Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Quitting Alcohol Gave Emma The Chance To Show Up Differently In Her Kids Life

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, host Brad interviews Emma, who shares her compelling journey from a childhood surrounded by a relaxed attitude towards alcohol to her eventual decision to quit drinking for good. Emma details the influence of her university years and the impact of her media career in the '90s on her alcohol consumption. She candidly describes her struggles with moderating alcohol intake, the turning point moments that led to her decision to embrace sobriety, and the personal growth and challenges she faced along the way. Emma offers invaluable insights for those considering a sober life, emphasizing the importance of faith, inner strength, and community for support. Emma on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emma_sobersonic/ Christine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherisessober/ Join the Sober Motivation Community: https://sobermotivation.mn.co/

Welcome back to season four of the Super Motivation Podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We're here to show sorority as possible, one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, I'm joined by Emma, who shares her compelling journey from a childhood surrounded by a relaxed attitude towards alcohol to her eventual decision to quit drinking for good. Emma details the influence of her university years and the impact of her media career in the 90s on her alcohol consumption. She candidly describes her struggles with moderating alcohol, the turning point moments that led to her decision to embrace sobriety,

and the personal growth and challenges she faced along the way. Emma offers invaluable insights for those considering a sober life, emphasizing the importance of faith, inner strength, and community for support. And this is Emma's story on a day. the Subur Motivation Podcast. Welcome back, everyone, another incredible episode. Before we jump into it, though, I want to give a huge shout out to my friend from the sober motivation community.

And an avid listener of the podcast here, Christine, for nine months sober, incredible job. It's been such a privilege to be a part of your journey through the Suburmotivation community to see everything that you're doing now and how much you've grown. I mean, nine months, of course, it's a long time. but it's just scratching the surface, I believe of your full potential. And for anybody else out there listening to, keep it going with things. I mean, keep it going. If you fall down and scrape your knees a little bit, you know, sometimes that's part of the process.

But don't let that stop you from getting back up and going after what you really truly know is going to improve your life. And those are the people around us that are important. I also want to mention, too, if you want to plug into the community, I know there's a lot of shy people out there, believe it or not, kind of like me in some ways. But I want to just give you an invite to check us out at the sober motivation community. We have a lot of different hosts. We have meetings every single day.

We have hangouts with the community. It's a great place to get to know some people, connect with some people, find out what's working for them, but also go through the struggle at times with other people instead of just doing it ourselves. I mean, that's really a turning point. A lot of people really talk about that's when things really change for them. The idea shifting from willpower into actually developing the skills to help us stay sober. I mean, just doing it on our own and having this big secret and stuff.

Like, to teach their own, obviously. But I see people really, really turn the corner when they're like, you know what? This just is where my life is at right now. And I'm ready and willing to do something about it. Things change for them. So thank you again for hanging out. Let's get into this episode with Emma. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast.

Today we've got Emma with us. Emma, how are you? I'm good. I'm doing good. Thanks, Brad. Nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah, of course.

Great to have you. We've known each other through Instagram, I feel like, for years. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, so it's great to have you here on the show. What were things like for you growing up? Yeah, so I think it's funny. When you quit drinking, you look back to your childhood, don't you? And you wonder if there were any things there that were maybe the roots for your problematic drinking. And my childhood was pretty normal. I only child growing up with two, two parents, so really stable home. Quite a bohemian home, though. Both my parents were artists. And I remember when I was a kid, there were lots of kind of hedonistic parties with visiting. artist coming to stay with us. My parents brood their own alcohol. So frequently, I've got memories

of Sundays being in like the pantry, helping them decant, these great big vats of alcohol into bottles, ready for parties. And I also remember like I'd be having my breakfast around the table, either with guests there who were hungover, who were often drinking at breakfast. I remember saying, Oh, what are you putting in your orange juice to one of them? And they said, oh, something to make my eye sparkle. That really stood out to me. But when they weren't there, when our house was empty, there'd be all these demi-jones on the chairs around the tables.

And there was a very relaxed attitude to alcohol in my childhood. I would often be given wine with a meal from a really early age, watered down. I'd have a little bit of sherry on a Sunday morning. If I wasn't very well, my mum would make me an eggnog. I think it's important to say that was very normal. It didn't feel like it was out there or some kind of parenting that brought up a big red flag. And actually, my parents just drank wine or beer. They weren't spirits drinkers.

