Lucy Rocca: Grey Area Drinking, Wine Culture & Alcohol Dependence

Lucy Rocca joins Believe in People to share her candid story of alcohol misuse, trauma, and recovery, and the creation of Soberistas, one of the earliest online sobriety communities for women.

Lucy takes us back to the 1990s, the rave scene, early drug use, and the beginnings of binge drinking that quickly became unsafe. She explains how alcohol escalated in adulthood, how motherhood and “outward stability” can hide the reality of harmful drinking, and why shame keeps so many people silent.

A key part of this conversation is trauma. Lucy describes living with post-traumatic stress disorder for years without recognising it, and how therapy, including eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, helped her process what happened and rebuild her life.

We also talk about “grey area drinking”, the gap between “social drinking” and physical dependence, and why so many people feel they are “not bad enough” to seek support until crisis hits. Lucy explains how Soberistas became a confidential, judgement-free space for women who want to change their relationship with alcohol, and why real connection matters more than ever in a world that is increasingly digital.

In this episode, we discuss

• Binge drinking, alcohol culture, and having “no off switch”
• The rave era, early drug use, and how alcohol became normalised
• Motherhood, emotional impact, and the hidden harms of drinking
• Crisis, hospitalisation, and the moment denial ended
• Trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and why it can go unrecognised
• Therapy, including eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing
• “Grey area drinking” and why people feel “not bad enough” for help
• Building Soberistas and why community reduces shame
• How sobriety changes relationships, identity, and self-respect
• The importance of real human connection alongside online support

Links and resources

• Soberistas: https://soberistas.com/
   

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🎙️ Facilitator: Matthew Butler
🎛️ Producer: Robbie Lawson
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Transcript

Welcome And Lucy’s Story

SPEAKER_03 0:00

This is a renewed original recording. Hello and welcome to Believe in People, a two-time Radio Academy Award nominated and British podcast award-winning series about all things addiction, recovery, and stigma. My name is Matthew Butler and I am your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator. In this episode, I'm joined by Lucy, founder of Soberistas, who shared her candid story of alcohol misuse, trauma, and recovery. From early days in the 1990s racing to motherhood and marriage, Lucy's relationship with alcohol grew increasingly destructive, potentially fuelled by PTSD following a violent assault at the age of 20. Despite outward appearances of stability, her drinking led to deep emotional struggles and eventually a hospitalisation that became a wake-up call. Sobriety brought clarity, healing, and a renewed sense of self. Through therapy and self-reflection, Lucy began to rebuild her life and eventually lost her boosters, an online anonymous community designed to support women with problematic drinking habits who might not identify with traditional recovery spaces. It now connects tens of thousands of people globally. Lucy shares how sobriety transformed her parenting, relationships and identity, and why she believes community and honesty are vital to changing how we talk about alcohol and recovery. I start my conversation today with Lucy by diving straight in at the deep end and exploring where did Lucy's addiction start.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I mean I always kind of start in the 1990s, seems sort of where I guess when you think about your own story narrative, that's kind of where my self-destructive behaviours first kind of started to emerge, I guess, around kind of 1990. I was about 15, very much into the rave scene, lots of illegal drugs. Did start drinking around 13, never had an off-switch, big binge drinker, like immediately. Never, never sort of thought when I was little. I sort of realised now when I look back, I never thought I wouldn't be a drinker. So it was like always in my mind, as soon as you get to a certain age, you start drinking. As soon as I got to that age and started drinking, I just drank like had no off switch. It definitely wasn't a progressive thing. I just like as I was always the one at parties who people would be like put into somebody's bed, like passed out, hiding alcohol from me, because I was like on the lookout for more because I'd run out or whatever. And then I sort of calmed down on the drinking a bit when I was about 15, got into the racing. Wasn't really the thing to do in 1990 to 93, like drinking, nobody kind of did, just took lots of ecstasy and amphetamines and cocaine. What do you think influenced that? I mean, all my friends were doing it. So I was from a nice you know, a nice middle class background, there was no trauma, there was no sort of awful stuff that went on in my life before then. It was really normalised. I mean, I went to a very nice well a school in a nice area of town.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Everybody in my year virtually smoked. Most I'd say about half were doing recreational drugs. I mean, it was just rife in 1990, 91. And the music, you know, sort of going to the music.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah, I was gonna say it was the cultural influences for all like the radio and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I remember watching Happy Mondays video on the chart show, which used to be on on a Saturday morning. Hassian, not Hassian, Hallelujah. And I remember watching the video to that and I was about 14, and it was like a pivotal moment, you know, and you just kind of think I've found my thing here. This is like me, I found my tribe. And then I just was like gone for years taking lots and lots of drugs, and then I got I had a baby when I was 23, calmed down on the drugs, very, very sort of intermittent after that, but it alcohol just came in, like really came in, and I just felt like that was okay because it was alcohol and it was acceptable and normal and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Yeah. Do you think I suppose was was there peer pressure growing up as a teenager? And then you talked about a lot of people in your year group doing it, you know, or was it just wanting to fit in, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Or I think I mean I never felt pressured to do it. I think I was probably more of a ringleader.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

I mean, I I just wanted to get off my head, I think. I was very rebellious. I mean, you don't know yourself at that age, do you? You don't kind of understand what the drivers are, but when I look back at it now, I would say I was probably lacking in confidence, lacking in self-esteem, but I had a very extrovert of an ear.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

And it kind of I felt like I'd found that was my identity. I just it it just all kind of felt good, uh or so I thought.

