Annie Grace joins Newsweek to discuss how she went from drinking two bottles of wine a night to helping over 235,000 people find freedom from alcohol with The Alcohol Experiment.
Drinking Two Bottles of Wine A Night
I was the Global Head of Marketing for a company, traveling in and out of the United Kingdom. Often I was staying there for six months at a time. I was drinking at least two bottles of wine every night.
I stopped feeling really hungover and I stopped really being able to get drunk. We would start drinking at 5 pm, then I’d get home or to a hotel at around midnight, open the mini-fridge, and have two or three more little wine bottles before I fell asleep in the early hours. It felt very compulsive.
I also started buying boxes of wine at home, because I did not want to know that I was opening that second bottle. The cognitive dissonance there was extremely high.
Trying To Drink Less Than Two Bottles of Wine A Night
Truthfully, six years of my decade of heavy drinking were spent trying to drink less. I was constantly on an alcohol diet, full of slight reductions and rebounds, though more rebounds than reductions. If I took a week off alcohol, I would be pining for it. I would feel like I was missing out the whole time I wasn’t drinking.
The Moment of Change
The moment of profound change for me was on a trip to London in 2013. I was away from my family and I had stayed up until four in the morning, getting totally drunk in somebody’s hotel room. I got up at 6 am, went into the hotel bar, and asked them for a mimosa as a “hair of the dog.” The waitress wouldn’t open a whole bottle of champagne for a mimosa but she offered to make me a screwdriver, which is vodka and orange juice. It was one of those little lines I had never crossed: vodka at 6 am.
Why Was I Drinking Two Bottles of Wine A Night?
I had been asking myself for years: Am I an alcoholic? What’s wrong with me? These really shame-inducing questions actually prevented me from changing, because the answers to them were so tragic. Sobriety was the absolute worst thing I could imagine because alcohol was certainly my best friend.
But at that moment, a different question came into my mind: Why?
Why was it that this fermented liquid glass had so much control over me? I felt smart and in control everywhere else in my life, but this was a strange exception. Why?
More at Newsweek
Keep reading the article at Newsweek to discover what I learned and how it led me to create The Alcohol Experiment.
The Alcohol Experiment
If you’re ready to stop drinking two bottles of wine a night or make whatever change is right for you, get curious and join us in The Alcohol Experiment. Sign up here!