So a lot of my friends had spirits cabinets. And as we were getting to teenage years, they'd be raiding the spirits cabinets and they'd be getting absolutely wasted. And I just wasn't that interested. So I think, like, my parents had this kind of quite relaxed, approach to alcohol, that they felt that if you made it a thing that it was more likely to be alluring. So they've taken this sort of view of it wasn't a big deal kind of thing. And that all seemed to be going pretty well. And then I can pinpoint a moment where I just finished school,

done my A-levels, and I'd gone to university in the north of England. So I'd grown up in London. I was away from home. I was pretty homesick. I didn't have many friends because I'd just gone there without a crew. And the halls of residence that I'd picked to live in was the design was based on a Swedish prison, which meant that if you were on the internal sort of side of it, you could see all the other tower blocks on the other side out of your window.

I remember one Friday night quite early on to my first term, I was doing an assignment, doing one of my essays, and I looked out and all the lights were off. It was probably about 9 o'clock on a Friday night. And this really mean girl in my head said, everyone else has got friends. You've got no friends. Everyone else is out having fun, enjoying themselves, and look at you. You're a loser. And I really wish I could go back and say to that girl, go.

You're here doing what you're meant to be doing. But that whole kind of FOMO just kicked in massively. And I was like, right, I need to make some shifts here. I need to make some friends. And if anyone knows Newcastle-upon-time, it's a real kind of party town. It's famous for Jordy Shore. And it was in the 90s, it was absolutely the party place to be. So I was on a student grant.

I didn't have much money. So I ended up working in quite a lot of bars, different pubs. and started to create a social life and an outside of university life that revolved around bars, clubbing, boozing and socialising and having fun. And it was all fun until it stopped being fun. And I thought that I'd leave university, I'd go back to London, I'd get a job and kind of the partying would stop. But I ended up working in media. and that just seemed to be like the next level up. It was all about the socialising.

It was making sure that your face fit. We were really encouraged to socialise with clients. It was mid to late 90s at this point. It was the rise of the Ladd-Out culture. So I traded university drinking of when there was a promotion night on or having a few drinks after a shift to then really going for it. And because the company was paying, it was an open checkbook. It was the breaks were off.

And there were some horrendous hangovers. There was some real, oh, God, why did I do that? Kind of cringe. But it was a very kind of alpha male slash ladet work environment that I was in. So it was laughed off. It was about keeping up with the boys. It was about being cool. And it was literally, it felt like a lot.

of it could be swept under the carpet and you could say sorry but actually it was it was okay no one was there with a notebook documenting it or and it was normal it was absolutely normal it was normal to go let's sack off work early and go to the pub for a long lunch let's oh let's brainstorm in the pub this afternoon oh let's carry this on and so my weekends bizarrely became about recovery time and the weeks were like the intent the weekdays were like the intensive drinking staying out late staggering in with a hangover the next day pushing through and it was becoming increasingly normal for me to take days of annual leave as hanging getting over a hangover day and it was fine it was cool that's how everyone was operating so no one there was going can we have a little word

emma your performance or my performance was fine it was like because it was It was like this was the industry currency, and it was a lot of fun. I was, okay, I was living on an overdraft, but everybody else was. A lot of my drinking was being bankrolled by the company, because that was part of how we were doing business. So it was, it was very hedonistic, and it wasn't what I expected. I thought I was going to go to university, get my degree, and then go and do sort of a regular nine to five job and kind of chunk along. And that would have been my having a blast put to bed, but actually it just been the warm up. And it was about keeping up. So that was like the blueprint for how things continue. Yeah, just going back over

that, taking it in on my end here from an early age too. Like you brought it up there as it just being normalized just as a part of life, right? And then you sharing that moment too about noticing that everybody else was out socializing and you had that moment with yourself. What I always found out too with alcohol is it was a real cheap, easy entry into making friends that false confidence of you can plug in, right? I would anyway and have a few drinks. The insecurities would melt away. The fear of judgment of myself would melt away.

The fear of what other people were thinking would melt away. And it would just help me really relax a little bit. Now those were like the good times. If that's a thing right about it, right? We were having some fun. We were able to loosen up a little bit, but also connected with what you mentioned there as well. It's fun until it's not. Like, everything's great until we get to that spot.

And I'm sure we'll get there. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. But we all get to that spot to where it's like, it's not what it once was. We come up with, I'm trying to quit and all that stuff. And then we find it difficult or struggle through that process too. So did you move when you got the job, you moved back to London then? That was in London? Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot like, and people that have been on the show too from there. I mean, I think there's a lot of like pubs and bars and stuff and a lot of different cities. But there is, from what I hear, I've never been,

but it's just a very like popular thing. Oh, it's like, it's great. It's very social. There's loads going on. I think I just gravitated towards that, that kind of side of things. University people often get hobbies or they join fraternities.

For me, it had been, partly it had been like financially driven as a way to support myself through college and working in a bar is a really easy one to do because it, yeah, was fit, it's flexible. And there are perks and there are benefits to it, which are great when you're a student. But I constructed this life that was mainly alcohol-based. And I've done it unwittingly, really. And so when I'd then moved to London, that was the blueprint for the next chapter. And I think the point that I'm trying to get to is that my drinking had built up and it had gone from, again, always being normal, but the level had just kept getting amplified.

