The Sober Awkward Path: Victoria Vanstone’s Journey to her Truth

Host Fran Willoughby welcomes Victoria Vanstone of the Sober Awkward podcast, an author and sobriety advocate living in Australia, to discuss alcohol, honesty, and motherhood. Victoria describes her weekend binge-drinking pattern after becoming a mum, the anxiety and guilt of hangovers with young children, and a defining moment of admitting she couldn’t moderate and needed help; therapy helped her envision “stepping off” the chaotic drinking culture, and she has been sober for eight years. Fran shares her own turning points, completing 100+ days sober, and grieving her mother without drinking, which changed her relationship with alcohol. They critique the stigma of the label “alcoholic,” discuss shame, role-modeling for children, and using professional support. Victoria highlights her books, communities, retreats, and episodes on menopause, ADHD, and the nervous system.

For more info on Vic use the links below:

Instagram @soberawkward @drunkmummysobermummy

www.soberawkward.com

www.soberawkward.com/retreats

www.cuppa.community - 

Books - A Thousand Wasted Sundays and Mumming - available on Amazon audio and kindle

If you have a story that you think would be good for the podcast, please do get in touch by emailing thepowerofthetruth@mojo-motivator.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Power of the Truth podcast with me, Fran Willoughby. I am so excited to welcome today's guest. She's someone that I came across because I've been on my own sobriety journey. I stumbled across her podcasts over Awkward about a year and a half ago, and at the time it was something I really needed. I felt Vic's story would really resonate with my listeners because ultimately her story is one of truth and having to learn to tell the truth to herself about her behaviour and also learning to be true about how she wanted to show up in her own life. If you are affected by anything that you hear, please do seek out her podcast or her community or any of the other tools or links in the show notes that you might need. I hope you find her as entertaining and insightful as me. If I could just ask a favour, if you enjoy what you hear, if you could like or subscribe or comment on Spotify or Apple or wherever you are listening, I would be very grateful and helps us to be seen and heard by other people. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome to the podcast Victoria Van Stone. Welcome to the podcast Victoria Van Stone. I'm so excited to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

