Advocate shines for being sober in bush
news@ruralweekly.com
I DID NOT IDENTIFY AS AN ALCOHOLIC BECAUSE I THOUGHT THEY WERE PEOPLE WHO DRANK SCOTCH OUT OF A BAG IN THE MORNING. I DIDN’T EVEN DRINK EVERY DAY.
SHANNA WHAN
IT TOOK a near-death experience for Shanna Whan to finally start talking about the illness she had been battling for 20 years.
Now it’s a topic she talks about daily.
The bubbly 45-year-old from northwest New South Wales has started a rural conversation about alcohol addiction so others don’t suffer alone, as she did.
“We celebrate alcohol in the bush. Every time a social event happens in this country it happens with alcohol – every celebration, every commiseration, every sporting event,” says the former rural photojournalist.
“That is awesome, we need to connect, we have to come together.
“However, for a person predisposed to addiction, it is obviously a massive problem.
“It is not about demonising people who do enjoy a drink, it is about putting a spotlight on the multitude of people who can’t safely do that.
“The same way we support the people who get cancer, we have to support our mates who have to drink less or nothing at all.
“If it has the word cancer in it we say, ‘OK, can I harvest your crops, feed your kids and look after your dog?’
“If it is alcoholism we say, ‘Gee, what’s wrong with you? You used to be fun’.”
Through her Sober in the Country awareness campaign, public speaking engagements, humour, political advocacy and online support group, Shanna works to make it socially acceptable to be sober in rural communities and educates people about how to help others and help themselves.
For decades, Shanna hid her symptoms from family and friends out of shame and fear that without a drink in hand, she would not be accepted.
She says doctors missed the urgency of her quiet calls for help, not recognising the severity of her problem because she looked “fine” and maintained her professional career.
“By day I exercised and ate kale and I did the right things,” she says.
“But by night, after 5 o’clock, I was an alcoholic.
“I did not identify as an alcoholic because I thought they were people who drank scotch out of a bag in the morning.
“I didn’t even drink every day. But once I drank, one was too many and 1000 wasn’t enough. I was no longer me when I drank.
“Then I would get up the next morning and go be amazing in front of the general public.”
Until one day five years ago when she hit rock bottom, falling down a flight of concrete stairs after she had been drinking. Her husband, Tim, found her unconscious with a head injury.
As part of her recovery, she started blogging about her experience and her story gained a following, evolving into an awareness campaign and support group.
“One of the things I was taught early on was that helping others would help me,” she explains.
Shanna is a rural ambassador for Australian alcohol awareness charity Hello Sunday Morning.
Her Sober in the Country website and social media channels are collectively reaching tens of thousands of people and her private online support group is a place where rural professionals can communicate and help each other. It has more than 250 members.
“If that is not proof of how desperately necessary support is, I don’t know what is,” she says.
“What we are doing through Sober in the Country is speaking a language rural people can understand, and it’s giving people the courage to be brave, and others the compassion to be better mates.”