‍"What's wrong with mummy?"

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Michelle had always been the life of the party. A binge drinker, sure, but not someone who drank every day. Not someone with a "real problem." At least, that's what she told herself - right up until the night her daughter asked a question she couldn't ignore.

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Michelle had just arrived home from a beer festival - but the problem was, she couldn’t remember how she got there.

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She knows her friends brought her back - they must have, because she woke up in her own house. She'd arranged for someone to watch the kids, and she'd thought they'd be asleep by the time she arrived.

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But they weren't.

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Her daughter was old enough to ask questions. Old enough to remember when her father had struggled with his drinking, whose relationship with Michelle had ended years earlier. Old enough to see what was happening now and connect it to what had happened then.

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"What's wrong with mummy?" she asked.

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Soon after, the babysitter had to leave. Michelle was alone with her children, still intoxicated and still barely functional. "Who knows what could have happened," she says now, her voice quiet.
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"You think about these things after the fact, and it's pretty shocking."

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That moment of her daughter's question cutting through the fog, the memories it dragged up, the realisation of what could have gone wrong - that was the wake-up call she couldn't ignore anymore.

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I wasn't a stereotypical 'alcoholic'

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Here's the thing Michelle wants you to understand: she never thought she had a real problem.

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She'd been drinking since before she was old enough to legally buy alcohol - always the life of the party, always fun and always up for it. A binge drinker, sure, but not a daily drinker. And that distinction mattered to her.

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"I wasn't a stereotypical 'alcoholic,'" she explains.

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"They call it grey area drinking. I wasn't drinking every day. I wasn't waking up and drinking first thing in the morning."

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Michelle knows now that it’s easy to hide in that grey area. Easy to convince yourself you're fine because you can always point to someone worse and say, "At least I'm not that bad."

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For years, Michelle stayed fairly stable with her drinking - but then loneliness crept in, life working from home got isolating and the stress built up. And her drinking, which had always been there in the background, started taking up more space in her life.

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She told herself it helped. Stressful job, stressful single parenting - all the reasons you think a few drinks will take the edge off. "But it doesn't actually help," Michelle says now. "It just doesn't."

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Still, she thought she needed it. More than that, she thought she enjoyed it. The idea of giving it up felt impossible, unnecessary even. She wasn't that bad.

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Except the warning signs kept piling up.

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The blackouts started adding up

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First, there was the polo event.

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One of those big day-drinking affairs where everyone's having a good time, the sun's out, the drinks are flowing. Michelle was there with all her friends, laughing and socialising, feeling fine.

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Until somehow, they lost her.

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She doesn't know what happened. Massive blackout. The next thing she remembers is being alone, trying to figure out how to get home. When she checked her wallet later, she found a card from a safety volunteer who'd helped her find her way.

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"Pretty horrible," she remembers. "The anxiety the next day, the regrets, beating yourself up over it." Her mental health wasn't great to begin with, and these incidents weren't helping.

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There were other nights where she didn't know how she got home. Little injuries she couldn't explain - nothing massive, but enough to make her wonder. Situations that, looking back, weren't safe. The kind of things you brush off in the moment but that stick with you later, nagging at the edges of your mind. 

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And then there was the beer festival - another day-drinking event with friends. Another afternoon that should have been fun.

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She arrived home with no memory of the trip. Her daughter saw her in that state. Asked that question. And suddenly, Michelle couldn't brush it off anymore.

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"That was probably what led up to me seriously thinking that something needed to change," she says.

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The four month break

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Not long after that night, Michelle was scheduled to have a planned surgical procedure. Her medical team outlined one key requirement: no alcohol. Her liver needed to shrink before surgery, and she couldn't drink during recovery either.

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So she stopped - for four whole months.

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"I did okay because it was a medical requirement," Michelle explains. When there's a rule, a reason, a deadline - she could stick to it. Four months alcohol-free. No problem.

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She had the surgery, she recovered and life moved forward. But once the medical necessity had lifted, the drinking slowly crept back in.

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Except this time it looked different. She wasn't going out to parties or festivals anymore. She was drinking alone at home, and working from home made that dangerously easy.

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She'd try to set limits for herself, like only buying a six-pack, but then it was so simple to just order more and have it delivered to her door. "So that didn't always work," she says. "And then the weekends were a free-for-all."

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But it wasn't just affecting her anymore.

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"It wasn't a life for the kids. I wasn't there for them."

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That realisation sat heavy in her chest. The pattern she'd sworn she'd never repeat was repeating itself right in front of her children's eyes.

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Taking the first step

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Michelle remembers seeing an ad for Clean Slate pop up on her Facebook feed. At first, she scrolled past, but then she saw it again. She clicked through, did some research, read what people were saying about it, and saw that her health fund covered the program. 

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But what Michelle liked the most, was that it didn't feel like “going to rehab”. There wasn't that stigma, that sense of "this is for people whose lives have completely fallen apart."

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"It was actually easier to go ahead with it," Michelle explains. "I was still at home. I didn't have to find alternative care for my kids. Everything was done via telehealth, appointments were easy to book - and honestly? That convenience mattered."

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The convenience wasn't just practical. It was psychological.

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"There was less chance of backing out because it was so easy. And I could just be in my own home, in my own bed."

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You have to do the work

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Michelle figured out early that stopping drinking was only the first step.

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"You have to do the work," she says, "otherwise nothing's going to change. I realised that pretty early in the piece."

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Once Michelle had gone through her supported detox, the regular appointments with her nurse provided accountability. "It was good to have someone to be accountable to and to check in on how things are going and talk through any issues that have come up," she explains.

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Then there were the group meetings which provided a sense of connection and community. Michelle explains, "it was great to connect with people that were going through the same process and having similar mindsets around alcohol - because other people don't always understand."

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They also became a safe space to figure out how to live her life without alcohol as a crutch, because stressful things still happen, and difficult emotions still come up. 

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"I had a friendship breakdown after I gave up," Michelle shares. "Things like that - you don't always know how to navigate them. But you can talk through them in these meetings with other people who may have had the same situations. It's a safe environment."

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What struck Michelle was how the telehealth format let her work through real challenges in real-time. She wasn't removed from her daily stressors - she was learning to handle them without alcohol.

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But she's clear about this: none of it works unless you actually do it.

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What's different now

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When Michelle talks about what's changed since she stopped drinking, she doesn't speak in vague terms.

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"You don't realise how much you spend on drinking."

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All that money that used to disappear into bottles and deliveries she barely remembered ordering - it started accumulating instead. Becoming something she could actually use.

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Her physical health improved, and she even quit smoking three and a half months into her journey.

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And that confidence showed up at work too with Michelle negotiating a higher-paying job, something she's not sure she would have had the courage to do before. "I'm doing a lot better in my work now," she says.

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But it's the bigger life shifts that really illustrate how much has changed.

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Michelle bought her first house.

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Something that felt completely out of reach when she was spending money on alcohol, when her focus was scattered and her confidence was low.

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"I mean, it didn't all happen just because I quit drinking," Michelle is quick to clarify, because she knows how it sounds, how it might seem too good to be true. "But it culminated. And giving up alcohol definitely helped in that regard."

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And then there's the shift that matters more than any house, job or amount of money saved: she's now present with her kids. Actually there, not just physically in the room but mentally and emotionally available.

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"I'm more present with my kids. They're happier," Michelle says, and you can hear how much that means to her. "I'm looking after their health now, too."

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Nine months into her journey, Michelle is clear about her intentions: "I'm 9 months alcohol-free now and don't intend on going back - because I don't need it."

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What's the worst that could happen?

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When Michelle is asked what she would say to someone who’s worried about a life without alcohol, her answer is characteristically direct:

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"What's the worst that's going to happen? You get healthy, you save money. There's no downside I can see."

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Before she quit, she thought she needed alcohol. Believed it was helping her cope with the stress of single parenting, the pressure of work, the loneliness - all of it. Those were the stories she told herself - that alcohol was a reward, a stress reliever, something she enjoyed that helped take the edge off. 

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"But it doesn't actually help," she says now.

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It took those wake-up calls to make her see that her relationship with alcohol wasn't what she'd convinced herself it was. But here's the message Michelle wishes someone had told her years ago:

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"You don't have to be the atypical or stereotypical ‘alcoholic’. I knew I had an issue with my relationship with alcohol, but I wasn't the stereotypical ‘alcoholic’." She pauses, making sure the words land. "Grey area drinking - I wasn't drinking every day, I wasn't waking up and drinking first thing. Doesn't mean you can't get help with the impacts alcohol might be having on your life."

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"You don't have to hit rock bottom. I had a few rock bottoms along the way, and they definitely give you wake-up calls. But let's not go all the way to the bottom."

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You don't have to lose everything to deserve help. You don't have to fit a narrow definition of "bad enough" either. If alcohol is impacting your life, your relationships, your parenting, your health, your sense of self - that's enough.