By Luke Voogt
Boxing Day 2017 was the last time Mary Stuart drank before her fourth and hopefully final attempt to live alcohol-free.
“We thought it was going to be mum’s last Christmas,” the first-time Herne Hill author said.
“I woke up with probably the worst hangover I’d ever had and that’s saying something, because I’ve had some bad ones. I haven’t touched a drink since.”
The Boxing Day binge was the last chapter in more than two decades of alcohol addiction in which Mary, at her worst, drank up to three bottles of wine a night.
The addiction stemmed from social anxiety and catastrophising – viewing situations in the worst possible way – along with binge drinking at social events in her 20s.
“I might have come back late from a break or something like that and I would think I would get fired,” she said.
“I was always fearful of the way people perceived me or looked at me – it was just this constant battle in my head.”
Decades in community service jobs, including a “quite stressful” stint working with offenders compounded her drinking problem.
She admits she was unprepared when she first attempted to quit at age 37 in 2010, after a close friend died of brain tumour.
A second attempt in 2012 came unstuck on a holiday to Spain. She tried a third time after being diagnosed with celiac disease a few years later.
For decades she had hidden her drinking problem from her mum, who she said knew nothing about it but “knew something was wrong”.
“She never delved into any of that, she waited for me to tell her,” she said.
“It was the best thing I ever did telling her, it was just this weight off my shoulders.”
In 2016 her mum was diagnosed with uterine cancer and underwent a hysterectomy.
But in February 2017 she was re-diagnosed with stage four cancer.
Several months later, a friend recounting Mary making an incoherent phone call while drunk, her mum’s condition and her worst hangover ever motivated her to quit for good.
“My brain was starting to get affected,” she said.
“I couldn’t even pick up when people couldn’t understand me.”
In the months prior she had gone through a litany of journal entries detailing one-night stands and embarrassing incidents to prepare.
“I thought about the horrible things I’d done, silly things that I would never have done sober, offending people,” she said.
Then, she began her alcohol-free journey with a hungover selfie on December 27.
“My hair was really dry and lacklustre,” she said.
“My eyes were glazy and it looked like I was staring into nothing.”
She took a selfie for the first 30 days, and regularly after that, noticing she looked healthier each day.
“It just became a way of life,” she said.
“My skin became clearer and my eyes didn’t look so grainy.”
She regained her energy and rediscovered her love of painting while caring for mum.
“That sort of kept me on the path because I wanted her to be proud of me,” she said.
Her mum fought on for another two “priceless” years and Mary helped her plan the songs and stories for her funeral before she finally succumbed to cancer in 2019.
“I could have easily gone, ‘this is stressful’ and had a drink, but I didn’t want to lose my focus on these things,” she said.
She also began writing about her journey in 2017 and, in February 2020, a Sydney book coach helped her turn 40,000 words with “no structure whatsoever” into a self-help book.
Mary published Living an Alcohol-free Life YOUR Way in April and, with many set to give up booze for ‘Dry July’, she plans to launch the book at Vixen Designs Studio Gallery in central Geelong next month.
She hopes her journey can inspire others to find their own way of being alcohol-free.
“This book actually made me discover a lot of stuff about myself as well,” she said.
“My brothers have read it and they told me mum would be proud to see I’ve published it.”
Details: marystuart.net.au
