I Didn’t Hit Rock Bottom. I Still Got Sober.

This episode is dedicated to everyone who grew up in a household impacted by alcohol. ❤️

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I thought you had to hit rock bottom before you were allowed to get sober.

Turns out, you don’t.

For years, I thought I couldn’t possibly have a problem with alcohol because I wasn’t drinking every day. I hadn’t lost my job. I hadn’t been arrested. I hadn’t lost my marriage because of alcohol. I wasn’t the person I imagined when I thought about alcoholism.

I was wrong.

In this episode, I talk about growing up in a culture where drinking was just what adults did, becoming “the girl who could drink” at university, using alcohol to manage social anxiety, and the quiet moment I realised I didn’t want alcohol running my life anymore.

I’m not a medical doctor. I’m not a counsellor. I’m not a therapist. I’m a 54-year-old woman who used to have a problem with alcohol and who is now sober. This is simply my story.

If you’re listening to this and thinking your own relationship with alcohol might not be where you’d like it to be, please don’t struggle with it on your own. Talk to your GP. Talk to someone you trust. Or walk into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I’ve never attended AA myself, but I know it’s helped countless people around the world, and if that’s the support you need, I hope you’ll reach out.

I don’t tell this story because I think everyone needs to stop drinking. I tell it because I was fortunate enough to make a big change before I lost my licence, before I hurt someone, before I had a serious crash, or before alcohol took more from me than it already had. Not everyone gets that opportunity, and I don’t take it for granted.

Content note: This episode discusses alcohol use, binge drinking, anxiety and drink driving.

Content Note ~
This podcast gets into bodies, panic attacks, trauma, sexism, mental health, and the occasional emotional sinkhole. Please look after yourself only listen when you feel safe to engage with potentially triggering material. 
Also, I swear.

Support ~ 
These aren’t here as a formality. I’ve used some of these myself.

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Emergency 000

Outside Australia, local crisis services are available. ~

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Credits
Recorded on the lands of the Ramindjeri and Ngarrindjeri peoples.
Sovereignty never ceded.

