A Thousand Wasted Sundays with Victoria Vanstone

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Castune. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Victoria van Stone is the host of the Sober Awkward podcast, which, while it is a comedy, actually won the Best Wellbeing Podcast at the twenty twenty three Australian Podcast Awards. She's also the author of the Drunk Mummy Sober Mummy blog, which has a huge following you might be familiar with it, and most recently she has written her memoir A Found and Wasted Sundays, which is a cracking read. I might add Victoria grew up in nineteen eighties England, very boozy culture. She parted hard in her twenties and only after moving to Australia and becoming a parent did she begin to question her drinking ways. She took herself off to therapy and she discovered the value of self care. She let go of people pleasing and has created a life.

1:24 That is far more fulfilling. She's great fun to talk to, has loads of great stories to tell. Just a heads up that this episode does contain some adult language, so if you've got little ones around, you might want to use your earphones. Victoria Vanston, Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. Hi, thanks so much for having me. And congratulations on the success of your podcast, The Sober Awkward Podcast, winning awards all over the place, and of course your brand new book, A Thousand Wasted Sundays. Yeah. So, I can't believe it's out there. It's kind of weird that all my awful drinking stories are out there the world to see. It's like hanging my dirty underwear out on the washing line, quite honestly. But yeah, no, it's really exciting. The podcast just one best wellbeing podcast in Australia. So we are so please.

2:11 Yeah that it is amazing. That's a great achievement. And so it is, all of your drinking stories in a book, Vic, I'm curious to know what was it like to write all of those stories. Had these were these stories you'd already documented through you know, journaling or through running your blog, et cetera. Or did you kind of have to trawl through the memory banks to come up with these stories. It was a bit of both. Actually, I do have diaries. I have probably twenty years of diaries from the ages of eight to about thirty, so they came in really useful for the timelines. But when I sat down to read it, there was a lot of thinking going on.

2:51 I had to really put myself back in those situations, which of course was difficult because I was in a blackout a lot of the time. So I had to sit down in each chapter and really close my eyes and imagine myself as a child and what I was like as a teen and in my twenties and growing up. It was actually a really fascinating process. I didn't know that as a human if we sat and really really thought about something, memories would come back up. So it's actually really interesting to flip back into my life and see where I'd gone wrong and assess those situations. And I think the writing became part of a therapy for me, like a writing therapy, whereas I could see my problems black and white on the pages, and it was very very clear where I'd been going wrong. All my life.

3:36 That's interesting. I was going to ask you, did you find that therapeutic? I imagine it would be, you know, could be potentially quite an emotional process to go back through the whole trajectory, like from beginning all the way through to where you are now. Well, actually the books are comedy. But when I did do that, and especially when I went to therapy and talked about all of those situations, I I realized the story wasn't as funny as I thought it was, and I realized my behavior wasn't as cool and party girlish as I thought it was. It was actually quite sad, and it represented someone who didn't care about herself and that abandoned her body most weekends. We talk about socially normalized binge drinking in the book, but some of my behaviors represented someone who was really quite lost and was It was sad to look back on and realize, after I've turned forty, that I've actually wasted a lot of years just abandoning myself and being unkind to myself. So it actually turned out to be a little bit sad.

4:36 They are, I mean, they are funny stories. You write very very well, but the purpose is not obviously to entertain people with the book, is it. It's like to help people. To see themselves in your story, so that they can potentially, you know, based on your experience, see where maybe they're doing the same thing, where they're going wrong. With everything that I do. I talk about stuff with brutal honesty because I feel like maybe if I share my shame, people won't feel so bad about theirs. And I hope that when people read the book, they will recognize themselves. I mean, everybody's got these stories. I mean I don't know many people. Mine might be a little bit more extreme here and there. I am one finger down from a firework incident in Thailand on the Millennium Night.

5:23 I was a big booze bag. Like so, I think my stories are quite extreme, but I hope that it makes people think about their drinking habit. My idea isn't to stop people drinking or say drinking is bad. I'm just going to say how is it impacting your life? That's really That's really what the book is for, is for anyone who is reconsidering their relationship with booze and going, well, is this working for me anymore? And if this lady's done it well, maybe I can too, so it's not preachy. I try to keep it funny. I tried to keep it upbeat with a lot of poignant stories. I think the funny story is outweigh the sad stories in there, so it will keep you entertained on each page. But at the same time it is there to share a message, which is you are deserving of healing.

