Getting Sober as a Mom: How Shelby Quit Drinking After Four Years of Trying
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
One morning during the pandemic, Shelby opened her freezer and took out the vodka.
"It was like I never put it back down. That's how it felt. It really felt like this switch, and from there it was a very quick descent into full-blown daily drinking."
Getting sober as a mom often means fighting two battles at once: the addiction itself, and the shame of being a mother who drinks. On this episode of the Sober Motivation podcast, Shelby shared how she went from hiding vodka in her Red Bull to more than a year alcohol-free, and why it took her four years of trying, failing, and trying again before sobriety finally stuck.
Her story covers childhood trauma, ADHD, secret daily drinking, and the moment she stopped trying to recover in silence. If you have ever promised yourself "I'm not going to drink tomorrow" and broken that promise by noon, this one is for you.
Where It Started: Childhood Trauma and Normalized Drinking
Shelby's relationship with alcohol was shaped long before her first drink.
When she was three years old, her biological father sexually abused her. He was never convicted. To get away, her mom sold everything, packed up the kids, and drove from Tucson, Arizona to Maine, a place she had read was one of the safest states to land.
Alcohol was part of the wallpaper of Shelby's childhood. Her mom worked as a bartender, and Shelby remembers sitting at the bar as a little girl with a cup of chocolate milk while they turned the disco ball on for her. Drinking never registered as dangerous. It registered as what adults did.
But the chaos around drinking left marks. Shelby watched her mom cycle through volatile relationships, including one that turned violent when she was five. She remembers hiding behind an entertainment center while her mom's boyfriend tore the house apart, then calling 911.
"My innocence was taken away at a really young age, but it kind of continued to just be taken away. I was this very grown-up child that didn't really have a chance to be goofy. I was always anxious, always kind of serious."
By sixth or seventh grade, her mom's own drinking had escalated to daily vodka. Shelby once pulled her mom out of the car to stop her from driving to work drunk. Another time, still without a license, she made her mom pull over and drove them home herself.
She swore she would never end up like that. Almost everyone who grows up around alcoholism swears the same thing.
The Good Girl With No Off Switch
At school, Shelby was the straight-A student, the people pleaser, the kid every parent complimented. On the inside, she describes it differently: she was performing, always on, and it was exhausting.
She had her first drink at 12. Vodka and orange juice. She hated the taste and drank it anyway, way too hard, from the very first time.
"I never had a stop button. I didn't drink to taste it. I didn't drink to have fun. I drank to get drunk."
Through high school she was blacking out most weekends while still pulling good grades. She was also smoking weed daily, which became its own physical dependency. What she didn't know then was that she had undiagnosed ADHD. The constant internal hyperactivity, the disorganization, the anxiety of holding it all together made alcohol feel less like partying and more like medicine.
That pattern of self-medicating an undiagnosed brain shows up constantly in recovery stories. Gary told a strikingly similar version of it in ADHD, Alcohol, and the Private School Kid Who Drank His 20s Away.
The takeaway: if drinking makes you feel normal rather than buzzed, that is not a personality quirk. It is a signal that alcohol is doing a job something else should be doing.
When the Switch Flipped: COVID, Motherhood, and Daily Vodka
Shelby got married the week she turned 21, partly so she could legally drink at her own wedding. Her son Austin was born in 2017, and she describes the love as the most intense she had ever felt, tangled up with severe postpartum anxiety and a depressive stretch at home.
Then came 2020. In March of that year, Austin turned three, the same age Shelby was when her abuse happened, and around the same time of year. Something inside her broke open. Her son was diagnosed with autism and wasn't speaking. Her marriage was struggling, and she was seeking validation outside of it. Her mom got into a car accident and went to rehab. And the world had just shut down.
That was the morning she took the vodka out of the freezer.
The progression was fast. A 750ml bottle of Smirnoff in the morning, sipped through the day. Sometimes two. Watering down the vodka bottle so her husband wouldn't notice. Shots at lunch. Driving with alcohol in her system, sometimes with her son in the car, which she calls the saddest part of her story.
She was still going to work. Still functioning, in the narrow sense of the word. That combination of daily drinking and a life that looks intact from the outside is exactly the pattern Andy described in Hiding Your Drinking? Andy Did It for Years.
In 2021, she came home from a work training so drunk she couldn't walk. Her husband told her she had to do something. That became her first attempt at sobriety.
Why Quitting Quietly Kept Failing
From October 2021 to August 2025, Shelby got sober and went back to drinking multiple times. A few months here, four months there. Each return started with the same thought: I feel better now. I can probably handle a little.
She switched to beer, which she didn't even like. Then boxed wine. Then nips, the little airport bottles, because she could control the dose and stay functional. She was spending more money than ever and telling herself she had it under control.
Looking back, she can name exactly why none of it stuck. She was treating sobriety as a countdown clock instead of an acceptance.
