Every week · from Relations

The Aoife Dispatch.

Aoife, Relations. Writes to you every week like a mate who's been there. Stories are shared with permission or blended together so nobody can be identified.

Issue #2 · 7 November 2026

🌤️ The Shite and the Sunshine

Christmas is coming, the Aunties are circling, and somebody's finally sleeping through the night.

Howya. Aoife here, Relations department — which is a fancy way of saying I'm the one who answers the inbox at 2am and then writes you this. It's the week the shops put the Christmas stuff out, so naturally half of you are already panicking about the office party. Grand. We'll get to that. Kettle on.

The hard one

The bag in the sock drawer

One of you wrote in about the night you found the last bag — the 'emergency' one — three months after you'd stopped. You stood in the bedroom holding it for forty minutes. Didn't flush it. Didn't use it. Just held it like it was going to tell you something.

Then you rang your sister, who said 'right, I'm coming over,' and she drove from Navan in her pyjamas and flushed it herself while you sat on the edge of the bath crying.

That's not weakness. That's knowing your limits and calling in backup. Forty minutes of not using is forty minutes of winning, even when it doesn't feel like it.

If you've got a 'just in case' stash: it's not a safety net. It's a trapdoor with a nice rug on it.

Quick one · anonymous

Be honest. The Christmas party is…

Tap one. We only keep a tally — never who you are.

The laugh

Fizzy water in a wine glass: a field report

Reader tip of the week: bring your own sparkling water, pour it into a proper fancy glass, stick a slice of lime in it and walk around like you own the place. Nobody asks. NOBODY asks.

One fella told us he did this so convincingly at a wedding that his uncle asked him where he got 'that nice dry one'. He said 'Lidl'. Not technically a lie.

Your glass, your business. You owe nobody an explanation at a buffet.

This or that: craving edition

The win

Six hours straight

A mam of two, off benzos for eleven weeks after a brutal taper, wrote in with one line: 'I slept six hours straight and woke up and didn't know where I was because it's been so long.'

Then she had a cup of tea in the garden in her dressing gown and the neighbour waved and she waved back. That was the whole story. It was perfect.

Small wins aren't small. They're the whole thing.

Tap for the truth: things people say vs what they mean

What got the inbox through this week

Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, start to finish, headphones, lights off
Peeling a whole bag of mandarins and eating none of them (don't ask, it worked)
Re-watching Derry Girls for the ninth time
Ice cube held in the fist until the craving passed
Telling a dog everything

Something to chew on

If the version of you from a year ago could see you right now — not the perfect you, the real you — what would surprise them most?

Mind yourselves this week. If it's a bad one, it's a bad week, not a bad life. And if you need someone right now, the help page is one tap away. Your sober. Nobody else's. — Aoife x

Back issues

Need someone now? Get help.