Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Spending the week waiting to get your hands on the next drink? Seana Pt.2
Seana Smith returns to the Why Smart Women podcast with a raw and revealing conversation about her decades-long struggle with alcohol and her transformative journey to five years of sobriety. From growing up with a father who was a drinker in Scotland to becoming what she calls a "grey area drinker" herself, Seana's story challenges our cultural assumptions about what problem drinking looks like.
So my relationship to alcohol is extremely good these days because I never drink, haven't drunk a touch, haven't touched a drop of alcohol for five years.
Speaker 2:You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur, jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain which will blow your mind.
Speaker 2:I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Well, hello smart women and welcome back to the why Smart Women podcast. I'm Annie McCubbin and I have the absolute pleasure of having my very, very dear friend, shauna Smith, back again For regular listeners. You may remember her from when we talked about her deep dive into conspiracy theories, which was also my favourite thing, and today we're going to talk about something else that had occurred in Shauna's life, and she has written a book about it called.
Speaker 1:Going Under, going Under which I have read, and loved.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for making the time to come back, so let's talk about you and your book and your relationship to alcohol.
Speaker 1:That's right, my relationship to alcohol. So my relationship to alcohol is extremely good these days because I never drink, haven't drunk a touch, haven't touched a drop of alcohol for five years and I cannot recommend it highly enough and I feel so much better for just not drinking at all.
Speaker 2:So when you say you feel better, what do you mean? In what way?
Speaker 1:My mental health is much better and my physical health is much better than it ever was in all my drinking years, and suppose my drinking years started at about 15, 16, but didn't really get going till I was 18. And I stopped when I was 55. So that was a lot of drinking years. I did have ups and downs within that time, you know, but I definitely was one of the 15 to 20% of people who drink, who drink much more than is recommended, than is healthy. So you know, a small number of people drink most of the alcohol. I think it's something like 20% of drinkers drink 70% of all alcohol.
Speaker 2:Can you say that again?
Speaker 1:20% of drinkers. About 20% of drinkers drink 70% of the alcohol sold, meaning that all the alcohol retailers rely for their income upon problem drinkers and I'm very happy to be called a problem drinker Alcohol is definitely causing me a problem, so you would refer to yourself as you used to called a problem drinker alcohol would have referred, causing me a problem um, so you would refer to yourself as you used to be a problem drinker and that's exactly how I'd put it.
Speaker 1:I was a problem drinker, stopped the drinking and now there's no problem, and I've got lots of friends who only drink a few glasses of wine a week, who would never go over the 10 units.
Speaker 1:That is the harm minimization recommendation by the government. Most people are like that, in fact, but there's a big gang of people who are not like that and who are drinking half a bottle of wine a night or a bottle of wine a night. And that was me, not all my life, but for the parts when I did do that it really caused me problems. So I but I was brought up in a house with a problem drinker um, tell me about.
Speaker 2:Tell me about that yeah, so.
Speaker 1:So dad was a huge drinker, very typical in Scotland at the time. He drank whiskey with no water, didn't want ice in it, didn't want water in it at all. And he drank a lot of whiskey, occasional glasses of wine, and he was unfortunately a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde drinker as well, because he was aggressive and violent when he was drinking not when he wasn't drinking.
Speaker 1:He was a lovely man, he was a big character, um, but when he did drink he drank far too much. But all the fun times when I was growing up had alcohol around them and I got out of the family house which I write about in my book as soon as I could. So I ended up getting a scholarship to a boarding school, which I look back now and think I was just trying to get out of the house, right. But really as soon as I left the house and was independent, I just picked up with the drinking and drank like an absolute fish all through my 20s, you know, like terrible binge drinking which I know a lot of people do in their 20s.
Speaker 2:So just describe binge drinking, because I mean I've thought about you a lot since reading the book because I have drinks but I certainly I can stop. I can stop after a couple and I've watched myself and thought, oh, I hope that's not me and that I can't. But I can actually stop and I get to a point and I go I don't want it, I don't want the acidity, there's something about the acidity, or I just don't want it, I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't, there's something about the acidity, or I just don't want it well, officially, you know, no, I, I could have kept drinking all night and many times I did. You know, even as a parent, many times I did keep drinking all night. There wasn't that sensible off switch, um, and I think that is universal with people who've got a problem drinking. You know, I'm in lots of sober groups now and people talk about how, once you've started, it's really difficult to stop. Once you've had a couple of alcoholic units, then your inhibitions are dulled, yes, and I would often find myself saying, oh, I'll just have another one, I'll just have another one, you know, or two or three, and it was terribly difficult to hold myself back. All through my 20s I did not try to hold myself back, you know, I was on a massive boozing bender which led me to do some really stupid things, and I was very fortunate that I never got caught drinking and driving or ran somebody over, because I was certainly doing it in my 20s.