Marriage, Motherhood, And “Nice Wine”

SPEAKER_03 4:54

Yeah. Yeah. So how did that go after you've had your baby at 23 moving into alcohol?

Denial, Alarms, And A Failing Marriage

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, I mean I was sort of it was very much nice bottles of wine. So expensive bottles of wine, bottle of wine, a couple of beers every night, put the baby to bed, just husband me, and it felt like a sophisticated adult thing to do. We just got married. I felt like I was really grown up. I was 23, I'd been partying for like 10 years, felt like I'd put all that to bed, and now I was, you know, this kind of grown-up married person with a baby. So I was doing what grown-ups do, which is cook nice meals and drink nice bottles of wine, and and then very fancy. Yeah, it was, and I was always buying nice bottles of wine, you know, expensive bottles of wine, and and so I none of this cherry blossom stuff. No, but so I never questioned it. I never like thought, you know, I never felt like worried about it, except every so often, every few weeks, I would get hammered. And then there were so there were several sort of intermittently, I don't know, maybe once every few months I would I would have a complete panic and think, Am I an alcoholic? There's something wrong with me, I'm drinking differently to other people. Like everybody else seems to get drunk, but they know when to stop. Like they get drunk and they have a nice time. I get drunk and I throw up or I pass out and everybody has to, you know, bundle me into a taxi, or I end up being put to bed in somebody's spare bedroom because of or waking up in a house that I couldn't remember getting to. And so there were alarm bells, let's say. I kind of always had this awareness that I drank differently and inverted commas to other people, which you know, as you've as you get older you realise there's loads of people who drink like that. It's just nobody really talks about it.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

How did that affect your relationship? And you talked about obviously being married at quite a young age. How did the your relationship with alcohol affect your your marriage?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Well, I mean, Kel Saprize, we got divorced when I was 27. So a very short marriage. Um I was married for four years, we were together for six. I was very much in denial when we got divorced about my alcohol and and mental health issues, I'm I'm gonna say now, which I would not have described them as then. I hated him, blamed him, it was all his fault, he did leave me for somebody else, and it was brutal kind of him, the way he left me, it was very it was very brutal. But looking back now, twenty two years later, I totally see that the way I drank uh meant that I was very emotionally mature, I had no I didn't I had very little compassion for myself, and so you can't really have true compassion for somebody else until I think you've found that compassion for yourself. So I was selfish, I was quite reckless, and I and I got drunk regularly. So clearly, you know, you look at that, it's not a great recipe for a good marriage.

Parenting Through The Fog Of Alcohol

SPEAKER_03 8:11

No, absolutely not, and and and obviously being being a mother whilst going through all this as well. Talk me through, I guess, how that affected your ability to be a parent as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

I mean, I I again I think I was in denial because I was surrounded by a very close-knit group of friends who were all big drinkers and we'd all gone through the rave scene together, so we were all quite hedonistic. So we were going to festivals together, getting really drunk, we'd all go around to each other's houses, put the kids to bed, and then we'd get really drunk, or we'd like sometimes take recreational drugs. So I was immersed in this scene that cushioned me really from the reality of what was going on. But I think, you know, in terms of again looking back with hindsight, how it affected my ability to be a parent, it wasn't it wasn't neglect, it wasn't overt, and it wasn't, you know, I don't think Isabel, my oldest daughter, she's now 26. I it wasn't really something on her radar in terms of her knowing it was related to alcohol, like she wouldn't have known mummy is like this because she's because of alcohol. But when I look back, the effect it had was uh really insidious and really damaging, actually. And I didn't realise or appreciate at all how damaging that was, and it's something I feel really passionate about now, and it was moodiness, snappiness, you know, being tired, rushing through a bedtime story because I wanted to get downstairs and crack the wine open, bad relationships, really low self-esteem, you know, all of those emotional, traumatic uh consequences of alcohol that can be quite subtle, yeah, have a huge impact on your ability to be a good parent. And I've got another daughter who I had when I had stopped drinking and it's been completely different. You know, my parenting has been completely different. Of course.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

And I know like all all children are are are different, but do you think there is any noticeable, I suppose, knock-on effects from your eldest daughter to your youngest daughter that you can maybe see as I suppose maybe they are that way because of how I was when they was younger?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

It's difficult to say because Isabel Isabel's dad had she's had a difficult relationship with a dad, and I know that's been hard for her, so it's it's difficult to say with with certainty it was because of that. And I stopped drinking when Isabel was twelve, which was a fantastic thing to do in terms of our relationship, as well as lots of other reasons. Yeah, well it was, and it saved our relationship, and we're best friends, you know, we're s we're really, really close, and she's got two children, so I'm a grandma, and I'm really close to them, and we have a fantastic relationship. So I feel enormously grateful that I had that I came to my senses with alcohol when she was twelve. I wished I'd done it when she was a bit younger or not at all drunk, you know, when she was after she was born, but I think I managed to rescue it and we've talked very openly about where I was at. I think she understands completely it didn't come from a place of malice, you know, it came from a place of of trauma and loneliness and very low self-worth.

