How To Destroy Your Life In One Drunken Night
Marie Claire Australia|December 2020
Fiona O’Loughlin is Australian comedy royalty. But for years, she was caught in a toxic trap, using alcoholism as material for her stand-up and using comedy as an excuse for her addiction. For the first time, she reveals the true depths and darkness of her disease
How To Destroy Your Life In One Drunken Night

I didn’t follow the protocol that night. Since coming out as an alcoholic in 2009 when I collapsed on a Brisbane stage in front of 400 paying ticketholders after drinking a stupid amount of vodka, I had put in place measures to protect myself from temptation at gigs: my team would remove the mini-bar from my hotel room and organise a driver to pick me up from the event straight after I walked offstage.

That night in 2012, I emceed a corporate gig for a disability charity at Parliament House in Canberra. It had gone phenomenally well, and the organiser was thanking me profusely as I walked offstage. He was a gay man about my age who was dying of cancer; this was to be his last event. I was invested in making sure it was a great night for him, so when he told me a respected judge wanted to meet me, I agreed to go. I told my driver to leave and said that I’d catch a taxi back to the hotel. That was my first mistake. And I made it willingly, knowing that I was immediately opening myself up to temptation.

On my way to the bathroom to fix my makeup before shaking the esteemed judge’s hand, I passed an unaccompanied catering trolley full of champagne flutes, filled to the brim with bubbles of temptation. Temptation I couldn’t resist. I downed three glasses on my way into the toilet, and three on the way out. That was my second mistake, and third and fourth and fifth and …

This story is from the December 2020 edition of Marie Claire Australia.

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This story is from the December 2020 edition of Marie Claire Australia.

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