And so actually, fast forward to the point where I started to think, heck, this isn't serving me anymore. I was actually drinking less at that point than I had been previously. and I think that's maybe why it took me such a long time to stop because there was a big part of my headspace, which is that you're drinking less than previously, so therefore you can't have a problem because you're drinking less. If I'd been drinking more at the similar level, I think my head would have been going,

well, yeah, for sure you're going out, you're sinking a bottle of vodka. That's not clever. But because I wasn't doing that, and because it was kind of like, you know, by this point I'd got married, I had children. It was having a bottle of wine. It was sharing it with my husband. It felt, again, it felt normal and it felt like acceptable and it didn't feel, air quote, like I had a problem. But I think the thing about alcohol is that it's not necessarily the volume and the volume alone.

It's about how it's making you feel. And, you know, when I was drinking a lot, going out, having fun. I was fancy free. I didn't have commitments. I didn't really have many responsibilities. It took me until I was 30 to like even get a cat and a plant because like I knew that I was going to be able to look after them. It was just like, oh, but you're drinking less than you were. And actually that was a bit of a roadblock for me into taking action because it was oh, you're drinking less than you were. And it's not about that. It's about how it's impacting you. That's the real kicker. So yeah, I think that's just for me, that's a a really important point to get across. It's not like your life doesn't have to become totally

unmanageable. Your life doesn't have to have got to a point where the only option is like detox and rehab. You can stop before then. It can be making you feel sad and unhappy before it gets to like an obliterating sort of point. And yeah. Yeah, no good. Yeah, really great point to to hit home too. because sometimes we do size it up, right? I'm just picturing me in the early days, like searching Google, right? Am I an alcoholic? And you hear it from people all the time, right? Do I check these boxes to qualify, to quit maybe?

Are we looking for something out there to basically let us know that, okay, for sure, Brad, and I think we're good. Like, we're really good at finding what we want as well, like relating to what we want. So even though we could come across the questionnaire, I had somebody on the podcast many moons ago, I'm guilty for it too. We had the questionnaire in front of us. We don't even tell the truth on the questionnaire.

Because we know what we're protecting in a sense. Yeah, but I was going to say, but also it's, you know, that question, do you drink in the morning? Well, only if I'm on holiday or if there was a wedding or if there was a celebration in the morning. Well, then only then. But actually, you're not saying yes. But you're saying, but only when, you know? And actually, even if you're going on holiday and you're fly. at 8 in the morning is having a pint at 6 a.m. acceptable.

Nice, not really. AM drinking, even if, oh, I'm really excited. You know, like, and yet, for me, when I was doing those Google searches back in, I think, 2013, 2014, I'd be like, oh, well, only if it's a really early morning flight, or only if someone was getting married, and then, yeah, of course, I'd have a glass of champagne. But actually, it should be just a straight yes or no, because otherwise, because then you're yes, if it's there, I'll have it, or no, because I can take it or leave it. And I think there are a couple of types of drinkers, but one of them is an all or nothing, or the other type

is I can take it or I can leave it. And if you can take it or you leave it, then that's safer territory for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as it goes back to the justifications that we make, right? Yeah. It's a thing, right? Yeah. It's so interesting, right? Because you mentioned there the take it or leave it sort of drinker and then the all or nothing. And on this side of things, you can identify the differences clear as day. Like I have people in my life or take it or leave with drinkers, somebody who has a little bit of wine for dinner and they're sleeping on the couch an hour later. They have half the glass.

They left half of it. Yeah, you're sure you don't want it? No, just throw it out, dump it down. Okay. That's really strange. What the heck is going on there? But when we're in it, we're trying to like keep the dream alive. I think I was anyway.

I was trying to keep the dream alive that there's got to be a way that I can keep alcohol on my life, reach my goals, reach my full potential, be happy, feel the joy, have gratitude. I wanted to figure it out to believe that there was a way because of life without alcohol just seemed so far out of reach, right? All the questions flow in, like, how am I going to have fun? How am I going to meet people? Who am I actually going to be? because before I started drinking, I was this very shy, introverted guy who had ADHD that had a hard time making connections with other people,

really got in a lot of trouble. When I started drinking, it was like all of a sudden I felt like I had a level of importance in this world. Like people noticed me on a level they never did before. So I was like, are people still going to notice me? Am I still going to fit in? And all those things flood in. So it's, oh my goodness, the thought of a life without alcohol, I couldn't even wrap my head around it. where I'm at, I can't even wrap my head around the idea of a life with alcohol. So that's the shift that takes. When did you notice, like going back in your story where you noticed you were cutting back and you noticed that, like, you were in that confusion type space about, I'm not drinking as much as I was, but you realized it was having some negative impact on your life and maybe your mental health and the way you were going about things. How old were you there?