"It's a clock that you're obsessed with. Do I have enough time under my belt before I can drink again? Until I fully accepted that alcohol could not be in the equation, period, my focus was never going to be how do I rebuild my life."
The other thing keeping her stuck was silence. She refused to tell her in-laws, wouldn't fully level with her counselor, and even downplayed her drinking to the doctor treating her stomach problems. She believed she could recover privately and never have to admit how bad it had gotten.
"Your addiction wants you to be quiet. It thrives in secrecy. It thrives in the privacy of your own mind. It wants you to think that you're not worthy, because that keeps you reaching."
If you have watched yourself return to drinking right when life was improving, that pattern has a logic to it. We broke it down in Why Do People Go Back to Drinking When Sobriety Is Going Well?
The takeaway: a break from drinking is not the same as a decision about drinking. As long as the door stays propped open for "someday," the countdown clock runs the show.
What Finally Worked: Acceptance, a Prayer, and a Community
In 2024, deep in daily drinking and desperate, Shelby typed two words into her podcast search bar: sober motivation. She started listening obsessively. Moms, daughters, functioning drinkers, people whose stories sounded like hers.
"I felt not alone. I felt like this was happening to a lot more people than people talk about."
One night in January 2025, she sat in her bed and prayed. She didn't have a higher power. She prayed anyway: please help me not do this anymore. The next day, she didn't buy alcohol. She got four months, went back out in April, and the drinking picked up faster than ever, right where it left off. Shakes. Drinking alone. Ordering a double with a shot on the side while everyone else had a glass of wine.
Her last drink was July 31, 2025. This time, something was different. It wasn't a break. It was acceptance.
"It was not like I'm gonna take a break. It was really accepting that I don't think I can drink. There's no amount of alcohol I can put in my body where I'm gonna be able to be okay."
Five months in, feeling squirrely and lonely doing sobriety alone, she joined the Sober Motivation app community. She describes walking into it as finding a home she never had, the first place she didn't have to perform.
Since getting sober as a mom, she has started drawing and writing again, things she hadn't touched since childhood. A year into sobriety, she hosts meetings, tells her story at speaker meetings, and came on the podcast, something she promised she would do when she hit one year.
The takeaway: you do not have to do this in a church basement, and you do not have to do it alone. But you almost certainly cannot do it in secret. Shame is not a recovery strategy.
Getting Sober as a Mom Takes as Many Tries as It Takes
Shelby's story is not a clean arc from rock bottom to redemption. It is four years of getting up again. The DUI in 2019 didn't fix her. The scare in 2021 didn't fix her. Even four good months in early 2025 didn't fix her.
What fixed her, as much as anything does, was the accumulation of every attempt, plus honesty, plus people.
She shared a hiking analogy on the episode that captures it. If you were on a brutal hike and every time you stopped to rest someone told you that you had failed and had to start over at the bottom, you would quit the hike. Rest is not failure. Starting again is not failure.
"The only difference between people in sobriety and someone looking to get sober is that they just kept trying. One day it sticks."
If you are trying to quit drinking and it hasn't stuck yet, that does not make you broken. It makes you someone mid-hike. As Shelby put it at the end of our conversation: reach out for help, because you will be met with more love and compassion than you are giving yourself.
Her story started with a freezer and a bottle of vodka. It didn't end there. Yours doesn't have to either.
Want more stories like Shelby's? Subscribe to the Sober Motivation podcast, and if you could use people in your corner, come find us on the Sober Motivation app.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many times does it take to quit drinking for good?
There is no fixed number, and multiple attempts are the norm rather than the exception. Shelby tried repeatedly over four years before sobriety stuck in August 2025. Each attempt taught her something the next one used. Returning to drinking after a sober stretch is common and is not a reason to stop trying.
Why do people go back to drinking when things are going well?
Feeling better is often the trigger. A few sober months can convince you that you're cured and can moderate. Shelby describes it as being obsessed with a countdown clock: do I have enough time under my belt to drink again? Until you accept that alcohol is off the table entirely, the clock keeps running.
What are the signs of a high-functioning drinking problem?
Going to work and managing daily life while drinking secretly is a hallmark. Shelby held a job while drinking vodka throughout the day, watering down bottles, switching to nips to control the dose, and hiding the spending. If you are managing your drinking so others won't see it, that management is itself the sign.
Can you get sober without AA?
Yes. Shelby had a complicated history with AA and never connected with it. Her path was acceptance, podcasts and quit lit, and eventually the Sober Motivation app community. What matters most is not the specific program but honesty and connection with people who understand. Recovery in total isolation is what kept failing her.
Is there a link between ADHD and alcohol use?
Shelby was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and believes drinking was self-medication for a brain that never slowed down. In girls especially, ADHD often shows up as internal hyperactivity rather than disruptive behavior, so it goes unnoticed. Alcohol, a depressant, can feel like relief, which makes it a common but destructive coping tool.
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