"It was a habit. That's all it was."

It was the dull headache that would remind me. The subtle pulsating in my frontal lobe as I got myself ready for work and started on the kid’s school lunches. The regret that I hadn’t stopped drinking before that one last wine.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that I’d been out somewhere, at a function maybe, or drinks with the girls. That this was the reason I’d drunk nearly an entire bottle of wine over the span of only a few hours.

But no, this was a fairly average way for me to feel on a Wednesday morning, or any morning really, after I’d spent an equally average night, simply decompressing after a day at work.

A recent study in the United Kingdom has revealed that 46 per cent of 10 – 14-year-olds have seen one or both of their parents drunk. I suspect the figures here in Australia wouldn’t be too different. In fact, they’re probably worse…

Generally I’d walk in the door at around 7pm from an unremarkable day.

Do I have a stressful job? Some days yes, some days no. Was it a particularly challenging day? Probably not, nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Like with any job where you are monetarily rewarded for your efforts, there is always some kind of pressure to perform.

On any given evening, I would usually walk on in the door, and after giving my husband and children a kiss, head directly to the fridge. There would be the usual questioning from all and sundry, often all at once.

“How was your day?” “How was the traffic” “Do you know where my goggles/football/socks/iPod/brain is?”.

All this, all these questions fired at me whilst I was pouring my first wine of the night. It started with just the one and in the beginning, it wasn’t even a thought until the kids were in bed and I got the chance to finally relax on the couch. That seems like an awfully long time ago, when I stopped at just “one” drink.

The quantity steadily increased. Before I knew it, I had myself convinced that I “deserved” a wine for simply making it home, a wine whilst cooking dinner, a wine whilst listening to the endless home reading, a wine because they were in bed. A wine just, well, because.

I justified this by thinking that hey, let’s face it, a bottle of wine sounds bad, but really, when you think about it, it’s only equivalent to 3 glasses.

Yet what I was doing wasn’t only common it had a name. ‘Oblivion Drinking’ and it’s a term used for middle-class women using alcohol to blot out the stress of a busy life.

The dangerous thing about ‘Oblivion Drinking’ is that it’s often thought of as quite normal, even celebrated in memes and conversations with likeminded others. Interestingly ‘Oblivion Drinking doesn’t mean you are drinking to pass out, it means you are drinking to simply forget the day and “wind down”.

The facts:

• Increasingly common among women with demanding careers
• Even more so if these high-powered women are also juggling motherhood
• Gives such women an escape from the pursuit of perfection
• 81% of women admitted that they drink above the recommended alcohol intake guidelines weekly
• They said they did so to ‘wind down from a stressful day’

This is an epidemic and it needs to be acknowledged and recognised that high-functioning, intelligent women are using alcohol as a coping mechanism to take the edge off and slow down their many and constant thoughts.

Many women are finding that the pursuit of having it all and basically trying to be a ‘super woman’ is driving them to drink. Women like Liz Hill, describe a chillingly similar situation to that of my own.

“’My job is relentless but I love it,’ she says. ‘But because I’m working so late my brain is still buzzing at bedtime. Wine helps me wind down – it’s a release that says the day is nearly over and everything is all right. And it helps me sleep.’

While Liz’s and my evening sound eerily similar and one that many busy women will identify with, experts are now warning that this kind of behaviour is part of a dangerous trend that can lead to liver damage, moodiness, irritability and a marked change in physical appearance.

I myself got a particularly nasty wakeup call one evening when I was at home alone and one of my neighbours needed me to drive them to the hospital, fast.

And I couldn’t.

I wasn’t drunk, but I’d drunk too much. I felt so ashamed of myself to have to admit this to her. I knew right then and there that something had to change.

It was a habit. That’s all it was.

I didn’t even particularly enjoy it any longer. My tolerance to the alcohol had grown to the point where I didn’t even get the warm buzz that drew me to the whole thing in the first place.

The thing is, it was so easy to convince myself that I didn’t have a problem. I mean, it was just a couple of drinks right? Wrong. One large glass of wine puts a woman over her daily recommended alcohol limit. 3 was definitely a problem.

I’m not saying I no longer drink. I do, and often I still drink too much but I have tried very hard to change the ‘way’ that I drink. I drink socially but I no longer reward myself at the end of the day with more than one glass of wine.

It is also hard to admit that it is actually a problem. Because believe me, those close to you are well aware of what is going on. Even if they don’t say anything.

I think the best thing to do, if you think this applies to you is to get help, talk it out, make a plan. Understand that regardless of the way society treats social drinking, when it’s just you nursing a glass of wine on the couch to try and block out your day at 1am, it’s no longer social, it’s a problem.

Are you an ‘Oblivion Drinker’? Know someone that is? Grew up with one in your family?