‘I’d always enjoyed alcohol – but my mother’s sudden, violent death made me a heavy drinker overnight’

On 17 March 2020, an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning, life as I knew it shattered. My dad called at 10am to say my mother had fallen while out running, hit her head and was now in hospital with a suspected brain bleed. Frantic with worry, he begged me to drive the four-hour journey home to Chester.

At first, I assumed he was overreacting; he had a history of dramatising health crises. But as I packed and began the drive north from Hampshire, doubt crept in. What if something more sinister had caused the fall? My chest tightened, fear flooding through me.

I was on the motorway when my dad called again. His voice trembled as he told me: “She’s really poorly. They’re running tests.” In my dad’s language, that phrase – really poorly – meant things were dire. I felt as if a pit of acid was forming in my stomach, which was twisting and contorting with my thoughts. I clung to hope and sent silent prayers to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in.

Then came the call that obliterated everything. My dad, screaming down the line: “She’s gone! She’s gone!” Pure unadulterated agony; a cry of grief is a cry like no other.

By the time I got to the hospital, I wasn’t allowed to see my mum. The pandemic had just begun and her body had already been moved to the morgue. The suddenness of her death felt incomprehensible. Just one day after her 62nd birthday, my mum had died from an aortic dissection, a condition I had never heard of. There were no symptoms, no warnings. Just a violent, unexpected end.

Grief descended like a storm. At first, I couldn’t bear the pain, and neither could the rest of my family. My dad and I, in particular, turned to alcohol to numb the unbearable feeling of loss. I began drinking at least a bottle of wine every night, despite having previously been a much more moderate drinker. My dad, who for 50 years had drunk a single bottle of red wine on a Friday and another on Saturday, began consuming three bottles of wine a day. The loss of his partner of 42 years left him broken. For months, I doubted he would survive.

Life as I knew it was plunged into darkness. I had never considered that I would lose a parent to anything other than old age. I didn’t know how to cope or where to begin with moving on.

When my mum died, I was 13 days into a new and highly stressful job. The workload was relentless and I had no time to think about anything else. If I couldn’t think, I couldn’t grieve. As soon as I finished work each day, I put on my trainers and went for a three-mile run, blasting tunes from my headphones at full-volume to ensure thoughts of my mum couldn’t creep in. My two boys, Arthur and Alfie, were five and two and I felt I couldn’t let them see me in tears. It would be far too unsettling. As long as I kept busy, I would be OK.

That was until a lengthy Covid lockdown meant evenings were spent at home with nothing to do. The only way I felt I could survive was by drinking. Alcohol was the ideal numbing agent and, almost overnight, I went from years of drinking socially with the odd weekend binge to daily, heavy drinking.

I had always loved a drink. From age 14, when I first picked up a bottle of Hooch, I was hooked. I loved the way alcohol gave me confidence and, as a highly anxious child, I welcomed the ability to shut off my thoughts and worries. But I always overdid it. I would be excited about getting dressed up and going out, but the night would inevitably end with me slamming shots until I was so intoxicated that my mum would drive into town to peel her teenage daughter off the pavement. She couldn’t stop me going out, so she did the best she could to make sure I got home safely.

When I reached my 20s, I went to Kingston University and studied law. I didn’t drink every day but, when I did, it was always to excess and would usually end in me vomiting. During my 30s, I had my two boys and for a while I lost the desire to get drunk. From the moment he was born, Arthur was a 5am riser. I am not a morning person and the only thing worse than a 5am start was a 5am start with a hangover. It wasn’t worth it. I still drank wine a couple of days a week, but I felt as if I successfully moderated my alcohol consumption for a few years. But at 37, with my mum’s sudden death, that all changed.

I drank heavily for the next couple of years, during which what already felt like the darkest period of my life got much darker. My husband and I divorced in 2021. Our relationship had become toxic and my drinking frequently fuelled arguments. The battle between our lawyers was stressful and exhausting, and I was propelled into the life of a single working mother. My anxiety about my ability to raise my children felt palpable. I worried about losing my home, the state of my finances and whether the boys would be scarred for life. My drinking increased further and, on the weekends when the boys were with their dad, two bottles of wine became a nightly minimum. I was desperately trying to drink my worries away, unaware that alcohol was part of the problem I wanted to solve.