My pleasure, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

No problem. I know who you are because I've listened to you for a long time on your fabulous podcast, Sober Awkward. But for the benefit of my listeners and anyone that doesn't know who you are, please could you tell us a little bit about you and how you got here?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, so I live in Australia now. I'm originally from Reading in the UK. I've been in Australia for about 15 years now, but lived all over the place out of a backpack for probably 25 years while I was in the midst of my partying days. I've got three kids and I'm an author and podcaster, I guess a sort of advocate for normalized social binge drinking a voice for people sort of struggling, especially women. And I create all sorts of different ways for people connecting who are treading this sober path. That's kind of my job by creating holidays and retreats and podcasts and community and meetups and all sorts of things. So I got sober about eight years ago, which I'm sure we're going to get into, but it was just uh I felt there was a gap that needed to be filled with a little bit of humour as well. So everything I do has a little dollop of very British toilet-based humour in it, which seems to keep everybody entertained, and it also gets people listening to my podcast that wouldn't normally listen to a sobriety podcast. So there is meaning behind my awful jokes.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Yeah, brilliant. And that yeah, and like I say, I've listened to the podcast a lot over the last couple of years because I've been on my own sober journey, or sober curious journey, I think probably is the way I would describe it. So obviously, this podcast is about truth, and I was incredibly drawn to you and your openness and honesty around the subject of alcohol. And I've been obviously reading about you as well, doing some research, and you talk about the morning that you sat on the floor sweaty, hung over, surrounded by baby wipes. Um in that moment, what was the exact truth that you admitted to yourself? What was it do you think that changed for you in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I was repeating a pattern so many times and wasn't solving an issue. And I think there's only so long that you can keep making the same mistakes and not getting a different result and keep doing it. There has to come a point where I realised I did not have a solution for what I didn't even know was a drinking problem at that stage. I just thought, well, I keep going out, I keep wanting to have a couple, and then I'm last man standing on any grubby dance floor. So what on earth is going on here? So that really reached a moment, an exact moment, as you say, which was with pure honesty to go, I cannot do this on my own. I have tried, I've tried and I've failed at moderation. I keep doing this, and it's getting worse, in fact. I'm not solving anything, and therefore I need to reach a turning point where I either carry on like this, which was never gonna work because I had such terrible anxiety, or I get help. And that was that moment, and I remember it as clear as day because it was a turning point, a massive, massive turning point in my life, was just being, as you say, totally honest with myself and understanding that I couldn't move forward if I didn't get somebody else involved.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Oh, yeah, I can absolutely relate to that because I had that moment not quite as dramatically, but a similar revelationary moment in January last year, which was around the time that I found your podcast as well. Great. Yeah, so you talk about a pattern. The pattern obviously was the going out and being the last man standing. But in terms of your daily routine, because I know for me, when my kids were little, nearly 20 and nearly 18 now, so they're big lads, and so I've kind of grown past that moment, but I did spend the majority of their young life drinking quite heavily. It's quite hard for me to say out loud because it's but it's true. And I remember saying to my husband, I need to just go and press the button on the kettle instead of opening the fridge when I've put them to bed. You know, I just need to I need to just change that habit because the habit was I've earned my glass of wine now. I've got I've got them both to bed, it's been a long day, I'm tired. I I've earned that. It felt like a treat, but it wasn't, it was a habit. And I did go through phases of being really good at pressing the button on the kettle instead of having a wine, but you know, as they got older and they didn't need me quite so much and they put themselves to bed, alright, five o'clock somewhere, let's have a glass of wine, you know. So for you, how did that manifest before you got to that point? Because your children were quite young, right, when this was all going on.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, they were really young. It just happened because well, it was really hard to identify, actually. I'll I'll say that. Because I wasn't a daily drinker, and because I wasn't what you'd label or imagine an alcoholic looks like, it was very hard for me to identify what I was. There was this gap, you know, this this place where I was falling through the cracks, a place between the pub and an AA meeting where I couldn't identify what I was experiencing. I knew that alcohol was having a negative impact on my life, but I couldn't understand that that was worthy of me getting support or even considering. I didn't even know that the sober, sober curious, you know, momentum, this movement had even begun, even though it was probably running alongside that the whole time. All I knew was that I needed a way to learn to be a better drinker because after having my kids, I'd been a party animal for 25 years, and you know, I wanted to continue the only identity that I knew, which was being a mum, which was this new identity, and then combining that with who I used to be, because I thought that's what you do. I didn't realise that you were supposed to give up the partying when you became a mum, so I was really determined to keep this persona alive, and I was like, I'm not gonna let a baby, you know, crawl in my path and take over who I am. I'm still gonna be party Vic and hold the party mantle high for me and all my friends. And of course, that is a really stupid. I was so naive to the fact that then, of course, I had a child, I had this huge responsibility, and suddenly there was a consequence to my hangovers. So I wouldn't drink you during the week, I'd be the perfect mum, I'd have all the amazing foods, I'd spend my days mashing pumpkin and all the lovely mumsy things, and I loved it and I was great at it, but by the time the weekend came, it was like right, you know, I've really deserved this now. That I was a perfect candidate for that mummy wine culture because I was so desperate to get some relief from the mundaneity of being a new mum, and that continued for far too long. I mean, there was four years between me having my first child and my second child, while I'd attempt moderation, I'd go out and make excuses and promises and be like, yes, I'm only gonna have a couple, and I'd sit at the bar with my one drink, feeling all you know, confident about it. And then once one was down the neck, of course, I was ordering a round of shots. That's the sort of drinker I was. And then I had to deal with a hangover, and I'd never had any consequences. You know, when I was travelling, I just moved on to the next town and I've made a dick out of myself in one town. I literally would pack all of my problems into my backpack and move. I actually actually got driven out of a place once because my behaviour had been so bad, so I didn't actually have to move myself. Often people moved me along as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah. So when you have a baby, you don't have anyone to kind of do that for you. And I, you know, I had to be home and I had to be responsible, which was something I hadn't really had been before. I've just been this kind of mad banshee travelling the world and doing whatever I wanted. But I'd always known I wanted kids and I knew I had to settle down a bit, but the shame and the I don't know, the guilt of having to tend for a newborn baby when you're hungover is horrendous. And I kind of didn't predict it, I just thought I'll just get on with it and I'll freeze the breast milk and I'll do all the things that you're supposed to do, you know, to get away with drinking as a new parent. And it got to the point where I used to get so drunk on those nights out, and I'd see all my friends like sitting in the corner of the bar with their one glass of wine, like still looking a bit prim and proper while I was kind of ripping my shirt off to Bon Jovi on the dance floor. And I just couldn't understand it. I'd be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, we're out, let's do this. And then they'd be the ones posting pictures of them walking along the seafront with their pram the next day. Well, I would be in bed, not able to even move my head, and the only time would be getting up to go and vomit because I was drinking so much more than everybody else. And yeah, the guilt of that caused huge anxiety, and that became my pattern. That was the question you asked, and that was a pattern, you know, that happened every weekend for a very long time. Four years, and then six weeks after having my second child was the last time I drank. So there was four years and six months, something like that, where I was trying to combine these two very, very different lives without even any forethought as to what to expect at when I had a child. I just thought I'm gonna have a baby and I'm gonna still be me. And there's not a lot out there about this transition from party girl to motherhood. You know, there's a place where you just you are who you are, and you're independent and free, and I was just this kind of animal when it came to partying, and that's all I knew. It was my entire identity. I realised now that I was a bit of a people pleaser and I had the responsibility of a room on me a lot of the time, which was probably too much, which actually probably meant I drank more. But the transition for me was hard because I'd gone from being, you know, out all the time to being in the flat and having this life to look after, and all I wanted was an out from that because it felt so strange and so different, and you know, how was I gonna cope? Because I was a drinker, so of course I'm gonna use alcohol as my coping mechanism and my self-medication to feel better about any situation, whether that was happy, sad, depressed, you know, vulnerable, whatever emotion I had. I just knew that booze was always gonna be the answer. Not in a way that I drank my emotions away, it was just a way of me changing an emotion from one thing to another, if you know what I mean. So I was always using it to try and lift the mood and feel better about something.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

