The Real Reasons I Drank Alcohol

Alcohol is everywhere, so it can feel like you’re the weird one if you don’t want a drink and that’s exactly the trap. We’re told alcohol is “normal” for birthdays, weddings, girls’ nights, stress, sadness, and even just getting through the week, yet we rarely talk honestly about what it’s doing to our bodies, our mental health, and our relationships. I’m Meg, and I’m sharing the real reasons I drank, not to shock you, but to tell the truth many of us recognise quietly. 

We unpack the cultural double standard that shrugs off binge drinking while shaming dependence, as if the addictive substance disappears and the person becomes the problem. I trace my timeline from my first drink at 18 to the moment I realised alcohol wasn’t a treat anymore it was a tool. Anxiety relief was the early hook, then drinking became a reward, then a way to “cope” with work and parenting pressure, and eventually a way to switch off, escape, and feel nothing. That shift matters for anyone exploring sobriety, mindful drinking, quitting alcohol, or understanding alcohol dependence, because it changes the question from “what’s wrong with me?” to “what need is this meeting?” 

You’ll hear the turning point: alcohol never solved the underlying problems, it only gave temporary relief, then added shame, regret, exhaustion, and more anxiety on top. I share practical reflection prompts you can use straight away, like “What does alcohol do for me?”, “What job am I giving alcohol?”, and “What feeling am I trying to avoid?” If you want a kinder, clearer way to understand your drinking, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find this conversation.

Contact Meg: 

Website: https://www.meganwebb.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579436511475
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/meganwebbcoaching/

Link to FREE discovery call with Meg:  

https://calendly.com/glassfulfilled

Email Meg here: 

meganwebbcoaching@gmail.com

Transcript

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Welcome To Conscious Unbottling

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hi and welcome to Conscious Unbottling. I am your host Meg and I'm so excited to have you here. The title of today's podcast is The Real Reasons I Drank. But to get there, I need to go back. But to get there, I need to go back a bit. We live in a society that tells us drinking alcohol is completely normal. We drink to celebrate, we drink to relax, we drink when we're stressed, we drink when we're happy, we drink when we're sad, we drink at weddings, funerals, birthdays, dinners, holidays, and girls' nights. And if you don't drink, sometimes you're the one people question. What? You don't drink? Is something wrong with you? Are you pregnant? Are you driving? Come on,

Normal Drinking And A Cruel Double Standard

SPEAKER_00 1:08

just have one. We've somehow created a culture where not drinking can seem abnormal. Yet alcohol is an addictive substance that can cause enormous harm. It's poison. It's associated with cancer, liver disease, cardiovascular problems, accidents, injuries, drink driving, relationship breakdown, domestic violence, financial problems, problems at work, impaired judgment, and countless other consequences. And here's the part I just can't get my head around. We are completely comfortable with alcohol when it's being consumed normally, in adverted commas. We're even comfortable with people over-drinking and binge drinking, doing and saying stupid things while they're drunk. Oh well, it's a rite of passage. Of course they're going to get drunk. They're 18, 19, 20. Oh well, they're 30, but they're so funny when they're drunk. Oh well, she's a 40-year-old woman. She just loves to party. She still looks after her family and has a job. She's 50, but she works so hard. She deserves a drink each night to unwind. But when someone develops a dependence on it, suddenly society changes the language. They're an alcoholic, they're weak, they lack willpower, they brought it on themselves, and somehow the addictive substance disappears from the conversation. We blame the person for becoming addicted to the thing we've spent their entire life telling them was normal. When I stopped drinking, I started asking myself a different question. Not why did I drink so much, but what was alcohol doing for me? Because when I look back now, I realize that at different parts of my life I drank for different reasons. I had my first drink when I was 18. I know that's probably older than many people. And honestly, I hadn't had a drink of alcohol before that. It wasn't even on my 18th birthday that I had my first drink. It was a few months later, after I'd finished school forever. Some friends and I went away on a camping trip for a night or two. Someone offered me a cup of straight gym beam and I said yes. And even with that very first drink, I drank it

The First Drink That Silenced Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 3:22