Recorded & edited at Ridley Farm Studio by Luke Ridley
https://ridleyfarmstudio.com...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Alcohol is the most commonly used drug that causes harm in Australia. And I know that sounds a bit weird because we often talk about drugs in Australia, and by talk I mean we see in the media, we see on social media, we talk amongst our friends. When we talk about drugs, we talk about ice or coke or MDMA or whatever the current tabloid panic is. But alcohol? Alcohol gets a seat at the wedding, alcohol gets a toast, alcohol gets a funny story, alcohol gets wrapped in celebration and adulthood and sophistication and sport on Christmas lunch. And yet in Australia, alcohol is still the most common principal drug of concern for people getting specialist alcohol and other drug treatment. You know, I love a stat, get ready. In 2024 to 2025, alcohol accounted for about 41% of treatment episodes, way ahead of methamphetamine, cannabis, and heroin. Hello, hello, and welcome to your brand new episode of the podcast. I'm Catherine Redden, and this is the C-Word with Catherine Redden, and today I'm going to be talking about my sobriety. It's the 1st of July. 1st of July 2026, which means in Australia, dry July has started. Officially, dry July is a fundraiser where people give up alcohol for the month of July and raise money for people affected by cancer. And one thing I think that's really interesting, because part of me always thinks, why don't we give up alcohol for people and families affected by alcohol? Anyway. But look, some of the cancers are caused by alcohol, so there's that. Dry July is probably Australia's best-known alcohol-free campaign, but there are others worldwide. So Dry January, which started in the UK, that has millions of people, it's spread all over the world. FebFast here in Australia, which supports Lifeline, Sober October. All of these are moments where human beings decide to take a break from drinking alcohol. And I found this really interesting. In 2025, Finder reported that about 3.2 million Australians who drink plan to go alcohol-free for July. That's one in five Australian drinkers. Please excuse me. While I tell Charlie off. Charlie, everything's fine, sweetheart. Everything's fine. Buttons is allowed to do that. Sorry, listen. Charlie. Good boy. I'm gonna report that, repeat that stat. Finder reported that about 3.2 million Australians who drink plan to go alcohol free for jollo. That's a lot of people. 3.2 million people, it's a lot. And it's a lot of people asking themselves one really interesting question. Well, I don't know if they're all asking themselves the question, but some of them are saying, What happens if I stop drinking? And that got me thinking about my own sobriety. It's something I haven't really talked about on the podcast. And I think the reason is because I don't feel like a real sober person. Or I didn't, not for a long time. Because I didn't hit rock bottom. I didn't lose my job, I didn't lose my license, it wasn't the reason I got divorced, I didn't get arrested, I didn't get done for drink driving, I wasn't drinking every day. I wasn't blacking out. I wasn't fighting with a partner because of my alcohol consumption. And so for a long time I thought, well, I don't have a problem. I knew I was a binge drinker in the back of my mind, but I kind of made allowances for that because I didn't drink every day. When I look back on it now, though, when I was saying to myself I'm not a real alcoholic, that was the problem. Look, and before I want to, before I go any further, I want to say two things. One is I don't know all the right language around alcohol and sobriety. I've never been to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I haven't been in formal recovery spaces. So if I say something clumsy, I'm not trying to offend anyone, and I'm really happy to learn how to approach this better in public spaces or in private. You can DM me or hit the Tell Me More link in the show notes and let me know where I've gone wrong. The second point is this is my story. It's not medical advice, it's not a sermon, it's not a moral position, it's not me suggesting you do anything. Podcasts primarily are for entertainment, and that's what this one is about. Now, if me telling the story of my sobriety entertains you, that is fantastic. If it resonates with you, I would love that. But I am gonna say, in my family, growing up when I was a kid and a teenager and an adult, alcohol was just normal. It was