“What would I do if I had to get him to hospital?” she thought, imagining herself as “the drunk old grandma throwing the baby in the taxi”.

At 63-years-old, the Ocean Grove local’s body was shutting down. Doctors had warned her that if she kept drinking, she would die from an oesophageal haemorrhage.

Her family had cut her off after years of drunken abuse, she had no money to her name, and she had become “immune to alcohol”, with the high she once felt when she started drinking at 14 replaced by numbness.

She had lost everything to the drink but what happened next, that night in her St Kilda home, Browne said, saved her life.

“I just got on my knees and prayed. I was crying my eyes out and I prayed to God to please take this away. Please help me,” Browne said.

“I saw this bright light, whereby I couldn’t see anything but this light, and I heard this soft voice echoing ‘I’m here to help you’ and I had goosebumps all over me and my obsession for alcohol left me in that moment.

“I went to an AA meeting the next morning and a woman also named Suzie stood up and shared, and she looked me in the eye the whole time … I went to probably 100 meetings in that area after that and I never saw that woman again.”

It has been eight and a half years since her “spiritual awakening” that night in June 2017, but as Browne discusses in her new memoir, the road to rock bottom began decades earlier when she owned Jan Juc’s wild party venue, Bird Rock Cafe.

“I’d start drinking at 12pm, drink through service, drink in the bar after and then we’d have everyone back at our place until the early hours of the morning, and then rinse and repeat,” Browne said.

“We broke every law. We had people there underage. We had people there after hours. We had drugs on the premises and the drinking was outrageous then.”

Browne recalled her ex husband dealing drugs out of the premises, a crime he was later convicted and jailed for.

“I owned Bird Rock for eight years between 1994 and 2002 with my partner Gary,” she said.

“When he got out of jail, he went to Colombia where the cocaine was pure and he actually ended up dying over there, which was very sad.

“I remember thinking back on our crazy times together at Bird Rock, it was just insane.”

It’s hard to deny the symbolism of Browne putting down her last drink that night in June 2017, the same month Bird Rock Cafe closed its doors for the final time after new owners Liv and Paul Tyler went into voluntary liquidation.

The venue has since undergone multiple transformations by various owners, and today stands as a restaurant and cocktail bar serving southeast Asian style cuisine under the name Bird Rock Jan Juc.

After selling the venue more than two decades ago, Browne moved to Sydney where the alcoholism she said was a “part of her DNA” began to take over her life.

“After my Bird Rock days, I just thought if I moved to Sydney, I could drink myself to death, and I wouldn’t have my family around me to judge me,” she said.

“I drank probably against my own will for seven years and it just wasn’t working anymore but I didn’t know how to stop … Alcohol is so powerful and insidious and it just had me. I was absolutely powerless.”

Browne said she could feel herself losing her mind while her body was simultaneously “packing up”.

“I had a fatty liver and they said if I kept drinking I would die,” she said.

According to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data, rates of recent alcohol consumption among young women aged 14-17-years-old were only increasing, up from 28 per cent in 2019 to 35 per cent in 2023.

Preliminary estimates revealed there were 1,667 alcohol-induced deaths in 2023, with more than 90 per cent related to chronic conditions such as alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

The cost of Browne’s addiction didn’t stop at her physical and mental health, however, it also took a toll on her relationships, finances and career.

“My family dumped me after a Christmas where I got drunk and screamed at them all,” she said.

“There was a time I was working in childcare and I couldn’t even stop then. It’s illegal to drink when looking after children, but I would sneak out at lunch time and go to the pub and have a few wines and then get back to the child care centre at exactly the right time, chewing mints.

“If I had been caught doing that, I could have gone to jail, but the alcohol was more important than anything.”

Now in 2025 at 71-years-old, Browne is a changed woman. One who has a loving relationship with her daughter and two grandsons, lives a healthy lifestyle, and can be around other people drinking without having a craving.

“My family are all really supportive and have congratulated me on what I did,” she said.

“They live around the corner from me in Ocean Grove, so I see them a lot. I go to yoga and pilates, and I’ve got a couple of girlfriends who I see for coffee and that’s about all I do.”

Browne attributes her dramatic turnaround to regular group support meetings and a 12 step program.

“I have been in AA since the 1990s and it has truly saved my life,” she said.

Browne’s journey from near-death to sobriety is detailed in her unfiltered memoir, The Hole In The Soul, which was released in November. She said a children’s book was in the pipeline next.

“Never in my life did I think that I would be a published author,” she said.

“But people always told me I had to tell my story, so in Covid I decided to write a book.

“I’ve read so many drunk-a-logs from other women and they give you a sense of belonging … you can put yourself in the story completely, almost like it’s written about you.

“This book is about letting people know they’re not alone at all.”