For those who have become dependent on alcohol, knowing when - and how - to stop can be difficult.
Kimberly Kearns had to ask herself these questions, and they led her to start “Sober in the Suburbs.”
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“From the outside looking in, I appeared to have it all together. You know, the picket fence, the three kids, the dog, you know I presented that I was really happy,” Kearns told Boston 25 News Anchor Elizabeth Hopkins, “But I was crumbling on the inside, that’s when I started sneaking vodka.”
Drinking became a crutch that took over Kearns’ life. She said it had become a central core of her social life.
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“I believed somebody who struggled with alcohol, that they were the person sitting on the corner with alcohol in the brown paper bag,” Kearns said, “You compare yourself to other people and say, oh I’m not that bad.”
After finishing a bottle of wine by herself one night in 2020 and having no recollection of putting her kids to bed, Kearns decided she needed to stop.
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I woke up with that debilitating self-loathing, this anxiety. I just had like, that voice was almost screaming in my head, and I was like I can’t do this anymore,” Kearns said.
Quitting alcohol allowed Kearns to refocus her life, and start the social group “Sober in the Suburbs”.
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“This could be for anybody and you don’t have to identify as somebody who struggles with alcohol, so that is what the main speaker series is, be we also have walks and coffee,” Kearns said.
9% of women over 18 are believed to have an alcohol disorder and 17% of women between ages 18 and 25 are believed to have an alcohol disorder.
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Dr. Ximena Sanchez-Samper, a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Charles River Recovery in Weston, thinks that an organization like “Sober in the Suburbs” can play an important role in helping people deal with alcohol disorders.
“When you can start to feel that you’re not alone, that you can talk about what it’s like to be you know, a mom, a spouse, and all those things that you sometimes keep behind the white picket fence,” Sanchez-Samper said, “There’s other ways of being together, of celebrating togetherness.”
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Sanchez-Samper said that drinking rates rose during the pandemic and that it can be hard for some people to remove alcohol from their lifestyles.
“I started to understand that there were so many people out there that were experiencing what I was experiencing. I hope that it normalizes not drinking, I hope it’s a safe space for people and that it eliminates the stigma of someone who doesn’t drink,” Kearns said, “One of my favorite phrases is that the opposite of addiction is connection.”
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