EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND star Patricia Heaton is celebrating eight years sober.
“This month in July is the eighth year of me not drinking,” she shared while appearing on SATURDAY IN AMERICA. “I said, ‘I think I need to stop drinking. I think You [God] want me to stop. I will never be able to stop because I love Maker’s Mark Old Fashioneds too much, so You’ll have to do it.’”
Heaton continued, “And really, within 72 hours, He put me in a situation where I realized I didn’t need to be drinking anymore, and it’s been eight years since then, so it’s been wonderful.”
Related: Patricia Heaton Discusses The Moment She Decided to Choose Sobriety
The actress has previously spoken about her decision to stop drinking. In an episode of the “Heart of the Matter” podcast, Heaton recalled a night when her adult sons came over for dinner. After steadily drinking all night, she was “making a joke,” but could not pronounce the word “tradition.”
“And I tried three times, and I couldn’t say the word. And I can’t even mispronounce it for you the way that I was mispronouncing it. I can’t remember,” Heaton said. “And my son at the end of the table says, ‘Oh great, mom. You can’t even talk.’ And I was so humiliated in front of my sons, and their friends. And God knows that that’s all it takes for me — for that kind of sense of their mom looking drunk in front of them.”
She added, “But also, I thought, ‘I feel fine. What is happening in my brain? What is the alcohol doing to my brain where the synapses are misfiring to the point where I can’t say this word? And I’m trying to say it and I can’t say it.’ It’s almost like having a stroke or something. And it shook me up. And I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s it.’”
In an interview with Parade, Heaton admitted she misses drinking “terribly,” but “at the end of the day, I feel better.”
“There’s an actual statistic that women who were moderate drinkers in their 30s and 40s often become alcoholics in their 50s and 60s,” she shared. “You’re a little bit at sea, and so you reach for the bottle to dull the uncertainty. I sensed that a bit with myself. And as your hormones change, you can’t really process alcohol the same way you did when you were younger. I’ve stopped, and my life has improved significantly.”
Heaton is one of many people around the world who have decided to cut alcohol out as they’ve gotten older.
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