One Tequila, two Tequila, three Tequila floor.

Picture me where I woke up if you will. There's blood absolutely everywhere. I unstick one eye and assess my surroundings, I’m alone in my bed which is an excellent start, but I decide to check the living room for strangers later. There's shattered glass in the folds of my duvet and I am fairly certain I’m tasting a mixture of ethanol and stale nicotine in my mouth, which I have obviously failed to remove the glitter from.

I should preface this story by saying that this isn't a drunken mishap, it isn't an ‘oopsie daisy did I get a little drunk and kiss someone I shouldn’t have’ story. This is a ‘there could be footage, possibly criminal damage and a hospital visit and these are definitely things I need to check’ story.

I've always been the do as I say not as I do kind of person, I’ve been on stage for long enough that I’ve helped others get a leg up in the live music industry, and my first piece of advice was to never take the free drinks. NEVER, take the free drinks. Audiences are absolutely hell bent on getting you plastered, and it's a fairly innocent pursuit, they are having a good time and they want you to as well! It's a very human thing to want the next person to be as wrecked as you are to assuage your guilt, and being “the talent” is no exception.

If you don't watch very carefully shot after shot are lined up on the stage ready to go, they'll even count you down as you drink them and make you feel like you're doing a public service by trying to perform the rest of your set with double vision and dry mouth. I’ve always kind of managed to stop and leave after a show graciously if not a little tipsy, but this is not one of those times.

My show was a sell out the night before, it was in full sing-a-long swing, and glasses of wine were being poured for me quicker than I could drink them, (which I did, with a straw, alarm bells, you with me? Good.) And somewhere, sneakily, in the back of my mind, my addict brain took over and I thought I could totally handle myself.

Being on stage is akin to being inside drinking. You're fine in the comfort of an armchair or a bar but as soon as you hit fresh air (aka come off stage) the pavement turns into liquid and suddenly you're crying at a taxi driver telling him your life story, and spoiler alert, he doesn't care and he really hopes you don't puke in his car.

I even remember the bar getting so lively that through the fog I saw three girls getting kicked out during Spandau Ballet's “Gold”. I was nearly there, nearly at the end of my set, and no one knew I was absolutely smashed and I could creep upstairs, get my suitcase leaving everyone with a fabulous time, as I slipped into Prince’s “Purple Rain”.

A particularly emotional song as you might recall, and the audience was with me, loving the atmosphere and singing with me as loud as they could. I sat on the edge of the stage for some of it, and then set up the stairs to the high platform to deliver the final verse and send it home. I hope by this point you are fearing for my safety, as well you should be. What followed was the reason, reader, that I woke up in a pool of my own blood and a phone full of WhatsApp's that I dared not look at.

Microphone in hand I stepped onto my right leg with its 6 inch heel, made my way to the side of the stage and took another step, into thin fucking air.

In front of a packed audience I had done something of feared legend, I had simply….walked off the side of the stage, onto my ass, shattering a glass of wine in the other hand, mid song. And I wish I could tell you that was the end of the story, like I really wish.

I knew it was bad because no one came to help, about a hundred faces with their jaws open in three beats of silence before I laughed it off down the microphone, and got up to thunderous applause to finish the song. About a pound of makeup on my face boiling off it due to the sheer diarrhoea inducing embarrassment of doing my first pissed up swan dive off a stage. But there seemed to be no damage that I could see, with jolts of adrenaline from the pain and the alcohol and trying to hold a show ran through me, I couldn't see what the audience could see, about a 4 inch deep cut running from my hip to my ass cheek, seeping through my tights.

The show finished after my encore, I had done it, held it together enough to do my thankyous and get past the fact that I had probably just been caught on camera eating absolute shit in front of everyone, and I changed and sat with my die hard's that come to every show, where three more glasses of wine were waiting for me, flanked by a couple of tequila shots.

You're thinking I stopped aren't you. You're thinking I refused the drinks, took myself home, noticed how badly I was hurt and took myself off to get stitches. Nonsense! In my pickled mind I certainly deserved a drink after all of that, slamming the three glasses of wine back including the shots I could barely see as I was dragged off to an after party over the road. Why not? What's the worst that could happen? I totally deserve some fun, I thought. I had clearly buckled in for the night and the debauchery was totally deserved, (an excellent lie I used to tell myself to completely avoid responsibility).

The last thing I remember was walking into a party full of 20 year olds, the type of unbearably cool party with black lights, thumping music, and people you kind of recognise but its too dark to see them so you just make out with them instead (which I must've done judging by my clown face when I brought myself to look in the mirror in the morning). How did I get home? A mystery, my dignity? Left at that party, wherever that was.

“But Billie!” I hear you think, “Surely you've noticed the massive gash in your thigh? And why was there glass in your bed?”

One thing at a time. Cut to the morning, and I've got enough fight in me to roll over and see the damage I've done, the gash is huge and padded with an enormous black bruise, my phone has at least 30 notifications ranging from congratulating me on a good show to asking if I had gone to A&E to telling me that I had left a lone thigh high sparkly boot at the venue.

I craned a sore neck around to see that my front door is wide open. No no, I hadn't been burgled, I had managed to get myself home and through the door, and I had also managed to destroy a priceless family heirloom lamp launching the glass into my bed, which I had then crawled into, face first, and bleeding absolutely everywhere.

When I had pulled myself upright and washed the shame off my gaunt face I stood and stared into the mirror and made a promise all part time drunks make. “I am never drinking again”. But far from being a hollow promise, apart from one slip up at Christmas, I actually haven't done that to myself again.

The shame of launching myself off my own stage is too great to replicate. I have a scar on my ass that did eventually need five stitches as a reminder that I can actually refuse a drink if I want to, along with a video of the whole escapade which I had to beg a friend not to share and to delete.

I don't have to be an embarrassing mess after a show, nor do I have to prove how fun I am by mainlining tequila. Turns out that when you hit bottom it can be far more literal than you think, starting the next show in the same place was a daunting experience, but I’m a better person for it, and damn if it doesn't feel good to smugly wake up in the morning without the room spinning.