After embracing a heavy drinking culture , Anna Donaghey, 53, used the qualities that drove her career to go teetotal From her mid-teens onwards, alcohol played an increasingly important role in Anna Donaghey’s life, helping her to fit in and cope with feelings of inadequacy. Despite a successful career in advertising, a happy marriage and motherhood , she drank every day, which ended up affecting her performance, sleep, health and marriage - and even, at times, her safety. That is, until eventually there were too many red flags to ignore and she had to find new and healthier ways of employing her addictive personality.
She told Marina Gask how she went from being reliant on alcohol to putting it aside altogether. I’m pretty sure I gravitated towards a career in advertising because of the heavy drinking lifestyle , although I now think that whatever industry I’d found myself in, I’d have been a drinker, because alcohol gave me the social confidence I lacked. My first foray was trying cider when I was 15 and drinking with my then-boyfriend who was older than me.
Getting a job in manufacturing at Rover after three booze-filled years studying European Business at Brighton University, the heavy drinking culture fitted me perfectly. I used to drink to fit in, to sit with the blokes on the track and be part of that team. When I moved to London and got a job as a planner in advertising in 2000, I felt like I’d found my tribe.
Everyone else seemed so accomplished, so togeth.