I can completely relate, and I don't think it just applies to people who've been party animals. We're sold nowadays, we're sold, you can have it all. You can be everything to everyone all the time, and it's really difficult. Because I did the same as you. I was the perfect mum in that, you know, I breastfed, I pureeed everything, I was so diligent in my motherhood, I read all the books and all the rest of it. But the pressure that came with that was huge, and also for me, it wasn't the party animal thing, although I could be a party animal, it was that I didn't plan to get pregnant, it was a shock. I was 25 when I fell pregnant. I'd been in the theatre, I'd had this dramatic career touring all over the world, it was brilliant, and then all of a sudden, and the smoking ban hadn't come in then in 2005, and someone went, Oh, you're pregnant, and I was like, Oh, well, what did that mean? What do I do now? And all of a sudden, overnight, I couldn't go out because everybody smoked in the pubs, and everything changed for me, and I I had to become a completely different person overnight, you know. And and I didn't understand until many years later the impact that that had had on me, in terms of me going, Oh god, I've got to be somebody completely different now. Who who am I? This I can't be that person anymore because I, you know, how how do I be me? So much of what you say resonates because the coping mechanism, whether it's every night or the binging at the weekend, and being the person that lifts the room, or people are relying on you to bring the party, which I can also appreciate, it comes with a certain pressure. I guess that that leads me to this notion of us being told we can have it all, and it is incredibly hard to manage that, I think.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, and I think it's just getting worse. Like, you know, for me, with my job and everything that I do now in particular, and I haven't even got booze anymore to get an out, but especially with social media and being a writer and all of these things, there's so much you're supposed to be able to achieve as a woman nowadays. Like, I've got to be my own marketing team, and then I'm unpacking the dishwasher, and then I'm making lunches, and then I'm doing a podcast and editing. I'm doing everything, and it's all these little tiny things like this minutia of life that stacks up. No wonder people are over drinking, because honestly, there aren't many outs where you can numb yourself and just disappear for a moment and feel like something's gonna make you relaxed. I'm gonna reach my hand and that's gonna make me feel better. It is so bloody alluring, especially in our day and age where everything is so heightened. Work, money, success, comparison, particularly, all of these things are being, you know, dumped on us because of, you know, mostly because of social media and the internet, there's certain expectations, and you think you've got to do everything. And now I'm getting it's so funny, like you've reminded me. I went to this like women's empowerment um thing the other week, and the women there were probably about 10 years younger than me. It was so funny, right? Because they were like, you know, I want to, this is what I want. I've got my business and I want to be fully empowered, and I want to do retreats, and I want to do keynote speeches. And I and I was they came to me and I was like, I don't want to do any more keynote speeches, I don't want to do any retreats, I want to stop using social media. I had gone like the opposite way. They were like, What do you mean? I was like, it's all fucked, I don't want to do any of it. I just want to sit in my house and be quiet and read a book. Yes, I'm telling you. So yeah, it all peaks, it all peaks, doesn't it? It's like peaks and troughs of emotions and hormones, and then you've got all of this stuff going on around. No wonder women in their 40s and 50s are drinking more than ever before because it's so much pressure, and the children like that is 99% of my capacity. Then I've got everything else on top, so yeah, you know, I I sort of there's part of me still like I will never drink again in my whole life. I'm completely over-educated about the drug in itself, but I totally understand it, and there are still moments where I've had a long day and I've go and see some mates, and they're sitting there having a cold beer, and I'm like, I understand that. I would never do it, but I remember exactly why I did.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

It's interesting, and the concept of an alcoholic, I think, is a very difficult one, and it's something I really wanted to speak to you about because I think we all have this image of the dirty tramp on the street with a bottle in a paper bag, and oh, he's an alcoholic, isn't it? Sad. But the reality of alcoholism, and I know that because my brother-in-law is an alcoholic, is very different. And I don't know whether what I was was an alcoholic. I certainly had problems with alcohol, I did manage to sort it out on my own. It is still something that I think I do think about giving up completely regularly, and I did do longer than my hundred days, Victoria Van Stone. I'm very proud of it. Um, and I I did question at the end of that time whether or not I wanted to drink again. I should explain because we talked about it beforehand, but one of your episodes, uh, which I would highly recommend anybody who is sober curious listening to one of the episodes on your sober awkward podcast is about um doing the hundred days sober, isn't it? And and I listened to that and thought I need to do that, I need to do it and see where it takes me. Um and I got to that moment because I'd been to oh, this is a hard story to tell out into the world, but I'm gonna tell it anyway because that's the point. I hadn't drunk over Christmas last year because I uh had been very poorly, I'd had flu, and as a result, I hadn't really had a drink, I'd had a virtually dry Christmas, which for me and my family was unheard of. We're a big rugby family, my husband's a big drinker, his family were a big drinker. Interestingly, my parents didn't drink at all. Um, so I hadn't grown up around alcohol or anything, it had just become this kind of draw for me through wanting to relax and and everything. Uh, and anyway, we'd had this kind of dry Christmas situation. Unfortunately, just before Christmas, my best friend's dad had passed away. And the funeral was on the 29th of January. And we got to this funeral, I'd driven there, but it became very clear when we got there that she was drinking, she'd decided she was drinking that day. And my husband said to me, you know, have a drink with her, I'll drive the car back, it's fine. I don't mind driving, you know, have have one. And I was like, Oh, all right, I'll just have one too. Fatal, um, because I couldn't just have two. If I'd had two, then I was carrying on. We did the wake, everything was fine. We decided to go on to a pub afterwards. We were several bottles of wine down between the group of us. My husband went to the bar and he shouted, they've run out of pickpool now. What do you want? I went, doesn't matter now, I can't taste it anyway. And we carried on. We had more wine, more wine. She, I know, was very hungover the following day and devastated because she felt like she'd overdrunk. I couldn't function the following day. I had a McDonald's for my lunch. I literally had to cancel all my meetings. So disappointed with myself because I hadn't drunk really properly for so long. And that was my sitting on the floor moment when I went, I'm not doing this anymore. And I didn't touch a drop then until late May. Um, now I didn't know when I started that journey that I was gonna lose my mum. I lost my mum in April of last year, but I was actually very grateful because I don't think it would have helped me during that time to be drinking at all. But I know through going through that journey and having to go out and be the person not drinking, or or whatever, that I definitely did have problems with how I related to people when I was drinking, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, f you just funerals are somewhere where it's one of the highest rates of relapse is at funerals because people almost feel like they owe it to the person that has passed away to have a drink, especially if they were a drinker. And it's a really Really big culture in the UK and in a lot of countries, actually, is to you know have a have a drink to bid someone farewell. But there's somebody on one of my community pages who got sober before his mum's funeral, actually, and said it was one of the best things he could have ever done because he felt like he respected um her by not drinking and was able to follow through with sobriety because he thought, Oh, I'm gonna do this. His his mother had passed away from alcoholism, and so instead of following what was kind of meant to be was to everyone have a drink at the funeral, he he took a stand on that day and decided not to, and he's been sober ever since. So, yeah, it's it can go either way, like it's very difficult, of course, when somebody dies, and it's you know, it's another feeling a feeling of sadness. And what do you do when you have a feeling? We go to the easiest option, and sometimes that extends people's grief, unfortunately, because you don't get to process any emotion, you just block them out. That the emotions will stay there, they will sit underneath the alcohol for as long as you keep drinking for. And a lot of people have to deal with grief when they get sober, even if it's from somebody who's died 10 or 20 years ago. It's like, gosh, I didn't even realise I hadn't dealt with this. It's all bubbling to the surface, and of course, that can lead to relapse too, because sobriety can feel so much. All of these things from the past start coming out, and you're like, Oh gosh, I've got to deal with it now. But then, of course, you do get to the other side of those things and you deal with them, and you're like, Okay, actually, I feel better because I'm not drinking, I'm clearer, and I'm doing the right thing for myself. So, yeah, but funerals are it's a really, really common, you know, for people that have been sober for a while to go there and just go hard.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