6:11 I think VI, you grew up in the UK. I grew up in Australia. We've done a little swapsy, but both. Countries have, you know, pretty big drinking culture. I'm curious to know what were your early experiences with alcohol. How did it kind of start and progress? I think it was very run of the mill, you know. I was a young kid. I grew up in a family who enjoyed to party. They were the life and soul my mum and dad. It was never any sort of sad drinking or commiserating. It was always joyful and frivolous. And I saw how they could control the room and how they could make others happy that I wanted a piece of that very very early on in my life.

6:52 And I had older brothers and sisters and I just thought, I just want to join in this kind of cheerful pandemonium I described in the book. It was always a very happy environment to be in. I saw their drinking as a way to be liked and a way to fit into their community. So I didn't really feel like perhaps I had a choice about alcohol at that very young age. It was coming for me at every direction. It was like my culture binge drinking. It was the British culture, the pub culture. It was generational, it was environmental, and I couldn't really avoid it. So of course, as soon as I as soon as my parents were pissed, actually, I used to go into the garage and go and steal a bottle of wine. And I was doing that from about twelve onwards. And I could see that I had a power when I stole the boots, because I could invite mates over to my house and go, look, this is me. I'm vic I'm the one that's going to give you fun. I'm the one that's going to get you drunk, and we're going to have the best night.

7:49 So it was kind of like a tool that I used from a very young age to make friends and to keep friends, and that continued throughout my life. Interesting, isn't it? Like I've got a teenage daughter now who drinks, and when we get to an age in life and we know better that we see them going down the same path like and she is in the same kind of boat right in her view, Like it's just what everybody does. Like, it's not bad. I'm not different, it's not wrong, And it's really hard to argue with that because we know that. But we all grew up like that, and like you said, it didn't feel like there was a choice necessarily. It was just something that everybody, everybody did, everybody does.

8:35 And it's unfortunate that it comes along at that crucial age. Suddenly you're thirteen, fourteen years old, you perhaps start questioning yourself a little bit. How do I look? Will boys like me? Or you know, will girls like me? Or where do I fit in to this sort of social world? And I've got to make choices about what to do at school and who I want to be when I'm older. It's all coming at you and every direction, and it can be really be hard at that age to numb out from all that. Your parents have certain expectations. You're trying to please everyone and trying to do the right thing, and I think that was an out for me. Suddenly I had a bottle of wine with a mate and I was rolling around on some reaccorational park ground like having a laugh, and none of that suddenly mattered. I didn't care. So I think for me, it was kind of an out of all the responsibilities and an out of expectations and what people wanted of me and what I wanted for myself. I didn't know. I was just a young kid, and especially with boys. I was probably a bit nervous around boys. I wasn't really into snogging, and you know, all those horrible things you do as a teenager that you don't do now basically, and all the things you avoid now. I wasn't into, which is probably because I didn't like them, and I wasn't brave enough to say do you know what I mean? So, yeah, it came along at the perfect time for me. And I think that's we say coming of age. Unfortunately we say it like it. It has to happen. This is part of growing up, and it's unfortunate that we live in a culture where you have to numb out and

10:05 black out and write yourself off in order to fit in and in order to come of age. It's a bit sad I realize now, of. Course, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then of course that means that we never at that crucial time in life and even finishing school and going off to university or starting jobs, when there's all these situations where we feel kind of nervous and uncomfortable and we're not really giving ourselves the opportunity to learn to manage that in any healthy way. We're just going out to the pub for Friday drinks, and you know, just it takes on this role, doesn't it, of being the solution to all of life's problems. It's so funny you say that. It's a really brilliant point because actually we end up not knowing how to be confident in a situation now having drinks. Yeah, it's really true, and I think booze nowadays. We interviewed Lee Mac recently and he made a really fantastic point on the podcast, which was alcohol gets all the credit for a night out. So we you know, as mates, we used to go out and we used to have a good time and in the morning we'd all be hungover and be like wasn't that a laugh? And imagined that that was because we were all drinking. But actually, you know, maybe I don't vomit on myself now or stumble out of nightclubs, but I can enjoy things sober as much as I did, well, probably more because I can remember them, but as a drinker. So it's really interesting we give credit to the booze, wh as in fact, maybe social experiences are about remembering who you've chatted to, good tunes, a nice environment, being with the people that you love, a nice evening, a warm summer's afternoon, all of these

