“That’s alcohol when you’re unable to control yourself, you never stop as long as you breathe, you go on and on. It’s ugly. Aurore, 31, did not expect to reach so many people after posting a few “hard” photos on Monday. Twitter. Pints of blonde at the PMU, “pochtron” friends, uncontrolled laughter, injuries, bruises. Thanks to her tweets, the Parisian wanted to give an overview of her daily life and “the reality and dangers of alcohol”. His few posts have accumulated nearly 1.5 million views.
And behind her smiling selfies hides a much deeper and more intimate malaise. “When I was drinking, I wanted to anesthetize my brain, anesthetize my body. I wanted to forget my problems. I wanted to disappear, it was a way of letting myself die, ”says the 30-year-old to 20 minutes.
At the PMU from 11 a.m.
Aurore, apparently, is the friend in the evening who “always ends up on the brink of a coma”. “I look good, I’m sociable, I have beautiful skin, without wanting to brag,” she slips. However, her life, the young woman spends it in “the most rotten bars possible” and PMUs. Often, from 11 a.m., beer in hand and cigarette in mouth, she gets drunk to forget “her past and her despair”. At PMU, she feels at home there. With her “pochtron friends”, Aurore is what is commonly called a bar pillar. “The more bass the better. There, I feel close to people, ”she explains. With them, she is not alone. Because, if the addiction isolates in many cases, Aurore maintains a large circle of friends, even beyond the walls of the PMU. But “it’s super unhealthy in the end”… the reasons for drinking are always met.
His relatives do not notice his dangerous behavior. “In addition, I had developed manipulation techniques to hide my alcoholism from them. I drank a few beers at home before going out to see my friends. I pretended that I was going home but in fact I was going to the PMU…”
“I jumped from the fourth floor”
If Aurore hid her addiction well from those close to her, it also took her many years to realize it herself. It was precisely in 2013 that everything changed for the 30-year-old. Aged then 21, Aurore, already in depression, was stuck in a toxic romantic relationship. With her ex, she juggled between alcohol and cocaine. “One evening, after 48 hours of drinking vodka and doing the traces without drinking a drop of water or eating anything, I stood at his window of my ex’s apartment, I said to him, ”listen, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to jump”. And I jumped from the fourth floor. »
This suicide attempt will leave an indelible mark, physical and psychological. The consequences of his fall will cause him to lose his job as a photographer, his “dream” job. Unemployed, she now had her entire days to get drunk.
“Arrested for drunkenness on the public highway at noon”
For many years, his weeks were summed up by that. “I have already been arrested for drunkenness on the public highway at noon,” she explains to support her remarks. Over time, her “beautiful” skin was marked with bruises. “I was constantly kicking my ass (sic) in fact”, exclaims Aurore, before illustrating her remarks with a photo… slipping that she “had the body of a battered woman”. “I was always filled with bruises more or less old. For ten years, I hid my legs. »
“Alcohol helps me make friends and will never leave me”: this is what Aurore said to herself during her first alcoholic evenings. Her first drunk, she knew her at 13 years old. One June 21, on the occasion of the Music Festival, her friends and she shared a bottle of vodka. “I can’t say how I did it, but I drank more than half the bottle in about ten minutes,” recalls the 30-year-old. And, as you can imagine, the young body of the schoolgirl did not appreciate such a quantity of strong alcohol at all. “Well, I threw up all night,” sighs Aurore. But, this first contact with alcohol will not disgust her. On the contrary.
As a teenager, school bullying and malaise plunged her into a clinical depression that would haunt her for many years. To forget her problems but also to “do like everyone else”, the young adult continues to test the limits of her body. She multiplies the cooked and thinks to feel better and better…
“I thought I was going to die”
Ten years later, one evening last summer, too alcoholic, she will lose track of the evening and the events. Her memory will come back to her when a stranger strangles and rapes her. “I thought I was going to die,” says today the one who filed a complaint for rape in stride. This attack of incredible violence traumatizes Aurore and causes a click. “I said to myself: ‘Look at yourself at 30, you have just suffered a rape, do you want the next ten years to be punctuated by drama?”… Then I saw my friends having projects, founding families, get married. Whereas I was there in my studio, just boozing all day. »
Today, Aurore is in rehab in Toulouse, where she has been living for some time. After a first attempt at weaning after her mother’s heart attack in 2018, the 30-year-old hopes that this will be the right one. To help her in her fight, she also goes to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. “I admit, I had drunk a glass of red wine before entering. It takes courage to walk out the door. But it was ultra-beneficial for me, it finalized the click, “says the one who has been abstinent for more than fifty days.