It's a really difficult situation, and we have this expectation, particularly in the UK, like you say, the drinking culture here is is kind of off the scale, I think. Um, I look at it, view it totally differently now. Um, but you know, the week after mum died, we had my nephew's wedding, but that was the week after mum died, and I nearly broke that day because everyone drinks at a wedding, even just the tradition of the toasts raising a glass for the toast, and everybody was amazed because of my past. I picked the glass up, I said cheers, and I put it back down on the table, but that took some willpower, I'm telling you. But off the back of that, I think uh the truth that I kind of came away with from that was if I can do that, if I can go through that off the back of losing mum and wishing mum was there and being sad about her not being present. Um if I can do that, I can do anything, which is why I ended up going on longer, doing mum's funeral, but sober and everything. Amazing. But, you know, interestingly, I do think that hundred days changed my relationship with alcohol completely. So I think for anyone who is curious about sobriety, doing that hundred days as a starter is a is a good place to start, isn't it? Because your body changes, you feel different. One of the things that really stuck with me about what you said was just you wait till you get to 30 days, till you get to 60 days. The smugness, the smugness, but also just physically, you just feel clearer, you feel alive in a way that I don't think I'd felt for a long number of years because I just always felt a little bit dumbed down, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

At the beginning, you said something about understanding this word alcoholism, and I think for anyone that's listening, it's a really important thing to discuss because having a label or having a term that does sound derogatory, quite honestly, is so unhelpful when it comes to stigma and you know what somebody thinks about you. And for me, I have never ever resonated with that term at all. That's not who I am, it's not who I think I am. And I know if I was to say to you, I'm an alcoholic, people conjure up an image straight away, exactly as you said, of that tramp, you know, on a on a park bench clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels. And of course, that wasn't who I was at all. So I do find that term actually quite unhelpful. There is an extreme, there is this vast spectrum of alcoholism, and I do sit very comfortably on it somewhere. I don't know where, and I don't care where, quite honestly. All I know is that alcohol had really negative impact on my life and caused me to have huge anxiety and made me very inauthentic in my own skin. So I was able to break that down that term and go, Well, what am I then? And what and what does it matter what I call myself? Because I think people, when they come to this topic, if they don't know about it, it's easy to point the finger and go, Well, I'm not that, I'm not that person on the park bench, so therefore I'm all right, Jack. And that's of course not the case. That finger pointing is going to keep you in the habit for much, much longer and keep you drinking. Yeah, you might not be that guy that's so far up the spectrum that is, you know, his life has gone out of control and everything's on the edge of a cliff about to fall over. You might not be that person, and actually, not that many are. That's quite an extreme version of alcoholism that we make up in our head. The reality is that people are struggling at home on their own. And it might be one glass of wine a week, it might be a bottle of wine every night. The point is, it doesn't matter how much you drink, whether it's one glass of wine a year, it's not the amount or how often, it's whether it's having impact on your life and considering what life would be like without it and learning who that person is underneath it, underneath the beer and the bravado and all the bollocks that comes along with it. You know, I'm so over all that stuff now, and it's so nice, honestly, to not have to go out and just talk shit all night like I did and dribble on a dance floor and lose my wallet and be puking in a taxi and all of that stuff that I got up to. To look outside of that and have a chance at something else is so liberating and it is like a sense of freedom. And I'm still so passionate about sobriety eight years in, and I it's a shame that that term that term can be really helpful alcoholism to some people because it helps them identify exactly what's going on for them and it can make them reach out for help. But for me, it just made me go, well, I'm not that, so what the bloody hell am I? And that's where a lot of people stop and just carry on drinking. It's like, well, I'm not that, pass the bottle of wine, that's fine, we'll just carry on. Everybody does it. People dilute their habits into the habits of others, and they surround themselves with people that drink. I mean, you can't avoid it everywhere you go. Every pub, every club, every bar, every social event, every funeral, every wake. It's everywhere. So it's really, really hard to identify a problem when you're sat in the middle of it and everyone around you is doing the same thing. So it takes some, you know, some bravado and some courage to step out of that and really understand what's going on with you. I had therapy for my drinking habit. I walked in there once saying to the therapist, I want to learn how to be a better drinker because my hangovers are getting bad. I've got terrible anxiety, and I need to get better at this because obviously I had no idea who I was without it, because it was everything to me. And there was a moment in there, I'll just go through it very quickly, where we did a sort of visualization, and she was like, you know, imagine your life, Vic. Let's close your eyes and imagine your life and imagine a merry-go-round, and you're on it, and all your family are on it, and everybody you know is on it, and it's spinning round really fast. Everybody's drinking, there's drug taking, there's music, and it's just like this spinning whirlwind of chaos. And she just said to me, Step off. I was like, What? She was like, you know, you're in there with them. Now step off and watch on from the periphery, and how do you feel? I was like, Oh my god, I didn't know. I never knew it. Make still makes me emotional now. I didn't know that was a possibility for me, and people don't look at that, like it's a possibility just to step away from the chaos for a moment, and the peace that I felt in that moment, I was like, there's no way I'm ever gonna drink again. Why would I enter the chaos and have all that going around me when I can step off, be authentic, and find out who who I am? And it was a real turning point for me. And and I never had a drink ever again, ever since that moment. And I think a lot of people we spend so much time wanting to fit in. It's human nature, be part of the tribe, follow what everybody does, and it being so normalized and the government makes so much money out of alcohol, it's hard to look beyond it. And if you, you know, if a kid from the 70s, like I was growing up in the 90s, and LADEC culture, and you know, generational alcoholism, and you know, all of these things combined, and media and everything, I always felt like alcohol was coming for me. There was no choice, everybody drank, everybody did it, everywhere I looked, it was coming for me like an arrow. And I think for me that takes a little bit of the guilt and the shame away from it because I don't feel like I had a choice. And when you give up, like it isn't all rainbows and sparklers and unicorns, you still have to deal with life, but there are some aspects of it that will ripple on throughout your family. Like, I didn't have a choice, but perhaps my children do now, you know, because they're seeing some role modelling, they're seeing somebody. We don't we have an alcohol-free house, my husband doesn't drink anymore, and you know, I don't know whether that's gonna happen. There's probably gonna be some situations that I'm gonna have to deal with. I have got a 14-year-old now, so we'll see what happens there. But it is interesting to think about, you know, beyond alcohol, because we get so bloody entrenched in it as a culture, like this is what we do, this is how we have fun, we've done it all our lives. Let's just stay with it and let's just do it and let's keep on doing it. But they say, you know, if you listen to the Huberman Lab podcast on alcohol, there's a stat in there which is one glass of wine will raise your anxiety 25% for a whole week. One glass of wine, and the damage it's doing and the cancers that it causes, it's all kept hush hush because it's like, well, we've got to keep everybody happy. This is what everybody does. And but if you really look into the stats and you do the work, we call it walking the walk and talking to talk in in the sobriety realm. If you delve into that information and even see it as like you being a bit rebellious and anti-government by stopping, just come up as many reasons as you can. But that is a great reason to stop drinking, is to go, look, there's so many people making money, it's like gambling. The big wigs make all the money out of this, and we're left with you know, heart disease, different types of cancers, accidents, oh, hugely massive, you know, people drinking, riding motorbikes, all this sort of thing, and let alone the shame and anxiety that completely goes amiss, no one really talks about. There's so many people in this world that are having Sundays that are a complete write-off. I did for 25 years. My book is called A Thousand Wasted Sundays for a reason, and you know, it's really hard to look outside of something when you are so ingrained.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah, so much in there that I I would want to talk to you about. I think we could be here for hours, but just to take you back to what you said about your children and you have an alcohol-free house. I remember being quite proud when my children were younger that they partied with us. And I don't mean drink drank with us, they didn't drink, but they came with us when we went out. We were in the rugby culture, surrounded by people who all drank a lot. We'd have house parties, and I do worry now, and there is shame uh attached to that for me, that I've created these two party animals, and they are one's worse than the other, but they do both love a drink. I mean, I think, like you said, it was coming for them anyway, just because of who that they were surrounded by and the drinking culture that surrounds rugby. But it is a worry for me that I've created that by my drinking habits, that they that they have become drinkers because they watched us doing the same, and it's too late for me. I can't change that now, you know. They're they're men.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

