SBS Addicted Australia: I drank three bottles of wine a day as an alcoholic

Heidi, a 31-year-old student, administrator and performing artist, had a secret life for five years.

I’d wake up and start drinking before 9am to get me through another work day. Instead of buying lunch, I’d buy another bottle of white wine. Before going home for dinner, I’d stop at the bottle shop again and buy two more bottles. By the end of the week, I’d consumed around 80 standard drinks – always wine.

My life started to fall apart, and each day would just be about when I would have my next drink. I was a shell of my former self, and for a while I didn’t even care.

I felt as though my life had nowhere to go but downhill. I was struggling to keep up the facade of being “OK”. All I thought about was alcohol.

I was never really in the room with anyone, even if my body was physically there. Some conversations I don’t even remember. I was in denial for so long that it became a matter of survival. How do I get through the day while drinking and make sure nobody knows?

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For the most part, nobody seemed to notice my drinking, or perhaps they just didn’t care.

As someone with an addiction, you become good at hiding things and you take great pains to think about the way in which you can hide it, so that no one has the ability to take the addiction away from you, not even yourself.

On the few occasions someone challenged me about my drinking, I always had an excuse at the ready. On one particular occasion, my partner at the time found a half bottle of wine hidden under clothes in the cupboard. When he asked me about it, I didn’t even think twice about denying that it was mine, and he didn’t press me further about it.

Sometimes I wish people had followed up with me more, perhaps it would have helped me seek help earlier. But hindsight is always 20/20 and these are difficult conversations most people are still not ready to have.

There’s this idea in Australia that if you can drink someone under the table, it’s an achievement, not something to be worried about. But if you have a drinking problem … well … they almost don’t see you as a whole person anymore. You become a label and mine was “Alcoholic”.

Alcohol was a huge part of my life, but it wasn’t who I was. It was something else. My attitude towards addiction changed once I realised I had one.

I first sought help in 2018, but I kept it secret from anyone I knew. No technology is allowed during your time in detox and rehab, because it allows you to better focus on your recovery. Knowing this in advanced, I told my family that my phone needed repairing and I might not be able to contact them for a while, and to close friends I simply said that I was going on a “retreat”.

I drank about two days after leaving my 10-day rehab stint thinking I would be OK. I felt ashamed to tell anyone about my problems, because there’s still so much stigma surrounding addiction.

I didn’t think people would understand how this could happen to me, particularly people who knew me very well. They’d never have guessed that I was back to struggling so much again every day.

Then last year, I came across a call-out on social media looking for people to participate in a free six-month program if they were struggling with addiction. It would be filmed as part of an SBS documentary series Addicted Australia.

It’s interesting that I decided to apply straight away. At that point, I obviously knew I had an issue with alcohol, even if subconsciously, but I didn’t really know where to turn, or how to find treatment I could afford. So, I took this opportunity and filled out the form.

I never expected to be accepted, I didn’t think my situation was bad enough to warrant help. But I suppose the stars aligned for me at that time.

The program provided six months of wrap around care, including weekly access to psychiatrists, psychologists and peer support groups, as well as family support programs. We also had the option to attend detox and then short-term rehab, of which I took up the opportunity of both.

When I first arrived at the hospital, on my own, I almost wished I had told someone I was going. It was a very lonely time for me, but I got through it.

I was told the first few days would be the most difficult, and they were. I barely slept, I was shaking, throwing up, sweating, seeing chairs move and lights in front of my eyes that weren’t actually there.

Now my perspective of addiction has changed. I now understand that you don’t choose to have an addiction, and that it doesn’t discriminate, much like any other illness. But you can choose to get help.

Knowing where that help is, when you’re ready for it, is possibly the more difficult part, and that’s why I owe so much to this program for having everything in the one place.

I only gained enough courage to tell my mum towards the end of the treatment program. I had no idea what to expect, but I thought she’d be very disappointed.

I spent weeks thinking about how to tell her. When I finally got on a plane to see her in person, all the ideas I had about where the conversation would go completely disappeared.

I just cried and told her about the program and that I had been drinking every day, including at work.

She simply said, “Thank you for telling me” and gave me a hug. That was completely unexpected but meant so much to me in that moment. I now feel our relationship is so much stronger because of it.

If it weren’t for the treatment program, I probably wouldn’t be here now. Being a part of the documentary series also prompted me to be more honest with myself and others.
I thought people close to me would be unsupportive and disappointed, but, for the most part, they have proven to be the exact opposite. Through this experience I have found out who my true friends and family are.

There is no straight and narrow road with addiction, even with all the support around you, you will fall sometimes. It is not a linear journey and I have had lapses, where I might drink on one particular day.

But it’s not about how many times you fall down. It’s the getting back up and trying again, and not giving up on yourself that is most important.

After leaving rehab, I began by counting each day I hadn’t had a drink. But after three weeks, I stopped counting. I found that it actually made me too nervous, and if I did end up having one drink in a week, then I would feel like a failure and wouldn’t consider the other 20 days I had been sober.

So now I just take each day at a time, and sometimes it is an hour at a time. I find this works best for me but I have met others who find counting each day of sobriety very helpful. It’s really about finding what works for you as an individual, and most importantly, to just keep moving forward!

I suspect there are many people in my situation who know that their alcohol use is not ‘normal’, but they don’t know what to do about it.

We tend to celebrate the drinking culture in Australia. Alcohol is everywhere you go; you can’t escape it. In that way, it makes it more difficult to know when you have crossed over from occasional drinker to addict.

But once it really starts to consume your life (literally and figuratively), you will know. Or you will be in denial. And I’ve been in both situations. Just don’t stay in denial forever. You are only as sick as your secrets.

Ask for help. Seek it out. You will be OK. You just need to take that first step. And the second, and then the third … It’s very difficult, but it’s worth it.

Tune into Addicted Australia from Tuesday 10 November, 8.30pm on SBS to see more of Heidi’s story.

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