11:38 things that are really simple and natural are actually what makes me happy now, And it's completely different to what made me happy when I, you know, throughout my teens, twenties and thirties. Actually it took me a really long time to realize what I was doing was taking the reality out of my life just by going, yeah, let's just have a few beers. That will solve everything. I can make loads of friends and be the life and soul of the party, and that's all I knew. So of course that became my entire identity. I didn't know who I was without it, which is exactly what you're saying there, I never got the opportunity to know who I am, and that's something that changes when you get sober.

12:23 Yeah, you were. The ultimate kind of party adventure girl. I mean you tell stories of traveling. Was it ten years? You traveled pretty much solo to all ends of the earth. That's a really cool thing to do. How much of a role did alcohol play during that time. I never even thought of it as like being sort of toxic what I did. Oh, I saw I'm just free and I can travel, and I'm a free spirit, and I'm independent and I do whatever I want. But looking back now, I realized that all of the environments that I plunked myself into were very, very boozy, and whether it subconsciously, I was surrounding myself with people that drank to the same level as I did. I mean, we naturally do that because I was a laugh like you would have wanted me at a party, So of course I just surrounded myself with people who drank lots, and I surrounded myself environments where there was booze everywhere.

13:15 I mean I own bars in Thailand and Cambodia for a while. I surrounded myself in the book. I describe it as the drink's cabinet of my youth because I was a DCBD binge drinker, which was my parents' drinks cabinet, and I carried on that behavior like having this drinks cabinet around me all the time, which is how I felt comfortable, like in a pub or in a nightclub or you know, having my own bars. I just was comfortable when everyone was doing what I was doing, perhaps, I realize now, because I was diluting my habit into the crowd, absorbing it into the people that I surrounded myself with. For many of us, we start off with, you know, alcohol is fun, and we go and we catch up with our mates on the weekends and we binge drink and we get hangover and da da da da da.

14:05 And then over time, as we get older and we get into professional jobs and marriages and have kids and get a mortgage, it then becomes for many people not so much a weekend party celebrate thing, but a fairly regular, take the edge off thing. And so I think, you know, many listeners of this podcast would recognize that something that used to be this occasion, like this social you know, drinking on the weekends, for example, eventually starts to take a much more prominent role. Like maybe not drinking to the same extent, but the everyday kind of drinking starts to happen. Is that what you experienced as well?

14:45 No, I didn't experience an everyday habit the level of drinking that I talk about. I try and sort of steer away from me hitting the wall. I know your podcast is called crappy to Happy, but I would say, like, sort of crappy too much much happier. So my message is always My message is always that it doesn't have to get really really really bad before it gets good. You can actually step off before it gets way too crappy. So I think sometimes with drinking stories, people really want the drama with it. They want me passed out on the floor with a baby crawling over me covered in vomit. I mean I probably had done that a few times, but like I think, people need it to be really really bad. My story, but my story is very, very similar to that of many Alcohol started to impact my life after having children. I'd been having a few panic attacks in my early twenties from recreational drug use. Of course, I was a party girl, so I was taking ecstasy and cocaine at the weekends. You know, I was off my trolley for many many years there and ended up a year of me being very very mentally unwell, and I never touched another drug. But I remember when I was really poorly with panic attacks in my early twenties, my my get better goal was to start drinking again.

16:03 That's how ingrained. This drinking identity was within me, and that carried on until I had children. And after I had my first son, George, I started to get anxiety on a Sunday, hence the book is called A Thousand Wasted Sundays. I started to have terrible anxiety, and that was the alcohol doing that to me. I didn't drink every day. I never drank in the morning. I was always a sociable, happy drinker. It wasn't the image that people imagine like an alcoholic to look like, which is this gray area drinking, which is basically everyone I've ever known, anyone that's ever had a hangover, fits into this sober, curious realm. And it caused me to question my relationship with Booze. You would never have People probably thought I drank too much, but you would have never said VIC has a drink problem. Perhaps, and that's the problem with it.

