'A bottle of wine a night was normal for me'

Anna Doneghey has launched a podcast confronting our relationship with alcohol

For almost 20 years it was not unusual for Anna Donaghey to drink a bottle of wine every night.

The advertising professional said it was a part of normal life, nothing "atypical or abnormal", until it began to impact her relationships with her husband and children.

Her story, she told BBC Radio Bristol, is a "frighteningly common" one.

Since becoming sober, the Thornbury resident has launched a podcast to encourage more conversations about our relationships with alcohol.

Now in her early 50s, with two children, Ms Donaghey has worked in advertising and marketing for many years - an industry where alcohol frequently features at client lunches and social events.

She told the BBC how at her first job at Rover in Filton she quickly turned to after-work drinks to become "one of the guys".

"The image is work hard and play harder," she said. "That is what we tell ourselves, that's how we normalise drinking behaviours."

She was known as a highly sociable person who liked a drink, and she continued to climb the career ladder.

But while drinking remained the norm at work, Anna said it also became part of her identity.

It reached a point, when her children were still young, that her husband would offer her a glass of wine when he returned home - not realising she had already drunk a bottle.

'Pushed as a drug'

Eventually, drinking became a "crutch" to manage the demands of everyday life.

"We are told...that there are many jobs that we can give alcohol to do," she said.

"Alcohol will make me sleep better, feel more confident, feel more happy.

"It is impressed upon us that alcohol can help, it becomes our coping mechanism. It is pushed as a drug really."

But it reached a point where those casual evening drinks began to affect many different areas of her life.

"Thankfully I never had a rock bottom moment," Anna said.

"I just bounced along the bottom in an unsustainable way. My children were growing older and they could notice how I was behaving and it was causing friction with my husband.

"I was exhausted by the façade I was keeping up. I knew that I was addicted to alcohol but I was terrified of staying where I was and doing anything about it.

"I was scared to death."

Anna has not drunk alcohol for three and a half years

Shame

Having struggled with alcohol for decades, at 49 she finally found a support group that clicked.

"I knew I had an addiction [but] I don't like the term alcoholic," she said.

"I felt an awful lot of shame in my drinking, but there was something very strong within me that wanted to work out why I had got there and how to reverse and course-correct rather than just say 'well that's that then'".

She said: "I've been dry for 3.5 years now. I don't measure it any more, I never have. I've never got into a place where I count days. I just don't drink any more."

With the Big Drink Rethink podcast, as well as her work as an alcohol mindset coach, Anna hopes to reach people who have a similar relationship with alcohol.

"We have an alcohol-centric society that is shifting," she said.

"Let's explore why, let's think about our relationships...and have an open conversation about alcohol in the same way we do about mental health or menopause or any other aspects of our health."