Where She Sat On The Spectrum

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Of course, yeah. And um do you know one of the things that there's all different levels of drinking but dependency, recreationally, you know, binge drinking, where did you sort of fit in on that spectrum?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

I mean, I think I s you know, you look at that the DSM five scale of you know, alcohol sort of use disorder and on a scale of one to ten, I mean I think at my worst I would say probably about an eight or a nine. I certainly wasn't physically addicted to alcohol, yeah, but I regularly drank in a way that was incredibly destructive and harmful in terms of my safety, my mental health. I was drinking about I don't know, 150 units a week when I was at my worst, so a couple of bottles of wine.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

And that's incredible. That didn't cause a dependency as well. Never found yourself waking up in the morning feeling like you need a drink to no.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

No.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

It's interesting how it can affect people in so you know so differently.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

And I remember I do remember saying once to my sister, which we do sort of chuckle about a bit now, that the the sort of naivety of it, that I remember saying to her when I was about twenty five, I really hope I'm never an alcoholic, because then you'd have to stop drinking forever.

SPEAKER_03 12:53

What's she what's your daughter's relationships like with alcohol after seeing your problems that you had? I know you said you she was 12, but has has that impacted her relationship with alcohol at all?

SPEAKER_01 13:02

She's definitely got a lot more awareness. So she drinks, she does drink, but she's a lot I mean, a totally moderate, you know, like she'll have one glass or maybe two glasses once a week and that or once every couple of weeks, and she's just she would never get drunk, you know. And her circle of friends is completely different. The social group at school was totally different.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

It kind of goes back to, I guess, for yourself growing up, those peer influences, as you said, you was kind of the ringleader of it, I suppose, but even still, I think being in those environments and all bouncing off each other and encouraging each other, and and I think that's you know one of the things that I've talked about so much before is with children, you only really have that influence over them for a a short number of years before you put them in those educational environments, and then the their influences become that of the friends. Yeah. And you don't really have that parental influence as much as as you'd like. Yeah.

The Night That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 13:56

No, it was a different world that she grew up in. None of her friends smoked, hardly any of them did drugs, some of them drank to excess, but it it wasn't it was almost frowned upon as something that was a bit not really very cool. Whereas when I was it's at school, it was the opposite. If you were if you worked hard at school and you had any kind of aspirations beyond getting hammered, you then you were a square and you got bullied.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

I I found it funny how things change so much. I had this conversation with uh my nephew before, and for me at school it was always cool just to have your bag on one shoulder. Whereas now it's cool to have them on both shoulder. If you have it on one shoulder, you're just a loser. And it's like, what? You know, the the sort of differences in terms of how things change. But yeah, it's crazy. And I suppose going back to yourself and your own childhood, then I know you said there were no no traumas there, but you talked about the the cultural influences, you know, and and pop culture onto your substance misuse. But what was your parents' relationship like with alcohol? Was that was that normal for lack of a better word?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, I mean I I think for the for the era, I think it was entirely normal. Neither of them you would ever have said were alcoholics or had a a dependency on alcohol, but they were both teachers, secondary school teachers in stressful jobs. They definitely used alcohol to unwind. I would see a massive difference in them in the some holidays, for instance. So they'd be stressed, working, you know, just really, really pulled out all term time. And then as soon as the holidays hit, it'd be friends round, loads of beers, sit in the garden. So I very subconsciously came to associate alcohol with letting your hair down, having a good time. That's how adults relax. Yeah, and it was always there, you know. Although when I was little, I remember it was kind of you know, the way that wine crept into our culture as a as a sort of nightly thing, that that was was very much the case in my family. Like when I was really little, it was a Sunday dinner treat. Like they'd get a bottle of wine with Sunday dinner. By the time I was kind of ten, it was it was like a regular purchase from the supermarket, you know, there's several bottles of wine going in the trolley, which never happened when I was like one or two, three, you know, little. They just didn't drink like that.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

What happened in my house uh during the pandemic, and um obviously we'd maybe have a bottle of wine at the weekend or something, but because he wasn't halved to come into work, it was I found myself every time I walked the dogs going past the corner shop, I thought, I'll just grab a bottle of wine to share with the wife tonight, you know, and that's how we did it. Yeah, it just changed, and that's just because the circumstances have changed around us as well. So it just kind of shows that that is and it's addictive.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

You know, nobody thinks of alcohol or that kind of drinking as an addictive thing, but it is, and so if you're drinking a bottle of wine every night, you're gonna start wanting a bottle of wine every night.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

And and wine, especially, do you know? I think there's something in there about the way alcohol is marketed, do you know, especially towards women, you know, things like your pink gins and mum's happy hour, do you know that our local pub has like a you know two for one on cocktails, you know, at a certain time, do you know, for mum's after school, and it's like how much it's just normalized to be marketing that way, and as you said, wine as well. I'm you know, still working in this service even then, but for some reason in my head wine felt a little bit classier. Yeah. It's like, well, I'm not on the lagers, I'm not on the vodkas, I'm just having a glass of wine with my meal tonight.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

And then gin obviously got pushed in the same way, it's very craft gin, you know, you call it a craft gin, and it's suddenly got that like air of sophistication, it's something a bit cultured, it's a bit classy, and it appeals to it.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

It's the glass as well, it's the way it's presented, isn't it, with the fruit in it. What would you say that your worst moment was then? What was the uh thing that really turned the tide for you with your drinking?