part of the landscape. And you know that very Australian way of minimising things. I call it the she'll be right problem, the she'll be right movement. If we ever talked about, if I ever talked about the consumption of alcohol in my family, it would go along the lines of, oh yeah, Uncle Fred drinks a bit. Meanwhile, Uncle Fred's consuming 12 long nets a night in a bottle of whiskey, and that is not an exaggeration. Oh by the way, there is no Uncle Fred. I'm inventing him. Please don't go to the family tree. But you know what I mean. Someone liked a drink. Some were a bit loud, some had a few too many. It was never said with judgment, it was just how we spoke. We minimized it, and I believe people continue to minimize it as a way of being. Alcohol was at birthdays, weddings, family barbecues, Christmas, funerals, after sport, after footy practice, after cricket, after bowls. In fact, my dad, um, when he was coaching the association football, banned alcohol being drunk before and during the game because they used to, and the game started at two o'clock, they used to drink before the players used to drink before the game and during the game, and he still gets blamed for them losing that match because the Rockman played better drunk. Look, and even I'm laughing at that, right? It's a funny story, but it's not that funny. Funerals was always a lot of grog up. Every celebration, every commiseration, every time we were together as a family, except maybe church and school. I didn't grow up thinking alcohol was dangerous. I grew up thinking that's what adults did. The first time drinking really had an impact on my life was at the end of year 12. I was 16, it was the last formal day of school before SWATVAC and exams. And at my school, it was traditional to have a champagne breakfast. And it was also traditional that someone would bring enough grog to sink a navy vessel. So I went down to Hazelwood Park at 6 o'clock in the morning. And the last thing I remember is sitting on a picnic bench. I don't even remember drinking anything, but I did because when the contents of my stomach were pumped, it had everything from brandy to wine to beer to vodka to a lot of other stuff that I'm not going to mention here. I drank until I blacked out, and then I hit my head on a rock in a creek bed, and then I passed out. So I blacked out and then I was concussed. And at some point before that, I'd taken all my clothes off because apparently my teenage brain was running a full circus that day. The girls I did didn't really know what to do. The girls I was with didn't really know what to do. My my schoolmates, because we were all young, we were 16 and 17. Someone's father owned a hospital in Adelaide, as you do. So they took me there. I had my stomach pumped, and then everything became very dramatic. My parents were called to come down early and from home or earlier than they were going to. There was a lot of whispering of me being expelled. I remember quite a few different girls would had snuck into my room at the hospital where I was to see how I was crying, saying that they were really sorry. There was a big school mass that day. I'd won five academic awards. But I wasn't there. They didn't say my name. The principal gave me the awards afterwards. Because I was in hospital having my stomach pumped, and I was so ashamed. I was worried about what mum and dad were going to say. I was worried that I was going to get expelled. I was worried that my friends were never going to talk to me again. The boarding house mistress got really stuck into me. When I went back, when I got back to the boarding house, she told me that I'd brought shame on the school. And she said things that have stayed with me for a very long time. But really interesting amongst all of this kerfuffle, the principal told me that I wasn't in trouble. She said I wasn't going to be expelled. She said it was it was they were thinking about expelling every other year twelve. She told me I hadn't done anything shameful. Because as it turns out, after a little bit of digging, and nuns know how to investigate, if you've ever watched any crime murders, mystery murders on TV, because it turned out after a bit of investigation, it looked a lot like my drink had been spiked. I don't remember any of it. But what what I do remember more than the alcohol is I remember the shame story. Sorry, we're just having a little this is a fun episode. Charlie, Charlie. Oi, Charlie, off. This is gonna be the episode where you learn about me. Charlie.