I don't agree with you. I don't agree with you. I think you can change it. I often get people coming to me with this all the time the guilt and shame of you know, bringing up children as a drinker, even if they're sober now, they they feel a sense of having done the wrong thing. But there's nothing more powerful than a message of change, no matter when it is in your life, and that role modelling and breaking the cycle, you know, being a cycle breaker, no matter whether they're grown up or not, to see you make those changes is, you know, undeniably will influence their choices now. I totally 100% agree with that. And Lucy, who I used to do the podcast with, she drank her children, her daughters were I think 17 and 19 when she gave up drinking, and she was like, Oh, they're done for, they're party animals, nothing's ever gonna change. I've done a terrible thing and I feel terrible guilt about it. But when she got sober, her kids started getting sober too because they see it. There's nothing more honest or um undeniable about somebody who has made a huge change, and people see it and they respect it. And funnily enough, one of the most common emails I get is people who have kind of fallen to the waysides, old friendships, like, oh, she's bloody boring now. You're never gonna hear from her again. She doesn't even go out, she used to be such a laugh. They're the emails that I get now is those friends that walked away from me. I see it come in my inbox. Hey Vic, you know, I've been reconsidering my drinking habits all these years, and I see what you do. So people notice and the kids notice too, and because they notice that you're happier and they think, Oh, well, mum's happier, that's interesting. Maybe I would be happier too if I didn't drink as much. I do think you can still make impact on those children, and in fact, I think it's the only way that you can is to stop.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah, and to be fair, everybody drinks less that because I'm not. I mean, not like I say, I I'm not, I don't haven't given up completely. I have the odd glass now. Yeah. But my husband drinks far less because we're not egging each other on all the time, and we always have zeros in the house now, so and everybody will have zeros. And yeah, the boys there have been moments actually when I've noticed the role modelling has it has started, thankfully. Right. But it was a real concern for me initially, and I think it's really important to talk about it because the shame, the shame game, the blame game is is huge, isn't it? And we it that can be something that would drive you back to drinking very easily.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Is that yeah, absolutely, yeah. A lot of relapses are because people don't fight through that shame, and uh it does take work and it does take therapy and psychiatrists and psychologists, and you have to get other people involved, professionals who know how to guide you through that sort of shame and guilt and blame, because it's it's not possible to do it on your own. I I I'm a real believer, like all the tools that I've created for sober people are designed to run alongside professional help, you know, and I'm in and out of therapy all the time. As soon as I feel like I don't know what's going on with me, I'm booking myself in because I learnt really early on in my sober life that I need other people to step on board and say, right, this is what's going on with you. And I'm always up for it. My husband's like, Were you in therapy for now? I'm like, I just need someone to talk to that's not you. And like at the moment, I'm questioning whether I have ADHD, and then another time, you know, I'll be questioning my confidence, and you know, there's all sorts of issues that pop up when you haven't dealt with emotions for so many years, and they're popping up a lot for me. So yeah, and actually the podcast really helps because I get to air all my dirty laundry to the public, which is amazing. And people email me and diagnose me with all sorts of things, which is always fun.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Great, thanks. Uh uh, yeah. No, I can completely again the ADHD thing, and I think that's come up for me since I've cut back on the drinking because all of a sudden you're so much more aware of how you are and how you behave, and you can't blame feelings or anxiety, or you know, I've suffered with palpitations for years and years, it's definitely connected to alcohol, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I used to have that.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

