QMWS 2023 President’s Chat with Shona Campbell

Welcome to the President’s Chat with Shona Campbell, founder of Women Living Sober

A chat recap

I met Shona Campbell at a business workshop earlier this year and became interested in the work she does. From my experience of working in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic in The Netherlands, I know how hard it can be for any doctor to have a meaningful conversation about problematic alcohol consumption with their patients. Let alone to connect and motivate our patients to make a change, stop drinking and lead an alcohol-free life.

Shame is a big motivator to hide alcohol dependency and it can be extremely hard to distinguish “social drinking” from “problem drinking”, especially in women. It is extremely brave to break through this shame and use the experience of alcohol dependency to help other women, which is what Shona has dedicated her life to now. She helps women with problematic drinking, whether they’re just “sober-curious” or wanting to work through the different stages of life without alcohol and how that looks like.

As many people and especially doctors can benefit from her knowledge, I decided she would be an excellent candidate to interview for the next President’s Chat.

I hope you enjoy the chat.

Dr Ira van der Steenstraten, President QMWS

Disclaimer: This interview is intended to shine a light on Shona’s process. As I have not participated in any of her programs, I can therefore not speak to its content, nor is this an explicit endorsement of her programs.

About Today’s Guest – Shona Campbell

Shona’s life today is so very different to how it was in May 2004. At that time Shona was living in Brisbane and outwardly looked to be living a good life – she had a “good, secure” job, she had a home she was paying off, she was living a nice life as a single woman with a career as a secretary. Shona joined in social events and participated in sporting activities.

Her life looked “pretty okay” to most people, including her workmates, but especially to her siblings and close relatives, and life-long friends who lived back in her home country of New Zealand.

However, what she had very cleverly managed to hide from everyone for more than the previous 20 years, was her addiction to alcohol.

And then in May 2004 after one more episode of drinking to the point of blacking out, Shona finally understood that she could no longer hide her addiction from those around her, and she reached out to get the help that she badly needed to quit alcohol for good.

What followed was 3 weeks in residential drug and alcohol rehab in Brisbane, and armed with determination and a multitude of strategies Shona set about restructuring her life so that she could ditch her dependence on alcohol and live an authentic life, unshackled by hangovers regrets, fear, worry, guilt, indecision … the list goes on!

Fast forward 19 years …

Shona has completely eliminated any thoughts of alcohol being remotely a part of her life. There are no cravings, no triggers and absolutely no desire to ever have alcohol be a part of her life again.

Shona is passionate about using her lived experience to help women to look at how they view their alcohol consumption as being “just what I do” with little thought about how this could be impacting not only their health but also their family life and their career. Through a series of programs she has developed, Shona will walk alongside any woman who is questioning her drinking, at whatever level of unease she feels (from sober-curious through to living with addiction), and guide her to move towards changing her life for the better.