How To Destroy Your Life In One Drunken Night

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

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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 …