16:55 I did fall through the cracks for many, many years, even though I was suffering. And funny that we talked about diaries at the beginning of the podcast. I've actually got one sitting here because I use it as part of my live show. This is my travel diary from like nineteen ninety nine, and in it there's a chapter where I'm saying, you know, I didn't realize till much later on, until I had kids, that perhaps drinking was having a negative impact on my life. But even in there, I'm saying, I've got to stop drinking. I need to be sober. And then the next day is I'm drunk again, and then the next day is I'm hungover, and it goes on and on and on, and my issue is very, very clear from twenty five years ago. Even so, it's quite frightening to see it in those diaries and me to not have known that I was even worthy of support back then. I was worthy of somebody stepping in and going, love, You're out of control, But of course no one did because everyone was doing the same thing.

17:49 But after having kids, they were my first real consequence to my very recreational, socialized, normalized binge drinking habit a very common English issue, and that was something that I've had to learn about a lot, is that it didn't have to be that bad for me to deserve therapy or to deserve being able to talk about it. And it's actually been kind of the niche where I've fitted in. It's like, look, you don't have to reach these rock bottoms. You don't have to be, you know, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels in a park or on a kidney dialysis machine. You can actually just be going, alcohol isn't doing it for me anymore, and that is enough for you to be deserving of help.

18:37 I really like that you made that point, because I think that you're quite right. Many people, and many women, Most of my listeners are women, you know, twenty five to fifty five, let's say, and they start to go, oh, am I an alcoholic? Or what's the definition? Or how many drinks do I have to have before I've got a problem? And they are much. Better questions to ask ourselves, aren't there. As you've just pointed out, it's not about whether you're an alcoholic or how much you're drinking. You can always find somebody who's drinking more to make you feel like you're not that bad. I would have failed those online am I in alcoholic tests, possibly because I would have lied like I did to the doctor all the time, like everybody does, but also because you know, it's so individual, And I always say to people, it's not about how much you drink. It could be one glass of wine a year. It's just your mental relationship with alcohol. You as an individual, How does it feel? Are you questioning it? Is there a preoccupation with it? Does it feel like it's doing good?

19:40 Is it having a positive impact on your life? The answer is probably no for most people. But there's definitely a time where you've just got to question your own relationship with booze and whether it's okay or not. Yeah. Absolutely, Was there a turning point where you said, right that this has got to stop? Was there a particular moment? There was four years of me trying to moderate because of course I was the party girl, and when I became a mum, the party girl and the mum crashed together because, as you probably know, partying and mumming is like mixing your drinks. It is a lethal combination, and I was trying to it doesn't work well. I was trying to mother and be hungover. So I'd be lying in bed with a terrible hangover, not able to move my head, with a baby crying in the room next to me, and I felt terribly guilty about that. So I tried. I'd go, right, okay, I've got to stop doing this. I've got to stop doing this. Maybe if I have water between wines, maybe if I salmon on the Friday night, or all of these weird old wives tales that I would look up, like, what's not going to make me hung over? What do I need to do?

20:52 None of that worked, and my anxiety progressively got worse, but I still didn't want to put down the party mantle. I was still trying desperately hard to be a party girl. So I would go out, promise to have one, have ten, come home two hours later and just be like, I've failed again. And that went on for about four years, and I got pregnant again, luckily, and I went out six weeks after my little baby was born. So I had a four year old and a newborn, and I went out to the local pub promise my husband i'd be home by ten, and within an hour I'd ordered shots and I was dancing pretty much on the bar with my big maternity nickers hanging out the top of my trousers. So I got up the next morning and I had the same anxiety that I'd been having for the previous four years since my first child was born, and I knew that I was failing getting better on my own. I kept repeating the same behavior, and I just asked myself suddenly, like if I can't fix this myself, perhaps I have a problem. If I'm not capable of this issue, then I need some help. I think I need help. I was a really weird moment in my brain coming to the understanding that I wasn't fixing this, I wasn't fixing my own problem. And I remember walking out into the lounge and my husband was there with the kids and just saying, I need to get professional support, and I'm failing at this, I'm failing at being a mother,