Yeah. So I was in my early 40s. And what I didn't know, which I know now, is that when you get some hormonal changes, it really impacts your liver's ability to process alcohol and to metabolise it. So I'd be going out and I'd be having a couple of drinks and I could be okay. Or I could go out and drink the same amount and I could be absolutely out of it. And I never really knew which way the evening was going to go. So it started being a bit like Russian roulette, which was pretty terrifying. And so to quell that anxiety, pre-going out, I'd have a glass of wine,

which of course would seal the inevitability of which way it was going to go. But, you know, my sleep wasn't great. I didn't feel like I was making much headway with my life. everything felt like it was a drag, a chore. I was just going through the motions, and I don't think I was showing up as the best version of me. I was just tired, I was sluggish. And yeah, just things felt pretty black and white.

There wasn't any kind of glitz or light going on. I think I'd got to the point where I'd been numbing out all the woes, but I'd also numbed out all the joy as well. so life just felt pretty monotone. And I didn't have a, didn't have a bad life at all. It was good. I was just not showing up in the way that I wanted. I won't drink so much next time. I'd made all those kind of promises. And of course, yeah, you have a couple of glasses of wine and it's game over. And so my self-esteem was pretty low and yeah, it just wasn't, it just wasn't serving me. And I had this like light bulb moment of instead of doing the detox powders and the things that you

can do to give yourself a little bit of a pep up rather than do those. Why don't you just stop drinking? I had this light bulb moment that alcohol was a kind of all roads lead to Rome, that alcohol was literally the root of everything that was going wrong in my life, why I was unhappy, why I wasn't showing up the way that I wanted, why I didn't have any money in my bank account, why I was like not sleeping through because I was waking up and I had this light bulb moment, alcohol was responsible. But then also this kind of horror, well, what was I going to drink instead of I wasn't going to drink wine and I got to that point Brad where it's literally

screw cap pour in the Sauvignon Blanc it wasn't there wasn't any kind of like celebration with it it was very much we'll get a screw cap because that's easiest to get off and just get it into the glass and lug it was very medicinal it wasn't like the romance

the glamour that we often get sold it'd become quite quite base and also I was finding I had little children pretty exhausted by parenting and it wasn't, you know, what I thought it wasn't all baking cookies and running around making poses. It's hard work. And I was like pretty bamboozled by it.

So by the end of the day, I'd kind of get through that final hurdle of bedtime, bath time. And then I just wanted to be on my own and just drink in silence because I literally, I was just like, done in. What I needed was a great big dose of self-care and compassion. and love not another glass of wine. So yeah, it was around that time. I was like, well, what would I drink otherwise and what would life look like without alcohol? And I came up with like literally a great big blank. I had no idea. I took one little bit of action. I went and bought a book. I went and bought a book that promised that giving up drink was going to be really

easy. And then I just thought you're lying to me. So I'd look at it on the bookshelf from the sorry for pouring another glass of wine thinking, no, it can't be. It can't be. And it was, yeah, it was just a miserable time. It was just, you're on a hamster wheel. It was not great. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that too, because it's a very relatable story to many. And I think, too, being a mom, having the young kids, some people float around the idea of the mommy wine culture, too, of how just normalized it is, right? And things get blurry, right? But at the end of the day, too, wanting to unplug, wanting to just quiet down, maybe everything that's going on and having to do all all the stuff that's required too and I'm with you it's not all

um baking cookies and all that I love that because they yeah there's so much to it with my three little ones I'm just like I don't know how we do it sometimes I have no idea but just just kind of show up for it but it's a very relatable story I think to so many people of being in that that spot of where you're wanting to quit not really knowing what life would look like without it but also like you mentioned too, you're drinking less than you used to. So it's making progress in a sense there. It's not like everything is falling apart, but I think what you share there and a lot of us go through it is we're starting to see some sort of cracks in the foundation here.

Maybe we're coming around to see that maybe alcohol is impacting our life in more ways than we're even able to see clearly at that time. Like maybe there's more going on here. So it's a very relatable thing. What was the book that promised you? Oh, do you know what? I don't even want to. I just don't recommend it. It works.

So this is the dichotomy. On the one hand, it works. On the other hand, like, I look back. It recommended that you read the book and keep drinking. Okay, yeah. I know the book. Yeah. If you really want to stop, why carry on, yeah.