It's the worst, yeah, the worst. And it does come back if I'm going through periods of high stress a bit, but it it drops off much quicker now than it did before. It would go on for weeks, you know, and it was definitely connected to alcohol. But it's um so just out of interest, I mean, I know you are a put it all out there kind of gal, and I kind of love that about you, but has there been anything that you've shared over your sobriety journey that you've kind of gone, oh, I wonder if that was just a bit past the bar.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

It's funny, right? When I started writing my book, the day I gave up drinking and I decided to stop drinking forever, I sat down in my studio where I'm in. I'm in my son's bedroom right now, which is my podcast studio, and eight million downloads from my son's bedroom. Thank you very much.

unknown 40:26

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

And my husband came in and said, What are you doing? I was like, I think I'm gonna write a book because I felt like there was this vast place between a pub and an AA meeting. I was like, I think there's gonna be other people feeling like me that are getting off the party bus before it's crashed, and I was like, I think I'm gonna write about it. And when I wrote that book, never in a million years did I think I'd get a publishing deal or anyone would ever read it. Like it it wasn't for that, it just poured out of me, and I'd always enjoyed writing, but I didn't even know that whether I could write a book, it was completely weird. And there's a few lines in there. Oh my god, there's actually a couple of chapters that if I could go, I wish I could go back. There's one there's one chapter on promiscuity which is called International Sex Machine, and something in there about hairy bottom, which I don't even want to talk to you about now. But uh there's a couple of chapters that I had to mark where my dad couldn't read them because uh my dad's 88, he doesn't need to know any of that stuff. There's loads of stuff in there about recreational drug use, you know. I don't care if it's people I don't know, but when it's my family reading this stuff, especially I think there's one chapter called Local Sex Machine, and then there's International Sex Machine, and it was all of these escapades that I got up to. I mean, they're funny chapters for everybody else, but yeah, my dad certainly didn't need to read them, so I do regret that a little bit, yeah. I mean, but I think the point in everything that I do is that all I have is my honesty now. Like that's it, that's all I am. I'm just like this open book and I don't mind it. I tell you what, though, what I don't like about being like that is that people sometimes think they know you so well. So people some people listen to sober awkward every day on a walk. So whether they're in Texas or Nebraska or South Africa, I get these emails from these people who feel like they know me and like I'm their best friend, which is lovely. But then they start telling you, Vic, I think you should do this and I think you should do that, because I I'm so open, like overly over sharing, that they're like, Oh my god, she's like my she's like my sister. Like we're so alike. Which can and then when we do our live shows, like we've done a couple of shows in London last year, people were coming up to me and just like rah rah rah rah rah rah, like hundreds of them. And I was like, just remember, you know me, and I know nothing about you. It was a really strange, actually. No, it was lovely, it's really lovely, but at the same time, it's just you forget when you're in a room like this on your own, talking to people, talking to whoever it is, you know, it feels really comfortable and safe for me. And if I don't think about who listens, then I I probably share a bit more. And I've become so used to it. I've been doing it for five years now, so I've become used to being so open, and actually, it is part of my therapy. Writing was, therapy is, and doing a podcast is, and it's become kind of my niche is to just go, look, I'm fucked up, we're all fucked up, it's fine, don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

It's fine. Is there anything that you struggled to say at the beginning of your journey that now you find very easy?

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Hmm. I think that's a great question. I I did struggle with that word alcoholic. I was like, oh my god, maybe I need to say that, and maybe if I identify that, I'll feel empowered, and you know, maybe this is something I need to do. So I've definitely pulled. Pulled back from that. I like you. I say I was sober curious, but now I'm just sober. And I try and use that word sober as often as I can. If people ask me why I'm not drinking, I don't say why you're obsessed with me or they haven't got enough here, or all these other answers that you could say, or fuck off, which is another good one. But I just say I'm sober because I just think the more people that say that, the more normalized that will be instead of drinking. So and it gives enough of a backstory saying that. It's like I'm sober, there's a reason there. We don't need to talk about it because it's not appropriate right now, but I am sober. That's all you need to know. And I feel really good saying that in social situations now, and I feel really, really proud of myself. Doesn't mean to say I stay until 10 o'clock at night and dance until the sun comes up the next day. I don't anymore. So this still been like in the last year, I'm still really trying to have some boundaries around my socialising because I found that I was still trying to go out and trying to people please and trying to be like, look, I'm still here, even though I'm finding it really, really hard. And in the actually, in the last few months, I've I'm getting a bit better at saying no to things and and really learning when it's time for me to leave, and that's taken a long time. Socialising is huge when you get sober, and in my early sobriety, I chose my days overnight. That was something I did very early on to go right. Actually, I'm gonna meet my friends for breakfast, I'm gonna go out for lunch, I'm gonna go for walks, and I'm I've done evenings, I've done them for 25 years, I know where they end up, which is me with like a traffic cone on my head passed out on a bloody sidewalk somewhere. So yeah, I know where that leads. So it was really safe for me in the beginning just to go, okay, I'm choosing days. And there's so many little tricks like that in sobriety that you know can really, really help you um understand and make it a lot easier. But yeah, everything that I do now has to run alongside some sort of help.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Yeah, and I think I've well, I've definitely retreated for sure out of my social life. Um and lots of people saying, Oh god, I haven't seen you for ages. Where have you been? And I've just like I've been really busy doing other things. Just I I and I and I have said to people, drinking's not a hobby for me anymore. Like drinking was a hobby.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