22:23 and actually I'm scared. I was scared. The anxiety was really really scaring me, and I knew that I wasn't myself, and I knew that my husband was worried about me. And it wasn't that sort of drinking where he would go out and say'd stop doing what you're doing. He was like, you know, Vic just gets a bit pissed every now and again. It's not really a big deal. But my mental health was deteriorating every single time I drank, and I just walked out there and I just knew that that was one hangover too far. And in the pub that night, I remember just before I left, there was a weird guy at the bar and I said, yeah, what are you doing here and having quite a nice chat, and I said, oh, I've got a six week old baby at home. And he was like, well, what are you doing here then, and it was kind of like a slap in the face and I just went, oh, yeah, of course I shouldn't be here, like what the fuck am I doing? And I think sometimes it can take an outside source because people just bumble along with this, like social binge drinking. It's like ha ha all the way.

23:18 And suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder and just went, actually, love, you should be at home with your child. And I was like, yeah, actually, I fucking should be. So it took many many years. I was over forty by then. I had Nelly, I think at thirty eight, and it took me, you know, a while to get sober after that. But yeah, it's been six years last Sunday now, so I feel like i've Yeah, that was a big turning point for me. That was the beginning of a completely new life. Quite honestly, where was your fear when you made that decision? One of the biggest fears about stopping drinking. I just thought people wouldn't like me anymore. They'd think I was a complete dullard. Like I thought people wanted this extroverted party girl that had, you know, a line of coca in her back pocket and knew what time the lockin was and the VIP passes. I thought that's what people expected of me. And with sobriety comes boundaries and all of these other fantastic things where I now realize I don't care about the opinions of others, which is huge of course, when I realized throughout my life I've been absolutely massive people pleaser and all of my behaviors and feeling responsible for the happiness of a nightclub, which is how I felt when I went in I've got to make everybody else happy. Somewhere along the line, I'd forgot that I mattered, and that's been one of my biggest lessons. But I think I was more worried about failing at it, and I was worried that I would have to give up drinking forever because I was

24:48 just like, I hated sober people. I thought they were the most boring, idiotic Why even live if you can't drink sort of attitude. I didn't want them near me. Why would I want someone even near me who if I can't remember my own behavior, why would I want someone here who remembers my behavior? It was like you are the enemy, which I realize now was a real sort of child bully sort of behavior. I call it the beer bully now, Like I didn't want you in my tribe if you weren't acting like I was, if you were different. And it's a really kind of immature way of being. And of course I'll have to like sober people now, but that's really common.

25:29 I think the fears are that life won't be fun anymore, there's no more good times to be had ever. Yeah, And you know what, So what do I do with my time and my life. But also that's social pressure that this is what the role that I play. People expect me to be up and ready to come out and have a good time, and if I'm not that, then where does that leave me? Yeah, that exact feeling was detrimental to my own health. I realize now like I was handing myself over to for the enjoyment of others almost and I realized that was having huge negative impact on me, and I had to step out of that to be able to see, well, what do I like about myself? What are the things that I want to carry forward into this new life?

26:16 And being that life and soul and the person that everyone relied on for the last laugh wasn't what I wanted to be. I didn't need to be that. I didn't need to show anyone anything anymore. My giving up drinking was about me and my kids. It was the first time that I was doing something for myself and I had to really concentrate on that and really not give any of myself away anymore, which has actually been the loveliest thing I've ever done. So what was the process for you once you made that decision? You said, I need professional help you saw a therapist. Is that yeah? Were there any other sort of tools or supports that you really relied on to help you to make that change?

26:57 I looked up loads of different options on I wouldn't have minded going to the Amazon and licking a toad and you know, having a shame and taking ayahuasca. I probably would have quite enjoyed that, but that wasn't an option because I had two little kids. So I ended up just looking online and finding a local therapist. And I think the title was breaking Free of Bad Habits, and I knew that my drinking by that point, I knew it was a bad habit. It wasn't habit. I was no joy in it anymore, and I booked myself in. I phoned the lady up and just said, oh, I'm a little bit of a binge drinker that might have a little bit of a drink problem, sort of hoping that I would get there and she would say, you're all right, love. You know, we only serve people who are drinking mouth wash for breakfast. But that wasn't the case at all. She said, you're very welcome here and see you on Monday. And I started twelve weeks of therapy in which I undid and unraveled my life with her.