Speaker 2:So you were actually behind the wheel of a car, right, yeah oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:a friend of mine once made me get out because I'd vomited out of the window I mean, it was a long time ago, by the way like, but yes, definitely was doing stupid, stupid things and having stupid, stupid relationships with men who probably weren't stupid and stupid, but I was just. I was just on a massive sort of self-harm binge through my 20s, whilst appearing to be fine on the surface. I first stopped drinking, actually, when I was 31, and I stopped drinking for about six months, and that was when I met Paul, who became my husband and got pregnant, and then I had four children and didn't find it difficult not to stop. It's amazing how easy it is really when you've got probably had a physical dependency, but I did find it quite easy to stop what when they were, when you were pregnant, when?
Speaker 1:when I was pregnant and when they were babies, right when they were little, it was too hard to drink. You couldn't cope. I couldn't cope with a hangover when I had small children, so that was great. But I found that once the youngest children got to about five and life got easier, I could feel alcohol creeping back in and I could feel that it was difficult not to drink as much as I wanted to, not to drink as much as I wanted to. So I spent decades saying to myself don't drink between Monday and Friday, don't drink during the week. I would never keep alcohol in the house, or it was rare to, because that helped slow me down. I had all these tips and tricks with myself to try and only drink at the weekends and not more than a bottle of night. But in the school holidays I would tend to drink every night and I'd always put on weight. It was always in my mind that I didn't want to drink a lot and then I would beat myself up horrendously if I woke up with a hangover.
Speaker 2:So there was a constant, I called myself all the names of the day. There was like an internal monologue, so your brain was preoccupied with whether or not you should be drinking and how to not drink or could be drinking, and how to not drink.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it came and went throughout life. So I once stopped drinking for a year, in 2013. Yeah, because I had been drinking too much and and I genuinely believed that at the end of that year. I went to AA that year, but I thought I'm not an alcoholic in that and at the end of this year I'll be able to just have one or two and I'll be like my many friends who don't have a problem with alcohol. And at the end of this year, I'll be able to just have one or two and I'll be like my many friends who don't have a problem with alcohol. But at the end of that year, funnily enough, I wasn't like my many friends who didn't have a problem with alcohol.
Speaker 2:So what happened at the end of the year?
Speaker 1:Well, I had a glass of wine and then a week later I had a couple of glasses of wine and then the next few days I was drinking, wanting to drink every night, but stopping myself and I write that about that in the book how this stopping myself was harder than anything else. So when I wrote the book I really actually started because my parents had both died and I really wanted to explore this weird upbringing in Scotland which was right, half marvelous and half catastrophic, and I wanted to write about that. But then I wanted I had stopped drinking by the time I started writing and I wanted to put the story of my very normal sort of gray area drinking where my life was ticking along. My husband didn't think I had a problem, but inside my own head it was a disaster um does he look back on?
Speaker 2:that now and go. Does Paul go? Your husband, look back on that now and go. Well, clearly it was a problem, or?
Speaker 1:yeah, but I yeah, no. Yes, it wasn't an external problem, but I wasn't really telling him about what I was thinking, and also he used to work away, as you know a lot. So the year which I write about, which is the last year that when I stopped drinking, he was away two or three nights a week, so he wasn't really seeing me drinking during the week and he would have seen me drinking at the weekends, but I wasn't falling about at all.
Speaker 2:So what were you like? Maybe occasionally I was right, occasionally.
Speaker 1:I'd go out and I would have been staggering on the way home. Yeah, I remember when our kids were at school together. I loved having parties at my house because I came to them to drive. I could drink as much as I wanted to. Yeah, yeah, but I would. Probably. I'd still be walking and talking at the end of the night, but the next morning I'd wake up with a hangover and feel absolutely terrible.
Speaker 2:I can honestly say, honestly say, in all those years, I cannot ever remember you looking drunk or seeming drunk. Never, never, never, never.
