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The Sun
4 days ago
- Health
- The Sun
I drank 4 bottles of wine a day after getting dumped, not even AA or a broken face could stop me…a call changed it all
MY world fell apart on New Year's Eve 2008 when my fiance of six years told me he didn't love me anymore. I moved out of his flat that we shared the next day - heartbroken and lost. I didn't know what to do with the emotional pain, so I drank. 7 7 My relationship with alcohol quickly shifted from something social to a desperate coping mechanism. Nights were spent in a local pub with friends, and bottles of wine consumed with my mum Caroline until the anger or sadness passed. I wouldn't go out sober. Drinking felt essential. It gave me confidence, made me feel fun. But things began to spiral. I lost my job at New Look not long after. Someone had complained I smelled of alcohol. That part wasn't upheld - but instead of seeing it as a warning sign, I used it as justification. I told myself it was their fault I'd lost my job. It didn't stop me drinking - I drank more. In the jobs that followed, mainly in retail, I'd count down the hours until I could get home and pour a glass of wine. I was high-functioning enough that no one really knew. Or, at least, no one said anything. By 2015, I started hiding bottles of booze. That's when I knew, deep down, that something wasn't right. But I convinced myself it was no one else's business. I was living at my mum's while saving to move to Cambodia. I drank 7 bottles of vodka & 30 glasses of wine a week- I smashed teeth & was fired for being drunk, the booze broke me A friend had told me it was really nice and I thought a change of country might change me. But one night I came home from drinking, and my mum had lined up all the empty booze bottles on the kitchen side. There were about 15. She had found them shoved at the back of my wardrobe. I still remember the look on her face. There was no shouting - just quiet heartbreak. Moving to Cambodia on my own in 2016 gave me total freedom - but it also gave me a deep sense of loneliness. I was teaching English as a foreign language to young children, and lived with a woman from New Zealand in an apartment in Phnom Penh. But my behaviour didn't change. One night I'd ended up at a casino with a group of men I'd met in a bar, phone dead, no way for anyone to reach me. My housemate panicked so called my mum. I thought they were overreacting. That was my mindset. I hoped coming back to the UK after a year would fix me - but even on the flight back, and drinking a beer at the airport, I knew it wouldn't. 7 I got my own place, which meant there was no one around to see what I was doing. My mum tried to talk to me gently about it sometimes, and I'd make these half-hearted promises to cut down. But the truth is, living alone made it way too easy to carry on. Then came Christmas 2018 when I was 38. I was working in a pub, and after one of my shifts, I drank way too much. I ended up drink-driving home. I don't even remember doing it. My colleagues were so concerned they called the police. But again, I didn't see the danger - or my own responsibility. I blamed them. In my head, I was the victim. I never went back to that job but I also didn't drive again until I got sober in 2019, so a part of me knew. What to do if you think are an alcoholic IF you're struggling with alcohol addiction, the most important thing is to recognise the problem and seek support - You don't have to face it alone. Seek Professional Help GP or Doctor – A medical professional can assess your situation and provide advice on treatment options. Therapists or Counsellors – Talking to an addiction specialist can help address underlying causes and develop coping strategies. Rehab or Detox Programmes – If physical dependence is severe, medically supervised detox may be necessary. Consider Support Groups Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – A well-known 12-step programme that provides peer support. SMART Recovery – A science-based alternative to AA, focusing on self-empowerment. Local Support Groups – Many communities have groups tailored to different needs. By the end, I was drinking between three and four bottles of wine a day. That had become my normal. I didn't even think it was excessive - it was just what I needed to get through the day. I stopped going out as much because it was easier to drink at home. When I did go out, I'd usually end up black-out drunk. I'd fall over, lose my keys, wake up in places I had no memory of ever going. It became too risky, too unpredictable. So I started choosing the sofa, a bottle - or four - and my own little bubble of self-pity. Eventually, I couldn't do anything without a drink in me. I needed at least two glasses of wine just to get ready for work because my hands would be shaking so much. I isolated myself a lot because I was trying so hard to hide what was really going on, as I didn't want to face questions from friends or family. I wasn't in a romantic relationship during that time. But I was promiscuous. I had a lot of one-night stands, thinking they'd somehow make me feel better. They didn't. I'd wake up filled with shame and self-loathing, and then use that as another excuse to drink. 7 7 In the summer of 2018, I experienced what should have been a rock bottom moment. That was when I fractured my face after a fall while drunk. But it wasn't. Not yet. I had to stop drinking for eight days while I was on antibiotics. But, the following week I celebrated by drinking again. A reward. I knew then I was in trouble. I went to my first AA meeting in January 2019. I was drunk when I went. I don't even remember much about it, but that was the first time I admitted something was wrong - even if I wasn't ready to deal with it yet. Alcohol and addiction had affected my confidence, my sense of self, my ability to trust my own thoughts. I stopped making plans for the future. I lived day-to-day, hour-to-hour, bottle-to-bottle. It robbed me of time. And, it impacted my health - my body was exhausted, my hands shook, I sweated constantly, my anxiety was through the roof. But I didn't care - my main concern was hiding the truth, from others, and most importantly, from myself. I told lies. I lived a double life: the version I showed the world and the one that sat at home pouring another glass. 