27:53 Quite honestly, I unraveled all sorts of situations that I didn't even know were affecting me. There was a kind of weird boyfriend that had in the past. There was a weird situation at school with some friends, and I didn't realize until that point in that sadness that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. I think I had a sadness and I was filling it up with alcohol. There was a void in me, and I think that's what you find a lot with people who overdrink, is that they are trying to fill something, perhaps for themselves or perhaps for someone else. And it was interesting to know that stuff about myself. I just always shoved it under the carpet and gone, oh, yeah, shit happens, and I'm okay, and I'll carry on. But all of that stuff had tumbled into a big kind of tumble weed ball and was still affecting my life. And it was interesting to know that if I looked back and healed that stuff, that I could then move forward and build a new foundation for the life that I wanted.

28:46 Yeah, would have been the maybe the surprising benefits of not drinking. Gosh, there's so many. I mean, caring about myself is the main one. And you know, finding out who I was before I started drinking, because I was actually quite a confident child that I numbed out and sort of making amends with her and going it's okay that all that. You know, what's it called pre child stuff? What do they call it? In a child? I did a lot of that in a child work. Yeah, it's fascinating. And finding out who I was after it. Somebody said to me once years ago, like, it's not about giving up alcohol, it's about finding out who you are without it, And that really has been the most interesting part of it, is going right, who am I now? Who am I without this identity, without being reliant and appeasing others all the time? Who am I as a human being? And I could never have imagined that me giving up beers like weekend beers would cause this kind of momentous change within me. It's quite amazing, really, So, I mean, I still have shit days. I'm still a shouty mum, and I get annoyed by things, and I'm probably pery menopausal, and I have ups and downs, but I definitely handle things a lot better because I can see the bigger picture and I definitely care about myself. And I think the thing about sobriety is my boozy life used to be this wiggly line. You know. It used to be up and down, the euphoria of a few glasses of wine,

30:17 and then the down, which was the come down of you know, the drug come down or the booze come down and the hangover. And I think when you decide to give up drinking, you have to give up that kind of wiggly line and you have to learn to live on this more content line throughout your life without the highs and lows. And that's something that takes time and effort, and you have to go out and get new hobbies, and you have to start exercising. You have to start podcasts and like books and all this other stuff that you have to start filling the time where you used to drink. But the best, I would say, one of the best things is the preoccupation with alcohol, which I mentioned before. I didn't realize how much of my life was spent drink, thinking about drinking, planning it, talking about it, doing it, with my friends. Everything I did was based upon you know, I would be entering a room and going like, rais the beers? Where's the beers?

31:10 Sort of thing, because I thought that's what everybody did. But actually I found out that that there's so much more to life than that, and that preoccupation being gone and not having to think about booze and never having to look around for a room for it is a real joy. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's such a great message. So when you first got sobervic you started a blog, how much was the writing and the sharing your story kind of instrumental or how much that factor into your ability to continue and stay sober? I definitely think it's held. The podcast is definite accountability, as is writing a book about sobriety. But when I sat down to write that book, actually it actually came before the blog. I sat down to write a book.

31:57 I started that book on the day that I gave up drinking six years and I was just writing it because I felt like the only person that had got off the crazy bus before it crashed. I thought there's a story here because I'm not this extreme drinker, and I didn't know that there were people like me. I felt very, very isolated in the first eighteen months of my sobriety because I did not know that there was this whole realm available, this whole, you know, community of people that don't drink. I felt like the only person in the world that had given up a mid range been drinking issue, or perhaps an alcoholic issue. But I felt so alone. I just thought, I'm going to write this down. If I'm feeling this, there's probably someone else out there in the world that feels like this too, so I'm going to write it down. And it just started off like a diary, like a chronological story of my life, which I'd gone over in therapy, so I knew where the red flags were, so it made sense for me to talk about those times. The rave culture, the cult I don't know whether you've got to the cult chapter yet, the sunna blowing my finger off, the abusive boyfriend. It all fitted in a story quite well, because when I read it, I realized those stories really had a place in my life, and they were deserving of me looking at and understanding. And that was really interesting about writing it all down was that I got to see my life in black and white and understand where I'd gone wrong and how I could then heal from it. So I started writing the blog probably about