And I look back that year of like thinking about not drinking as and continuing to drink. back on that year as a year of self-harm. And I see that actually drinking was a form of self-harm. That's the only way that now I can like rationalise what I was doing because I felt so desperately stuck and I lost all my power because I didn't feel I had sufficient power to take any action to move forward to do the thing that I needed to do. I didn't feel I was strong enough. And I didn't feel like I felt like I fitted the profile for say AA, A.A. my life, the wheels hadn't come off. There were a lot of conflicting things that were going on at that time.

And in the end, I just had the worst hangover ever. And when we all go, oh, never drinking again, and then there's one where literally you're never drinking again. And I think the reason for it was that I'd gone out for a quiet meal. I've gone out for quiet meal. And then literally it went the way that quiet meals go. and next thing you know you're doing shots and then you're drinking apparel spritz in your kitchen and then you've run out of run out of the fish so you're just drinking neat apparel and then

you've got to get up the next morning with the kids and take them swimming and you're just being sick at the pool and you're just like oh my god this is this isn't how i want to show up as a parent my kids have just started school so weekends suddenly become really precious so at the time i got to spend with my kids and i was like emma what are you doing this is embarrassing and so suddenly there was like that sense of whilst there wasn't anyone there taking notes or telling me off, I was having a serious chat to myself. I was like, this is not the way to show up. I remember just being able to lie on the sofa all day when we made it back from the swimming pool. Just pressing on the remote so they could watch yet another episode. And when they said they were hungry, just going,

oh, get another bag of crisps. Like, that was their best day. They were in heaven. They were like, whoa, what's happened to Murray? We can have as many episodes, as many bags of Christmas chocolates. Woohoo, it's a party. For me, I was like, oh my God, I'm failing seriously at being a parent. This is not how I want a parent. This is not how I want to show up in my life. This is not how I want to spend my weekends. So I was like, I was severely disappointed in myself. I was like, you've got to do something. You can't have this continually on repeat. I think the weekend before, again, I'd drunk a bit too much on my own in the evening. I'd taken my daughter's cinema. I'd had to run out the middle of the showing. I think was it frozen?

Something like that. I'd had to run out and be sick and leave my little child in the cinema on their own to go and be sick. That just, again, like, flipping heck. Thank God, nothing happened or whatever, and she was fine. But that wasn't being the person that I wanted to be. And I was like, seriously, it's time to grow up. You've got to look. after your children, you need to sort things out. So there was that kind of sense of this is when you sort it out. So it was trick-or-treated that night that night as well, Brad. So I literally had to put the wig on and then put all this mortician makeup on top of my makeup from the night before. I felt like I was putting on a death mask. Some of the people we went trick-or-treating with,

they invited us to their house and they still always have like a fire ceremony and write some things, some intentions and pop them in the fire. And I remember writing on a piece of paper, but you cannot keep doing this to your body. You just can't keep treating your body like a trash can. And again, it wasn't like massive volumes of alcohol, but I just wasn't able to metabolise it. And it was too much. And I was literally, I felt,

had this moment where I was poisoning myself. And I think once you look at alcohol and see it as poison with skull and crossbones on the bottle, you then really, you don't want it anymore. And so, yeah, that was, I'd like to say that was my day one, but because the books I'd keep drinking and I followed the instructions, I'm a kind of compliant person, and I don't like breaking rules, I carried on drinking, and then on the 9th of November, I stopped, and I thought, yeah, this is it. But, oh my God.

And it was hard. It was so hard. I had no community. I didn't know anyone else who didn't drink. I didn't tell anyone because I was so, like, full of shame about it that I couldn't handle my drink. And yeah, it was pretty ropey going. And there weren't the apps. We've got the apps now. Oh, you're five days sober. You're three days sober. You're a month. None of that. It's literally mere my fingers counting up. Oh, I've done a whole week. Man, I've done a whole week. Can I do a weekend?

And then, I've done a whole week. Wow. Seven days. Like mind blown. Can I get to 10? And it was such real white knuckle one day, one day at a time. And already that kind of like, writing yourself excuse notes. I was like, well, maybe I'll just give up for six weeks and have a little bit of a break pre-Christmas. And I went out and I bought the six bottles of champagne with the 25% off at the beginning of December, ready for Christmas. And then like, I just had this little moment where instead of having a mean girl in my head, I just had a girl who went, oh, I wonder how far you could go though. I wonder could you get through December? Could you get through Christmas and it just went on and on. Like I just got curious and for me that's the real definition

of sober curious. How far can you take this? I really wish I'd done a sponsored month and got people to sponsor me because I'd absolutely raked it in. But unfortunately I didn't. But also equally, I didn't put that pressure on myself. It was just can I get through this day? And those early days were really hard. People talk about the pink clouds. and having an amazing time. I've got none of that. I've got no pink cloud. I still feel cheated.