unknown 12:33

Off.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Okay, the cat's gone under the bed and the dog's chasing the ball. Welcome to the direct, welcome to the party of my direct existence. Okay. I think one of the reasons alcohol is so complicated is because so many stories about drinking are told as funny stories. Wild stories, legendary stories. You know, in my family, a common story that we tell is when we were at a barbecue once and the boys had to drive dad home because dad couldn't drive. And when I say the boys, I mean one was 10 and one was 12. You know, I remember when you did this, I remember when you fell over, I remember when you said that. I remember when you had your photo taken with a militia in an AK-47. I mean, you know, they are funny at the time, but actually, maybe they're not. Maybe they're frightening, and we're covering it up with humor. People still tell stories about my alcohol drinking or their alcohol drinking, and I'll smile, but I look back and think I was covering up so much shame. After school I went to university. Boat races. Boat races. The only sport I have ever been any good at. So off I went to Adelaide University. I was 17. I enrolled in a science degree, which back then was still very, very male dominated. And somewhere along the way I became the girl who could drink. Now, if you've never been to university in Australia, particularly in the 80s and 90s, let me introduce you to one of the stupidest sports ever invented: boat races. There wasn't actually a boat. You'd line up on one side of the table, usually in teams of four or eight. There were pairs, but fours or eights. Eight was the most common number. You'd crouch down, put your chin on the table, hands beside hands beside your beer, and your beer would normally be a schooner. And the judge would say, thumbs on table, so you'd put your thumbs on each side of the glass. Chins on table, you'd put your chin on the table, face the water, so you would face the drink. The drink would be on your left hand side, and then row. And you'd scull the entire beer as fast as you possibly could. The fastest drinker usually became the captain. Because you could potentially win if you were behind. Guess who became the captain? Me. The other thing that happened at that time is I was incredibly socially awkward. But the university was becoming semi-woke, and I love being woke, so I'm not saying that negatively. The semi-wokeness meant that all the sculling teams, so all the boat racing teams, needed to have at least one girl. Word quickly got around that I was a Maui girl that could have a drink. It made me popular, it made me feel like I belonged. The engineering boys courted me to join their team. You didn't have to skull within your department, and you could form any team from anywhere. You know, the med students wanted me over, like it was just crazy. But it made me feel like I belonged. The boys on the teams looked after me. Because I wasn't, I wasn't dating at that stage. I was quite, even though I looked like I was outgoing, I was quite shy with boys and not really confident in my body. But the alcohol and the kind of I don't know, the camaraderie, the belonging that was happening made me feel like I had a community. And alcohol became part of I didn't even like drinking beer, but alcohol became part of my identity. You know, people, when I see people from my past, often they'll tell stories about my drinking. When I went to a university ball and I got so drunk I locked myself in the women's toilets, and I was refusing to come out and I was throwing full glasses of alcohol over the top of the cubicle. Everybody laughs. Kind of, but it wasn't funny. Because now I think underneath that story is a story of a girl and a young woman, an adult, who drank until she lost control. Because she wasn't she thought she wasn't in control when she was sober. One of the last times I got really, really drunk was in El Salvador. My ex-husband's family, there was a a wedding, there was a family wedding there. Now going to El Salvador was an experience. And I want to tell you that it's not really a tourist country. Um, the big difference that's different to Australia is there are people with guns protecting things, or they're men actually, and the guns are AK-47s, they're semi-automatic rifles. Every guns you're allowed to carry guns. I don't know what the regulations are, but you know, you go into a deli and there's a man with a gun out the front. We Jeff and I went on a few tours, like, and there would be a driver in the car, and there would be a man and a gun in the front man and a gun. It's probably a whole other podcast episode, actually. There'd be a man with a gun in the front of the car. Now, this was in the mmm, I think it was 2010, I can't remember. It was a really different experience. Um, we there was one shopping mall where tourists could go, and my mother-in-law, my ex-mother-in-law, wanted to go out of that mall over the road to another shop, and she speaks Spanish, and the guy with a gun at the end of the mall said, I am not, I'm gonna shoot you if you cross the road because I'm pre paid to protect you on this side of the road, and there was nobody to protect you on the other side, so you know this different. Anyway, the wedding was halfway up a volcano. Um, we went in a bus with a man with a gun in front. There was a car with a you know, there were there were a lot of men with AK-47s providing security. It was it was extraordinary. It was also beautiful. It was a little chapel, uh, tropical, but cool because it was up the volcano. Very beautiful, quite unlike any wedding I'd ever been to. And naturally, I got absolutely shitfaced. And I somehow ended up trying to make friends with the armed security guards, and there's a photo of me holding one of the rifles. And at the time, everybody thought it was hilarious. But I remember the next day my ex-husband saying to me, Catherine, you put yourself in a really dangerous position, and we were all worried