Quit Drinking and Banish Anxiety with Molly Desch
Episode 148
By the time single mom Molly Desch was in her thirties she was hitting the alcohol hard.
Newly divorced she dived into the online dating game with enthusiasm and with hindsight she can see it was much too soon.
She got very depressed and found herself in a suicidal state but she fought back…she ditched the booze, did the work and is in a very different place today.
In this Episode
- Molly was a rebellious teenager so the drinking started back then
- By her late twenties Molly was drinking heavily but never questioned it as it was so normalised
- In her thirties the drinking got really bad – freshly divorced she got back into the dating game far too soon
- As a single mom she was trying to keep it all together but felt she was going downhill fast
- Working from home she would be drinking in the mornings while she was doing online meetings with colleagues
- Hit by a serious depression she found herself sitting in her car with a loaded gun as she contemplated suicide
- Her son called her at that moment and begged her to come home
- She did go home and immediately called her mom who came to stay with her
- Molly knew she had to quit drinking but had no idea how she was going to do that and felt terrified at the prospect
- She went to AA which did help although she rebelled against the concept of being powerless and the rigid structure of the steps.
- After 3 months she left AA which is when Covid hit – that helped her stay sober as she couldn’t go anywhere
- She managed her first year of sobriety but was not really doing the work – just not drinking..
- Perhaps that’s why she had 3 relapses in her second year
- Her last relapse was during her leaving party at a job she had been at for a decade – her colleagues put on a Happy Hour for her and she went completely over the top
- THAT was when she realised that she had to do the work and she threw herself into it with great enthusiasm
- She spent hours in the library – perusing the non fiction shelves and pulling out any books that appealed to her
- Molly was trying to discover who she was and what she actually wanted out of life
- She devoured self help books and loved the quitlit memoirs
- Her favourite book was "Braving the Wilderness" by Brene Brown
- We agreed that the Artists Way by Julia Cameron was a great way to unlock creativity and we both do our morning pages
- Molly did lots of journaling which allowed her to build new habits, build a sobriety toolbox, discover who she was and finally began to love herself
- She learned to set boundaries and began a daily meditation practice as well as yoga
- Molly got in tune with her intuition and started paying attention to it
- She takes pleasure in everyday activities like gardening and walking her dog
- Her top 3 benefits of sobriety are better relationship with her kids, waking up in the morning feeling great and getting to know who is she really is and what she wants out of life
- One of the ways that she sustains her sobriety is by staying open to opportunities – one day she received an email about a coaching course and decided to jump on a free call to find out more
- The call led her to qualifying as a coach and quitting her job so she could focus on building her coaching practice
- These days Molly is thriving in her sobriety and loving her work as a coach – to find out more about her coaching go to her website which is asyouarelifecoaching.com
- You heard Molly say that she had notebooks all over the house. She’s now taken the content from those notebooks and created a beautiful workbook about taking back control and redefining how you want to live – it’s called Wine Stole My Dreams – if you’d like a copy then just email