Eventually, Bryony was able to get help and stopped drinking<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n “Almost nine years ago this summer, at the end of a beautifully sunny bank holiday<\/a> I had once again ruined by getting drunk, I sat on the edge of my bed and realised that if I didn\u2019t stop drinking, I was going to die,” the 45-year-old wrote for the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Either I was going to die by choosing to kill myself, the terrible lows of my endless hangovers frequently leaving me suicidal.<\/p>\n “I didn\u2019t want to stop drinking, but nor did I want to continue. I knew, somewhere deep down in my well-pickled soul, that<\/p>\n “I had a problem \u2013 so in August 2017, just before my then four-year-old daughter started reception, I packed myself off to rehab to get sober.”<\/p>\n She said ‘looking back, these are the signs I wish I\u2019d known about, the things that might have shepherded me to safety and sobriety a little sooner’.<\/p>\n Lots of rules around alcohol<\/p>\n Bryony says that setting rules around drinking can feel like you’re in control but, in reality, is a sign of dependence.<\/p>\n “I wouldn\u2019t drink until my daughter was in bed; I wouldn\u2019t drink after 11pm; I wouldn\u2019t drink two nights in a row; I wouldn\u2019t drink spirits; I wouldn\u2019t drink alone (unless everyone I\u2019d been drinking with had gone to bed),” she explained.<\/p>\n “I wouldn\u2019t drink with people who were a bad influence on me, and I wouldn\u2019t drink at work events, because I didn\u2019t want to make a fool of myself in front of my boss.<\/p>\n “I didn\u2019t always stick to these rules. But their existence somehow gave me the illusion that I was OK, and allowed me to pretend to everyone else that this was the case.”<\/p>\n Swapping alcohol The second sign is constantly changing your drink-of-choice in the hope of solving the problem.<\/p>\n Bryony went from vodka and cola to vodka and tonic, then wine, beer and lower-alcohol alternatives.<\/p>\n Eventually, she realised the issue was not a specific drink – but the alcohol itself.<\/p>\n “Does a person with an allergy to shellfish hope that it might go away if they try mussels instead of prawns? No, they do not, and so it,” she wrote.<\/p>\n Fill in drinking questionnaires<\/p>\n Bryony recalled completing online quizzes designed to assess drinking habits to reassure herself.<\/p>\n Instead of accepting the truth, she tried to support her belief that she was fine.<\/p>\n “It didn\u2019t matter if I answered \u2018yes\u2019 to 19 out of the 20 questions \u2013 I would focus on the one I answered \u2018no\u2019 to as proof that I couldn\u2019t possibly have a proper issue,” she wrote.<\/p>\n “I would pour myself a glass of wine, put on my matching rose-tinted glasses, and focus on the wonder of that first sip.”<\/p>\n Plan your life around drinking Another warning sign is organising daily life around opportunities to drink.<\/p>\n Bryony explains that although she never drank during the day, she thought constantly about when she could drink next.<\/p>\n \u201cMy whole life and work schedule was arranged around when I could have an ice-cold glass of ros\u00e9,\u201d she penned.<\/p>\n ‘One glass always leads to oblivion’<\/p>\n “I could often go weeks without having a drink. But the moment I decided to have \u2018just one\u2019 glass of wine, I would end up drinking to oblivion,” Bryony revealed.<\/p>\n “However hard I tried, I could not moderate. It is genuinely easier for me to have no drinks whatsoever than one or two.”<\/p>\n Getting ‘existential crises, not hangovers’<\/p>\n The final sign is the ‘shame the day after a night out with friends’.<\/p>\n “My husband can go for a nice night out, drink four pints of beer, and while the next day he has a headache and feels rough, he doesn\u2019t feel consumed by paranoia. He simply has a fry-up, drinks lots of water, and laughs at some of the stories his friends told the night before,” she wrote.<\/p>\n “But I could not accept how I felt the next day. It was horrific.”<\/p>\n Please drink responsibly. If you want to discuss any issues relating to alcohol in confidence, contact Drinkline on 0300 123 1110, 9am\u20138pm weekdays and 11am\u20134pm weekends for advice and support.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don\u2019t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123 or contact Harmless by visiting their website https:\/\/harmless.org.uk<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide and alcoholism which some readers may find distressing. Bryony Gordon had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11313,93,61,60,166,410],"class_list":["post-466978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alcohol","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lifestyle","tag-mental-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bryony](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aHR0cHM6Ly9ldS1pbWFnZXMuY29udGVudHN0YWNrLmNvbS92My9hc3NldHMvYmx0Y2Q3NGFjYzFkMGE5OWYzYS9ibHRkMWI4YTRl.webp\"\/)
Bryony Gordon has been open about her struggles with alcohol and drug addiction (ITV)<\/p>\n![\"Around](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aHR0cHM6Ly9ldS1pbWFnZXMuY29udGVudHN0YWNrLmNvbS92My9hc3NldHMvYmx0Y2Q3NGFjYzFkMGE5OWYzYS9ibHRjNTZmYzdl.webp\"\/)
Around 76 percent of UK adults drink alcohol, with about 21 percent exceeding the recommended weekly limit of 14 units (Getty Stock Images)<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aHR0cHM6Ly9ldS1pbWFnZXMuY29udGVudHN0YWNrLmNvbS92My9hc3NldHMvYmx0Y2Q3NGFjYzFkMGE5OWYzYS9ibHQyNjEwM2E2.webp\"\/)
In 2023, there were 10,473 alcohol-specific deaths in the UK (Getty Stock Images)<\/p>\n