‘I was a highly functioning binge-drinker’, says Ulrika Jonsson

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Louise Thomas

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Ulrika Jonsson has revealed she is four months sober after admitting she was using alcohol to “escape from my woes”.

The TV presenter told the Sun newspaper she “sobbed like a child” after her best friend told her she needed help with her drinking.

Having split with husband Brian Monet in 2019, Jonsson said she had “no one to lean on” amid “family problems and personal issues”.

“It was just me and my friend, the drink,” she told the newspaper.

Jonsson said she knew there was a problem because “I no longer recognised myself”.

The 57-year-old said she wasn’t a regular drinker but she was heading towards drinking every day “when things got bad over the past year”.

“I established a routine of drinking then punishing myself with hard work through my hangover,” she said.

“And then reward myself with another drink at the end of it all.”

Jonsson said sobriety had brought her “much-needed peace”.

“Drink quelled my anxiety,” she said.

“I was a highly functioning binge drinker. I never woke up dishevelled in a pool of sick.

“But the number of times I would black out and not recall the night before when I had been drinking alone, were increasing.”

Jonsson said that drinking “stifled my anger” as she used it to “remember the good times and to forget the present bad times”.

“It was the perfect escape from my woes,” she told the newspaper.

“When I drank, I felt I became a better, nicer person, and more equipped to cope.

“The truth, of course, was quite the opposite.”