‍

The wine glass

‍

It was the kind of drawing that usually ends up on the fridge. It had all the hallmarks of childhood: bright colours, stick figures, careful handwriting. But when Charlotte took a closer look at it, her heart dropped.

‍

In the picture, she was holding a wine glass.

‍

“I looked at it and thought, oh God. I’m passing this on to my kids,” she says. “They’re going to learn it from the get-go. And that, for me, was the bit that made it not okay anymore.”

‍

It wasn’t the first time she’d questioned her drinking, but it was the first time she couldn’t look away.

‍

This wasn’t just about her anymore, instead, it was about what was being normalised. About what her children might quietly absorb as ordinary.

‍

And standing there with that card in her hands, she knew something had to change.

‍

“I always knew”

‍

Charlotte started drinking around fourteen. Boarding school culture made it feel inevitable as everyone drank, and heavily at that. What began as teenage experimentation slowly threaded itself into adulthood until alcohol wasn’t an event; it was simply a part of the day.

‍

With the exception of her two pregnancies, when she stopped without much difficulty, she drank almost daily.

‍

“I’ve never met a glass of wine that I didn’t finish,” she says. “I always knew it was probably something I didn’t have the control over that I really wanted to have.”

‍

For years, that knowing hovered in the background. Around five years ago it became harder to ignore. She began negotiating with herself: spacing drinks with water, setting limits, promising tomorrow would be different. The familiar cycle of trying and failing chipped away at her confidence.

‍

“I started to feel like it was owning me rather than just being something I did.”

‍

If there wasn’t alcohol in the house, Charlotte would feel anxious - and she hated that something else had that much influence over her choices. Still, recognising the problem and acting on it were two very different things.

‍

The help that didn’t land

‍

Over the years, Charlotte raised her drinking with GPs - never explicitly saying the words “I have a problem.” She would circle around it, hoping someone would hear what she couldn’t quite say outright.

‍

“The response was very much, ‘You’ll be right. Just cut down a bit.’”

‍

Looking back, she sees those moments differently.

‍

“I was calling for help. I just didn’t have the courage to say it clearly.”

‍

No one dismissed her intentionally, but no one recognised the weight behind what she was hinting at either. And so the years continued. She knew something wasn’t right and she was unsure of what to do next.

‍

Three years of knowing

‍

Thinking back, Charlotte says it took about three years from fully recognising the issue to reaching out for support.

‍

Three years of bargaining that slowly turned into quiet frustration, three years of feeling stuck and unable to make any progress

‍

“You almost feel paralysed,” she says. “You know you need help, but you don’t know how to ask for it properly.”

‍

Each failed attempt at moderation reinforced the belief that she should be able to fix it herself. It was, in her words, “a pretty unpleasant time.”

‍

Eventually she came across an online community that led her to a program she could access from home. It didn’t feel institutional or overwhelming, rather it felt manageable.

‍

She booked a call, then cancelled it.

‍

“I was probably just scared.”

‍

She booked again. And for reasons she still can’t fully explain, the day she made that second call she stopped drinking. Not as part of a grand plan, but because something in her had shifted.

‍

By the time she had her first clinical appointment, she’d already been alcohol-free for nearly two weeks.

‍

What struck her most wasn’t the structure of the program, it was the fact that she was finally being heard.

‍

“It was the first time I’d said it out loud and someone spoke back to me in a language I understood. It was remarkable.”

‍

After years of minimising and half-admissions, someone responded without dismissal.

‍

Responsibility with support

‍

What mattered to Charlotte was that she remained in her own life while making changes.

‍

“I liked that the responsibility was still mine, but I had support.”

‍

She didn’t want to be removed from her world; she wanted to learn how to live in it differently. Regular check-ins gave rhythm to her weeks. Meetings that initially terrified her, slowly became grounding.

‍

“I really struggled to go to the first few,” she admits. “Now I think they’re magic.”

‍

The combination of structured support and shared experience helped her build tools she hadn’t known existed. Practical strategies, yes, but also a different way of seeing herself.

‍

One of the biggest shifts for Charlotte was learning not to tie her worth to drinking, or to not drinking.

‍

“It’s hard to stop measuring yourself against it,” she says. “But eventually it becomes just one part of your story, not the whole thing.”

‍

Appointments created accountability, and knowing someone would ask how she was going added gentle momentum. Over time, the process felt less like crisis management and more like steady growth.

‍

“It became a really nice rhythm.”

‍

More space

‍

When Charlotte describes her life now, she talks about space.

‍

Her mornings began to feel spacious, with no headaches and no fog - and that sense of ease gradually extended into her mind.

‍

“It’s really neat to wake up and just get on with the day.”

‍

The anxiety that once hummed in the background has softened, and her life now feels more intentional rather than reactive.

‍

“I don’t tolerate as much crap as I used to,” she says, smiling. “If something’s not good for me, I step away faster.”

‍

The fear versus the reality

‍

Before she stopped drinking, two fears loomed large. The first was around socialising and being the “different” person in the room - particularly in a culture where alcohol threads through celebration and grief alike, she worried about standing out.

‍

The second was that life would be boring.

‍

“I hadn’t really done anything fun without alcohol involved,” she says. “I thought alcohol equaled fun.”

‍

However, neither fear materialised the way she expected.

‍

“No one really questioned me,” she says. “If anything, people were curious.”

‍

Some even began reflecting on their own drinking in those conversations. And as for fun?

‍

“Fun is fun,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what you’re holding in your hand.”

‍

These days, if a passing thought suggests a glass of wine, another voice answers quickly.

‍

“Almost immediately I think, ‘Oh my God, no you wouldn’t.’”

‍

As time passed, it felt less like deprivation and more like she had found her new normal.

‍

The second card

‍

Recently, her daughter found that original Mother’s Day card, the one with the wine glass.

‍

“She said, ‘I need to draw that again without the wine glass. Because you don’t drink anymore.’”

‍

Charlotte pauses when she tells this part.

‍

The legacy she’d feared, the quiet message that a wine glass is how mum unwinds - has shifted. Not through perfection, but through action. Through doing something hard and staying with it.

‍

Your discomfort is enough

‍

If someone is wondering whether they should reach out, Charlotte’s advice is simple.

‍

“Just do it.”

‍

But more than that, she wishes someone had told her sooner that you don’t need to hit a dramatic rock bottom.

‍

“If what you’re doing makes you uncomfortable, that’s enough,” she says. “You don’t need someone else to validate that.”

‍

You don’t need to meet a stereotype. You don’t need to wait until things fall apart. If you wake up wishing you hadn’t done what you did the night before, or if a small voice keeps asking whether this is really how you want to live - that’s sufficient.

‍

For Charlotte, acting on that discomfort changed the trajectory of her life.

‍

“My goodness, my life is so much better without alcohol,” she says. “There’s nothing I miss about drinking. It just becomes normal not to. And I wouldn’t want to go back in a million years.”

‍

There’ll be another card this Mother’s Day, and this time, Charlotte won’t be holding a wine glass.

‍