I didn’t want to be reminded about the mess. And about the way I had spewed so many tens of thousands of words on here about the mess of my inner and outer life.

I must have sent out offended vibrations because she tried to dial it back, “Oh I didn’t mean it like that, what I meant was….” But she couldn’t re-spin it convincingly. What she meant was. “Poor you selling your dirty laundry for money like a Japanese schoolgirl.”

I’m going to have to stop doing writing about this shituation, the whole Cupboard Life vomitorium for worried words is going to have to put it in a locked box in the dank basement of Substack. It will be there, but hard to find. It’s over. I need to stop all this. By January all of these Cupboard posts will be put here ⤵️ away from prying eyes. But for now, let’s keep at it just a little longer.