It was a that's a great, that's a great response. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

It's not a hobby. Um, I'd rather go to the theatre, I'd rather meet someone for coffee, like you said, go out for lunch, go for a walk. I found I actually made a list of all the things that I could do that wasn't drinking.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Amazing, what a brilliant thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

But I felt like I needed to because the automatic response in our house was, what should we do this afternoon? Should we walk down to should we walk to the pub and have a few drinks? And that was the first response. That was the automatic. And I remember saying to my husband, I'm really bored of going to the same places all the time, all the time. I don't just want to see the inside of the Duke of York and the inside of the rugby club every weekend. I want to go to other places, I want to see things, I want to be, you know. And he was like, Oh, really? Like, yeah, actually, yeah, but it's really funny.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Well, I think partly sobriety, it does feel like making up for lost time, doesn't it? You know, you I spent years in a blackout, like I did one of those, you know, this thing on the um on Instagram at the moment, dad, what you what were you like in the nineties? And they'd play that lovely music in the background and it shows all the old pictures. I did one which was just me, and then it was just a black screen because I just wrote underneath, I have no idea what I was like in the 90s because I know I was in a blackout from 1989 till 2018, so I've got no bloody idea. But you do get to do the stuff, and it's often the childhood stuff that comes back, like pottery or dancing, or you get to do the stuff that you really thoroughly enjoy, the stuff that you forgot you could do without a drink in you. And I've discovered so many different ways, like I'm you know, I'm I yeah, you might consider me boring now, but I'm so much more content. There's not this high low, high low, high low, drunk, hung over, drunk, hung over. It's just this more content line. I mean, it does have some jagged edges occasionally. If I find 15 pairs of socks all around my house and wet towels, things people haven't put away, the ogre comes out. But apart from that, generally I'm just more happy being sober, and there's no pressure on me to, you know, not be who I am and just step into everything totally authentically, which is a real revelation, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

Yeah, completely it resonate with all of that. So let's talk about your book, Mumming. Um, so this is all about failure, right? Leans into failure and how you want to be a better parent. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Well, when I started writing that book, it was after my first book, and I thought it'd be nice to continue the story a little bit with my parenting journey, because really the end of my other book was where the party animal mit the mum and therapy and all of that. So I write comedy memoir, and I'd always wanted to write about the kids, not only to hope that other people would read it, but I thought, what a brilliant way to log that part of our lives, that chapter of our lives. And it's just about me, a year of me trying and failing to be a better parent. And I thought when I started writing it that there was going to be of this trajectory of me becoming better at it, but actually the process of writing the book made me realize that I'm actually doing alright, and that I'm actually a good mum, and you know, even though I fail all the time, I strive and I keep going, and it was actually a really lovely therapeutic process to go, okay, yeah, everybody makes mistakes, and all we need to be is heard sometimes. And there's a moment in the book where I'm crying in a car park, in the Audi car park or something, and a mate comes up to the window, she sees me crying and hands me a paper bag with some chocolate, a face mask, and some tea in it, and a note that just said, sometimes parenting is fucked. And I think sometimes that's all we need to hear. She didn't tell me what I was doing wrong, what I should be, what I shouldn't be, what I could do, what I can't do. She just heard me or saw me in that moment and just went, You're fine. Parenting is just fucked some days. And I was like, Oh my god, that is. I mean, I should have called the book that because it is it is a better name. Yeah, but yeah, it was a really lovely book to write because there was a point where my son Freddie nearly died, and to go over those moments in my life and remember them and write about them, it was just such a beautiful process, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing that book. But yeah, I don't know, I think probably I'll end up writing about the perimenopause next because that's hitting me hard at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Well, if your son's 14, I hate to tell you, but the next few years is going to be a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, it's just bad timing with the menopause for me because I had kids quite late, so like it's like this clash of the titans.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Yeah, I have to say that my eldest son, he's fabulous, and I'm so proud of him in so many ways. He's an actual real life human man now, and you know, he has a job and everything, he earns bought a car, and you know, all of that stuff, and I am incredibly proud of him. But my journey through teenager land with him was hard, and I remember saying to him on numerous occasions two things. One is I say no because I care. Saying yes is really, really easy. If I didn't give a shit, I could just say yes, do whatever you want, and and no care. And and he used to say, You you're you just want to make my life miserable. And I'm like, no, no, that's not it. And the other thing I used to say to him all the time was, you didn't come with a manual, like you know, you didn't come, I don't know what I'm doing. All I can do is give you the best advice based on the experiences that I've had and what I believe is going to be the safest option for you in this moment. I mean, I hate to say he drove me to drink, there was a lot, but yeah, no, I can imagine it's connected to the stress of the first girlfriend, the fighting, the drinking, the him, you know, learning to drive and going out with him and taking driving you know, all the stuff, all the stuff. He was hard work, and it's you know, my youngest son uh in different ways for different reasons, they're completely different people. I've been relatively sober, not quite sober curious for most of his kind of most difficult teenage years. Perhaps I learned from my mistakes with Ben on that front. But they don't come with a manual, these kids. We don't know what we're doing, and as a child of the 90s, also, we lived with shell suits, roller boots, and graves. We were having a great time, you know. Oasis and Robbie Williams, and we were live at Nebworth, for God's sake. That was the culture, wasn't it? It was a different time, and yet really nothing's changed. Still the same problems from Ben's first lad's holiday to Zanti. My god.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Oh yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

The videos we got on our family channel.