Unseen PTSD And Self‑Medication

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Well, I mean, when in the sort of maybe five years leading up to me stopping drinking, there were several horrific things that happened, which which I can't believe e any of those singular events didn't stop me drinking, but they didn't. I kept kind of I somehow kept managing to say, well, it's alright, I was just having a laugh, it's okay. And you the bravado, you know, you kind of laugh it off. Yeah, and then in nine uh in 2011, and I'd just finished a law degree, and I was I couldn't get a training contract, couldn't get a law training contract, and I was really depressed. My daughter was at a dad's, so I was on my own free night, Wednesday night or something, in this horrible job that I hated at Sheffield Hallam University. Nothing wrong with Sheffield Hallam University, but I hated the job.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

And I went, I had a bottle of wine in the house and I drank it really quickly, sort of six o'clock, just like walloped it back. I think probably about half an hour that drunk the whole thing. And then I thought, well, I'll just go and buy one more bottle of wine from the Tesco's up the road, and then I had to buy one, get one free. So I bought two bottles of wine. Would have been rude not to, yeah, and then thought, well, I won't drink both of them, obviously. Went home, drank both of them again very quickly, and found a bottle of a litre of strong cider in the back of the fridge, which I didn't even drink cider, somebody had left it there. Drank the whole lot, and I mean, God, I don't even want to think about how many units that is, fifty units of alcohol or something in about three hours. And I took the dog for a wee at the top of the drive and went for a cigarette, and I passed out and was throwing up in on the street about half nine at night, unconscious, and somebody drove past who I knew and saw me on the pavement, and the dog sadly passed now, Betty, bless her, was running around with the lead hanging off her collar, nobody holding the lead, running around in the road. So he stopped and called an ambulance. And then I woke up in the Sheffield's Northern General Hospital about three o'clock in the morning and had absolutely no idea where I was, covered in my own sick, stark lights, you know, hospital bed, very unsympathetic nurse, and it was just utterly shameful. I was so devastated. It was just like the worst thing that had ever happened to me. And it was all that denial just went, you know, everything, all the kind of stories I'd told myself about how I was just having a laugh, and I was just, you know, like everybody else, and it was a treat, and all the rest of it just fell away.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

What caused you to drink that much that night then?

EMDR And Processing Trauma

SPEAKER_01 20:36

I think I was just on a complete self-destruct mission. I think it was a a combination of never having an off switch. I just I just never knew when I was drunk. You know, I it I was genuinely mystified how people could have several drinks and then feel a bit drunk and say, I've had enough now, I'm gonna have a cup of tea. I couldn't understand how they did that. I I drank to get drunk, and I always drank to get drunk, and then it was just not being able to get a training contract, I'd I'd spent five or ten thousand, I think, of my own money on going back to university to do a law degree, I'd invested all this stuff in it. I was a single parent, I'd been working my butt off for like a year, working like 70 hours a week, just got got a first nearly, just two percent short of a first. Just give me the first, you know, so you know, gutting that I'd done all that to try and better myself after years of being this you know poverty stricken single parent doing crappy jobs that I hated, and then I couldn't get a training contract and I couldn't afford to to pay the rest of the the training, you know, the legal training. And I just hit self destruct. I think I was quite suicidal, really, on a sort of low, like a kind of not something that I'd openly acknowledge to myself, but I think on a subconscious level, I think I'd pretty I felt very defeated.

SPEAKER_03 21:59

Because you you Mentioned obviously w at the end of end of your marriage, you know, you said there obviously there was mental health issues there as well. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that and how that ties into to everything as well?

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah, I mean that was a a very a big part of my life actually, an event when I was 20 that had caused PTSD, which again, you know, this is like a different era now, isn't it, where we talk about mental health problems and people know they recognise mental health problems. I had PTSD for 20 years and had no idea I had PTSD. So when I was drinking in my 20s, I was self-medicating massively for an event that happened when I was 20 where I got attacked very violently. And I mean, I look back now and I don't know how I survived it to be honest, by an ex-boyfriend. And it it scarred me enormously. I had no support. I had to live in hiding for a while, so he couldn't find me. I eventually moved to London to get away from him because I was so terrified of him. And I never got any support for it. I never talked about it to a professional therapist. I just sort of swept it under the carpet and thought, well, these things happen, it was my fault. You know, I shouldn't have gone out with somebody who was like that. And I put myself in that situation, so I've just got to deal with it.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