33:29 a year after that. So I was like, right, I feel like I've done a bit of practice, and I started my Drunk Mummy Sober Mummy blog and that became really popular really quickly. I just couldn't believe it, like everybody was reading all my posts. And I was kind of trying to be anonymous at first because I was scared that I was being so brutally honest, but then asked to oh, fuck it, I'm just I am who I am. I think your confidence grows in sobriety by the year, and by that point I was like, here I am, I'm authentically me. This is my story or hate it, this is what happened to me. And that's been the best journey as well, is like learning to just to be authentic and just be who I am and hope that people like me, and if they don't, well I don't really give a sheit either. So Okay, it's all good, Yeah, it's all good. Whatever.

34:17 Yeah, I'm just curious about that because I know, you know, people big name writers like Glennon Doyle for example, you know, she had a similar story where she felt like that was her process to sit down and write every day, and it is so therapeutic. I mean, there's so much science about that, whether you choose to share it or not. I just think sitting down and writing processing whatever's inside of you is just such a healing thing and gives you that clarity. You know, I'm sure you must have had you had the therapy, but then with the writing, I'm sure there must have been those kind of moments of clarity and insight that you get just from putting it all out on paper. Definitely, I think I learned more writing the book than I did in therapy, quite honestly. There's stuff that bubba to the surface when you're in that process and you're in a room on your own and really trying to remember everything. It's very very soothing writing, and I love constructing sentences so that there's a bit of a punchline.

35:12 So I just really enjoyed the process. And I don't know whether I would have gone back to drinking if I hadn't had that. Quite honestly, it became such a part of my journey that it's just big in this sort of organic thing. And funnily enough, when I was pregnant with my first child, I wrote a series of children's books. I'd always enjoyed writing, and I thought I was writing, but I thought it was the hormones. I thought it was the pregnancy hormones. I was like, Oh, these are all making me feel good, and I'm feeling all creative again. Of course, I realize now it's because I wasn't drinking for the first time ever in my life, when I was that magical nine months of pregnancy where I was able to actually use my brain that I carried on drinking again after that, But I really see that as a little sobriety window that I had and can look back on and go. Of course, it wasn't the hormones. It was the booze being like burnt off my skin for the first time ever. So yeah, but writing has really been a wonderful escape for me as well, from motherhood and from the party girl. It's like, actually, if I'm ever wondering why I do this or I question my choices, I have a book where I go.

36:19 Of course, there is terms of page forty that's where you were completely crazy and ran down the high street with a traffic cone on your head, naked in Byron Bay. It's like, I don't think I need to do this stuff again. I feel like I've done everything drunk, like I didn't miss anything. It's time to try something new, that's for sure. And it sounds like life is still plenty of fun. I think that's the thing that the message that a lot of people want to be reassured, like life is still fun, It's still good, you can still have a good time, go out on the weekends. Bonus, remember it all. Yeah, I mean. Alcoholism is a serious topic and we talk about it on the podcast in a serious way. We talk about the stats, and we talk about cancer, and we talk about dementia and mental health and all of these things. It is a comedy podcast, but we talk about these things. Alcoholism is a very serious cultural issue.

37:08 But also sobriety doesn't have to be the kind of on this sober as in this word is somber. It sounds really down and sad and boring, but I reckon it's about embracing the boring a little bit, Like I love nothing more now than being boring. It brings me peace, It brings me joy and crosswords and scrabble and nights out where I can leave a good time and sneak out the back door and nobody cares like. It brings me boundaries and nicer skin and closer relationships. It brings me so much stuff that I never ever had. All drinking gave me was a very very short lived high and which I thought I had to carry on. It was a five ten minute one glass of wine in Oh, I feel good, then necking the battle that was it.

37:56 I was a total right off. There was none of this, you know, sitting at a bar with my pink finger stuck out, look at me and how glamorous I am. That wasn't me and Booze. That's not how we worked. It was me passed out in a toilet with somebody holding my ponytail as I sort of regurgitated tequila shots into the toilet. So me and booz never ever really worked well. I realize that now, but we just sort of accept that as a sort of part of it that we act crazy. So I think the lesson for me, definitely, You know about that boring word and about its reputation, is that life's what you make it, and you only live once and I spent a lot of it in a blackout. And now I'm really trying to embrace life day by day as it is good or bad. Like I'm conscious to witness my failures and successes. And I couldn't be prouder quite honestly.