Speaker 1:No, no. So it's interesting. I don't think you have to to have a problem, though, because nowadays, when I was young, if you'd met me in my 20s, you would have seen me tripping over, breaking my leg. You know I would have. You would have seen me being drunk, but then a lot of my friends and I were like that in our 20s. I don't think anybody in since I had the children probably would have said oh, sean, I've had too much to drink. No, or maybe once or twice, once or twice. But that doesn't mean you don't have a problem and it doesn't mean that you're not drinking way, way more than is healthy.
Speaker 1:in fact, no amount of alcohol is good for you yeah um and we all drink because we like the instant relax that you get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a real thing and it helps people be more sociable, but any amount of alcohol is lifting your cancer risk and is lifting your heart attack risk. But you know so I'm now a member of lots of lovely sober communities, my favourite one being the British group Over the Influence, which is a wonderful community for me to belong to, and people in there tended to be drinking much more.
Speaker 2:Just tell me if you don't mind about amounts. So you described yourself as a grey drinker, and then you said the grey area and these people were drinking much more. So can you explain to me the amounts you're talking about?
Speaker 1:okay. So if you're a person who drinks one bottle of wine a night, that's seven alcoholic units. So that's 49 a week. So that's 39 a week more than the harm minimization guidelines. But if you're a young person or a person in your 30s who's going out, you might be drinking 30 units a night. If you're drinking cocktails and you have a very long night, that's a lot of units. You have to stay upright. You have to have a very high tolerance to be drinking that much and still going. But I have to say I know a person who doesn't want to stop drinking who would be drinking two bottles of wine a night, and beers as well.
Speaker 2:So these people that are drinking?
Speaker 1:But their tolerance level is huge and that is a very serious amount.
Speaker 2:So you're just trying to get my head around, because if I go out and I have a margarita, I pretty much can't have another one. I can't have one. Well, good idea. So you're talking about you could have 30 of those, but I'm old right, not 30 margaritas 30 units of alcohol.
Speaker 1:So maybe people would have 10 cocktails if they go out for a very long night, right? Not many people would be doing cocktails if they go out for a very long night, right, not many people would be doing that. When you think about grey area drinking, it's more thinking of somebody who's having half a bottle of wine a night and one at the weekends. And that's still a lot of units.
Speaker 1:It's still a lot of alcohol, you know, and lots of people would be having 20 to 30 units of alcohol a week and hopefully most people know about the harm that can be caused by alcohol and people are choosing their harm risk. But I think what we don't like to talk about is that it's also an addictive substance so that people think they're drinking because it's good fun and they think they're drinking because it's relaxing.
Speaker 1:But actually at a certain point people are drinking because they need the alcohol to feel that their brain chemistry is normal. Because if you, if you, drink alcohol every day or every couple of days, it is having a big effect on your neurochemistry. So your brain is being dampened down and then it's having to ramp itself up Right and it ends up not feeling normal. Like any physical addiction, you don't feel normal if you haven't had it. It's no different from smoking. I don't know if you've ever smoked, but my experience of smoking was that it was a very physical addiction and it was really hard to stop because I had that physical addiction. But I had to change my thinking with you and your gray area drinking.
Speaker 2:So this you're saying it's an addiction, and father was an alcoholic. So what are we saying? Are we saying that it's in the gene, that it was the society you were exposed to it as a thing? Like, what are we saying about?
Speaker 1:what engendered it. I think it's pretty well established that it's both genetic and environmental. So there are genetic predispositions to addiction. But if you're brought up in active addiction as well, then you also, as a child, see that as normal. So I think that sort of genes and environment often go hand in hand. Yes, you know so. Yeah, I definitely feel that it would have been better if I had never picked up an alcoholic drink in my life. But I was primed to pick one up and run with it in Scotland in the 70s and 80s.
Speaker 1:I think young people now are making more considered choices.
Speaker 1:I do too they have a lot more information about the harms and I feel, as a person who really never drank normally or never drank moderately, that I was just plugged into the matrix at a very early age. I found it really, really difficult to stop. I kept chasing the myth of moderation. So some people can moderate, most people can moderate, but if you're a person who can't moderate then it is torture to try and do so right, because you're stopping your body getting what it feels yeah, I see so abstinence and I went for years of stopping and starting, stopping and starting, stopping and starting, but would always end up feeling that I was drinking too much and berating myself.
Speaker 1:You know, I've got a very nice husband. I would never talk to me the way I talk to myself, and if anybody had ever talked to me that way, yeah, I would have left them. You know, I would never put up with it way I talk to myself, and if anybody had ever talked to me that way, yeah.