But I I think talking about the alcoholism, you know, now you've shared that story. Everything else, I'm not saying that's the reason for it, but everything else suddenly makes a little bit more sense. Now you shared that part of the story.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

I mean, I'd been drinking, I'd been drinking sort of destructively from 13. So that you know, I'd already got an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. That was like the straw that broke the camel. That pushed me into a different kind of drinking where and I didn't understand it. And then I remember being about 40 and watching a documentary about PTSD. I mean, 40, I'd been sober for five years, and it was, you know, like I felt like I was quite self-aware and I'd done a lot of personal development work, I'd had therapy, I felt like I was in a really good place. And I watched this documentary and I just broke down completely and thought, shit, I've got PTSD. I didn't even know. And I thought if you did have anything like that happen, you might have PTSD for a year or a couple of years. I didn't know you could have PTSD for 20 years without knowing it. And I went to see a EMDR therapist, a sort of Googled EMDR therapists, and amazingly, there was one who lived about two minutes up the road from me, and she was absolutely fantastic. And I had about 10 EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprogramming therapy for trauma, for unprocessed trauma, and it was life-changing. It was completely life-changing.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Tell me a little bit more about what that process entails though.

Founding Soberistas And Its Ethos

SPEAKER_01 25:03

I mean, the the theory behind it is that pro PTSD is caused by events that are are so traumatic our brain can't process them. And so it remains live trauma. So you have flashbacks, you have nightmares, you break out in sweats, you know, if if you something reminds you of something, or you you saw that person who did something to you, you know, like I saw that person who who attacked me several times afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

What was that like when you saw him?

SPEAKER_01 25:35

I mean, bizarre really, because he ended he died about ten years ago of cancer. So the last time I saw him, he was a he he looked like a 70-year-old man, and he was well, he would be my age now, he was he was 49 last time I saw him, and he looked about 75, and he was a big, scary man when I went out with him, and he he'd sort of shrunk into this like ill little old man because of his illness. So it was a very weird thing when I saw him because I'd lived in fear of him for so long, and then I just saw this kind of shell of a man, and yeah, but it still evoked that that complete trauma in me, and and I couldn't understand why so many years later I was in such a state when I saw him, you know, that that things that reminded me of him would just put me in this state of pan a panic attack, you know, full-on panic attack. So EMDR through weird, it's like a little machine that that you sit in front of with a light on it, and the therapist guides you through the memory of you you start off with a specific memory point of that event, and then whilst you're thinking about that, you let your mind sort of go free thinking about that event and where it takes you, and you follow the light on this machine in front of you, and then the therapist tells you to stop and asks you, where are you now? So you don't have to say, you can just acknowledge in your own mind, and then she starts it again, and then you keep going, and you keep doing that until you get to a positive end of the sequence of events, and so she sort of helped me get process it, I suppose. You're reliving it, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

I imagine that's quite difficult to do though as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

It was the first time I'd ever spoken to anybody about what actually happened, it's the first time I've told anybody the actual detail of what happened, and it was really, really difficult. But about six weeks after I started doing it, I remember walking out and just feeling like this enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Just a complete free freedom of mind that I didn't realise I'd not had for 20 years, 25 years.

SPEAKER_03 27:51

Your husband wouldn't have known about it either, would he?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

He knew it had happened, but I was very he didn't know I was I don't think anybody knew the extent to how, you know, to how much it had affected me. And and certainly the drinking, I could I couldn't be in a house on my own because that ex-boyfriend had had climbed up a drain pipe, broken into the house I was in, and attacked me while I was I was asleep in bed. So I could not be in a house on my own.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Jesus Christ, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

And I used to drink two bottles of wine just if my husband went out.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

That's what I'm thinking, is it to sleep basically or to feel like I couldn't cope with being in a house on my own?

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah, it was terrifying. But I you know, again, going back to the sort of different climate we live in today, I never thought, hang on a minute, this is a bit I can't it's not okay to just be that terrified sitting in a house on your own that you have to drink two bottles of wine just to cope with that at eight o'clock at night on a Tuesday night. It's that's not that scary to most people, but to me it was terrifying.

Culture, Marketing, And The Grey Area

SPEAKER_03 28:52

I it's always like we always talk about trauma being subjective, and what is traumatic to one person may not be to somebody else, or someone could share a story to me of you know a trauma, and I could think, well, that's not that bad, for instance. But you it's hard to say unless you're that person that's experienced that yourself because of the I guess the emotions that the trauma has brought as well. So there's all those things that that come into them. But as soon as you've mentioned that that that assault, everything else that we discussed so far, suddenly in my head, boom, made sense. It felt like I'd just put the middle piece of a jigsaw, can be catchphrase the TV show. It was like the last piece had come up, and now I get now I get the picture. So it kind of brings everything, everything together. Talk to me a little bit about Subaristas then and this project that you are leading at the helm of, yeah, how it came to be and what it does.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Okay, so I so after all of that, I stopped drinking instantly. So woke up in the hospital, that was it, me and alcohol done, 22 years of drinking. I knew that was it, and it was hard, you know. I wasn't I wasn't physically addicted to alcohol, but I had obviously used it to deal with all of that stuff and socialising and everything else, and so living without alcohol for the first year and a half was really, really hard. You know, I had to learn all social skills, emotional resilience, going through loads of therapy as well, you know, just kind of life in the raw, and it was hard. And as the sort of months went by, I kind of became more I suppose I had a realisation that or a or a suspicion that there must be a lot of people like me who were not physically addicted to alcohol but had been using it in a really destructive way and who had a very shameful kind of relationship with it. I was really ashamed of my relationship with drinking. And I would and I knew I would not have gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. I I was too ashamed. I was a single parent, I couldn't have really gone to meetings for 90 days, no way, and couldn't have gone out if I had that 90 days.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

EFOS wouldn't have maybe resonated with you anyway. You probably wouldn't have found yourself amongst peers in in that environment, would you?

