“I had many obstacles in my mind—confidence, self-doubt, perfectionism. But just cracking on and doing it proved to be easier than I thought.”

Anna launched The Big Drink Rethink, a podcast exploring our relationship with alcohol, the culture around it, and what life can look like without it. It was a creative outlet, a way to channel her curiosity, and, unexpectedly, an anchor that kept her steady in her alcohol-free life.

“It keeps me very intact in this world of alcohol freedom, which is very important to me.”

But her journey to this point wasn’t smooth. It was a long, slow unraveling of drinking habits that had once felt normal, even essential. Anna’s story isn’t one of dramatic rock bottoms, it’s one of creeping dissatisfaction, of realising that drinking wasn’t just stealing her time, but also her sense of self.

Advertising, Drinking, and a Life on Repeat

Anna spent over 25 years in advertising, an industry where drinking wasn’t just acceptable – it was expected. She remembers long lunches, late nights, and the endless socialising that blurred into work.

“I sometimes think about whether I was attracted to the industry because there was permission within that space to drink.”

She wasn’t an outlier. Alcohol was woven into the job – client meetings over wine, celebratory drinks, networking events. It was an industry where drinking was both professional and personal, making it even harder to see when it had crossed the line from social to habitual.

When she got married, her drinking didn’t slow down. In fact, it ramped up. Parenthood brought a new challenge: identity loss. Motherhood was disorienting, and the reality of maternity leave was nothing like the glowing, fulfilling image sold to women.

“I found maternity leave deadly dull. I found being a young mum incredibly boring. And I felt shameful that I wasn’t reveling in it the way I was ‘supposed’ to.”

The loneliness, the shift in identity, the quiet grief for the life she had before, Anna managed it the way she had always managed difficult feelings: with wine.

“I knew that life had changed forever. I was no longer the advertising girl, but I wasn’t quite an established mum. I worried I never would be.”

The Wake-Up Call

There was no one big dramatic moment, just a series of small wake-up calls. A particularly painful one came when her daughter noticed.

“Hearing my daughter ask my husband why I was slurring and behaving the way I was on a Sunday lunchtime was a bit of a wake-up call.”

That day, she had done what had become routine, drinking in the kitchen while preparing Sunday lunch, stretching the cooking process to justify just one more glass. By the time they sat down for a board game afterward, she was too drunk to follow along.

“I had thought that not much would be needed of me that afternoon. But then we sat down to play, and I was all over the shop.”

She had tried moderation for years, but it never stuck. The idea of giving up entirely had always seemed too extreme. But suddenly, drinking wasn’t just affecting her, it was seeping into her family life. That changed everything.

The Shift

In 2020, Anna made a decision.

“I had started really going through that contemplative stage about six months before, but that year, I knew I had to change.”

She read books, This Naked Mind by Annie Grace was a game-changer. It shifted her mindset, helping her see that alcohol wasn’t the solution she had always thought it was.

“You thought it relaxed you. It doesn’t. You thought it helped you sleep. It doesn’t. You thought it was a reward. It’s poison.”

This approach, looking at alcohol as something that had been falsely placed on a pedestal, helped her finally break free.

From there, it was about rebuilding. She left advertising, a move that felt like closing the door on an old version of herself. She started The Big Drink Rethink, not to tell people what to do, but to open up conversations about alcohol, identity, and change.

“I feel in some small way that I’m trying to put right some of the wrongs from my past.”

A New Narrative

For Anna, sobriety isn’t just about not drinking. It’s about figuring out who you are without it, what truly excites you, and what you want to give your energy to.

“I regret the energy I gave to drinking. I sometimes wonder what more I could have achieved.”

Now, she gets to use that energy for something that feeds her creativity and curiosity. And, most importantly, it allows her to stay rooted in a life she chose.

“You don’t need to know straight away what you’ll do with your time when you stop drinking. You just have to be willing to try things, to see what fills you up.”

For Anna, podcasting did exactly that.