quite quickly and I got drunk quite quickly too. But what had happened the year before that is significant. So when I was 17, I developed an anxiety disorder that made me shake whenever I felt people were looking at me. I was standing in front of my class reading the notices, something I'd always loved doing, and suddenly the paper in my hands started shaking. From that moment, I became increasingly afraid of shaking in front of other people. I stopped speaking in front of the class. I avoided anything that might make me nervous or put me in the spotlight. Eventually, it even got to the point where I couldn't eat or drink in front of other people without worrying that I would shake. Then I had that first drink at 18. And something happened that I found pretty powerful. I didn't feel nervous. The more I drank, the more I noticed that the shaking disappeared. Alcohol seemed to quiet the anxiety that had been controlling so much of my life. And that was enough to start a very powerful association in my brain. Alcohol made me feel different. It made me more confident, less self self-conscious. It meant I could socialize, talk to people, and even socialize with the boys that I'd been so nervous in front of. I was realizing that alcohol could change the way I felt and behaved. And once your brain learns that a substance can make an uncomfortable feeling disappear, it makes sense that you might want to go back to it again and again. What I also didn't realize at the time and wouldn't realize for many, many years, was that I actually had been living with generalized anxiety disorder since I was around five or six years old. So that relief I felt from my very first drink wasn't just about the shaking and self-consciousness. It was the relief of finally letting go of an exhaustion I had carried for almost my entire life. Alcohol became my self-medication. I didn't know I was doing it for that reason. I didn't understand what was happening. I certainly didn't think I was setting myself up for a complicated relationship with alcohol. At the time, I just knew that when I drank, I finally felt like I could let go. As I got older, alcohol not only helped me with my anxieties, but it became my way to relax from work, responsibilities, life. It became a reward. After a long day, I'd talk about needing a drink with my friends at work, you know, after working so hard. We deserve it. It became a very normal way to relax as a parent. And this was normalized by society, by TV and movies, and by other parents. We would go out and drink because parenting was hard. There were memes about drinking and about motherhood. It was so normalized. So I drank for my 20s and 30s for different reasons and also I thought for fun. I had stopped drinking for pregnancies and I was what I'd call a social drinker. Certainly a binge drinker when I drank socially, but yeah, I was a social drinker. And that started to change in my 40s, though. I was not just drinking socially anymore. I started to drink at home, alone. And the reasons were deeper. I was unhappy, I felt stuck, I wasn't fulfilled, but I didn't know these were the reasons my drinking was increasing. I didn't realize that feeling alone in my marriage was a big reason I was numbing out. I didn't realize how exhausted I'd become worrying about my kids

When Drinking Shifts From Want To Need

SPEAKER_00 7:04

and trying to make sure they were always okay. I had responsibilities in a life that probably looked fine from the outside, but it didn't feel right on the inside. And alcohol became the easiest way to temporarily escape the discomfort. I think this is where alcohol stopped being something I drank and started becoming something I needed. I wasn't drinking because I wanted to enjoy the taste and chill out. I was drinking because I wanted to feel different. I wanted to be drunk so that I felt nothing, basically. I wanted to switch off, escape. I wanted a break from my own thoughts. I wanted to stop feeling the things I just didn't know how to deal with. And eventually I realized something. Alcohol wasn't actually solving any of these problems. It was giving me temporary relief from them. But the next day, all of those problems were still there. Except now I had anxiety, shame, regret, exhaustion, and other things on top of those reasons. Alcohol was adding to my problems. I was stuck in a cycle of drinking to numb out, then waking up feeling terrible about how much I was drinking, and then drinking to numb those feelings as well. And ironically, the thing I had originally used to make myself feel better became one of the biggest reasons I was feeling so bad. Alcohol had gone from helping me feel confident, helping me relax, to helping me switch off and helping me escape my life. But eventually I realized I wasn't drinking to enjoy my life anymore. I was drinking to tolerate it. When I drank, I could pretend that everything was okay, or I could cope with the fact that nothing was okay. Alcohol took it all away for the moment. But my tolerance to alcohol was growing. And this is what happens when you use an addictive substance regularly. You need more of the substance to get the same effect. And finally, when I had stopped drinking, I had the clarity, the peace, and the freedom to reflect on the real reasons I'd been drinking. Those reasons were everything I have said in this podcast. But also from that very first drink, I realized that I had been drinking to stop that voice in my head that said, something is wrong with me. I am not worthy of love. I am not enough. It might have looked like different things at each stage of

The Questions That Change Everything

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my life, but basically, those were the real reasons I drank. And now that I have stopped drinking, I have healed those things. And ironically, the answer was never ever in the alcohol. It was always in me. So if you're listening to this and you're wondering why you drink, maybe don't ask yourself, why can't I stop? Ask instead something like this. What does alcohol do for me? What job am I giving alcohol? What feeling am I trying to create? What feeling am I trying to avoid? What is it about myself that prevents me from sitting with my feelings and emotions? What does that first drink promise me? What am I hoping will change when I drink it? Because the answer is not that you're weak. It is not that you're a failure or that something is wrong with you. Maybe you've simply become incredibly good at using alcohol to meet needs that haven't been met in other ways. And once you understand that, you can start changing the relationship you have with alcohol. Not with shame, not with blame, but with self-compassion. Because you are enough and you deserve all the wonderful things that life has to offer. You were never ever less than enough. Before I let you go, guys, I just wanted to tell you about a very special course I am about to launch. It's called the Reclaimed Woman Course, and it's a 12-week-long course with close support from me all the way. I'm currently offering it at almost half price, but only for a short time. If you would like to hear more about it, please contact me via my website, meeganweb.com.au, and we can have a chat. I am not

Reclaimed Woman Course And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 11:12

taking everyone, only those wanting to commit and change their lives. So reach out. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. Bye.