Community Kindness And Real Connections

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Yeah, I mean I did go to Sheffield Alcohol Support Service, which is now defunct, I think. But I remember walking in there and there were posters on the wall for needle exchange. The people who ran it were people who'd been on the street and who'd kind of lost everything, and I felt like a fraud. Yeah. Totally felt like a fraud. And I just thought, I haven't had a problem. I've been drinking, you know, one or two bottles of Chardonnay every night. I don't belong here. And and it it didn't resonate enough for me to stick with it. So I I felt very alone in I felt like there were alcoholics in inverted commas on one side, responsible drinkers very much in inverted commas on the other side, and then me in the middle as the only person in the world who's had this awful relationship with alcohol. But slowly I kind of thought that can't be true, it just can't be true. There must be other people like me. So I started writing a blog, I got about, I think I had about 800 followers on the blog, and then I had this idea where I thought, what if we turn that blog into a just a s a space online, a safe space that where people can write completely confidentially, anonymously, yeah, and just offload their shame in a nice environment where other people know how they feel and aren't going to judge them. And that was it, really. That was the kind of that was the sort of starting point. The only other things that were important to me, I think, in the in the initial thinking about soberists was I it was for women women who who sort of had lived a similar story to mine, I guess. And that it should be totally aspirational, the idea of sobriety, rather than it being, oh my god, I'm an alcoholic, I've got to live the rest of my life, can't drink, it's terrible, you know, sort of self-flagellation. That I really felt like after about a year and a half of not drinking, that I I felt this is actually a gift, what I've done. Stopping drinking was a gift, it was positive, it was amazing, and I kind of wanted the site I created to represent that. I wanted people to feel inspired to be sober, yeah, not to be beating themselves up for having had a drink problem. So we just launched I launched it with my ex-boyfriend who helped me with the tech side of things because I'm not very techie. And we had about I don't know, 20, 30 people on the first night just logged on and it was a bit like what do we do? Yeah, yeah, and then within a year, 20,000 people joined.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

And it was like just tapped into this massive group of people who had felt unseen, unheard, unvalidated, who hadn't wanted to go and get help in real life, who just sort of all gravitated towards the site.

SPEAKER_03 34:02

Because it really is, and and you know, you you've written before about it being that career area of drinking, alcohol dependency, you know, recreationally having a drink, and then that complex space where someone may not identify as an alcoholic yet struggles to moderate their drinking as well. Why do you think that as a concept, you know, you talked about you know the the 20,000, 30,000 people? Why do you think that concept resonates so deeply, particularly with women? And how has that shaped the ethos of Subaristas?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

I think the first part of your question, it I think because we live in a culture that is very hypocritical about alcohol, so we are constantly dealing with this this sort of dual representation of alcohol. So on the one hand, it's celebrated even to the point of excess, you know, films like The Hangover.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Yeah.

Life After Alcohol And Identity

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Just watching Netflix sometimes, you know, you watch all these series, and the characters are attractive and successful, and and they've got beautiful skin, and and then they're knocking back these massive glasses of wine, and there's there's never the negative consequences, it's always dressed up in this very positive, glamorous way. So you're kind of constantly dealing with that, and then it that's at odds with your relationship with drinking, because your relationship with drinking is sort of terrible anxiety at three o'clock in the morning, weight gain, bloated face, hating yourself, going through your phone the next morning, seeing who you've texted. Those two things are just totally at odds with each other. So you end up thinking it's just me, it's my fault. Everybody else is doing it right, everyone else is drinking in a way that's they've they've figured it out. Yeah, there's something wrong with me because I can't do that. Because everywhere we look, we're seeing this positive, glamorous story around alcohol. So for that reason, I think an enormous amount of people just internalize it, they just keep plugging away at trying to fix their relationship with alcohol. I I'm just not doing it right. I need to learn to moderate, I need to drink water in between my drinks of alcohol or whatever, and it and it doesn't work because it isn't them, it's the substance.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

So that's the reason I think you get this sort of you know, shameful situation, this this this reason why people find it so difficult to go and ask for help or talk about it in an honest way.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

