Hayley Holt has talked candidly about her alter-ego "Arthur" after revealing the birthday of her stillborn baby Frankie led her to pick up the bottle again after nearly six years of sobriety.
"I really didn't want to face my feelings on Frankie's birthday," she told the Sunday programme. "I knew the answer, I just knew how I was going to do it and that was blacking out."
Holt describes going to the liquor store on the first anniversary of his birth, knowing that her partner was about to meet her alter-ego Arthur.
Arthur was a nickname Holt was given in her twenties — a reference to a popular 1980s movie about a loveable but drunken millionaire.
"Arthur dances around by herself. She bangs things over. She truth tells. She says things that are really awkward, and you know, Arthur thinks it's funny, but it's really not funny," Holt said.
She said her career as a ballroom dancer first led to long alcohol-fuelled nights. Amid the pressures of the industry, alcohol was a release. "Drinking allowed me to go, 'I've had enough, I'm not pleasing anyone'," she said.
Holt eventually decided to quit after years of binge drinking and attended an AA meeting.
"It was like finally, I'm telling the truth and I'm with these people who might be able to help," she said.
In her new memoir, Second Chances, Holt describes alcohol as "cunning".
"Recovery is precarious because, given a chance, alcohol can wriggle its way back into the lives of people who've been sober for years. It does this in many ways. One of them is by deluding you into thinking that you're in control, but you never are."
Holt said that after the birthday incident, waking up and realising she lost control was enough to convince her that she never wanted to drink again.
"Really knowing that drinking wasn't for me. I was like 'oh yeah, it's always going to be like this'."
Watch Holt's full story with Sunday's Miriama Kamo below.
Holt lost her first child Frankie in late pregnancy. (Source: Sunday)
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