I got no pink cloud. I got no kind of euphoria. I was just in this kind of doldrums of numbness. And like, who the hell am I? Who am I? I had no idea. It was absolutely terrifying. But I just had this conviction that you started on this path.

You need to keep going. It's really important that you keep going. because the key will be down there. Well, great job. That was over nine years ago too, right? Yeah. And it's so interesting there too, how you mention it too, right? Obviously, in nine years, a lot has changed as far as people sharing about it and resources

and places to connect. There's been a massive change, but I'm just going back to that in the beginning for you. A lot of times, people in the community, like, I only got one day, as in a way of, I don't have 100 days, but I'm always like, maybe that one day for some people is the hardest one to get. Wow. So we got to pick ourselves up a little bit. Maybe the third day could be one. Some of those early days can be some of the hardest because the confusion sets in.

And obviously we're different people drinking different amounts, right, going through maybe not those heavy withdrawal symptoms, but just the everyday kind of irritability and waking up and coming alive again, all the uncomfortable emotions and feelings. and we're not reaching to alcohol, just to numb everything anymore. I really connected with what you said earlier as well as when you were drinking. It's the interesting thing about drinking is we can't pick and choose what we numb. We can't just be like, hey, alcohol, let's just numb out the grief or the hard times or the stress or the anxiety. It throws a blanket over everything.

So it's the joy. It's the happiness. It's everything else as well. And that scale seems to tip the further we stay engaged with how. alcohol too as it starts to really just numb every the good stuff and maybe this stuff we're struggling with. I'm curious to as you're going through all of this too. How are your relationships as you're making this decision and too and leading up to it? I know you talked about with the kids, but what about with other people going on your life too? Is anybody saying anything? I don't think so,

right? No, no one was saying anything. No one said, oh, I think you've got a problem. People say, well how much were you drinking my my answer is always the same as you which yeah which if i like them it's a bit of a wink and if i don't like them it's a hard paddington bare stare but you know it's like i wasn't drinking abnormal amounts i wasn't drinking at weird times of the day it but i tell you what looking back now i can absolutely see that i was drinking too much people do drink too much it's totally amassed. And I think for anyone at the beginning of their journey, it's so hard because you haven't got a blueprint. You haven't got a blueprint for what a non-drinking evening or week or weekend or week of holiday can look like. And there's all those kind of like celebration times

of birthdays or weddings. And you can feel like such an outsider right at the beginning. And not drinking takes away that security blanket in a really weird way and makes you feel so, so vulnerable. I think one of the reasons I was so like, you've just got to stick with this. However hard it gets, don't go back to it, was because I'd had so many unsuccessful attempts at giving up smoking, like many years before.

And I'd always tried everything, so many different techniques or ways to do it. And I'd always end up back. And then you feel absolutely crushed, and defeated and it's harder to then get started again. And I knew that stopping drinking was going to be tough. And I thought, I've probably got one go in me. I didn't know that I had more than like one attempt.

So I was like, well, I've just got to give it everything I've got. And I knew from those sort of aborted cigarette giving up attempts that actually trying to restart is really hard again. So I was like, just give it all you've got. and everyone bangs on about it is hard and yes it is hard but also it's really joyful and it's really positive and you suddenly find that you've got a lot more time I think you've got a lot more time initially because nine years down the track I don't feel like I've got much spare time anymore as well as it all gone but I think it felt like a new beginning everything started to feel new exciting challenging challenging.

in a fun way rather than this is going to be hard, but like in a, oh, I wonder what this will be like. And just it opened up lots of possibilities, lots of possibilities to try things in different ways. To be the person that I wanted to be, oh, well, I could go and do that or I could go and sort that out. And as time was worn on, I'm less about being the taxi driver home and all the rest of it. But in the early days, it certainly does give you a bit of an identity and a bit of a purpose, doesn't it, rather than feeling like you're tagging along with the crew. But yeah, those first three months felt really pivotal. And then on the 1st of January, for the first time I looked in the mirror and I saw a pair of

sparkly eyes, the spark would come back. And I was like, oh, this is it. This is great. Coupled with the this is also really hard and is this going to be forever and all those questions that come up. And I actually didn't commit as a, this is going to be forever, I think, until about four years. Like it was always, I'll just see how I can get on. And I've got a sort of a sense that for every decade that you're drinking, I think you need one year of sobriety just to clear the slate of

that decade, really, to then and start to discover and uncover the person that you were underneath it. Yeah, that work that continues too. Yeah. I think at first we talk a lot about on the show is like the idea of giving up drinking can feel like impossible or like it's not attainable. But then the further we get down the journey of things and with your experience it over nine years too is the not drinking part. A lot of people share anyway becomes the easier part. And now it's like life and identity and who am I? What do I like to do?