And I think you know, with with that in itself, you you're absolutely right because you know the service that we have here, yes, there are people here though that are you know struggling with alcohol dependency, drug dependency. We offer a methrodome programme here for people. But if you're someone like yourself with a binge drinking problem where you you you you know are struggling to moderate, you're gonna come to this building, sit down and be like, hang on, this isn't for me because I'm not to that extent. And even some of the characters that will get that, you know, maybe hang around the building. You could walk up for your first appointment, see some of our service users stood outside the building and think, actually, I'm not that bad because you're not at that point yet, or currently, as well. I always think yet is the interesting is the interesting point. So it's really hard to target people when we are just talking about moderation, because I think people suddenly think that we are just dependency as a service, and it's quite a grey area to navigate, and obviously it sounds like something that you've struggled with to navigate.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah, and I think if we were more honest as a society about and we talked about alcohol use disorder and the spectrum of alcohol use disorder, it would be really helpful because I think it's very difficult to identify that problem until all the wheels have fallen off and you can't lie about it to yourself anymore. You know, when you're really far down the line, then you can kind of say, Yeah, I've got a problem with alcohol. There's a long way to go before you get to that point, isn't it? Where you can stay in denial, but it's still having a really detrimental effect on your life. And that's now on Soberisters, that is what I see all the time in our blogs, you know, in the chat rooms, the forums. It's they're they're functioning really well, you know, their lives are still together, they're still they've still got jobs, they've still got the house, they've still got the kids, but they're drinking one, two, three bottles of wine a night, and their mental health is abysmal. They hate themselves, you know, they're depressed, they're anxious, they're overweight, they're stuck in this trap and they can't get out, but they don't feel like they can go to rehab or alcoholics anonymous because they've still got a really nice life on the surface.

Building Belonging Online And Offline

SPEAKER_03 38:48

Yeah. I think the the interesting thing about the soberists project is that you started it in 2012. This was at a time when online sober communities were virtually non-existent. Uh you know, even talking about it now, I still think we're quite far off as services, looking at this as a spectrum of disorder. So, you know, going back 13 years ago, even further behind with that. But you've weathered the digital changes that has happened in that time in the last 13 years, the social shifts, the pandemic. So, 13 years on, what has surprised you most about the way that people use the platform in which you have given them?

SPEAKER_01 39:29

It's a nice, a nice, it's a very positive answer. I would say, what because we have been through a lot of changes, like you say, especially the digital kind of I think there's been a massive explosion of like sober influences and all sorts of like online communities, which just like you say didn't exist. But what what really always stands out to me is our community and love on soberisters, it is the nicest place, I think, on the internet.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

I go on there, and the internet is a horrible place.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Well, it can be, it can't be, yeah, and especially sort of social media, but you know, it is without exception almost, so unbelievably kind, supportive, and and our members just kind of rally around new people who come on, anybody who's going through struggles. We've got, I mean, just unbelievable acts of kindness and bonding people who've flown across to America with people they've never met before and gone on like a two-week tour of America, staying in other sobristers' houses, like best friends. They've only met online, you know, women in their 50s and 60s. These huge acts of bravery after they've stopped drinking, they just want to start living their life and embrace, you know, adventure and and they're just so lovely and kind. So the community is what I think stand makes us stand apart. It is it is a very sort of close-knit, friendly, supportive place that has managed to keep its ethos all the way through.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

Yeah. Because life changes so much with with sobriety. I think one of the things that I often hear is people worry about being seen as being boring because they don't drink. Maybe they're not going to get invited to parties anymore because they don't drink. How did your life change the positively with sobriety?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Just knowing who I am, I think, being authentic and understanding myself. So realising I was a bit of an introvert, that I really like my own company, that I really don't want to go to any parties.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't actually want to go to these parties either.

A Message To Quiet Questioners

SPEAKER_01 41:40

I'm much happier in my pyjamas at like half eight on a Saturday night watching something on TV and just you know having having a Horlicks. But you know, the the the how it's kind of changed me, I think, is I'm more it's the confidence, knowing who I am, knowing what makes me happy, and and having and knowing how to look after myself and having enough self-compassion to do the things that make me happy, make time for the things that make me happy and to value things, you know, to sort of really celebrate the things that are actually meaningful in life, instead of always chasing, well, you know, you what you think you're getting when you're drinking, the fun, the excitement, the adventure, the naughtiness, you know, letting go of all of that and actually seeing what's real and and being very grounded in what's real.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Because you said obviously you you've got such a good relationship with your daughter, like how did sobriety positively impact other relationships as well?

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Again, just in my self-compassion, if you know, you I think when you when you're sober, you start to respect yourself again, don't you? You know, when you're drinking like I used to drink three, four times a week I was waking up full of self-hatred to the point where I could hardly look at myself in the mirror. If you hate yourself on that kind of visceral level, there's no way you can have a positive relationship with somebody else. So self-respect, self-compassion means you can give an awful lot more to the person you're in a relationship with, and you can have a much more meaningful connection with those people because you're present and you like yourself.

SPEAKER_03 43:18

What's your relationship like with your your eldest daughter's father now? Do you do you talk to each other at all or no?

SPEAKER_01 43:24

He he decided to to detach himself from Isabel, my eldest daughter, completely and walked out of her life several years ago. So she has no relationship with him, and I haven't had a relationship with him at all for a good ten years.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

I didn't know if I was thinking about maybe how he views you now, do you know obviously being so different twenty twenty two years?

