'I'd be thinking about wine at 10am.' How my drinking spiralled.

I’m sure we all have a vivid memory from the pandemic. Mine is sitting at my desk in front of a full screen of 20 world-class researchers in a Zoom meeting I was hosting. Meanwhile, my eight-year-old son was lying across my feet screaming, “I AM NOT DOING IT” over and over while ripping up his spelling work. All I could think about, as I plastered a frozen smile on my face, was of the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc sitting in my fridge. It was 10 am, and I wondered if it was too early to pour a glass and make myself feel better.

It was my 'Mummy wine'. I deserved it, right? The funny Facebook memes told me I did, my colleagues and mates laughingly told me I did. Social media told me I deserved a drink to cope with the stress of working motherhood. Each day I poured myself an ever-bigger glass of wine and felt my stress melt away. Then it became two, then two BIG ones. Then I was thinking about it earlier and earlier in the day, and before long the stress came back more quickly each day. I tried feebly to cut back and each day the stress of the pandemic and work and kids got worse and I “deserved” it again.

I was 42 and, suddenly, my funny 'Mummy wine time' had become grey area drinking. Lots of people I know are grey area drinkers, and they mostly would define themselves as “social drinkers”. Did I meet the criteria for alcohol dependence? No. Did I drink more than was good for me and struggle to control it? Yes indeed. My health started to take a hit in ways that I didn’t associate with my 'Mummy Wine'. Nights spent wide awake with insomnia, weight gain, bad skin, days of incurable brain fog... maybe it was perimenopause? It wasn’t until a check-up with my doctor showed how badly my overall health had declined in the pandemic that reality hit, the 'Mummy Wine' had to go.

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I had a think about what I really enjoyed about the 'Mummy Wine' and realised it was giving myself a treat. It was the daily ritual of cracking open an ice-cold bottle, pulling out a nice glass and pouring myself something yummy to drink. Everyone in the house knew that this was my time to sit quietly and have some me time. I knew enough about habit breaking psychology to know that if I could replace my reward with something I enjoyed just as much I would have a much better chance of breaking my habit. 

I started to experiment with non-alcoholic wines and found some great ones (and some not so great). By keeping my 'Mummy Wine' ritual and swapping in a good quality non-alcoholic wine instead, I slowly started to reduce the need for booze at the end of the day. I still got the me-time, I still got the quiet, unwinding reward at the end of the day without the alcohol.

That’s when I started to think that swapping to yummy non-alcoholic alternatives was a great idea for lots of my friends who I could see struggling with drinking in their 40s. The more I thought about it the more passionate I became about offering an alternative to the 'Mummy Wine' culture. I realised it was a great opportunity to make a difference to women’s health, with lots of research showing that excessive alcohol use is increasing in women my age and older. Women are also more vulnerable to the negative health and social impacts of drinking too much and I really felt like it was time to do something about it.

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That’s when I dreamt up The Drink Swap, a business idea to market non-alcoholic swaps for your favourite drinks to older women (and everyone else!) Had I ever run a business? No. Did I have any money to start a business? Also no! Still, I knew I needed to give it a crack or I would always regret it. So I quit my stable, well-paid job at The Royal Children’s Hospital and launched an online business… in the middle of a pandemic.

Image: Supplied.

Within four weeks of launching I was featured on Channel 7's Sunrise and have gone onward an upward from there. We’ve also been finalists in national business awards and regularly support family violence charities through our trade. My mission to break my Mummy Wine habit grew into a crazy business idea and totally changed my life in the best way.

If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner. If you're based in Australia, 24-hour support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

A list of helplines for substance abuse, misuse, and addiction is also provided on the Lifeline website here.

Rianna Chapman is the founder of The Drink Swap, a non-alcoholic drinks online store and events business that supports family violence charities through their trade. Rianna has a background in psychology and mental health research and changed her career mid-life to start her own non-alcoholic drinks business as a result of changing her own drinking habits. The Drink Swap aims to help create a booze-less culture by offering great tasting non-alcoholic swaps to your favourite drinks.

Feature Image: Supplied.

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