The mid-pandemic 'sea change' that fast-tracked a husband's alcoholism

Three years ago, when former Australian journalist Kate Halfpenny and her husband made a spontaneous move to the Victorian town of Ocean Grove, she discovered he was secretly drinking half a bottle of vodka a day.

"For a while, I thought I was going to lose my marriage, whether that would be by Chris dying - which he ultimately feared was going to happen - or whether I just couldn't put up with being married to an addict who didn't want to get help," she tells RNZ's Nine to Noon.

After four decades of writing about other people, Halfpenny tells her own compelling life story in the new memoir Boogie Wonderland.

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Within two days of deciding to make their "sea change", Kate and Chris - who have three grown kids together - found an Ocean Grove house online that they liked the look of. Less than 10 days after that, the couple sold their leaky Melbourne apartment and relocated.

"It was quick, and I think it was meant to be."

Kate - who felt like she'd already done a lot for her husband - hoped the move would usher in a new marriage dynamic in which Chris would take his turn as "the safe pair of hands" in their family.

"I'm not proud of it, but my mindset at the time was 'Right, I want to be looked after now'."

Like a lot of people, Kate says she and Chris - a business executive - hit the bottle pretty hard during lockdown.

Although "never a huge drinker" herself, Kate loved the "glittery feeling" of laughing about something with her husband after a couple of drinks.

Every night in Ocean Grove, they would hop into their big blow-up pool together to drink cocktails and listen to cricket on the radio.

"Suddenly, it felt like we were at this incredible resort all the time."

But bored with having few friends around the Bellarine Peninsula, Chris's drinking soon took on a "much darker" tone, Kate says.

When his brother died suddenly at home one Saturday morning, that "terrible, terrible blow" led her husband to start drinking half a bottle of vodka every day before their shared nightly bottle of rosé.

As a "trained observer of people", Kate was miffed at how she could have missed her own husband had an addiction to alcohol.

"Darling, addicts are incredible liars. You really didn't stand a chance," Chris said to her later.

It took Kate's 83-year-old dad nearly drowning on Chris's watch for her to kick him out of the house and say that he needed to go to rehab for the sake of their marriage.

"A lot of the time, I was really angry with Chris while also wanting to save him. As women, I think we tend to do that a lot. We keep hyper vigilant about everyone in our lives."

During the eight-week wait for a residential rehab bed in Sydney, Kate says her husband "tried every trick in the book" to get out of going.

"He would say things to try and wound me, to make me back off. He'd say, 'I love vodka more than I love you,' and things like that.

"Ultimately, I just had to stay the course and think 'This is not my beautiful husband speaking'."

At the time, Kate says Chris more closely resembled the creepy Lord of the Rings character Gríma Wormtongue.

"I'd think, 'My husband is in there somewhere. I just need to crack that carapace and get him out of there.'"

Kate hopes Boogie Wonderland can help remove some of the stigma around alcoholism, a very common addiction, but still a scary topic for many people.

Within their relationship, it was a "strange adjustment" to no longer have alcohol as the "main lubricant", she says, and newfound sobriety definitely affected the couple's social prospects, too.

"When you don't drink anymore, lots of social activities change and also people change around you. A lot of people behaved weirdly towards both of us [and said things like] 'Well, we won't drink if you're not drinking' and that kind of thing."

Some friends Kate told about BoogieWonderland haven't spoken to her since.

"I think it cuts too close to the bone for them."

By 58, all of us have "dings on the bodywork", Kate says, and she's grateful to be living a life that so far has been packed with plenty of twists and turns.

'One thing I can promise is that our life will never be boring,' she told Chris, soon after declaring her love for him on their first date.

"I think that I've pretty much stuck to that."

Where to get help

Alcoholics Anonymous NZ 0800 229 6757 or email help@aa.org.nz or online.