Speaker 1:I would have left them. You know, I would never put up with it. I mean, I did get abused by my father a lot and I think that once I left, dana decided but I abused myself yeah, I was gonna say so I wake up every morning thinking thank god I've got no hangover and thank goodness it's a normal day.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say, um, that you you've just internalized, haven't you this sort of abusive voice of your father? Yes, that's right, I did, but I just in terms of addiction, I mean, we do well for all of us. The way we have washed up on this planet who we are is a combination, is it not, of our gene, our environment and our personality, and the three of those things come together and and then you have behavior.
Speaker 2:So your siblings, yes, are they are? Do they are? They do they have gray area? I don't know what to call you are they problem?
Speaker 1:well, you know they've been very clear to me that it's not up to me to to say whether they had addictions or not, that that is their story, because I may have mentioned that what I thought about it in the book, but I took it out because they said, no, no, shauna, you cannot say that these are our stories so that's true, I mean, I have to say, my younger brother, who I have written quite a lot about, definitely had alcohol and drug addiction problems.
Speaker 1:And he has got a severe mental health condition. Yes, but so I'm speaking on his behalf there. But I'm sure he'd tell you the same thing as you met him.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So if someone's listening to this and they feel that they are in the problem, drinking basket what do they do?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that trying to pull the wool away from their own eyes and unplug from the matrix is a great start. Honestly, I really believe that anybody who has ever googled and am I an alcoholic or am I drinking too much? Is drinking too much and, realistically, anybody who's drinking more than 10 units a week yeah, is causing damage themselves. Now, if they're doing it and they know about it, then it is their lives. Of course, if you're a sober, curious person, there's a massive movement of people now to do other things instead of drinking whilst they're out having fun, like what it's quite like chatting to your friends, like drinking non-alcoholic drinks, like right, if I want a big buzz, nowadays I go swimming in the sea and I get a massive buzz from that.
Speaker 2:Do you? I know I see you all with mimes swimming, yeah, yeah. So you're saying to replace, I love a buzz.
Speaker 1:I love a bit of a. I love a buzz and I love a bit of adrenaline, so I just get it in ways that are a bit healthier. Now, who doesn't like a dopamine boost?
Speaker 2:We all do, we all do, but we don't have to. Yeah, get it. If I can just go back. So what you're saying is if you suspect that you're a problem drinker, you can go online and look and you Google. Sober curious.
Speaker 1:So you can Google sober curious. You could talk to your GP and just say what kind of support might there be available? But you will find online A lot of people are running courses and classes where you do a month off alcohol as a test or, even better, try a hundred days off alcohol. I see, but you do need to replace it with something else. So you know, you need to sort of change your lifestyle so that you don't miss it and you put something else in and mixing with other people who are doing the same things, who are socializing sober, going to weddings sober. Going to funerals sober, going to book launches sober. It's quite a revelation, because it's so tied into our culture that we need alcohol to celebrate and commiserate, but we actually don't at all and yes, you're so right, it is on our own.
Speaker 2:It's a societal norm, isn't it? It is, if someone thinks I'm a problem drinker, um, look, you know. Google it, go to the doctor and then have a lifestyle change so that something replaces it in terms of the dopamine correct.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right replaces it in terms of the dopamine. Some people go to rehabs and there are all sorts of different rehabs. You can also go to detox. If you're a very, very heavy drinker, you would do a medical detox. Right of podcasts, which are superb way to gain information and knowledge and a sense of community, and there are lots of quit lit books. So mine is called a quit lit book and there are lots of quit lit books where people talk about what happened when they stopped drinking and how they've improved their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, well, that's very interesting and thank you so much, shauna Smith, for telling me your story. It is a fantastic book. We will put it in my pleasure, we will put the book in the show notes and the book is called Going Under and I can highly recommend that you read it. And thank you so much. Honestly, that was really really super interesting and helpful, and thank you for coming on again and telling me your story.
Speaker 1:Shauna, my pleasure. Thank you for having me See you at Anita's party.
Speaker 2:Yes, I don't know anything about it. I don't either, yet I haven't planned it. Thank you, I've just got the date. I don't know anything, but you'll be there.
Speaker 1:That's a great date.
Speaker 2:Excellent, all right, lovely to talk. Thank you, and have a lovely afternoon. Thank you so much, shauna. See you, bye, no worries, bye, bye. Thanks for tuning into why.
Speaker 2:Smart Women with me, annie McCubbin, I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny.
Speaker 2:This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. No-transcript.
