Yumi Stynes open letter about her drinking problem

KIIS radio presenter Yumi Stynes has revealed the extent of her battle with alcohol in an open letter, detailing how the addiction impacted her life.
 
Stynes, who is also a presenter for the ABC Radio podcast Ladies, We Need to Talk, wrote, “I was very addicted to alcohol. I’d been drinking heavily since I was 13 and from a family that had lots of alcohol around — boozing daily was all very normal.”
 
At 25 and during her first pregnancy, she took a break from drinking, and for the first time felt what it was like to not be hungover most days.
 
Despite being sober during all of her pregnancies, Yumi fell back into old habits after each child, and struggled to finally give up drinking, writing “I’d spend all day feeling shaky and ashamed and sick and full of resolve to quit, but — you know how it goes — around the 3 or 4pm mark, when you’re finally overcoming the hungover feeling, the booze-craving would come on and you’d know that a couple of beers would be just the thing to kill that goddamn hangover completely dead.”
 
When she finally made the move to quit she found that “…the first night was easy.
The second night, not so much. During the bender months, if I went a day without drinking, the next day was usually an unofficial Reward Day and I would go extra hard and the drinks would be extra delicious.
 
“So those first days I felt like a junkie, the way the cravings came on and I wanted to drink and the embarrassment of it, of being that person, that thirsty bitch.
 
“I think if you can make it through the first two weeks, you’re in with a chance. So I made it through, and it’s been two and a half years.”
 
In the two and a half years she has been sober, Stynes has written and published three books and is working on a fourth and has a successful podcast.
 
Her advice to anyone trying to quit is to understand that they also “…have the ability to commit, and persevere, and face failure and retry. And retry. And try again.”

 
 
 

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