Ulrika Jonsson sat down with Made in Chelsea star Spencer Matthews for an episode of the Untapped podcast, revealing her experience of giving up alcohol for good and how sobriety has changed her life for the better.
In an open letter in The Times last month, the presenter, 57, announced she had quit drinking a year ago after a "hangover day much like any other...sat on the sofa with my liver and brain pickled in equal measure, wrapped up in the blanket of shame".
The star said she knew that "there was an issue that needed to be addressed", but because "it's not every day" and she still managed to keep her house "impeccable" and was "on top of everything", she didn't think it was affecting anyone.
"Drink became my friend" during tougher times, she said. "I had very, very, very punishing anxiety. One personal issue that had been ongoing for years in my life, that I've been trying to resolve and not being able to, and it just refused to go away, and it was going to result in some major changes in my life, and I just couldn't see a way out. And so this was my solution."
It was only when she started drinking earlier in the day and hiding her drinking that alarm bells started to ring.
"I would go and just neck neat rum from the bottle so that if my son, for any reason, was checking if I was drinking, he would drink the glass of mixer and go 'oh, there's no alcohol in that'. I know, it's pretty hardcore," she said.
Friends reached out to the star, recognising that there was a problem. "Everyone or people around me knew. I had my best friend phone me one Saturday morning, and she said, 'I need to speak to you because I spoke to you at four o'clock in the afternoon and I couldn't understand a f*** word. You have a problem and I can't help you."
She said, "I was crying my eyes out, because there was no way of avoiding it."
But still, she said she didn't stop drinking, bolstered by other people telling her she wasn't an alcoholic.
"One person was in the support group that I was attending, my lovely therapist, and then a really close friend said, 'but you're not [an alcoholic]'. And I said, 'You haven't seen me [drinking]. You haven't seen me.'"
Jonsson calls the experience of recognising that she was an alcoholic "desperately weird". She said: "I just didn't feel like I was the sort of person who would lose control over an aspect of my life, you know. I've always been the main breadwinner...I've raised the kids, sometimes together with the fathers and sometimes on my own, and whatever else, but I've always led the charge.
"To suddenly be in this place, and how I got there, I just couldn't quite comprehend that."
Now, Jonsson credits meetings with her sobriety, saying she attends them almost "religiously".
"At the beginning, I felt like if I start to miss one or make excuses for not going to one, I'm going to slip. So I was holding on really tightly," she said.
She also makes sobriety her "priority", recognising that "without my sobriety, I can't be there for my children", and found other benefits of not drinking alcohol, including being able to know herself better.
"There's nothing anyone can teach me about myself that I don't know. I've done therapy on and off for 30 years. I know me. I don't need to do this," she recalled thinking. "Turns out was wrong, and it's really good to be wrong sometimes."
If you think you may have a problem with alcohol, speak to your GP.
“Any of us can find our drinking creeping up in our day-to-day lives or during various ups and downs. Yet, just like Ulrika experienced, once we develop habitual associations with alcohol for whatever reason, the prospect of cutting down or stopping drinking can be a daunting one," says Dr Richard Piper, CEO at Alcohol Change UK.
“What’s important to remember is there is a sliding scale of alcohol harm happening right across the drinking spectrum. From poor sleep, hangovers and relationship issues to high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and other health conditions, these impacts affect millions of us drinking at different levels and over different time periods," he says.
There are some tell-tale indicators that alcohol has taken more of a hold of our lives than we'd like it to, he says. These include:
- Finding ourselves drinking more than 14 units a week every week.
- Not remembering when our last non-drinking day was.
- Thinking about where our next alcoholic drink will come from and frequently making plans to get hold of alcohol.
- Hiding alcohol from our family, and lying or being defensive about our drinking habits.
"Other signs include drinking earlier in the day (e.g. now 5 pm when it used to be 7 pm), choosing alcohol over other activities, and the people who are closest to us telling us that they are worried about our drinking," says Dr Piper.
For help, you can also contact Drinkline, a free and confidential helpline for those concerned about their drinking or someone else's. Call 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9 am–8 pm, weekends 11 am–4 pm)
