Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast · Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife – Brenda Tells All

·1 hr 13 min·4 clips

Brenda says, "I am pissing my life away" after her grandmother and mother-in-law died a week and a half apart.

1. Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast centers on Stephanie Wilder-Taylor and Brenda Willimson talking about Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife and sobriety as a mother. 2. Stephanie Wilder-Taylor hosts the episode, and Brenda Willimson is the journalist-author whose book helped put a public name to "drunk mom" recovery. 3. The episode asks what it felt like for Brenda to write publicly about alcoholism, motherhood, and recovery while fearing judgment. 4. Brenda says she got sober in 2009 and that Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife came out in 2011. 5. She describes feeling "petrified" that people would find out she was sober because she had worked hard to look normal on the outside. 6. Brenda says she kept separate drinking friends, including daytime friends and "mommy" friends, and drank with people who could keep up. 7. She explains that her drinking started in high school after a "fundamentalist religious upbringing" and included pot, alcohol, cocaine, Quaaludes, and some acid. 8. Brenda says her father taught her to drink, including the idea that "if you're going to drink, you got to eat, you got to lay down a foundation." 9. She describes moving into journalism and buying into the idea that drinking belonged to the writing life, especially around colleagues and bars. 10. Brenda recounts one newspaper Christmas party where she grabbed a candle, dragged it through her hair like a cigarette, and had to be taken to a friend's parents' house. 11. She says becoming a parent changed her drinking into a daily habit, with mornings spent at the computer and in pajamas until around 5 o'clock. 12. Brenda and Stephanie talk about how motherhood can feel like a loss of identity, especially when a person once saw herself as edgy, cool, or a rebel. 13. Brenda says her husband eventually told her, "this has to stop," after coming home to a drunk wife and her cousin Mike night after night. 14. She recalls going to her first recovery meeting with her father, who left her there after hearing the room's horror stories. 15. Brenda says she stayed sober for three months, then went drinking again on a Michigan beach trip and kept drinking for eight more years. 16. She says her drinking escalated to two or three stiff martinis before a bottle or bottle and a half of wine each night. 17. Brenda says her final decision came after back-to-back heavy holiday drinking, a Sunday morning hangover, and the thought that she was "pissing my life away." 18. The conversation is conversational, candid, and self-aware, with Stephanie matching Brenda's language and sharing related experiences from her own sobriety. 19. People who like recovery stories about motherhood, journalism, and late-onset sobriety will likely connect with this episode. 20. People looking for a fast, light celebrity interview probably will not.

As heard by us

A candid sobriety conversation about blackout logic, denial, and the relief of naming it.

The episode stays plainspoken about how nightly drinking slides into routine and how hard it is to stop treating that routine as normal. Brenda Willimson moves through Xanax, blackouts, marriage, and motherhood, while Stephanie Wilder-Taylor keeps the focus on the pull of…

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Why you'd press play

If you want a blunt, familiar sobriety talk with real shame and some gallows humor.

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