On 20 September 2013, I drank my last alcoholic drink. As a nurse who cares for liver disease patients, I had seen the physical impact of booze, but also the psychological and social impacts – I knew I had to stop.
My own drinking started when I was a teenager and had slowly increased over 25 years, from light social drinking to drinking heavily every day. I had become psychologically dependent on booze – all attempts to try to moderate my drinking had failed. I have two young children, and I didn't want them to experience what I did growing up. As a child, I remember finding my parents passed out in the garden in the middle of the day, drunk. I had been terrified for them.
I remember going to a barbecue with friends. They were the perfect hosts and our wine glasses remained topped up all day. By about 7.30pm, I was beginning to feel worse for wear and asked my husband if we could leave. He didn't realise what a state I was close to being in, and said that the kids were still having a ball so we should stay.
I went and passed out on the sofa. Later, we walked home with the children – I was reeling, and remember cannoning off the verges and falling over many times. I even stopped to spend a penny – in front of my kids. I remember crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees and passing out cold.
I had done the very thing I swore to myself I would never do to my own kids.
It wasn't rock bottom, as such – it took me another four months to stop – but it was part of a slow realisation that my self-esteem, and my confidence in my ability to function without booze, had been completely eroded.
Alcohol is a silent public health epidemic, and both my professional and personal lives have shown me just how true this is. It feels like our whole country has an issue with booze. 85% of the population drink, and although the message from the drinks industry is always one of 'responsibility', I've never drunk moderately in my entire life - and neither have most of the people I know.
Most of my family and friends don't acknowledge that my husband and I don't drink any more. We have had some very negative reactions to our sobriety, as if we're snubbing those we socialise with. People seem to take it personally, like it says something about their drinking habits rather being a reflection of a change we wanted to make in our own lives. People will try very hard to get you to have 'just one', as if, if we're all in the same boat - all 'just having a swift half' - then we don't have to think about what it's doing to our health.
Alcohol is ingrained in our society because it is our first response to anything and everything. Birth, wedding, divorce, funeral? Have a drink. Christmas, New Year, birthday? A large one. Good day at work, bad day at home with the kids? Celebrating or commiserating? Open a bottle. It's like we don't know how to connect or express ourselves emotionally without involving alcohol. A few glasses of wine will lubricate that deep-and-meaningful you've been meaning to have with a friend for ages, or get your boss on side in the pub after work, won't it? Alcohol is woven into our everyday lives, and picking up a bottle at the supermarket is as ubiquitous as getting milk and bread. Drinking is so normalised in this country that not to do so marks you out as 'weird'.
There's an old adage that says 'you only have a drink problem if you drink more than your MP or your GP', and with the House of Commons spending £1.4m on alcohol to stock their bars in two years, one has to question how seriously the political class takes this issue. At your GP's surgery, you will be offered an Alcohol Brief Intervention if you drink more than the recommended unit guidelines and will be advised to cut down a bit, but that's about it. It feels like nobody is taking our country's escalating drinking problem seriously.
Things are starting to change, though. There are lots of resources appearing online to support people who want to cut down or stop completely. There are hundreds of sober bloggers just like me, there are online communities like Soberistas, and a new documentary film called - which looks at how alcohol has become such a big part of British culture - is due to premier in London shortly. And maybe, this Alcohol Awareness Week, we should all think about how much we drink, why, and whether we could stop.
Guest posts
Guest post: 'The moment I knew I had to give up drinking'
MumsnetGuestPosts · 20/11/2014 10:55
Interesting post, thanks OP.
That phenomenon you describe where friends and family try to coerce you into "just having one, go on, it's just one, it can't hurt!" is so painfully familiar - not just for drinking, but friends of mine who've tried to give up smoking as well, and found it very difficult when some "friend" of theirs brandishes one under their nose and says "Go on, it's only one!"
I think a lot of it is tall poppy syndrome - the idea that someone who can or wants to give up is trying to better themselves in some way (even if it's just for health or financial reasons) - so the ones who aren't trying to give up want to cut the giver-upper down to size, to fit back in with them.
As well as what you said too about them feeling uncomfortable about their own unwillingness to address their own addiction.
Whitechocolatestars - I used to drink more than I do now. After DS2, when I gave up alcohol completely (I hadn't completely stopped while pg with DS1 - apart from the first 18w - because when I was 18w pg I got married, then went on honeymoon, then my mum died and it was all too much), I didn't really start again for ages. Then it was maybe one wine spritzer with dinner one or 2 nights, then more nights etc. DS2 is now 2 and I'll sometimes have 2 wine spritzers in an evening but not more. I can't be doing with hangovers any more, and I just stop wanting to drink it. In fact, I've been know to leave half a glass standing there overnight! I'm hugely relieved about this, because it makes it much easier to stop completely if I need to.
One advantage I have here is that there is a decent de-alcoholised wine available in the supermarkets, and that makes a good substitute (red, white and fizz).
But on that point: Moniker, in Australia (or at least in NSW where I am), most supermarkets do not sell alcohol, you have to go to the bottle shop. Some are parked right next to the supermarket, so you don't have to go too far; but you can't buy alcohol with your groceries like you can in the UK. This hasn't stopped the drinking culture in Australia being just as bad as in the UK. The public "shame" is just as lost here as it is in the UK; young drinkers are just as bad, nights out in cities have just as much trouble etc. etc. Maybe it's the drinking age limit - it's 18 here, same as the UK - but I know it's mostly 21 in most states of the USA, isn't it? Not all, but most.
DH frequently gives up alcohol for months at a time; he comes from a family where problem drinking is an issue with quite a few of the extended family members, including his own brother, and he has no intention of joining their number. As soon as he gets to the point where he's finishing off a bottle from which I've only had one small glass and he's had the rest, he stops again.
Laly - I've said it before on another thread but 
for you - what an awful tragic happening in your life :(. I hope that none of your friends/acquaintance ever ever try to dismiss or diminish your stance on either your own drinking or drink-driving - I'm sure they wouldn't, or they wouldn't still be your friends - and I hope that they listen and learn from your story.
OP - good luck - keep up the good work.
Thank you to all of the further comments left since Sunday!
Laly I'm so sorry to hear what happened and my words feel inadequate 
Janeahersey exWifebeginsat40 ThisFenceIsComfy Eliza22 same here with my DF, memories of childhood and hiding what went on.
Glidingpig that's a great way of looking at it to get the point across. It is a legal socially acceptable drug, but a drug nonetheless.
AndHarry I'm with you on the booze freebie's too
ladyprimrose thank you :)
I agree ThisFence it's easier to just not drink for me too and for anyone wondering about their drinking why not give it a miss for a bit and see how you go? 
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Lucy thanks for that...I restarted my browser thinking it was me! Didn't realise that...it's interesting as I was just saying to eh this week that I want to try and have a break because the odd glass of wine is becoming a nightly occurance 
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