SPEAKER_02 53:43

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

Was it nudity? Booze cruisers were featured heavily.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Uh they still do like wet t-shirt competitions and stuff like that. Oh, hopefully that's all gone out of the window now. Back in my day, it was like it was like a porno.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Yeah, I mean, it's still it's still very hedonistic, there's no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Yeah, I can imagine. Shots off belly buttons and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

I'm just incredibly thankful that smartphones didn't exist in the world.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Yeah, me too. Oh, the evidence would be bad.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Well, think of what these kids have got to deal with. This is the thing now, is that these kids are still living the wild life, but they are living it with proof everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

I do think that's one of the reasons that the drinking culture has, you know, especially in Australia here where I live, it's 25% less, even more than that, I think now. They're not drinking as much. That the the sort of 20 to to 30 year olds are are are choosing to say no, which is amazing. Because of social media, I think you're exactly right. Like they don't want to be seen, they don't want to be embarrassed, they don't want to have to deal with the aftermath of somebody sharing a picture of them while they're off their nut. It's amazing, really.

unknown 54:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Backlash.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

Absolutely. And it is interesting. My my nieces and nephews are all in their late 20s, 30s, and they are um none of them drink really.

SPEAKER_00 55:09

Wow. Yeah. There's definitely an undercurrent, isn't there? This sort of sober revolution, I like to call it, of people making changes.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

So if anybody's really taken a lot from this conversation and want to hear more, obviously there's Sober Awkward Podcast, which is available everywhere, isn't it? Where you get your podcast?

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Yeah, yeah, wherever you get that. You can go to our sober awkward website, which is just soberawed.com. On there, you can find out about our amazing sober holidays that we have in Thailand every year. So they're basically just you go there with 15 other sober people and we sort of act like children for a week. You go and see the elephants, and we do silent discos and quiz nights. We basically act pissed for a week, but no one's drinking. And actually, last year's one was the first time socially. I I haven't been around a group of sober people like that ever before, and I felt my sort of, I don't know, my nervous system relaxed, my heart rate slowed down. I didn't have to explain myself to anybody for the first time, which was incredible. So I highly recommend coming on one of those. I've got two running, one with sober Dave this year. Lots of people come from England. You can find out about those. I do writing courses, I support people who make podcasts. I've got communities, I've got my cuppa community, which is cuppa.community. It's just a free online hub for anyone that's reconsidering their drinking. And yeah, just Instagram, it's drunk mummy, sober mummy, but you can download my books or on Kindle or wherever. Just Google my name, Victoria Van Stone, you find out all about me, all my terrible stories and my regretful past and all the changes. There's a positive outcome. I I'll let you know the end of the book is that I didn't die at the end. That's that's all I'm gonna give away.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

And that's it, that's amazing. I love it. Well, I look forward to the menopause uh um the menopause menopause installment because I'm right there with you. Um I think it needs to be done. I think it does need to be done, and it does need to be done in terms of what that means in terms of alcohol, too, because Yeah, oh yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

There's a couple of sober awkward episodes if someone's there is one called alcohol and the menopause, and actually I did one on alcohol and ADHD that came out today, and next week there's one on alcohol and the nervous system, which we talk about menopause as well. So, any women that are in their 40s and 50s, we talk a lot about hormones and its impact on our on our aging, decrepit bodies.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Yeah, and also I've been on HRT for the last three years, um, and it changed my life. Yeah, it's great. And I do think that probably contributed to my ability to make the decision about my sobriety because prior to that I was just angry in a fog. I I the the irrational rage that I felt towards my husband, my family, and most people around me was down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Oh yeah, I had I had it too. And in fact, hormone changes cause something called alcohol-seeking behaviour, ASB, which is something that happens to you if even if you've never had a drink before, you are going to be searching out tools that are gonna make you feel different to the way that you're feeling. And of course, some women start drinking in their 40s for the first time ever because of this alcohol-seeking. You just want anything to take that feeling away.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

Yeah, to risk it.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

So, yeah, we talk all about that sort of stuff, but in a funny way. We're not too preachy. I know I get a bit preachy about booze sometimes, but you know, I'm quite hypocritical. I was I was a massive booze hound for years.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

No, honestly, I have not found you preachy at all. I think you're what you're doing is creating a movement and uh a huge amount of respect for what you're doing, I think it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 58:59

Thank you, thank you, Fran. Thank you for listening. No, yeah, thank you for listening. I'm glad it's helped. I can't wait to hear about your 300 days.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Yeah, well, we'll get there, hopefully, one day. Maybe um, maybe it's time to, yeah. Well, we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 59:16

I'm not gonna have another chat about that offline.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Thank you so much for your time. I'm so grateful. Thank you, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 59:23

Thanks, Fan. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 59:25

I actually recorded that episode with Vic a couple of days ago and I've been kind of reflecting on it since. And I mean, I definitely talked about some things I wasn't expecting to talk about, but hey, the premise of this podcast is truth, and I think it's really important that I'm as honest as I expect my guests to be. So, like I said in the intro, if you have been affected by anything you've heard to do with alcohol or otherwise in this episode, please do go to the show notes, find fixed community, get the help that you need. It's a huge subject, alcohol, and I think there is this huge divide between what we view an alcoholic to be and this gap between you know drinking regularly and an AA meeting. And if you think you've got problems with alcohol, I would encourage you to address it. It's really changed my life. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please do subscribe or follow us on wherever you get your podcasts. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed it, and I look forward to the next episode very soon.