And how do I want to show up and how do I express emotions, feel emotions? All these other things that we've maybe in one way or another put on the back burner for so long. What's what are your thoughts on sort of some of those challenges too that you've you've come up against over the years on this journey too? Yeah, I think as well, there's a real sense that you can see if you look at the sober Instagram that you stop drinking and life becomes full of unicorns and fluffy bunnies and it's absolutely wonderful. And actually like that really hasn't been my experience and the last few years of my sober life been pretty tough. My my husband, he's a veteran, he suffers from PTSD.

In the past he's self-harmed, but also more recently he had amnesia. He had a clonk on the head, and we didn't know if he was going to get his memory back. And like that, I've just got such a clear moment. So I think this is what, I'd say two years ago, so I'm kind of seven, eight years sober. I've just sitting on a part bench just thinking, well, what's going to have? happen next? Is he going to get his memory back? Where do we go from here? What's, what's going to happen? And it's at that point that all of your kind of entry point sobriety base camp training kicks in. It's one day at a time. What can I do that will make things one percent better?

How can I get through this? And over the years, you've worked the sober muscle, you've built up some resilience, you hope that you've got the sense that you can do hard things and you can get through stuff and then like you get walloped with some really funky stuff and you're like, I have no idea how to approach this, but I just need to keep plodding on because having alcohol in the mix would just make things a million times worse. And so yeah, like I think it's about having that faith in your in yourself, in your sober journey that you have got the tools that you need to go forward. It gives us so much. I think it gives us more than we realize. It gives us the strength. It gives us the ability to carry on, to shoulder a lot, to accept, to also have a

bit of faith. It's when he had amnesia. There was nothing I could do about that. I just had to accept that this is how it is and hopefully it will change. And, tomorrow is another day. And sitting in that is quite uncomfortable. And especially when you've got children saying, you know, is Daddy going to be okay? And you're like, I don't know. I hope so. And I think life doesn't necessarily stop lifing. So I think there's sometimes a sense from people that I know who do drink that they think that they drink because their life is tough and that alcohol gives them what they need and they need it and that therefore my life is easy and I don't need it. It's some sort of weird paradigm that people seem to come up with and I'm like, that's not the

case. Like, genuinely I've got a lot of hard things going on. I just know that they would be so much harder with alcohol in the mix. And plus, I'd be letting myself down. I know that whatever gets thrown at me, I can cope. But with alcohol in the mix, no, I can't. The wheels will come off. I've got this thing of, well, was I an alcoholic? I don't know, but could I go back to drinking? Could I moderate? I just wouldn't want to, Brad. I just don't want to do that to myself anymore.

It's like going back to the whole thing, the volume isn't the question. It's how it made you feel. And alcohol made me feel weak and sobriety makes me feel strong. Whatever kind of gets punched my way. And so that's the reason to stay sober because you could be like, Oh, well, you've got your life fixed. You don't seem to have a problem anymore. You've been managing.

And after I think about four or five years, the kind of like the sheen and the shine of sobriety can come off. Because like you say, that's when the hard stuff can come up, dealing with emotions, doing life in day in, day out, without ever being able to press the mute button. That's the tough thing. You never get to press the mute. It's always there.

So it's like, what else do you find? And for me, sound healing. has been amazing. Essential oils has been amazing. Meditation has been like beautiful. Also, like a big part of my journey has been alcohol-free drinks, which I know isn't for everyone, but it's like it's got the ritual of it that I never had when I was opening my screw-cap bottle of wine. It's a more mindful practice and just being mindful in kind of general and doing all these practices of gratitude and just taking time. with yourself, being compassionate, has just allowed myself to be more emotionally grounded and

moving towards the person that I always wanted to be and didn't show up as when I was boozing. So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that too. It is so true. You can get wrapped up in the stories and everything out there of how beautiful things look for different people, but I think it's great to be realistic in a sense, too, that there are challenges that come up and that things that aren't going to be prepared for.

And then we really have to face head on without the distraction or without the numbing of alcohol, which is very difficult at times. But we build that confidence in ourselves and that resilience and that ability to some days, I just go to bed and I'm like, I'm exhausted. I don't know if I can do what I'm doing for another day. And I don't mean like the sobriety thing, but everything else. But I just tell myself, like, just stay in the game for one more day. Like, just stick around.

And that's what I always try to talk with people who are in that moderation, right? Let me try to figure out if I can make this work one week on, maybe the weekend, drinking, maybe another week off. What I always tell people my experience was that was extremely difficult. That was much harder than just not drinking at all, all of the time that we put into it of trying to make this work. But it is a really interesting thing of like, hey, you know, I've been away from it for nine years. but I think when we slow ourselves down a little bit,

we look at what alcohol is, we look at what it's doing to maybe people around us, what it did to our life and everything, and it's like I come to the conclusion really fast that, you know what, maybe I could work it all out. Maybe this magical thing has happened over the years and I could, but I have no interest in trying to make all of this work out again.