for you. Now, the story, I don't tell that story very often, and I suspect I might never tell it again because I'm now divorced, but it was always kind of ha ha, you know, but again, it's me losing control because I thought I didn't have any. Now look, I wasn't a person who drank every day. In fact, there were long stretches where I hardly drank at all, months sometimes. I didn't wake up craving alcohol. I wasn't hiding bottles around the house, I wasn't not drinking in front of people. Um so it was easy for me to say, see, you don't have a problem. But often when I drank, I binged, and I could drink a lot. My body seemed to tolerate it. I didn't get hangovers until my mid-40s. I didn't know what people were complaining about. Before that, I could drink until two or three or five in the morning, have a shower, get up, go to work, go to uni, feel absolutely fine. Or at least I thought I was fine. The thing I didn't realize was was I spent a lot of myself, a lot of years asking myself the wrong question. The question I kept asking was can I still get up the next day? That wasn't actually the important question. The important question was how often am I thinking about drinking and how much am I drinking? Because eventually alcohol stopped being something I did and it became something I thought about a lot. It became the answer to almost every single uncomfortable feeling. Feeling socially awkward, have a drink. Giving a workshop, have a drink. Cleaning the house, have a drink. Feeling anxious, have a drink. And without really noticing, alcohol stopped being the guest and started becoming the host. And then COVID arrived. And that's when everything changed. My relationship to our alcohol changed quite dramatically. I was, I mean, I I mean, you know, up until this point I'd been binge drinking a lot, and then gradually kind of introducing alcohol at before events and things. But during COVID, um, it didn't my life didn't change because I already worked from home, but my then husband started working from home. And I started putting Bailey's in my morning iced coffee at 10 o'clock in the morning. You know, at first it was just if I was giving a workshop that day or if I had a big day ahead of me. And then it became every day, and then it became weekends. And I started noticing something else too. I wasn't just drinking more, I was thinking about alcohol more. If I'd had my Bailey's in the morning, I'd think, well, when can I have a glass of wine in the afternoon? You know, and if I had to clean the house or do something I didn't want to do, I'd think, well, I can get by with alcohol if I do that. And then I started being noticeably drunk at some dinner times with Jeff. Eventually my marriage ended, and it I don't I think the alcohol played a part, but it wasn't the main reason my marriage ended. I started going house sitting, I moved to Brisbane, I started a completely new chapter of my life, and and I met someone, a really nice someone, really lovely, and we drank together, not because he pressured me, but just we enjoyed a drink together, so we we did that. You know, when I was with my man friend, sometimes I'd go to his apartment, sometimes he'd come over to whatever house I was looking after, and somewhere along the way I started drinking even before I saw him. Someone I loved very much, and someone I knew loved me back, someone I was very comfortable with, I started drinking before I even saw him. I remember one day really, really clearly, it was March 2024. I was house sitting in Newstead, and I bought three little bottles of vodka. You know those mini bar sized bottles, and I sculled all three before I drove to see him. And I remember thinking I shouldn't be driving. But I drove anyway. And I'm really, really ashamed of that, and I really wish I hadn't. Nothing happened. Meaning I didn't have a crash, I didn't run into anyone, I didn't get pulled up for drink driving. But something did happen. Because when I got home, there was one thought that I had, and it was quiet, but it was persistent, and it was I think I've got a problem. Not I'm an alcoholic, not my life's falling apart, just I think I've got a problem. And I didn't think I had a problem because I wasn't like that every day. I wasn't blacking out on the floor at night. You know, none of that was happening. But also at that time I'd come across an organization called Sober in the Country. I know I was living in Brisbane, but I grew up in the country and I love the country where I discovered alcohol was in the country, you know, and I thought maybe I'll give this a go. And I told my man friend, and he was really wonderful. He didn't disappear, he didn't, he wasn't disappointed, he wasn't passive aggressive, he didn't tease me, he still kept drinking, but he just supported me, and I think it's one of the kindest things someone has ever done for me. Between March 2024 and January 2025, I fell off the wagon a couple of times. I had a glass of wine at lunch, and I at that time I was still thinking maybe I can just drink occasionally and not binge drink because I can do that, you know, but I was still thinking about alcohol. When I had permission to have one glass, I was still thinking that alcohol could fix my problems. Just before I met left Brisbane, I had a really important client meeting in the middle of the day, and I got absolutely smashed first. Now I don't know if they could tell or not, and they probably could, but afterwards I remember thinking, what am I doing? Then I moved back to South Australia on January the 4th, 2025, was my niece's 18th, where I had way too much to drink. And I woke up the next day on January the 5th and I thought, that's it. I'm not going to drink anything ever again. And it wasn't dramatic, and I didn't write in my journal, and I didn't make an affirmation. I just thought that's enough. And I stopped drinking and I haven't had an alcoholic drink since. People sometimes ask me if I miss it. I sometimes do. I sometimes miss that total feeling of being