Quitting Drinking Without a "Rock Bottom": Paula's Story

From Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories Brad McLeod

You don't need a rock bottom to quit drinking. No DUI. No lost job. No moment where everything blows up. For Paula, life looked great from the outside, a beautiful home in South Florida, two kids, a marriage built in the alcohol industry, and a career soaked in alcohol. Nothing was falling apart on the outside or so she thought. She made every soccer practice. She was the homeroom mom. But the hangovers were getting worse, the blackouts had started, and her kids were beginning to see two different versions of her.

In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Paula shares what she calls the "miserable middle" of drinking. The place so many high-functioning drinkers get stuck. Nothing is bad enough to quit, but nothing feels right either. She talks about growing up with a normal relationship to alcohol, building her entire career around it, falling into the mommy wine culture trap, and how managing her drinking became more exhausting than the drinking itself.

After 30 years of drinking and four years of being sober curious, it was her teenage daughter's words that finally broke through: "I can't take these two different people." That was Paula's day one. November 2, 2022.

We cover:

Quitting drinking without a rock bottom
High-functioning alcoholism and the gray area drinker
Mommy wine culture and how it sneaks up on you
Why managing your drinking is exhausting
Anxiety, hangxiety, and the cortisol crash
How alcohol affects your kids even when you think they don't notice
The "miserable middle" between drinking and sobriety
What the first year of sobriety actually looks like

If you've been sober curious, gray area drinking, questioning your relationship with alcohol, or wondering if your drinking is "bad enough" to quit — this episode is for you. You are not alone, and you don't have to wait for things to fall apart to choose something better.

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