Maz Compton on her year without drinking and why she gave up alcohol

FORMER 2DayFm breakfast radio host Maz Compton has written an emotional blog post about her year being sober, detailing the heartbreak and personal pain.

FORMER 2DayFm breakfast radio host Maz Compton has written an emotional and touching blog post about her year being sober, detailing the heartbreak and personal pain that led her to quit alcohol for good.

The 31-year-old said the death of her manager and confidant, Mark Byrne, in September 2014, meant that her “life was slowly unravelling into a disaster zone”.

“When Mark passed away I have never felt loss quite like it,” she wrote on her personal blog. “I felt like my heart broke beyond repair, my dreams suddenly came to a screeching halt, I felt a part of me had died with him.”

“When he was suddenly gone my world fell apart and my heart broke into a thousand pieces. The pain and sadness that I felt seemed to consume me and I really did think it would last forever.”

Compton said she found herself drinking at least a bottle of wine every night and started turning down plans with friends to sit at home alone and drink.

“My normal life had become a vacuum of a highly stressful and demanding job, a long distance relationship with several complications, living away from my family, and a bottle of red every evening, at least.

“I told myself many things to make it OK. You’re still hurting from the divorce. Everyone drinks, so it’s fine. You’re fun and happy when you drink. It’s impossible to stop. It’s an expectation with my job. I’m stressed. I’m sad today. I need it to relax. I live alone. I’m single. I need it to cope. I’m not hurting anyone. I miss my family. When you start saying no to dinner plans with friends, so you can sit in your courtyard, alone and drink a bottle of wine, just because you can’t face anyone, because you feel like a fraud, then perhaps yes that is a problem.”

Maz Compton with her former 2DayFM breakfast radio partner Dan Debuf.

Compton admitted her alcohol problem got so bad, on some nights, she had no idea how she got home.

“The problem was that I would, more often than not, have a drink in one hand, sometimes one in each,” she said.

“I would drive my car to a party with the intention of just having one or two, and find myself still fully clothed in my bed the next day nursing a hangover with a taxi receipt hanging out of my purse and zero idea on how I got home.”

Compton said she then signed up for a fitness holiday in Thailand where drinking was not an option, and she took health classes, ate clean food and spoke to other attendees in similar situations.

From there she quit drinking for the first month of 2015 and hasn’t had a drink since New Year’s Eve in 2014, describing the decision as the most “empowering and rewarding” of her life.

Compton and Debuf replaced radio gurus Kyle and Jackie O when they moved from 2DayFM to Kiis but were replaced by Rove McManus and Sam Frost late last year.

Maz Compton and Dan Debuf.