I was born in 1940 and I'm learning how to be old. So Lotta Dann talks here about sobriety in old age. Everything is different when you’re older, and that includes why we drink, how we drink, and the social environment in which we drink. Lotta Dann made a huge impression on New Zealand and abroad with her secret project to give up drinking: alcohol, that is. She wrote a daily diary as a blog describing her struggles, which became a best-seller book: Mrs D is going without. She now carries on with what is now her passion: helping others who want to change their drinking habits. With kindness! Lotta was only 40 when she gave up drinking. She speaks with compassion and understanding about people who might have a little voice in their heads that says, you need to rethink the way you drink, this is not right for you personally — for whatever reason. I have also transitioned into sobriety, but it was sobriety in old age (I was over 80) and for different reasons. Just because I'm old, alcohol was giving me less pleasure and bothering me physically. My taste buds, my brain and my digestive system were protesting. Even so, there were some challenges. I learned how even the loveliest friends can take a while to understand your change — and I was ambivalent myself, to start with. The pressure from your social circle can be intense or subtle, defensive or well-meaning. Any time is a good time to look at how your country, your culture and your social group treat alcohol. New Zealand is a particularly weird place in that way, largely because for 50 years (1929–1979) pubs closed at 6pm, training Kiwis to drink fast, drink up, drink to get pissed in the 'six-o'clock swill.' It's wrong to blame yourself if you're drinking too much because there's so much pressure from business, history, society to do so — and alcohol is addictive. I have seen people begin drinking heavily in old age. But I'd like to know how many people shift to sobriety in old age, like me. Head to Lotta's website for information and advice and company, if this topic interests you: Living Sober: advice, tools, experts, and a caring community Mrs D is going without: Lotta Dann's historic blog, still online, with good reason! Reading a podcast transcript Podcasts on Apple Podcasts have a transcript running at the same time. That can be handy, especially if you're hard of hearing. If you listen to it on my website, you can read the transcript here. It's pretty long — just keep scrolling! Transcript of episode 49. Thinking about sobriety in old age: Guest Lotta Dann Hello, I'm Rachel McAlpine. I was born in 1940, so I'm learning how to be old. And with me today is Lotta Dann, who made a huge impression in New Zealand and abroad with her day-by-day account of her struggle to give up drinking. Alcohol, that is. And she now carries on the good work. She runs the Living Sober website with the New Zealand Drug Foundation. I'll give you the URL in the notes. I'm very interested because everything is different when you're older and that includes why we drink, how we drink, and the social environment in which we drink. So welcome, Lotta. I'm so very glad to have you here in my podcast studio. In other words, sitting on the couch in my sitting room. Hello lovely to be here. Yes bathed in sunlight. Yes and with a cat let's hope she behaves. Now it struck me that you and I are both good subjects for a compare and contrast exercise. Did you do that at school? Compare this poem with that poem or? Probably yes. And contrast what's alike because we both gave up drinking but at completely different times of our life and for different reasons and different methods. Yeah, because how old are you? Not at all? I'll be 55 this year. Yeah, and I'm 85 so that's enough of a difference to have a contrast. Oh for goodness sake, I'm not 85. I'm 86. I want to know how old you were when you gave up drinking. I was 39. I was one month shy of my 40th birthday. Was that a point, the fact that you were turning 40? Yes and no. I think in hindsight, I don't think it's surprising that I came to a big life decision right on that 40th birthday because it is a time of change but it was also just the reason that my drinking had really got to such a bad point at that time that I was forced in many ways to give up then. Yeah 40. Yeah there's quite a lot of drinking done before 40. Whereas I gave up drinking almost completely. I'll have like a millimetre of nice wine if it's around sometimes, once a week, once a month or something, but mostly not at all. But I suppose I really gave up about, perhaps when I was about 80, I don't know, and it was just tailing off until then. Was that a conscious decision for you? Like I'm not going to drink anymore or was it more of a casual you just found that you weren't drinking that. It was an intention yes not for the same reasons as you probably I think it was my old body saying look you can't do this Rachel I just drink less and less until I was thinking well is there a waste of money to buy a bottle of wine and have it sitting there for a couple of weeks going funny. Yeah that is not my experience. Why did you give up drinking. I mean why, tell me about it because it's an amazing story. Well I would just, you know, there was a huge part of me that didn't want to quit drinking because it had been a part of my life since I was 15 and in many respects I loved it. I loved alcohol, you know, I loved that it made me feel loose and relaxed and sort of naughty and fun and I loved it. I always just wanted to be The upbeat fun lotter and alcohol helped me do that, but I couldn't control it. I mean, I was literally drinking to intoxication almost every single night of the week. I was embarrassing myself when I was out at social events and I had a raging internal dialogue telling me something was wrong and I needed to change. alongside the raging internal dialogue telling me, drinking's normal, everyone does it. You're hardworking, you deserve it. Go ahead, drink. The other part of my brain was going, this is wrong. You're out of control, you've gotta stop. And it was absolute hell back and forward. A nightmare. To the point where I had to, the only way to stop that was actually to stop drinking and it was terrifying, but I made that decision and I haven't had a drink since. Just like that. Well, not just like that. It was very hard. It was a couple of years, was it? That you were writing your blog. This is the strange and amazing thing to me, to most people, I suppose, is that you didn't tell your family, but you did a blog about it. I told my husband, Yes. Because we don't have any secrets from each other. Although right at the end, I was hiding wine bottles, which was part of the pain of seeing where I was at was that I was bringing deceit into our marriage. So he knew I was quitting, but I didn't tell my extended family who were all living elsewhere at the time. I just really focused on trying to fix myself and I sort of set out to do it all by myself, which I now realize was foolish, but anyway, it worked for me 'cause I started writing this blog and writing myself letters effectively every day about what I was doing. And that way it worked for other people too because you got such a following and people were so engaged. People who had the same feelings. Yeah, and I mean at the time there were all these blogs on the internet and you know every housewife in America was blogging about her crafting and children and I just thought my blog would be hidden amongst all of them and no one would read it. I didn't write it to be read. I wrote it as a private, I just did it online type faster than I write with a pen. Yeah. But actually people started reading it and commenting and they were all saying I'm just like you and up to that point I had felt very alone. I thought everyone in the world, 'cause this is what's presented to us through marketing and our environment, everyone in the world's having a great time with alcohol and you're the only loser that is miserable. And when people started reading my blog and commenting just like you, I discovered there are so many people secretly, privately struggling with alcohol still to this day and feeling that it's their fault, their to blame, they should be ashamed and they hide it and you know this is why I do what I do now because I just think the more we're open and honest the more we're all helped. Yes, it's that pressure from society that's why people are failing. If society didn't that attitude that you know a good time equals a glass in your hand then it wouldn't be embarrassing it wouldn't be disturbing you could just get cracking and give up without some of that struggle wouldn't be there. I mean I find that you know by contrast it's not a very big contrast really but at least I grew up with parents who had a sherry at Christmas before dinner or something like that. It was about like that. So there'd be this bottle of sherry getting syrupy year after year after year. And that was the limit of it. But then things changed. 50 years of the 6 o'clock swill I think must have trained New Zealanders to boos, to get drunk as fast as possible in a way that it's not sort of normal in other countries. The six o'clock swill, it did train us to booze and get as drunk as fast as we can, but it also trained us to be okay with public and open intoxication. And we still have this attitude today. If someone is fallin
