Exclusive:
The demands of motherhood sent Rachel Shephard drinking spiralling, until a booze-soaked holiday with her young sons made her realise she had to change
I adore babies, but when I decided to get pregnant, an obvious yet alarming fact escaped me: they would grow into small children.
Little actual people, placed on the planet for the sole purpose of winding me up with their outrageous demands and ability to push every one of my buttons.
By the end of each long day, that glass of wine (or bottle) became the superhero cape I would drape over my shoulders, rescuing me from the chaos of bedtime negotiations and providing quiet relief after an argument about utter foolishness: like why we don’t put the cat in the washing machine.
I told myself that drinking wine was the antidote to the pains of motherhood, and was a necessary, if not mandatory, requirement of parenting. The only answer in order that I could successfully put my two boys to bed each night, instead of on Ebay. Or at least, this is how I used to view my relationship with alcohol – and motherhood – before I quit drinking for good.
I was always a big drinker. Raised in the north of England, namely Chester, I started drinking Hooch at the grand old age of 14. For years I remained a social drinker, I didn’t consume booze daily and didn’t feel like alcohol was having any major impact on my life.
But I always drank to get wasted. Always. I didn’t see the point in one, and I never did find my ‘off’ switch. That button is either broken or just missing entirely. I loved the chaos and drama of booze-filled nights out, and I loved to get so drunk that the end result was always black out, vomiting or waking up in unfamiliar surroundings with a banging headache.
I stopped drinking when I got pregnant with my eldest son, Arthur, in 2013 and once he was born, I actually started to better moderate my alcohol consumption – not because I wanted to – but because getting up at 5am on a raging hangover was utterly soul-destroying.
All of a sudden, wine was not worth the effort. My second son, Alfie, was born in 2017. Two months premature and so tiny he looked like a bird that had fallen out of his nest; he was a very easy baby.
Alfie slept through the night almost immediately, never cried, and for the most part, it felt like I didn’t even have a second child – and my wine consumption slowly began to increase. By the time Alfie reached the toddler years, I was knocking back wine a few times a week.
The problem with this was that I could never just have one glass. I would always get to the bottom of a bottle. Not even because I was addicted at that point, I just saw zero point in drinking unless I could get drunk. That was my mission. Every time.
Fast forward to 2020 when Alfie was three and Arthur five, I very suddenly and unexpectedly lost my mum to aortic dissection. It felt violent. She was only 62 years old and went out for a run, never to return after she collapsed and died.
Overnight, I became a daily drinker, consuming at least a bottle of wine a night. By the following year I’d left my husband and was catapulted into the role of single mother. I coped the way I always had – by adding more wine to my nightly routine.
By mid 2021, I was a mess. I’d start my day by dragging myself out of bed feeling rough as hell. I’d always end up yelling at my boys over some clothing issue or food related drama, before we even got out of the house for the school run. I was irritable all the time, impatient and quick to anger. Motherhood was something to get through and tolerate. Certainly not to enjoy.
In fact, the only time I enjoyed motherhood was from about 4pm, when I could open a bottle of Pinot – a reasonable and socially acceptable time – without being considered an alcoholic. As soon as I could drink my instant relaxation elixir, I was okay.
The breaking point came one morning when I was on holiday in late 2021 and I started to exhibit signs of physical dependency to alcohol. I was shaking. This landed like a sledgehammer. I stared at my reflection in the mirror – puffy-eyed, exhausted, and riddled with shame – and finally admitted what I’d been avoiding for years: I couldn’t keep living like this.
In the midst of divorce, I couldn’t make decisions about the rest of my life when I could barely navigate the question of what to feed my boys for breakfast.
I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and decided to quit drinking. I expected to feel healthier, but what I didn’t see coming was a 180-degree shift in the way I felt and behaved as a mother. Thoughts about wine dominated my first month of sobriety, but motherhood became immeasurably easier, almost immediately.
It didn’t occur to me that my avoidance of my boys’ troublesome behaviour was actually the cause of it. As soon as I dedicated my drinking time to playing, they became incalculably better behaved. Go figure?!
Instead of reaching for a wine glass at 4pm I opted for puzzles, games and crafting activities with them. I became monumentally more patient after just two weeks without alcohol. I started to enjoy the mornings as waking up without a hangover set my day off in a totally different direction. I didn’t need to numb the pains of tantrums because there was so much less of them.
The longer I stayed sober, the better (and easier) life became. I always considered that wine was the antidote to parenting, but it was the wine that made being a mum feel so difficult. Sober, it’s so much easier that I don’t need a remedy, because quite simply, I love being a mum.
Sober Mama: Breaking Free from the Bottle: A Woman’s Journey to Sobriety and Practical Tips for Quitting by Rachael Shephard (Summersdale), £10.99, is out now
