Drunk Mom author became the ‘poster girl for sobriety’ — but struggled secretly with relapse

Toronto author Jowita Bydlowska told the world how she got sober in her 2013 bestselling memoir Drunk Mom.

What she didn’t expect was that her next book would chronicle her relapse in the years that followed.

In Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse and What Comes After, Bydlowska confronts the shame of relapsing after becoming, as she puts it, the “poster girl for sobriety.”

The book opens with her regaining consciousness after a bike accident on the Toronto Island boardwalk in the summer of 2020.

She says she lied to doctors about how it happened, leaving out that she had been drinking, because she worried she wouldn’t receive the same care as she would if it was an “innocent accident.”

“I also believed myself to be someone who was publicly sober because of my memoir,” Bydlowska told The Current’s Matt Galloway. 

Opening the book with this story was intentional, Bydlowska says.

“It shows me in the middle of a relapse, it shows me lying, it shows me living the … double life.”

That moment marked the beginning of Bydlowska’s shame spiral. Her 2013 memoir Drunk Mom had been a huge success. In it, Bydlowska described what it was like to be the mother of a young son while struggling with alcohol addiction — recounting binge drinking, blackouts and clandestine trips to the liquor store. Even 13 years later, she says she was receiving weekly letters from readers inspired by her story.

“So, I certainly felt the pressure of having to carry this story of redemption and triumph, and it was really clashing with what was going on privately.”

Shame is a monster

The bike accident wouldn’t be the only time Bydlowska relapsed.

In another moment she writes about in Unshaming, her son, his father and her boyfriend decide to bond together at a barbeque — a decision, she says, that initially made her feel “euphoric.” She tried to celebrate with a drink, but it quickly turned into binge drinking.

“I felt like the worst failure because I thought I ruined their moment. I ruined my son’s trust again,” Bydlowska said. “My shame was so … overpowering that I had no other emotion.”

Bydlowska says she continued to carry that shame in silence. After her bike accident, a friend set up an online fundraiser to help cover dental surgery. But Bydlowska says she “whitewashed” the fundraiser story, omitting that she had been drinking to make the explanation more “digestible.”

“I asked myself … would I donate knowing that this person had this accident because of their drinking, because of their actions? And my instant answer was no,” said Bydlowska. “The shame in that was that I felt that I lied to people.”

That feeling, Bydlowska says, led her to believe that the outside world could never see her with compassion.

That’s the difference between guilt and shame, she says.

“Guilt is more, ‘I did something bad,’ and shame says, ‘I am bad,’ ” said Bydlowska. “So guilt can be motivating, right? Guilt is a chance to fix whatever action happened.” 

But shame is “frankly death, because it keeps us isolated, because it keeps us hidden,” she said.

Writing Unshaming, she says, became a way to confront that secrecy. She says she only started to forgive herself when she started to share her story.

“Just making this big thing that’s crushing you, that’s killing you, making it smaller by saying it to someone else,” said Bydlowska. 

Rethinking Recovery

When it comes to addiction and recovery, Bydlowska says people are often more comfortable with stories that follow a clear arc — struggle, recovery and a “happy ending.”

“Everyone wants to celebrate sobriety,” she said.

Bydlowska notices that people may even show sympathy when someone relapses once. But that compassion can shrink when relapse becomes part of a longer pattern.

Someone leaving rehab full of hope and excitement, she says, may return to loved ones who feel exhausted or distrustful.

That’s why she calls addiction a “family disease,” arguing that recovery should involve support not only for the person struggling with addiction, but also for the people around them.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Why is this my problem? You were drinking. You were using. Why should I go to therapy?’ But I think we know enough now about mental health and therapy to know that it’s not just the people who suffer from it, it’s the people around them.”

Bydlowska hopes Unshaming will open up conversations about addiction and challenge the expectation that recovery must end in a neat resolution.

“I didn’t write these things to shock or to … provoke people,” said Bydlowska. “I think if I continue to keep things secret and … continu[ed] with the lie of being … the poster child for sobriety while drinking and relapsing, I think it would eventually kill me.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, here’s where to look for help: