After 10 years of highlighting the many wrongs with our alcohol culture (and there are many!), I'm now taking a swipe at another damaging cultural norm - diet culture.  Diet culture. Do you know much about it? I didn't. I had no idea that we were living under a system of beliefs that are based on a twisted system of misinformation that cause so much harm.  It's actually unbelievable when you start exploring and unpicking it. Diet culture is deeply embedded, we're all negatively impacted by it, and yet it's fundamentally flawed. Flawed I tell you!  So, as with alcohol cultur ..read more

I went out for dinner last night with some colleagues and one of them ordered a glass of wine, which is totally fine by me. At 12 years sober (12 years sober canyoufuckingbelieveit!) I don't hanker for wine any more or get cravings or wish I could drink it or envy others for drinking it, they can have that dumb stuff is my opinion. I love my sober life. But my colleague obviously felt a bit awkward about getting a glass of wine and drinking it around me, knowing my story as we work in the addiction space, so they made a bit of a song and dance about it, acting kinda defiant and loudly justifyi ..read more

I've been having a very reflective time of late - reaching some monumental milestones in my life. A few weeks back I celebrated ten years sober. TEN! What a milestone. And in just over one week I'll be turning 50 years old. Also a pretty big milestone. Celebrating ten years of sobriety was really cool. It's so easy for me to not drink now, I don't hanker, crave or wish for booze in my life ever. But I still have to front up to all my emotions in the raw every single day.. so being sober makes a big difference to my day-to-day life. Celebrating milestones is important, I think, and because it w ..read more

My new book came out two weeks ago! What a crazy couple of weeks it has been doing lots of media and a wee book launch event. The book is called 'The Wine O'Clock Myth: The truth you need to know about women and alcohol' and it is a thorough exploration about the situation we're in with regards to our alcohol soaked societies, the normalisation and glorification of booze that goes on left, right and centre, the manipulation that goes on through marketing, the targeting of women (especially on social media), and the many ways that all of this is impacting on women's lives. Happy to say the who ..read more

Oh my golly, golly goodness it has been a loooong time since I wrote here on my lovely original blog. But I never forget about you! I've got a new job facilitating addiction workshops and as part of the day I have to tell my personal story. I stand up and relive my last drinking days and the lead up to quitting.. then I talk about this place, how I started writing to myself daily right after I quit and how powerful and awesome that process was. I talk about how a community of support built up around my blog and every comment (especially in the early days) felt like a hug. This blog was my li ..read more

I seem to be getting more anxious lately - which is a total bummer. I'm worried it's the start of menopause, because I keep reading that anxiety is one of the symptoms of menopause, and I am (gulp) getting up to that phase of life.. turning 48 this year! All I need is the slightest thing to be worried about - a tricky work meeting ahead or a dissatisfying interaction with someone - and I'll suddenly be on edge. Sometimes I'll forget what the thing is that's making me uneasy, I'll just spend the day feeling nervy and then I'll have to stop and ask myself, "why am I uneasy right now?". And then ..read more