In November 2021, I started to see that I wasn’t even enjoying booze any more. After a bottle of wine, I would often end up in tears. The month before, while on a cruise holiday, I got the shakes for the first time. I was drinking cocktails from 10 each morning and getting hammered every night. I knew alcohol was destroying my body and I was terrified that I might already have cirrhosis of the liver. I decided to quit and bought a couple of books about alcohol addiction, reading them religiously during my first few months of sobriety. I knew I could no longer moderate my drinking; I had to stop completely.

Quitting wasn’t nearly as hard as I had expected. The first two weeks were the toughest in terms of fighting cravings, but then I started to feel so much better, mentally and physically, that it spurred me on. I slept properly for the first time in years. I was also staggered to discover how much I didn’t know about alcohol, such as the fact that it is a group one carcinogen, which means there is enough evidence to show that alcohol causes cancer. Inspired by my own journey toward sobriety, my dad stopped drinking too.

There are so many myths that perpetuate the illusion that moderate drinking is healthy, such as the idea that red wine lowers the risk of heart disease. It is easy to dismiss the risks when science-based articles suggest consuming alcohol might be healthy. Alcohol can thin the blood, which may reduce the risk of heart disease for a time – but it can also cause high blood pressure, heart failure, heart attack, irregular heart rhythms and strokes. Drinking for any perceived benefit is like letting go of a life raft because you might enjoy a nice little swim before you drown.

The UK government recommends a maximum of 14 units a week, suggesting that this keeps the risk of developing alcohol-related diseases at a low level. But I have seen how fragile this reliance on “moderation” can be when life unexpectedly upends us. The World Health Organization has stated that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health, and that the risks start “from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage”.

After I became sober, I often wondered if losing someone else close to me would push me back into drinking. How could anyone face such profound sadness without a chemical crutch? I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

In December 2021, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw a professional headshot photo of my dear friend Sara. It wasn’t unusual to see news from Sara in my feed – she had built a property empire in Florida, and often shared photos and videos of her stunning renovations. She exuded confidence and charisma.

But this photo was different. It looked like a news article. Confused, I read the headline: “British real estate agent, 40, shot dead in Florida.” I froze, reading it over and over, unable to process the words. My vibrant, talented friend – dead? Murdered? The details were even more horrific: Sara was shot in her car on 23 December 2021, a victim of mistaken identity. She left behind her husband, three-year-old daughter and countless shattered hearts, including mine.

At that point, I was just five weeks sober. The temptation to drink was strong, but something stopped me. I knew it would only make things worse. For the first time in years, I let myself truly grieve. I cried, more than I had when my mum died. Not because I loved Sara more, but because I was allowing myself to feel the full weight of my sadness. Without alcohol muting my emotions, I sat with my pain. It was raw, ugly and excruciating, but it was also healing. I felt I was finally able to grieve for the loss of my mum too.

Through this, I learned that sobriety isn’t just about abstinence – it is about confronting life’s hardest moments with clarity and resilience. Processing my grief head-on allowed me to recover in a way I never had before. The pain of losing Sara will always linger, especially when I think of her young daughter growing up without her mum. But alongside the sorrow is a newfound peace.

This experience also reshaped my perspective on alcohol. Like many people, I once viewed moderation as the ideal, balancing enjoyment without excess. But moderation isn’t freedom; it is dependence in disguise. When you rely on alcohol to ease minor stress, what happens during a major crisis? A glass of wine for a bad day can spiral into a bottle – or more – when faced with trauma or heartbreak.

Moderation keeps addiction alive, feeding a mechanism that can quickly escalate into a downward spiral. For me and many others, sobriety is easier than moderation because once the brain “forgets” about alcohol, it stops seeking it out to provide a dopamine fix. Drinking even just once a week puts the body into continuous withdrawal, because it can take up to a week for your body to adjust to being without alcohol. Once someone gives up alcohol for a prolonged period, the brain rewires to produce its own dopamine again, and cravings subside. Anyone who drinks is at risk of developing a physical dependence on alcohol, which is part of why I now coach others on how to quit drinking entirely, breaking the link between trauma and addiction.

Sobriety can’t solve all your problems, but it does make them a lot easier to deal with. It is not about putting down a glass, it is about learning to live a life that you don’t want to escape in the first place.

Sober Mama: Breaking Free from the Bottle: A Woman’s Journey to Sobriety and Practical Tips for Quitting by Rachael Shephard is published on 19 December by Summersdale (£10.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer, buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.