Shanna Whan talks about addiction and Sober in the Country

When life fell apart for Shanna Whan due to alcohol, she reached out to help others.

Taking a stand: Shanna Whan started an alcohol awareness campaign called Sober in the Country, aimed at supporting rural professionals who don’t know where to turn for support with drinking or addiction. Picture: Tony Harrington

IT TOOK a near-death experience for Shanna Whan to finally start talking about the illness she had been battling for 20 years.

Now, it’s a topic she talks about daily.

The bubbly 45-year-old from northwest NSW has started a conversation about alcohol addiction in rural areas, so others don’t suffer alone, as she did.

“We celebrate alcohol in the bush. Every time a social event happens in this country it happens with alcohol — every celebration, every commiseration, every sporting event,” says the former rural photojournalist.

“That is awesome, we need to connect; we have to come together.

“However, for a person predisposed to addiction, it is obviously a massive problem.

“It is not about demonising people who do enjoy a drink. It is about putting a spotlight on the multitude of people who can’t safely do that.

“The same way we support the people who get cancer, we have to support our mates who have to drink less or nothing at all.

“If it has the word cancer in it, we say, ‘OK, can I harvest your crops, feed your kids and look after your dog?’. If it is alcoholism, we say, ‘Gee what’s wrong with you? You used to be fun’.”

Through her Sober in the Country awareness campaign, public speaking engagements, humour, political advocacy work and an online support group, Shanna works to make it socially acceptable to be sober in rural communities and educates people about how to help others and themselves.

For decades, Shanna hid her symptoms from family and friends, out of shame — and a fear that without a drink in hand, she would not be accepted.

She says doctors missed the urgency of her quiet calls for help, not recognising the severity of her problem because she looked “fine” and maintained her professional career.

“By day, I exercised and ate kale and I did the right things,” she says.

“But by night, after 5 o’clock, I was an alcoholic.

“I did not identify as an alcoholic because I thought they were people who drank scotch out of a bag in the morning. I didn’t even drink every day.

“But once I drank, one was too many and 1000 wasn’t enough … I was no longer me when I drank. Then I would get up the next morning, and go and be amazing in front of the general public.”

SITC: Shanna Whan. Picture: Tony Harrington

That was until one day five years ago, when she hit rock bottom, falling down a flight of concrete stairs after she had been drinking.

Her husband, Tim, found her unconscious with a head injury.

As part of her recovery, she started blogging about her experience, and her story gained a following, evolving into an awareness campaign and support group. “One of the things I was taught early on was that helping others would help me,” she says.

Shanna is a rural ambassador for Australian alcohol awareness charity Hello Sunday Morning.

Her Sober in the Country website and social media channels are collectively reaching tens of thousands of people, and her private online support group is a place where rural professionals can communicate and help each other.

It has membership of more than 250 people. “If that is not proof of how desperately necessary support is, I don’t know what is,” Shanna says.

“What we are doing through Sober in the Country is speaking a language rural people can understand, and it’s giving people the courage to be brave, and others the compassion to be better mates.”

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