Meet Laura

So how did I get here? I joined yachting as a bright eyed 20 year old, and I didn’t drink. I wasn’t ‘sober’ – I just didn’t drink. I’d drunk before joining yachting but had recently taken a holistic allergy test which suggested I shouldn’t drink, so I decided not to.

That first boat saw me working for an alcoholic captain with a taste for Blue Nun, a bosun who drank every night and often turned up to work with a black eye from falling down the stairs and a butler a who had a crush on me.

That butler flirted mercilessly and kept asking me out for drinks.

At the end of the season, in the Hop Store, I decided to call that butler’s bluff and said I’d only drink if it was Champagne. A night of Laurent Perrier Rosé later and I was a) his girlfriend

and b) back to drinking.

I spent the rest of the year being wooed with rosé lunches in the south of France, going for Michelin starred dinners and that was it – drinking had gone form a weekend activity to an integral part of life.

Holidays were spent wine tasting, leave in New Zealand was spent in a campervan hopping from Marlbourough to Martinborough, to Hawke’s Bay. We drank wine every day and it was always the good stuff, after all – we were connoisseurs and it was a passion.

After seven years, I decided to part with him but the habit stuck.

Only it wasn’t just wine. I romanticised every part of drinking. Summer days in JLP weren’t the same without a beer in a chilled beer glass, an Aperol or a crisp rose. Winter wasn’t winter without a full bodied bottle of Malbec in front of a country pub fire. Drop off day was irrelevant without too many Heineken’s on the bow before heading out for cocktails (I could never remember getting home).

I couldn’t honour my dad’s passing without single malt.

I couldn’t have a day with my girlfriends without bottomless brunch. I would invite friends over for cocktails and I would make a margarita so strong it would knock your socks off. I would make myself a martini, in the most delightfully chilled glass with the best quality olives to take in to have a bath, I would turn up for dinners with two bottles of wine – not one.

Alcohol was everywhere. I couldn’t socialise, laugh, cry, deal with life, mourn or celebrate without it. Something good happened, let’s crack open a bottle. Something bad happened?

You best believe I need a bottle...

And I slowly realised that actually, the lies I was telling myself were catching up with me.

I was sad. Really sad.

My life had always had the illusions of being full. I remember a friend telling me that I was like Donna from Mamma Mia 2, fearless, open to adventure, self reliant, brave.

I remember thinking – if only she knew.

If any of that was true, why did I always feel so lonely, afraid and depressed. The truth was I was living a lie. I thought I was an adventurous, outdoorsy, healthy, independent, strongwoman. Truth was, I was lonely, fat, sad and had spent the last week on my sofa, leaving only for cheese and wine. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

This wasn’t the bolt from the blue that it sounds – I had known for a LONG time that my relationship with alcohol was deeply unhealthy. I couldn’t drink like other people, it caused arguments in my relationships, it caused me to act like a prick, I often found when I started I couldn’t stop, and even when I took a break – it was taking up too much of my thoughts.

But it was the first time that I acknowledged the truth.

That no good was coming from my drinking.

That all of the stuff that I regretted, all the stuff that I was ashamed of, all the things that I wished I’d never done? About 99% of that was related to alcohol.

And I finally asked myself – “If I carry on like this. Where will I be a year from now?

Happier? Healthier?”

How about five years from now? I was fearful I could be dead. Because the truth was, alcohol was killing me. And if it didn’t kill me physically, I was worried it could lead me to kill myself.

So. I stopped. I made the decision there and then that I wanted my life to feel bigger than it did. I wanted my life to feel more beautiful, more fun, more exciting and more full of joy than the life I was living as a drinker. And that’s the ethos I live by now.

And that’s why I’m here doing this. Because life as a non-drinker working on boats is exactly that. It is full of love, joy and freedom. And I want YOU to be able to experience that as well.

I want YOU to know that it is possible. I want you to let go of all the bullshit you keep in your head about why drinking is the answer to your issues.