I have no interest at how it destroys persons, personally my health, my mental health, my relationships with myself, any sort of spiritual connection is basically just chopped. That door is closed. And obviously the impact on our relationships and on so many areas, is it worth it? If to me, it's like putting every dollar I have, my house, cars, everything on a blackjack table, on one hand, maybe I double up, but maybe I lose it all. It's not worth it.

Just be happy of where we're at. So I love that. Just looking towards wrapping up here, Emma, this has been incredible. I really appreciate you jumping on here and sharing everything. Very relatable story to so many of our listeners. What's one thing that you would like to mention to others if they're struggling to get or stay sober? That's been so helpful in your journey. I think to have faith and to know that it's possible and to know that you already have all the tools within you.

to do it. They're just a little bit buried and they may be need uncovering and polishing and nurturing and protecting, but you've got everything within you to do this. You just need to have the faith. And once you can find that faith, then that will be your north guiding star. You can be the person that you want to be. you can show up the way that you want to be. It is possible and like that life is there and to go for it, to really go for it. I think for me it took a year to pick up that book, but I feel like that sort of analogy and I'm like not promoting anyone cut down trees, but if you're going to chop down a tree and you've got seven hours, spend six sharpening the knife, the axe rather.

It's all there. You just need to assemble it and find it and to get the courage to do it. And it's worth doing. No one ever says, oh, I wish I hadn't stopped, no one. Yeah. We all say, oh, we wish we'd stayed stopped or, oh, so, like anyone who's got any regrets on their sober journey, it's normally, well, I picked up for a bit or I relapsed. It's not that I stopped in the first place. So, yeah, just have courage, have faith. And there's so much community out there. So reach out. People are really kind. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah, I love that. I'm a huge believer of that too. I think a lot of times when we're looking to change, we're looking outside of ourselves. We're looking for the answers. We can find the answers in the roadmap to how this works anywhere. I think where the big disconnect is with us on individual basis is we know the way to get there. Can we find a little fire inside of ourselves? Can we find the belief? Can we find the courage to raise our hand and get some support and get some help and say, you know what? Things are just not. not going the way I want them to. And maybe there's a problem here. And it doesn't have to be that you're diagnosing yourself with this, that, or anything else. Just say, hey, I'm just not headed in the direction I want to be. I know that alcohol is in the way and I'm here. I'm showing up here and I'm willing to do something about it. That's always been, that's always the thing, right? Because to get sober to not drink, what is it? You just don't drink. It's not overly complicated,

but how do we stay sober? We're adding layers to it. And I love all that other stuff you mentioned before about things that that you didn't plug into but I think now looking back you would say hey that would be something that maybe somebody should consider right plugging in talking with other people sharing plugging into books you know what I mean to say hey these are all 100 cents I didn't meet my first sober person in real life until I was like three and a half years sober how mad is that that's just that just blows my mind so you can do it on your own it's better it's better with It's better with people on the road, but also it's inside what you need. And just give you, I'd just say to people to give for them to give themselves that and give

themselves permission. You don't need to wait for somebody else to tell you. And yeah, go for it, 100%. Yeah. Another great point to end things off. Anything else you want to mention before we sign off? I don't know. I'd just say that lots of things get better.

Your relationships get better. your emotional maturity is better your health is better your bank balance isn't obliterated well it's when you've got teenagers but you know not by going out and just making poor choices and decisions everything becomes better when you remove the alcohol if that's something that you feel hasn't been serving you my partner drinks so i don't expect everyone to quit drinking it's a personal choice and you have ownership of yourself And yeah, but for me, it's been the best choice. And for anyone who's thinking about doing it, good luck.

I'm cheering you on. I really hope you make it because, unfortunately, so many people don't. And that's, yeah, get out while you can. Yeah. Yeah. And that's sort of the reality, truth side of things too, is, yeah, it doesn't always play out a sober way, just how it is. Well, thank you again, Emma so much for sharing. sharing with us today.

Oh, my pleasure, Brad. Thank you. It's been great having a chat with you. Thank you. Another incredible episode here on the podcast. Thank you, Emma, for jumping on and sharing your story and just so much honesty in it. I think a lot of people can relate with. I'll drop Emma's contact information for Instagram down on the show notes below.

I'll also drop Christine's. Go and give both of them a follow. Send them a message. Say hi. Start the conversation. and hope a few of you will consider joining us inside of the suburb motivation community. You don't have to do this alone. It's tough at times, but I think it's a lot easier when you have a whole group of people behind you,

cheering you on, rooting you on, and supporting you. So I'll see you in there soon.