The Project’s Chrissie Swan reveals why she quit drinking alcohol

The Project co-host Chrissie Swan has opened up about what drinking during lockdown last year did to her and why she gave it up.

The Project co-host Chrissie Swan has opened up about what drinking during lockdown last year did to her and why she gave it up.

The Network 10 program’s panellists were discussing how the NSW alcohol regulator is investigating alcohol delivery service Jimmy Brings after the death of a 49-year-old man from Bondi in 2018.

Liquor and Gaming NSW is investigating after it was revealed the man was delivered three bottles of wine a day for several weeks before he died.

Swan said she had recently given up drinking after finding herself relying on alcohol to cope with the stress of last year’s lockdowns in Melbourne.

She said she was reticent to be the poster girl for sobriety but “it was a decision I made for myself after giving it a fair nudge in the first lockdown last year”.

“I haven’t had a drink in about nine months,” she said.

“I do recommend it. If you’re thinking, ‘oh, maybe I’m drinking a bit much’ or ‘it’s not helping me any more’, I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve taken from it, is that it didn’t help.

As the pandemic has worn on, Aussies have become increasingly comfortable ordering just about everything to their door.
That “everything” includes alcohol, and it’s feared that it could have deadly consequences.#TheProjectTVpic.twitter.com/xZqfljxlnv

— The Project (@theprojecttv) October 14, 2021

“With the pressures and anxieties and worries and being responsible for kids and their whole life has changed and you’re their parent, you feel enormous guilt, though it’s all out of your control, you kind of feel like having a few drinks will take the edge off and a couple of drinks does but eventually it’s at the stage where it doesn’t help and it certainly wasn’t helping me.”

She said her anxiety was “through the roof” and she found herself unable to get a good night’s sleep.

“I really noticed a huge difference in my day-to-day positivity and ability to deal with the pandemic and the ongoing changes to literally every part of our lives if I’m clear minded and for me it’s been fantastic, a fantastic choice,” she said of quitting.

The Project revealed that in the last year, household spending on alcohol grew by 15 per cent.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Bondi man spent $24,000 with Jimmy Brings on almost 300 orders in the three years before his death.

The company that owns Jimmy Brings says it has a system in place to alert them when a customer’s orders are exceedingly large or frequent.