Drinking Out of Boredom

Trigger Warning: This episode includes mentions of a medical emergency and a homicide.

Sunday morning, and Brenda can't get out of bed. Her head is pounding hard enough that she genuinely believes she might die from it, so she turns over and doesn't get up again until one in the afternoon. She'd been retired for years by then, a daily schedule and routine filled with wine instead, and what she labeled relaxing was really drinking out of boredom. A couple of glasses had turned into a full box, then a bottle most nights, one more way to use up hours a twenty-year police career used to take up on its own. A week later, she threw that box of wine in the trash.

Brenda and Coach Cole discuss:

Starting the police academy, getting married, and quitting drinking, all in the same month, years apart

Why retiring in 2013 removed the one thing that had kept her drinking in check

Naming the voice in her head Dave, and talking back to him out loud in the car

The pink cloud moment driving home along the lake six weeks after her last drink

The Sunday morning hangover that convinced her she was dying, and why it became her turning point

Why she filled her newly empty days with sewing for her local theater and mornings back at the SPCA

And more on rebuilding her marriage and finally learning to put herself first…

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