out of control and everything being okay. But I don't miss the aftermath of me wondering what I've said to people, of me arguing with people when I was drinking, of me drink driving, you know, of me losing impulse control. I I don't miss that. I don't miss the hangovers. My doctor said something to me after I became sober that that I'll never forget. I kind of casually mentioned to her that I'd stopped drinking. Like it was just like, she said, Oh, is anything else going on? And I told her, and she said, you know, Catherine, that's amazing. And I said, Oh, thank you. And she said, because there is no safe level of alcohol. And I said, What do you mean? And she said, Oh, because you know, I'd grown up hearing that a glass of red wine was good for your heart, and you know, you can have a drink here and there, and everything is fine. I think it was, I don't I don't know what the limits are, but you can kind of see them publicized on TV and stuff. This is what's safe to drink. And she said that the evidence has changed, and she said that the health benefits people used to talk about don't really stack up once you account for the harms. Meaning, and I'm I'm just gonna hypothesize and make this up, but meaning you'd have to drink 12 bottles of red wine to get the benefits that they were talking about, it's a different amount to that, but it's a lot, right? And then, but the amount of out the harm that alcohol does outweighs the amount of benefits in the glass of wine or whatever that you're drinking. I'm not anti-alcohol, I'm really not. People can make their own decisions, and I'm certainly not here to tell anybody else whether they should drink alcohol or not. But kind of as I as I my sobriety, I guess the time I was sober increased. I realized I'd spent my whole adult life thinking about alcohol. I thought about it as normal, not a drug. I knew it was a drug, I knew it was a legal one, but I didn't ever think about it as a drug that was harming me. I know that sounds dumb, but I never thought about it as a drug that was harming me. I thought about it as something everybody did. I I loved red wine, I loved white wine, and I loved champagne. It's something I had in common with a lot of people. Um, my ex-husband was really passionate about collecting wine. Interestingly, he was not a big drinker. I don't think I ever saw him drunk. He didn't binge drink and he didn't drink very much, but he loved red wine. You know, my it was something that we could talk about, not just my husband, like my family and friends. But like when I look back on it, or forwards maybe, or look to what how alcohol affects people today, alcohol isn't a niche health issue. About one in three Australians drinks at levels that exceed the national health guidelines, and those guidelines are no more than 10 standard drinks a week. So that's millions of people. Millions of people drinking more than the health guidelines say. And alcohol remains the leading drug that people seek treatment for in Australia's specialist alcohol and other drug services. That doesn't mean that everyone who enjoys a glass of wine has a problem. That doesn't mean that at all. But what it does tell me is that alcohol and the problems it causes doesn't just happen to other people. It's about us. It's about ordinary Australians, it's about families, it's about workplaces, it's about weddings, it's about Christmas lunch, and it's about all those places where alcohol has an invited seat of honour at the table. Sometimes people say to me, What has sobriety given you? Like, what's changed? And honestly, everything's changed and nothing's changed. I don't think people who knew me before would see much of change in my I could be wrong about this, but there's not been a big change in my personality or my appearance, you know. There's no before and after shots of me drinking alcohol, just a few more grey hairs and a few more beautiful wrinkles. But honestly, lots of little things have changed. My blood tests have improved, my cholesterol has improved, my liver has improved, my kidneys have improved. My because what happened is I had a blood test and I'd forgotten to tell my doctor that I'd given up alcohol, and the changes were quite dramatic. But they're not the reasons I'm most proud of, although I am really proud of that, but they're not the reasons I'm most proud or grateful for. I don't look at the clock and think, oh, is that too early for a drink? And I don't think I don't think anymore, oh, if I can just get through this meeting, I'll open a bottle of wine. That voice just isn't there more. And that's incredibly peaceful. Now I've had to work through a lot of shit to get to that point. I've had to confront a lot of stuff that I felt about those meetings, about social engagements, about going outside and going shopping. I've had to confront a lot of things about that. But no longer do I try and blot those feelings out with thinking about or drinking alcohol. And I trust myself more. I know that if I'm driving someone somewhere, I'm sober. I'm never gonna pick up, get picked up drink driving. I know that if I have an argument with someone, it's not because I've had too much to drink. I know that if I embarrass myself, I'm gonna have to blame it. I can't blame alcohol anymore. And weirdly, that's made me more confident, not less. Look, I'm still socially anxious, I'm still really awkward, I still have days where I don't leave the house, I still put off and decline meeting friends and family for social events. But I do go to them. I do, I do go to them, and I realized that alcohol actually didn't fix my anxiety, it just postponed it. I'd borrow the confidence for a couple of hours and I'd pay it back with interest later. And these days, I'd just rather be awkward because awkward doesn't give me a hangover, awkward doesn't make me drive when I shouldn't. Awkward doesn't make me wake up wondering who I've abused now and I was pissed. Awkward doesn't make me ashamed. I'd rather be socially awkward than drunk.