7 The moment it all stopped wasn't loud or dramatic. It was May 2019, and I passed out at work working as a store manager of a retail shop. I was drinking all day, every day - even at work. When they found me unconscious, I felt pure shame. But still not surprised. At the same time, I was also in therapy, trying to cope without actually telling my therapist I was still drinking. Years of buried pain came up - heartbreak, my parents' divorce, the fallout from my cancelled wedding. I had no idea how to cope. So I drank more. But, that day, something cracked. I didn't want to live like this anymore. But I didn't want to die either. I'd been given the number for the Samaritans, and I called them. That call saved my life. After that, I rang my mum and told her I needed help. My mum suggested rehab. And four days later, I was in. Now, I've been sober for six years, since 8 May 2019. If I'm honest, I haven't found my recovery that hard - not in the way people expect. I accepted very early on that I just couldn't drink. I loved rehab. I soaked up everything. I started going to 12-step meetings and worked through a programme. The real shift came in October 2020, when I finally shared on social media that I was in recovery. I was tired of pretending. And the outpouring of love and 'me too' messages flipped something in my mind. Maybe I didn't have to hide. That's when I began helping others - and helping others helped me. That's how it works. On the outside, the changes are obvious - I look healthier, I show up, I've built a business. In 2022, I decided to write a book to help others. How Did I Get Here: Building A Life Beyond Alcohol wasn't just about sharing my story - it was about telling the truth. Even when I got sober, there weren't enough stories that talked about the identity crisis, the grief, the rediscovery, the unlearning, the rising. I wanted women to know they weren't broken. Drinking has been normalised, glamourised, romanticised to the point where not drinking makes you the weird one. But here's the truth: you don't need alcohol to have fun, to fit in, or to survive the day. And once you realise that, once you live that - you start to see the lie for what it is.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘What if I just didn't drink this': the question that changed everything
For most of her 20s, Jamie* mastered the art of keeping things on the surface. She was the funny one, the party starter, the friend who never said no to another round of drinks. To friends and colleagues, she seemed effortlessly confident. But beneath the banter and bravado was a deep discomfort – with silence, with vulnerability, and most of all, with herself. 'I didn't even realise I was numbing anything,' she told me in one of our recent therapy sessions. 'I just thought I liked to have fun. But looking back, I was terrified of feeling anything real.' Jamie, now 39, is part of a growing number of Australians rethinking their relationship with alcohol. For her, drinking wasn't just a habit, it was a coping mechanism – although she was the last one to realise this. She was drinking to blur the edges. There wasn't a traumatic event that she could remember, but because feeling sad or lonely or anxious felt unbearable, alcohol helped her skip past that. It worked – until it didn't. Her 'bottom' wasn't dramatic; she told me in one session it was more like a slow hollowing, and she got tired of waking up feeling like a stranger to herself. The turning point came in the early months of the pandemic. Isolated from friends, stripped of distractions, she began to realise how often she reached for wine to fill the space. 'One night I was sitting alone with a glass of pinot, and I remember thinking – what would happen if I didn't drink this?' That question changed everything. Jamie decided to stop drinking 'just for a month'. But when the fog began to lift, she couldn't go back. She describes early sobriety as raw and revealing. She was suddenly face to face with everything she pushed away for years – grief, anxiety, even joy – and it became overwhelming. Alcohol addiction is often less about the substance itself, and more about what it helps a person avoid. From a clinical standpoint, we understand alcohol not just as a chemical dependency, but as an emotional anaesthetic – one that temporarily blunts the nervous system's distress signals. Many individuals who struggle with problematic drinking patterns may have started out chasing pleasure and to be social; but consistent reliance upon alcohol can result in using it to flee pain such as unprocessed grief, chronic stress, shame, anxiety or trauma. The neurobiology of addiction reveals that alcohol activates the brain's reward system while simultaneously suppressing the prefrontal cortex, impairing emotional regulation and decision-making. In this way, alcohol becomes a fast, accessible tool for short-term relief – even if it compounds emotional dysregulation in the long term. What makes this cycle so complex is that emotional numbing isn't always conscious. Clients often present in therapy describing 'overwhelm', 'flatness' or 'disconnection', without immediately recognising that these are signs of emotional avoidance – and that alcohol has become part of that equation. Therapy helps illuminate the underlying patterns: how early attachment dynamics, adverse childhood experiences or unresolved trauma may have shaped a person's tolerance for emotional discomfort. A trauma-informed approach encourages clients to build somatic awareness, develop emotional literacy and begin tolerating – rather than bypassing – their internal experience. Recovery, then, is not only about abstaining from alcohol; it's about being able to stay present with what's real and building a nervous system that can feel without needing to flee. In group therapy with professional guidance, Jamie started to see how she had numbed her emotions and buried the difficulties she had experienced in her life. 'I sat with just me,' she recalled. 'And I started crying and couldn't stop. It felt like every emotion I'd stored was finally being released.' I encouraged Jamie to begin journalling daily and start each entry with the question: 'What am I feeling today?' Sometimes she said it was anger. Sometimes relief. Sometimes nothing at all. Jamie finally allowed herself to feel – not with fear, but with curiosity. Our emotions can serve as signposts, gently pointing us toward the places where healing is needed: our blockages, our numbness and the parts of us that have gone quiet in the face of hopelessness. Recovery – from drinking, from disconnection, from self-avoidance – isn't linear, and Jamie is still in that process. But what's changed is her willingness to stay with herself, especially when things feel hard. Jamie is one of many emerging in what some call the 'sober curious' movement. But for her, it's not about labels or lifestyle – it's about presence. She's not interested in moralising alcohol use. It's not about judging drinking. It's about asking why. Why am I drinking? What am I avoiding? Can I support myself with awareness? And what might be possible if I stopped? In a culture where numbing is easy – scroll, sip, swipe – choosing to feel can feel too hard. It's important to take at least one quiet moment a day to ask yourself: What am I feeling? You might be surprised by the answer. * All clients discussed are fictional amalgams Diane Young is a trauma specialist and psychotherapist at South Pacific Private, a trauma, addiction and mental health treatment centre In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat
