On Giving Up Drinking

On January 21st 2013, I decided to stop drinking. It was a decision a few months in the making, so by the time I made it, it was actually quite a relief.

I share my story and experience with everyone: I am very open about the fact that I don’t drink, I am not ashamed of it, I don’t need to justify it, but if people do ask, I let them know why. And basically it was this - drinking was just not working out for me anymore.

And as a result I have had some very personal exchanges with my friends about their drinking habits as well. With no judgement on either side. It has been wonderful and enlightening and life affirming. And over the years, I've coached dozens and dozens of other people through reassessing their relationship with alcohol too.

As I have come to understand, the thing is never the thing. Drinking is not the thing. It is what it is hiding, covering up, what we are avoiding through the drinking. That is what we need to be able to look at. But we can't do it while we are drinking. I know that problem drinking does not discriminate, certainly not by age, not by gender, not by income and not by relationship or parental status. So I know that my experiences with drinking are in no way unique.

Way back in 2013, I decided to go public with my story because I think that as a society we love the idea of drinking (as long as we don’t have a “problem”) but we are very quick to make people feel ashamed and not provide them with the support they need if they allude to or admit to perhaps having said “problem”.

At no point along this path have I referred to myself as an alcoholic. Labels can be very dangerous things. I like to think of myself as a drinker who is not very good at moderation. I don’t beat myself up about this. I don’t feel bad about it. I just accept it.

A lot of us are drinking way too much and way too often. For many of us, it is a coping mechanism. But it is not healthy, it is not good for us, it is costing us as individuals and as a society. Our culture is completely saturated with alcohol – we use it to celebrate, to grieve, to commiserate, to reward, to self-medicate, to relieve stress, to pass the time, when we are bored, when we are happy, when we are sad, when we are angry… whatever the reason, alcohol is generally part of the equation.

Throughout my drinking career I had periods of minimal to moderate consumption, through to pretty heavy drinking. I was always a good binge drinker though, and my life was punctuated with extended periods of binging every Saturday night and many weekend benders. I can’t remember when I first started feeling that my drinking was becoming problematic.

But there were a number of events and understandings that really started to highlight some of the problems to me. I was very unhappy. I felt unfit and unhealthy. I was concerned about the kind of example I was being to my kids. I suffered anxiety. I felt depressed. I didn’t have much patience. I was angry a lot of the time. I was negative and felt like the world was against me. I felt like a bad mother.

There was one distinct moment (well, actually there were several, but this was the clincher) when I knew that something really had to change. It was when I realised that I was starting to look at the clock at 4pm and wonder when I could have a drink. With an absolute thirst for a wine. Even though I'd woken up that morning with a shocking hangover and an absolute resolution that I was not, I repeat not, going to drink today. And I know I am not alone in this. And this is why I share my story.

The last several years have been the most intense, challenging, enriching, rewarding, difficult, enlightening, confrontational, joyous and scary periods in my life. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I knew from past experience of trying to cut down or cut out alcohol that it was a pretty difficult task. So I started doing some research about how