I was a party girl with constant hangxiety – I went sober at 26 after uni drinking culture left me with an alcohol problem

Freshers’ week with its intense drinking culture may be a rite of passage for new university students, but one graduate has told how hers sparked a “problematic relationship with alcohol” that followed her into working life.

Millie Gooch, 32, started drinking regularly at the age of 18, during Freshers’ Week when she started her English Language and Literature course at the University of Sussex.

She says the drinking culture meant she was binging several times a week and regularly downing pints of vodka-Red Bull on a night out, but at the time she didn’t see a problem with it.

Millie often went on nights out and drank triple shots of vodka poured into pint glasses of Red Bull.

She suffered from ‘constant hangover’ attacks and would overcome the problem by ‘getting back to it’.

Millie’s problem continued to haunt her for years afterward – and her behavior became ‘dangerous’. She would often wake up in different people’s homes and use alcohol to cope with anxious situations, such as dates.

At the same time, she suffered from constant ‘hangxiety’ – increased anxiety levels during a hangover – that lasted for weeks.

Now – she has been sober for more than five years – and ‘happier than ever’.

Millie, who runs the Sober Girl Society, a community for down-to-earth and down-to-earth, curious women, full-time from Kent, said: ‘I’ve built my whole personality around being a party girl.

‘Drinking became the only thing I looked forward to – now I’m much happier.

“It was so hard to untangle the cycle; Drinking made me anxious, and I dealt with it by drinking more.’

Millie moved to Brighton, East Sussex, in September 2009 and began studying English Language and Literature at the University of Sussex.

Before freshers’ week, Millie said she was not a heavy drinker and only had the “occasional drink” at family gatherings.

She said: ‘I was born in August, so I was the youngest in my year. I turned 18 and went to college three weeks later.

‘I had the occasional WKD at a family party, but I only started drinking heavily during freshers’ week.

‘The drinking culture was huge at university; everything was shoved in our faces from the start.

‘If I told people I wasn’t a drinker, I would probably be seen as a loser; it would have been much harder to make friends.”

Millie says she went from ‘a bit of a non-drinker’ to a regular binge drinker in just a week.

During college, she went to bars and clubs four times a week, with her favorite drink being “two triple vodka-and-Red-Bulls in a pint glass.”

Millie graduated in 2011, but she says her alcohol problems worsened when she got a job in the media industry.

She found it difficult to say no to constant pub visits and networking events with free champagne.

Millie says she soon fell into a perpetual cycle of anxiety, depression and binge drinking.

“After college I worked in PR and then became a magazine journalist,” she says.

“It was an incredibly strong drinks industry, there were loads of networking events.

‘It was just a perk of the job: alcohol-free Fridays, walking into events and immediately grabbing a glass of champagne from the tray.

‘And because there wasn’t a super fun atmosphere, everyone wanted to have a drink and have a laugh, knowing that we were all in it together.’

Millie says a big trigger for her was being ‘filled with shame’ every time she woke up after a night out.

“Shame can be a pretty big trigger for drinking,” she added.

‘I went out and woke up in other people’s houses with no memory of how I got there.

‘The day after a night of drinking I woke up feeling very down. It had a twofold effect: it was clear that the alcohol itself was taking over, but I was having real blackouts.

‘I would get so paranoid – what did I say? What have I done? Is everyone really leaving with me?

‘Hangovers lasted longer and longer – and by the time I started to feel better, suddenly it was Friday and time to go out again.’

Millie became trapped in a cycle of using booze to cope and finally made the decision to take a break from booze in 2018.

Although ‘nothing in particular’ prompted her to quit, she says she suddenly realized that she did not want to continue living with her alcohol problems.

She said: ‘The hangover that made me give up was quite normal for me – nothing life-changing happened, it was nothing crazy.

‘But I just had a sense of clarity: I can’t keep living like this.

‘I didn’t want to use drinking to deal with social anxiety; i was tired of going on dates and not being able to remember what happened the night before.

“It was miserable and I was struggling.”

Five years later, Millie has left booze behind for good: she has swapped cocktails for mocktails and goes on ‘healthy’, sober days out with friends.

She credits non-alcoholic drinks and surrounding herself with sober friends for keeping her on track.

She also left the media industry full-time, choosing to work from home as a freelancer and found her own organization, Sober Girl Society.

“I just feel a lot calmer now,” she said. ‘I can deal with my mental health much better.

‘I am much more stable, I no longer create all my own problems and disasters. I’m much happier.’