38:43 Yeah, No, you should be vig while you were going through your own journey in a recovery for one of the better word journey. Were obviously this book would be your book would be a great resource for people. Were there books that you read that you found really helpful or podcasts that you live into, you know the other resources you would recommend for people going through that process. I definitely recommend William Porter's book Alcohol Explained if you're a bit of a science brain. It just explains cravings and that alcohol need and like you tricking yourself into thinking that you want it, and how that works. It is absolutely fascinating. The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober is by Catherine Gray. That is also a wonderful book, very similar vein to mine. There's also this, I think it's called This Naked Mind. This Naked Mind is a great one.

39:36 There's so much out there now, there's so many resources that you can just even I recommend to people very early on in their sobriety, or even just before they decide to take this leap. It's just if you're an instagrammer or a facebooker, go and join and follow some people who are sober, because it is a really I know, we hate social media and it's just the big most fucked up thing in the world. If you're struggling, there is something there that's twenty four to seven that you can just go and flip through and go, Okay, there's a nice quote about so I used to hate quotes, but now I'm all about the quotes. That's so true. But you can just flip through and there's people there that are doing what you're doing. I have a free online sober community if anyone wants to join that. It's called Cuppa Cuppa Dot community. It's a free, basically social forum where you can talk about your sobriety and find loads of other people in your area that are doing the same thing. So there's loads of stuff, loads of books, loads of podcasts. Start Sober Awkward from the beginning. We will be your mates on this journey. So yeah, come and have a ride with us. We talk a lot about Willy's though, just so that to warn you, I think you're.

40:47 Just gonna hold on new subscribers. That's really great, and I would completely agree. I think that the more that you can start to consume content, consume media that reinforce is the message that you've shared today, the more it helps people to kind of relax into this idea that oh, actually maybe I can do it, Maybe I will be able to do that, life won't be all boring. She's got to continue to reinforce that message. Absolutely, and I think it's time just to start being kind to your body. Sometimes I didn't if somebody had said that to me when I was a big drinker. I've just been, you know, f off and down another glass of wine. But now since I've given up drinking, I can see the error of my ways and go, well, actually, that was somebody who just didn't care about herself. And sobriety brings many wonderful things into my life, but I would say that's the biggest one, and of course being more present with my children. I realized that my drinking was like saying, I need to drink to deal with your behavior, or I need to drink because I've had a hard day and it was all quite selfish. I realized my messaging with them, and actually, nowadays I really enjoy being this cycle breaker in my family and living in a house that's alcohol free, just so that my kids have a choice about alcohol at the end of the day.

42:05 Perhaps I didn't have that choice growing up so much. I mean, you could say that everyone has a choice, but I'm not sure that I did. It was everywhere, and I think by creating an environment where the kids where you're very president and authentic and you know, it's not fucking perfect all the time. But I would say that having an alcohol free house and us not leaning on a drug, if we can say that to numb ourselves out from them, I think is a really positive message. But ask me in a few years, because my oldest is twelve, so we're just about to reach those interesting times. So yeah, it's been a few years. How that's going big.

42:46 Thank you so much for your time today. It's been so much fun and great message, and congratulations on the book. It really is a great read. Yeah, thank you so much. It's called A Thousand Wasted Sundays and you can buy in Australia. I haven't got a book deal yet in England, so hopefully soon you'll be able to get it in England as well. Yeah, it's just in Australia and New Zealand at the moment, but you can buy it and pay the postage and I can send it that the book agency will send it to you in England. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Vic thought it was important to share with you because she forgot to say that she does continue with regular therapy. She finds that really essential and in maintaining her well being. Drunk Mummysobermummy dot com is the name of her website and that is where you can find all of her resources.

43:27 Her blog, links to the podcast, anything else that you think might be helpful. Loads of really valuable resources there. Thank you so much for. Being here again this week. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review, share the episode with your friends. Can't wait to catch you next week for another episode of Crabby the Happy