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Yeah, I mean I d I don't know. We had nothing it was a very acrimonious divorce, and we haven't we've never had anything to do with each other. We were very we we were very separate parents in terms of bringing Isabel up after we got divorced and then he He's he's moved away.

SPEAKER_03 44:02

Connection talking about community, talking about connection, connection is clearly a core value of subristors, you know, from the Zoom groups, the real life meetups that you do in a world that I think is increasingly digital, especially now more so than it was, you know, 13 years ago. What do you think the unique challenges and opportunities for maintaining those genuine peer-to-peer connections in those online sobriety spaces?

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Well, real life meetups, I think intermittently to really fuel that's that sense of community is imperative. So we've got uh our in May, we've got one of our amazing members, Dave Ladd, is his username, who is walking from Blackpool, where he lives, to Sheffield, where I live, walking the whole way to raise money for us. So Bristos is a charity now, so he's doing that to raise money for So Bristers. When he gets to Sheffield, there's about 40 or 50 So Bristos members who are all coming up to Sheffield for the weekend. We've got a meal planned together, we're going for a yoga class, we're going for a trip to Chatsworth, that's a nice stately home. So a whole weekend of kind of lovely activities with each other to really bond and and kind of reinforce that connection. So a lot more of that, and I think it's really, really important now, especially with AI. I think it's just such a kind of that's the thing that's gonna be the big challenge, I think, as as AI increases in its you know, cleverness. It it we've got a we've the only thing that that we've got that AI can't replicate is that human connection. And so it's it's really important to to kind of reinforce that in real life, I think. So that's our sort of one of our massive priorities now.

SPEAKER_03 45:55

And I can see that completely, do you know that you know these the the face-to-face connection as well is is such an important part, and I think obviously being around like-minded people. You talked earlier about when you were younger, about finding your tribe, and obviously that you thought the pop culture influences was exactly that, finding your tribe, but how does that translate now to soberists now in terms of finding your tribe? Does it feel like how would you compare the finding of the tribe now to what you thought it was, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Well, it's it's deeper, and it's you know, I think when you're younger, your tribe is quite surface level, isn't it? It's about sort of having a laugh, the music you like, the clothes you wear, what you look like, you know, you're quite superficial, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

I think now the connections that I see amongst our members, the the connection comes from from pain, really, emotional pain. The connection comes from being human and recognising in themselves, underneath the ego, that we're all the same. We've all been through the same kind of pain, the same kind of struggles, we've overcome the same kind of struggles, you know. That creates this connection, the tribe, the feeling of belonging to each other that's almost like family. That's that is you know, we meet we meet up in real life, and you feel like these are kind of sisters almost, because you've been through those very painful experiences. It's a much deeper sense of belonging, I think.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

And and if you could speak to someone listening to this who does fall into that grey area, maybe not alcohol dependent, not able to moderate, who's just quietly questioning their drinking, but maybe hasn't told anybody, what would you want them to know?

Quick‑Fire Closers And CTA

SPEAKER_01 47:49

That when you remove alcohol, you become a completely different person. So we've I I truly believe we've all got hidden reserves of strength, love, and wisdom and resilience that we have no idea about when we drink all the time. And when you take the alcohol away, they all come out, and you realise all the things you were using alcohol for to try and deal with the void you were trying to fill, the person you were trying to become, it was all there. You just were pushing it down with alcohol, so it's kind of a leap of faith, I guess, that you trust that you take away the alcohol, guaranteed you will become a person that you really like, that you can rely on, that you that will give you a good life. But you can't see that person while you're drinking, so you have to kind of trust that that person is there and will emerge at some point in the future because they always do.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Thank you, Lucy. I'd I'd like to finish these podcasts with a series of questions unrelated to what we spoke about so far. But before I do, is there anything else that you'd like to talk about or share? Brilliant. My first question is what's your favourite word?

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Oh discombobulated?

SPEAKER_03 49:08

Nice least favourite word.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Oh gosh, maybe babe.

SPEAKER_03 49:14

Babe, yeah, I can see that. Tell me something that excites you.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Going to the gym these days, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

The artist party's getting there for me. Once I'm there I enjoy it with the game.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Yeah, I love the gym, yeah. Boxing.

SPEAKER_03 49:29

Yeah. Tell me what doesn't excite you.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Hangovers.

SPEAKER_03 49:34

What sound or noise do you love?

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Music. House music.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

What sound or noise do you hear?

SPEAKER_01 49:43

That's a hard one.

unknown 49:47

Gosh.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

I guess an in an incessant dog bark.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Nothing worse. I just hear the neighbour's dog go in and going. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

SPEAKER_01 49:58

I mean it's kind of along the same lines, but like a a psychotherapist, I suppose, something in mental health. Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_03 50:06

What profession would you not like to?

SPEAKER_01 50:09

Any of the ones that I used to do before I set Zoom for instance. Sheffield Hell of University.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

And then lastly, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say it when you arrive at the Paley Gates?

SPEAKER_01 50:20

You've done alright, kid. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 50:23

Lucy, thank you so much for joining me on Believe in People.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

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